angiolillo

> It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse.

Is is an excuse for some, sure. But we will fail at pushing back if we ignore that there are a meaningful number of concerned parents who support solutions like this because they have become aware of the danger that social media presents. For many of them, self-attestation of age at the OS account level is likely sufficient, not to mention much simpler to implement and use.

But others are working hard to shift the narrative away from age attestation towards age verification or even identity verification. Government officials (on both the right and left) want to be able to police speech based on what is acceptable to those who are currently in power. Companies want to verify humans for advertising and training purposes. And some privacy advocates intentionally conflate age attestation (like California AB 1043) with age verification because it is an easier strawman to attack.

> Have apps and websites declare the objectionable content they have, and let the device decide if it will show it or not according to parental controls.

That would have been nice. The RSAC (Recreational Software Advisory Council) had a slightly more granular rating system that rated violence, sex, and language on a scale from 0 to 4 which unfortunately it lost out to the ESRB/IARC age-based classifications, and the internet appears to be going towards age-based classifications as well. Personally I like Common Sense Media's ratings which extend the standard violence, sex, and language flags by adding scales for "Products & Purchases" and "Drinking, Drugs, & Smoking".

From a semantic web standpoint it would have been useful if the web had codified these sorts of content flags so content producers could apply them to apps, websites, page sections, images, or even individual HTML tags. Then a device administrator could tell the operating system or browser to restrict certain content, either based on age-appropriate presets or based on custom levels for each type of content.

> No one sets the thing.

Based on the surveys from the wikipedia page it appears that 15-20% of parents used the v-chip feature on their TV. For an optional feature that has to be manually configured that seems like an incredible success. I would have guessed that fewer than 20% of users configure any optional setting on their TV.

> kids will always find circumvention pathways

I'd consider this a feature. I'd be proud if my kids find a way to circumvent the parental controls on the family computer or use their own money to build their own computer like I did growing up. At that point they've earned the right to the full internet.

(However, I would not be willing to use any solution that sacrifices my or my kid's privacy.)

I've lived in a few US cities, but the example of NYC comes to mind. New Yorkers are happy to lend a hand if you're lost, struggling with a stroller on the stairs, or something falls out of your bag. And they're happy to chat at a concert, club, farmer's market, sporting event, carnival, conference, convention, etc.

But a stranger gesturing for you to take off your headphones while you're walking briskly down the street or riding the subway just so they can make smalltalk does not seem socially acceptable whether it's packed at rush hour or mostly empty at 1:00 in the morning.

That is my experience as well -- most people are basically good.

But my personal experience has also been that the sort of people who ignore social cues and try and chat someone up who is wearing headphones while riding public transit or working out are generally less good.

> It's fine to start a conversation with a women wearing headphones, just take it in stride and don't be weird about it if she isn't interested in talking. I do this (with men and women) a lot.

Not sure where you're from, but where I live, headphones are a well-understood signal that someone would rather not engage in conversation at the moment. Some have been conditioned to placate the kind of people who deliberately ignore these signals by engaging in brief small talk rather than risking a confrontation, but this shouldn't be misconstrued as an interest in talking.

Different public spaces have wildly different expectations with regard to social interaction.

Most people know better than to strike up a conversation with a stranger who is watching a theater performance, reading in a library, or walking briskly to work. Whereas chatting with people at a club, sporting event, carnival, conference, convention, etc is socially acceptable.

But many places are ambiguous like public transit, gyms, shops, airplanes, etc. Assessing whether someone in those contexts would welcome interaction with strangers requires social awareness.

Unfortunately, some people overlook or deliberately ignore these cues, so folks who aren't interested in social interaction have taken to wearing headphones in those contexts to make it as obvious as possible. If you're the kind of person who is surprised by how many people are now wearing headphones, it may be because you were missing their more subtle cues before.

Scientific progress is typically the result of outliers at the upper end of the normal distribution which doesn't inherently contradict a decrease in average knowledge. (i.e. a larger standard deviation could overcome a lower average)

Consider nutrition. Technological advancements mean that people have access to both higher-quality food and lower-quality food than their ancestors. In practice that seems to have resulted in some people eating healthier than their ancestors could have, and others worse.

Whether it's reasonable depends on the distribution, not just the duration.

A 2 hour onsite with the candidate being rapid-fire interviewed by six different different teams and a 20 minute call every couple weeks for three months are very different (and select for very different types of candidates) despite having the same overall duration.

Making interviews efficient and making them easy are orthogonal. It depends on what attributes your organization is trying to select for.

To select for people who are willing to commit to a slow bureaucratic organization, make them go through repetitive interview rounds spread over many weeks.

To select for people who do well under pressure, make the interview stressful.

To select for people who can solve challenging problems, make the interview challenging.

There's no right answer as long as your hiring process is tailored to select for the attributes your company needs.

> designing interfaces that keep pointing-device-free users in mind.

Agreed. Using keyboard keys to emulate a mouse cursor seems like it ought to be a last resort for graphical applications that lack proper accessibility affordances.

Contrast that with command palettes, accessibility controls, syntax tree navigation, and other approaches that rely on the names, content, and document structure that users already know rather than a special mode that displays two letter codes that must be read each time or memorized. Many of these other approaches also allow users to activate buttons, menu items, and links that are outside the current viewport or hidden in menus which reduces the overall number of "clicks" required to perform those actions. The downside is that they can take longer to type than a two-letter code. Still, my guess is that for most people it would be overall more efficient to optimize for cognitive load than pure speed.

(Though in the long run, I suspect that improvements in eye-tracking will lead to hybrid systems that are both lower cognitive load and faster than any of these.)

> Content creating is not maintenance.

Technical maintenance isn't the only kind of website maintenance. Unless you're ready to put a site into hibernation, maintaining the content is an ongoing cost. For example, Ian adds testimonial photos and quotes that people submit via email not to mention corrections and improvements based on feedback.

> It could've been a two-million-dollar website if he'd tried to roll his own CMS and Javascript framework

Sure, and it could have been a three-million-dollar website if he wrote a web server from scratch in a language he invented to host the bespoke CMS and JavaScript framework he created.

But more reasonable alternatives to a personal HTML/CSS site like this would be either an off-the-shelf CMS or a third-party website builder. Those seem like they'd be more expensive in some ways and cheaper in others.

> It costs him almost nothing to run

> Maintenance cost is effectively zero...

His estimates[1] of ongoing costs seem different:

> I spend probably 60 hours a week continuously improving this website, answering visitors' questions, solving their shoelace problems – even granting permission for my material to be re-used by other educators.

> All of this effort earns me less than 1/5 of the Australian National Minimum Wage.

> I'm thinking of calling this my “Million Dollar Website” – not because it's worth a million dollars but because it has cost me a million dollars compared to what I could have earned at a regular job (based on an average Australian annual wage of $50,000 × 25+ years).

Granted it seems like you're commenting just on the cost of maintaining the site's HTML/CSS, and I agree that making the website simpler reduces those costs. But even with more complex websites the development costs are often less than the cost of developing good content, attracting people to your site, paying for hosting, etc.

[1] https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/support.htm

Sure, authors can adopt Gemini-like restrictions on their own simple HTML pages to gain some of the benefits of publishing with Gemini.

But this ignores the benefit for readers. Simple HTML pages are one link, search, or change of management away from a sea of enshittified internet slop. But Gemini capsules never have banners, unwanted sounds, intrusive ads, popups, etc, making browsing gemspace a qualitatively different experience.

To use a metaphor, a gardener can plant the same flowers alongside a loud, busy, trash-strewn highway as they can in a quiet garden. Many more people will see the flowers along the highway and it's a wonderful contribution. But wandering amongst the flowers in a peaceful garden is a qualitatively different experience than doing so alongside a busy highway.

Objections to Gemini that point out that nothing is stopping people from writing simple HTML miss the point.

It's not that HTML forces well-meaning creators to add complexity, size, or user-hostile behavior; it's that an ecosystem that permits such behavior eventually becomes swamped by adtech and other user-hostile content for financial gain. The problem is that this content drowns out organic, human-centric content.

Having said that, while format restrictions (to plaintext, markdown, gemtext, HTML without JavaScript) do help mitigate the damage somewhat by making tracking harder, I doubt they are sufficient: even text-only forums can become overrun with spam, ads, bots, and propaganda if they lack suitable moderation.

Ultimately folks who want to browse a web of authentic human content need to combine format restrictions with blocklists and web-of-trust tools. Browser plugins, reader mode, and customized search engines can already get us partway there, but there are still gaps.

> A HN-er that has never ran before throwing out stuff about barefoot running since they read Born to Run a few years ago is just plain ignorance.

This seems uncharitable. I see only one comment that favorably mentions Born to Run and a couple that favorably mention minimalist running shoes but none of these give any indication that the poster has never run before.

It seems like a barefoot-style runner giving someone advice about training barefoot to strengthen stabilizing muscles or improve ankle proprioception or something is similarly trying to be helpful and supportive, even if misguided.

I agree with your underlying point though -- it's a very personal sport. That's why it's hard to specific advice about shoes or training unless you know whether someone is running to improve their race times, cardiovascular health, mental health, age gracefully, physical therapy, lose weight, or something else. Because the right approach for one goal might be counterproductive for another.

True! Though if I were to pick an aspirational target it would be his sub-four at 85 :)

I should clarify that it's not that I don't pay any attention to race times, just that it's not my primary focus -- I regularly sacrifice PRs to make sure I feel good and avoid injury.

“We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.” — Robert M. Pirsig

> it would make more sense to run in shoes that make you slower for the same effort or make you expend more effort

Some runners train with parachutes, sleds, weight vests, or rucksacks which all make even short runs feel much harder. Ultimately it depends on your goals. Is it cardiovascular fitness? Build muscle? Live longer? Feel better? See a lower number in a chart?

Some of the disagreement I've seen seems to boil down to the fact that different runners have different goals. Advice for a number-chaser trying to crack 2:30 isn't helpful for minimalists who want better foot stability and ground feel and vice versa.

In my case I get a lot of well-meaning but misguided advice from fellow runners who can't understand why I don't focus on optimizing my race times. But my goal is to continue running marathons in my 80s and beyond like Fauja Singh or Ed Whitlock, so I make different tradeoffs.

Fascinating. My main takeaway is that running technology is primarily driven by World Athletics' 40 mm stack limit and prohibition on physical springs or pistons but not on advanced foams. If they relaxed those constraints then number-chasers would happily show up to races in 150mm foam clouds, jumping stilts, exoskeleton leggings, etc. Alternately, if they started restricting races to 20 mm stack heights that might result in different world records, especially for long-distance races.

As some who runs trails in minimalist shoes for enjoyment I do appreciate that the author acknowledged that many people prioritize things besides speed and efficiency: fun, fitness, injury prevention, being outdoors, socializing. Because if I'm actually picking footwear for speed and efficiency the fastest shoes I own are my Crankbrothers with a bicycle attached to the bottom.

Grok and Roll appears to be stuck and speaks the following on repeat ad infinitum:

"Queues clear, let's dive into All Blues by Miles Davis to keep the jazz flowing. Queues clear, let's dive into All Blues by..."

Each time with a slightly different voice and inflection. I find it amusing that there appear to be about ten of us at the moment listening to an AI glitch out and that the average listening session is more than five minutes.

> Companies can’t afford to just give things away right?

Let's say a cutting-edge young researcher is making a name for themselves in their field and earning $300k/yr at a company where they're encouraged to publish and speak. You're trying to headhunt them for a company where they'll be forbidden from sharing their work which will likely stall their career and reputation outside of that company. How much do you think you'd have to offer? $600k? $1M? $1.5M?

When faced with the choice to paying significant salaries, hiring lower-tier researchers, or just letting their people publish, many companies conclude that giving away some of their work is the best option. (And that doesn't even include the benefits of boosting the company's profile which makes it easier to attract other cutting-edge researchers.)

It is an interesting project. I would love to see markdown improved and I agree with many of the simplifications they've made.

However I'm skeptical that any format that compromises the editing experience will gain traction with users. For example, djot requires a blank line before nested lists (at least in the default mode) which requires writing lists in a way that I've never seen anyone write in an email because it groups nested items incorrectly in the raw text.

Indeed. I suppose one way to ensure you can find Waldo in any image is to add it yourself.

> the "stronger" road user is at fault unless proven otherwise

In general I agree with this, but a lot a lot depends on how "unless proven otherwise" is interpreted.

If a driver is typically at fault when a pedestrian or cyclist unexpectedly moves into their path then it seems like that practically restricts cars to speeds close to biking or walking in many cities.

Similarly, if a cyclist is typically at fault when a pedestrian unexpectedly moves into their path then it seems like that restricts bikes to speeds close to walking in many cities.

This effectively pedestrianizes car lanes and bike lanes which would be lovely in some areas, but it also restricts travel to walking speeds which also has downsides if enforced across an entire city.

Edit: after reading the post at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-highway-code-8-change... the guidance seems to strike a reasonable balance:

> People cycling, riding a horse or driving a horse-drawn vehicle should respect the safety of people walking in these spaces, but people walking should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them.

Does your forever limit apply to names besides "Asimov"?

There are a lot of companies and projects that have used the names of real people without that person's involvement or approval: Einstein, Tesla, Edison (besides the ones related to his company), Darwin, Beethoven, Mozart, Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Copernicus, Archimedes, Socrates...

> Adding filters so that developers only look at actionable tickets would be much more sane.

That's a reasonable approach, but I don't understand how it's any more or less sane than autoclosing them with a stale label.

Whether these sorts of bugs are "open but stale" or "closed because stale" seems like it depends on whether the project defines "closed" as "no work planned" or "fixed", which both seem valid.

Either way these bugs will be hidden from developer dashboards but still available in the database so there's no practical difference, you just need to make sure everyone is on the same page about the meaning of "closed".

To some people "open" means "not fixed" whereas to others it means "more work planned". I've worked on projects with both interpretations and it's fine as long as everyone is on the same page.

> It costs nothing (except pride?) to leave "Issues (1)" if there is indeed an Issue.

In our case we omit bugs we couldn't reproduce from the issues list due to practicality, not pride -- our software has tens of thousands of unreproducible bugs and having them show up in reports would drown out planned work.

And it's not like anyone deleted or locked the unreproducible bugs, they are either tracked as "open but unreproducible" or "closed because unreproducible". Either way they're still in the database in case more information comes along, but still filtered out of the vast majority of dashboards.

> What's the harm in keeping the bug open?

Conversely, what's the harm in closing the bug? (As long as you don't lock or delete it, I agree that's bad.)

People focused on the work often interpret "open" to mean "requires work" and "closed" to mean "no planned work" in which case keeping an unreproducible bug open is dishonest because it falsely implies that someone might continue to work on it.

Whereas people focused on the problem often interpret "open" to mean "not fixed" and "closed" to mean "fixed" in which case closing an unreproducible bug is dishonest because it falsely implies that it's no longer a problem.

Neither seems right or wrong as long as everyone on the project agrees which interpretation you're using.