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Fun read. I was there for most of this, from 1994 to 1998. I have a little different take on what doomed the company.

They had the innovation but, because of the class action, they were afraid to release it. I was using the Clik! drive before Compact Flash (CF) and later SD were ubiquitous.

The Clik! would have been amazing in the digital cameras of the era and manufacturers seemed to be lining up.

But the failure rate was >2% and leadership wanted it under 1% before they would ship. It took two years to close the gap and we all know that’s a lifetime in technology.


Love the story. I feel like I also rolled the dice more than others. Somehow, I haven’t ever hit. Well, that’s not true, my career has been good to me. Maybe that’s why, but my crazy ideas never seem to work or I give up too early.

I wrote about a bunch of my hits and failures a few years back.

https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-fail...


Original career aside, I only struck gold once, and I didn't realise what I was sitting on for a while. I'm almost a decade in, and I'm still learning.

p.s. what a fitting name!


I’ll just throw in a counter example. I turn 50 in two weeks. I programmed for the love of it and eventually turned it into my career. Maybe it hampered my love, a little, maybe. But the job and the passion are still different. I still write software on nights and weekends. But, maybe I’m a weirdo.

Hopefully this career will still be here until I retire. If not, I’ll try to adapt, maybe to something more hands on.


Authy but I’m considering moving to Apple Passwords so it’s all together.

Same. To add some details, I used Authy because at the time it was the only app that would just work after upgrading my iphone. I never enabled their cloud mode, so only local 2FA codes.

Why? You’re against 2FA? You couldn’t contribute without an account before, could you?

I'd had a GH account for ages under my own name, I closed that as soon as Microsoft took it over, moved all my repos to GitLab, good move. I opened a new GH account under a silly name [1] so I could collaborate with people still on it. Now I'm not really against 2FA, but don't use it myself, it adds friction, adds risk (what if you lose it), it seems too "theatrical" for my liking. You want to use 2FA? be my guest, live and let live etc. What I don't like is being told what to do with my account, particularly by someone like MicroSlop. I won't add 2FA to my GH account, so I'll not contribute any code to GH based projects, ho hum. As I understand it, I'll still be able to raise issues without 2FA, fine, and when 2FA becomes mandatory for that, I'll stop doing that too.

[1] https://github.com/noproblemwiththat


> What I don't like is being told what to do with my account

All of the arguments against 2FA here could be made against requiring passwords longer than 8 characters.

It’s not secure. The fix is easy, effective, and has almost no downsides.


> adds risk (what if you lose it)

Lose what exactly? Decent 2FA setups make you confirm you've recorded a set of backup codes somewhere (they often recommend print and store in a safe, I find a secure note in a password manager works well) before activating it.

Furthermore plenty of TOTP applications offer secure backup and syncing features.

So again, what specifically do you think you're going to "lose"?


I’m not Op but I was just looking at these. I jumped on Apple.com and notice the “Mac Pro” option is gone when clicking “Mac”.

I don’t know how configurable these were as I think any M-series processor had integrated RAM by design.

Anyway, it does look like they’ve removed them.


I love the simple design of the page. This is a random observations, but I noticed the author has an interesting "likes" button that is served from an API on https://dddddddddzzzz.org, a curious and interesting looking domain. I'll have to go dig around his blog to see if he's written about this.

> This is a random observations, but I noticed the author has an interesting "likes" button that is served from an API on https://dddddddddzzzz.org, a curious and interesting looking domain. I'll have to go dig around his blog to see if he's written about this

Here you go: https://openheart.fyi


I love making Zines, but I don’t make enough of them. That might be a nice medium for something like this.

I’ve also done some light-fast testing. Laser prints (both B&W and color) survive a long while in direct harsh sunlight left in the window of my Utah home. All types of pen I tried were faded within a couple years but Pencil survives.

A 360 degree stapler is a fantastic tool for quickly binding them.


I just got a Honda Hybrid. It doesn’t phone home or do updates automatically, as far as I can tell, and I love this.

Unfortunately the only valid response is "Don't be so sure." There have been too many exposés about the poor data privacy practices of virtually every automaker including Honda. [1]

[1] Example: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/arti... (prev. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37401563 )


Actually it does do that. They sell your driving data to your insurance company & government.

I also recently bought a Honda hybrid. I turned off as many of the data sharing features as I could from the first day I drove it. They don't make it easy, of course.

Is this an effective CTA?

What types of negative side-effects would there be from an “open source” application that was free, open, and restricted entirely by license? Rather than “we make no warranty” the license says “you may not use”.

I’ve also had a few products I’ve released on GitHub as public but never assigned a license, which probably means they are proprietary, unless GitHub TOS says otherwise.

I realize each of these is a unique situation.


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