The other day i saw a slick scifi movie and really liked the interface in one of the random background terminals. I thought id recreate a working version of it. I snapped a screenshot on my iphone where i was watching, but lo it was blacked out? Same after several attempts. Ugh fine, go to my macbook, fire up netflix in a browser there,
screenshot from desktop. Nope. Still blacked out.
Its not just older architecture we are losing out on.
That's a bit disingenuous isn't it? Being unable to use any screenshot tool to capture an image on my laptop's browser was surprising to me, yes. Or are you arguing that Apple's implementations are no more restrictive than on any linux machine, so as such there is no case to be made for anything DRM related that a non-Apple device is superior (less limiting) in any way? Or... I suppose what is your actual argument here?
No I don't think it's disingenuous – indeed, it seemed to me that you were being disingenuous. My actual argument is that you're confusing Netflix's use of DRM for "Apple's implementation," without acknowledging that you'd have this exact same problem on Windows and Android devices. That Linux doesn't have it is just testament to the fact that hardly anyone, comparatively speaking, actually uses Linux as a daily driver (and, notably, Netflix doesn't let you watch high definition video on Linux anyway).
I'm not interested in dragging my eyelids over whatever esoteric setup notorious Apple shittalker bigyabai uses to feel haughty when dispensing cherry-picked bullshit on HN. Move on.
If you review what I've said above, I think you'll be hard pressed to make an argument that I'm actually defending DRM. Instead, I think you saw someone say something not negative about Apple and that activated your own "unqualified ideologue", causing you to jump into the conversation with some blithe Steve Jobs quote. Nobody gives a shit that you can run arch or gentoo or whatever, and configure it just so to get around Netflix's DRM. Superfluous details, not germane to the conversation.
> and thank you for subsidizing my 4k Netflix torrents!
But I don't configure anything, that's my point. DRM is entirely unnecessary to watch high-resolution Netflix, or really any online media. Nobody needs Widevine, DRM is an anti-feature if you value freedom.
You really are "holding it wrong" if you pay for Netflix and expect FAANG to defend your user freedoms. On iOS, iPadOS and macOS you get a superior experience watching the torrented version every time. This is also the case on Windows and Android, before you cram a stick in my spokes.
My Pixel 8a also blocks screenshots of DRM content. The analog hole remains gaping: pause the movie on your MacBook, and take a picture of the screen with your iPhone.
Carmack level folks are the exception. the vast majority of faang interest is money. In fact if youve been in dev long enough, youd see even the makeup of the tyipical eng has changed, there are quite a few normies in the field these days, many of whom im not sure even like coding at all. Its seen as a reliably high paying field worth steering towards regardless of interest. It has lately reminded me of the kinds of people id see in medicine. smart, capable, not particularly interested in the field as such.
One that has long tickled me is cabbage +/- pickling. I eat both sauerkraut and kimchi from the jar and enjoy them as additions to _roughly_ the same foods, and when friends/family ask I insist they are basically the same thing anyways, but they are uninterested in such shenanigans. I'd love to learn more about these cross cultural shared foods.
Doesnt need to be tech. My blue collar UPS worker friend is all in on down with regulations, and claimed if anything we meed MORE billionaires. Many in America see regulation and taxes in all forms as bad, and the primary thing holding back prosperity for all.
I remember thinking like this when i was younger (hes older than me). Then here i am working nearly half as many hours as this guy, for 5-10x the pay.
This is a widespread, pervasive train of thought in America. Yet i wonder as the houses and healthcare stay expensive, food and fuel too... at some point this mental model breaks right?
One more on top of others. Many people felt it was a solution in search of a problem. As in, there was no problem i had that it solved. And it was forced on us, in place of something useful. From the start i read that as: This wont be here in a couple years. Which then made it annoying to deal with in the meantime (the hate).
Things that stick around, are generally value adding across a large or complete subset of their users. Touch bar was always niche, and thus always doomed. I think a good counter comparison is Apple VR headsets. For me, i have no use and little interest. But i can see them as a hedge at the very least, or as an enthusiast entrant into an emerging market, where future products in that segment may become interesting. And on top, it doesnt impact me - i can ignore their existence until it becomes useful.
If touch bar were launched like VR, i suspect it would have gotten similar level of dismisals, but less hate.
IMO the right next step, which Apple will get to slowly, is better Siri and better app intents. No apps reminds me a bit of the no folders, use search for everything and organize nothing, approach. To me it falls flat because structure - which apps provide - acts as context, memory, mental glue. Heck even changing the layout of apps on my home screen alters what i engage with, and remember to do.
Now generating apps will be game changer. But i dont think it means apps go away. I think we just get better apps, and more open apis (for llms to use).
Sort of, except if no one can ever discover a community it is always dying by default
Personally I'd love to find a decent online community these days, my social circle has shrunk considerably, but idk. It seems difficult to start fresh with new people nowadays
we were made to socialize in person. you can mimic it online and nourish existing connections over it but nothing helps build friendship more than being in the same place at the same time a few different times and talking to each other
Thats true but online content has always had its place. 25 years ago finding forums and irc was a god send, my lonely hobbies and interests became things i could regularly talk about. Its just modern social media abused the system, the algorithm, and us.
Which is all to say i agree about needing mostly irl, but there is also something of online community that irl could never replicate (for most people).
i know what you mean, and i think online communities can still be successful. but i think in the early internet you already had some common ground with anyone you met online because spending time on the internet was kind of a irl choice to make. It was like a magic room anyone could enter and find others. Now its so ubiquitous that simply being online or on a forum is not the same kind of specialness to it
> but being aware of your mortality is inextricably linked to the human experience.
They aren't aware / afraid of their mortality. They are aware of the lack of financial safety net / social support. It is in effect everyone accepting a more primal state of affairs, where the weak die, as a virtue. Rather than a state of affairs that we are economically capable of: Universal healthcare. Many of us understand this is a political hurdle. But that is precisely what makes it so disheartening. If we were all too poor to afford socialized healthcare, we could at least take solace in our shared experience. But that is not the state of affairs. It is an invented problem. And most frustrating of all, we already spend more than people with universal healthcare. Maddening.
Thank you, I'm confident I will fairly consider all which you're about to reveal!
> We get taxed a lot (not if you are ultrawealthy but still…). so government is taking [sic] of money in exchange for…? well in the USA it is in exchange for paying down debt and department of “defense” so that we can bomb the [sic] out of everyone we want whenever we want.
An idea so crucial to the birth of this nation, is that taxes are not paid in any "exchange". Your property is removed from you and your government makes use of it as it will. In fact, the federal income tax was unknown to our country before it was concocted to raise funds for WW1 and was unfortunately never retired. Pointing out our current conflicts is definitely appropriate!
> we also spend [sic] of money on healthcare already but this money is going you know where, middlemen and racking in profits and doing a whole lot of other things except providing care. so the question is - where would you rather your tax dollars be spent?
I would rather my government didn't help itself to my money at all. In my opinion concentrating the wealth of a nation in the hands of a few is exactly the circumstances most certain to create the corruption I think you've described.
> and also another question which is why are Americans the only citizens of any developed nation where providing care is “impossible
In the United States emergency care must be provided, regardless of ability to pay.
For non-emergency care, please consider some of the issues I've already raised.
You are looking at this from the wrong angle. We get taxed a lot (not if you are ultrawealthy but still…). so government is taking shitton of money in exchange for…? well in the USA it is in exchange for paying down debt and department of “defense” so that we can bomb the shit out of everyone we want whenever we want. we also spend shitton of money on healthcare already but this money is going you know where, middlemen and racking in profits and doing a whole lot of other things except providing care. so the question is - where would you rather your tax dollars be spent? and also another question which is why are Americans the only citizens of any developed nation where providing care is “impossible”?
I'd color this a little. I think there's also an engineering mindset some people have, and some don't. And over 10 years in, I'm still not sure if it can be trained or not. Some people are just really good at seeing the technical solutions in terms of engineering: Where does the data live, where does it go. How does it get there, how does it change. How does it break, how will we know, how will we fix it, how will we cope with its shortcomings. All of those questions to some people are a relatively quick and intuitive part of scoping and design. And for others its like a constant cliff they run into midway through their projects, or worse (and far more common) a set of bugs that are "tech debt" (for someone else to inherit) as the slap the "Mission Accomplished" on yet another project.
I've seen people that are very proactive and generally fall into your former group, but also don't quite seem to think like an engineer. I really want it to be trainable - I am trying - but IDK if it is or not.
Its not just older architecture we are losing out on.
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