Yeah, this was my thought process. I get the appeal, but I don't think a million-user open-source extension is gonna start relying on a clear bug to function.
It would be creating more work for the Ublock Origin developer[1]; as far as I can tell it wouldn't be creating any extra work for Google, which has to patch the issue anyway.
1: Assuming he even elected to do it; I know I wouldn't.
From what we’ve seen recently, the federal government and federal agencies are no longer following the law, not even the constitution. I’m not sure what makes this case unique.
It’s not worth doing because it is easier, but because all of our eggs are in one basket (planet). We know of disasters that can wipe out almost all life on a single planet. Of course, there are also disasters that can wipe out all life in one star system (and one region of the Galaxy). So, ideally we need to colonize many worlds in many different parts of the Galaxy, but baby steps. Step one is to have a sustainable population on multiple moons/planets/stations of this star system before we jump to other star systems.
I did leather working as a kid in the 80s and only knew Tandy as the leather company. I’ve been a programmer for decades now and had heard of the Tandy computers but never connected the name to the leather company. I’d especially never heard that they also owned Radio Shack. This article was a real eye opener.
There can’t be that many iOS developers that the $99 really affects their bottom line. I always assumed it was a barrier to entry to help discourage low effort apps.
The fee could be less and have a similar deterrent on the type of activity you describe. The real question isn't what Apple is gaining from this fee, but what they are losing.
Apple's $99 fee is annoying and feels like a waste of time and one more thing to manage.
The paid ADC program has kept me from sharing projects with other developers who would have otherwise been able to contribute (but they aren't paid devs because they'd rather have a year of Costco hotdogs than pay Apple to help me with my app for a week)
Of course there are. Many browser extensions are available for all platforms except Apple's, because you need that $99/y (and a Mac) to wrap (and fix up) a bunch of JS you already wrote and tested everywhere else.
I applaud the authors of the few good extensions who went the extra 20.000 leagues. (But I still reluctantly switched to Ungoogled Chromium.)
Well that obviously didn't work. I got rid of my Iphone, but I remember the app store as being an absolute wasteland of garbage, and discoverability was awful. I don't know if it was a slogan, or an ad campaign once, but there was this thing with "there's an app for that". Yea I guess maybe there is, but good luck finding it, and finding one that isn't riddled with ads and scammy in-app purchases, and then further good luck that the developer of it keeps paying apple 99$ dollars every year so the app isn't delisted.
I'm not saying Google is any better. I've pretty much given up on apps and app stores at this point. If I find something new, it's something I'm made aware of via other channels (or unavoidable bullshit like mandatory app based car parking etc.).
I mean you're right and you've said it yourself already, but in comparison to try Play Store there apps from the App Store are like double the quality on average. Because most of the extremely low effort bs is kept out. I still hate the fee though, dont get me wrong.
But it's asinine for developers to have to pay $99 in order to test their app, such as on TestFlight. When you have an app idea, when you are far from deciding on monetization, you just want to test out the central features of the app among friends, it's wrong to require payment for that.
Remember all apps have once been low effort apps: the first few weeks when you begin working on them. Polish comes later.
$99 is a show-stopping barrier for more people than you can possibly imagine.
Please, if you are of the mindset $99 is not a life-changing amount for someone else, I implore you to widen your world and at least stay in touch with what the average human experience is like.
The person working McDonald's who has an app idea now needs an iOS device, a Mac, and $99 of available funds. Then, remember that person is richer than many people in other countries.
$99 is a huge amount, especially given that you get nothing except a privilege that has no inherent value.
Meaningless distinction. Most starting indie developers don't have more than one app anyway. It's like going to a fancy steakhouse and being offered a $99 all-you-can-eat where the only menu item is a 18oz porterhouse.
> $99 isn’t a huge amount
It isn't if this is your main job. It could be if this is merely a hobby.
I said test among friends, i.e. potential but real users. The gulf between the simulator and TestFlight is so large that they are better considered completely different stages of testing.
Furthermore, there are so many things that can't realistically tested by the developer on the simulator.
Forums are not "social media", this gotcha needs to stop. They've existed for longer than the web itself, we're pseudonymous, we hardly share anything about our private life, this has nothing to do with the commonly accepted definition of "social media" unless we're being overly pedantic for the sake of it.
What is social about what we're doing here ? I haven't even read your username, I dont care about it, I won't remember you tomorrow, there's nothing social about that, or else we should consider that every single BBS ever was "social" and the word doesn't mean shit anymore
Reddit and 4chan are different from Facebook and Instagram, but they are still social media.
Wikipedia:
> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
The categorization you’re relying on dates back to the early 2010s; it equates social media with Facebook-style platforms centered on a main feed, profiles, connections, messaging, and other ancillary functionality. This was 15 years ago; YouTube doesn’t have a messaging system anymore, but you would probably still consider it to be social media. Most of the reels you see on Instagram are not from accounts that you follow, and hardly anyone uses their real name to post there, so by your definition it would not qualify as social media, but it plainly is.
I’m familiar with the attitude because I see it all over on 4chan, Reddit, and Hacker News. Someone who posts here claiming they don’t use social media is like someone claiming to be a vegan who eats beef; it’s a clout thing among the strange anti-social subcultures that developed on these platforms used to indicate that the user doesn’t use platforms that involve something as shallow as talking about his personal life.
I think the worst thing about this attitude that sites like HN aren't social media is that it lets users feel superior just for using these sites even if they engage in the same low quality behaviors found on other social media.
"Sure I exaggerated the privacy risk and hyperbolized my experience but it's because I'm passionate about privacy! I'm not like those losers on Facebook spreading fake news."
They're doing the exact same thing. Pseudonymous and anonymous social networks are also social networks and suffer from the same problems of discourse. The smug "we're not like the normies" attitude often makes this even worse than mainstream social networks, not better.
Smugness is definitely a problem on Reddit, but I think in the case of Hacker News you’re often dealing with older guys who grew up on either traditional forums or BBS. When you try to tell them that what they are doing is also social media, they reject it because they associate it with the networks that emerged from around 2005 to 2010, which they perceive as vapid owing to the emphasis on image over text.
I’ve always got the sense that this perception was a big reason why Redditors seem to hate Instagram so much. The algorithm does occasionally do some unpleasant things, but 90% of the time it’s great. When I read about people comparing their lives to others and becoming depressed I can’t help but feel like the app might not be the problem.
But HN is not a social media, you don’t publish and are not linked to anyone (I cannot subscribe to your comment) on this site. Your definition of social media is almost equivalent of the internet.
I know I’m being pedantic here but take a look at Wikipedia:
> Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
Forums satisfy all of these requirements. The key factor is not what kind of content users can post but that users can post, and more importantly that they post with the primary intention of interacting with other users. This covers Hacker News and other forums but excludes guest books and contact forms.
Is minecraft a social medium? Are "stick finger here" messages in dark souls social media? They also fall under your "definition".
The key factor is that a third party has an algorithm that decides what you gets on your feed, based on the content. This is used to feed you ads or occasionally steer the election of the most powerful democracy.
Minecraft might qualify per this definition but that really comes down to whether you’re considering the game as a form of “content.” (e.g. FPS games would typically not qualify because they aren’t primarily intended to be a medium of expression even though most of them include a chat option).
> The key factor is that a third party has an algorithm that decides what you gets on your feed, based on the content.
Eh. Your argument keeps coming back to that same snippet from Wikipedia, which is unconvincing. Wikipedia isn't the end-all-be-all arbiter of language. "Social media" is a useful term for discussing a lot of specific phenomena that have come out of sites like facebook, instagram, twitter, etc which all rely on metrics of social graphing to track popularity and guide content exposure and interaction. (Due to the nature of your argument I feel compelled to say that I'm not trying to formalize a complete airtight definition here)
There is a distinct experience and ecosystem that arises from those types of sites that we all recognize, which didn't exist in the same way before the advent of social media sites. And it warrants discussion. When you try to say "actually, technically, ALL human communication is social media!" and won't let it go, you derail a conversation in a way that benefits nobody and is functionally (if not literally at this point) untrue for anyone who's experienced the internet over the last 20 years.
> which all rely on metrics of social graphing to track popularity and guide content exposure and interaction
TikTok, IG Reels, and YouTube don't depend on a social graph at all
> There is a distinct experience and ecosystem that arises from those types of sites that we all recognize, which didn't exist in the same way before the advent of social media sites. And it warrants discussion.
No that's the intellectual trap that allows you to use different standards to judge the two types of social networks. HN, Reddit, and Facebook all suffer from the same types of social problems. Bots, astroturfers, growth hackers, zealots who spread exaggerated or fake information to further their cause, conspiracy ideation reinforced by the network, etc. To classify these networks separately is to be blind to how similar they all are.
> TikTok, IG Reels, and YouTube don't depend on a social graph at all
The entire premise of these platforms is how many followers / subscribers you have. This controls how you interact with the algorithm and whether you get promoted, etc. They have incredibly complex and nuanced social graphs that govern everything that happens on those sites.
> No that's the intellectual trap that allows you to use different standards to judge the two types of social networks
Disagee. Meta-discussion of users at the platform scale, UIs that are so algorithmically tailored that I often can't find the same information as another user even if I wanted, and re-enforcement loops designed to alter the website to maximize engagement over all else are among the things that make these sites distinct. You're being obtuse because you have a foregone conclusion you want to reach. The social problems I'm discussing are unique to those platforms.
> Bots, astroturfers, growth hackers, zealots who spread exaggerated or fake information to further their cause, conspiracy ideation reinforced by the network, etc. To classify these networks separately is to be blind to how similar they all are.
The problems you listed here are possible by definition on every website that exists. None of these problems are what make a website social media or not. Hell, those problems exist in traditional broadcast media.
I don’t consider an anonymous link aggregator with a forum bolted on top to be social media. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never read a comment from the same person (assuming they are people and not bots) in more than one post. Strangers passing in a pitch black room a single time is hardly social.
The bureaucrats deciding on your visa just want sources for doing a colonoscopy on your opinions. If they say HN is social media, what are you going to do?
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