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apparent

2,069 karma · joined January 30, 2025

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apparent··on Airbnb bans making guests do dishes and take out the trash
Why? Who gets the revenue? Local government or national? What are they supposed to spend it on?
apparent··on Americans Are Spending More Money to Drive Worse Cars
> They now have 35%

Is this of new car sales? Surely they've not taken over a third of the entire fleet in a few years.

apparent··on New Withings Users Must Pay $99/Year for Apple Health Syncing
Wyze makes a decent one, and cheap. Probably has fewer bells and whistles, but it serves me just fine.
apparent··on E Ink Kaleido 4
Kindle's color tablets look a bit better than Kobo's, by my estimation. But neither is anywhere near iPad-level color saturation or contrast.

I think Amazon does some special stuff with the backplane or something. Seems like it's not 100% marketing gimmicks if it actually looks better.

apparent··on Apple HomeView
I'll let you continue being wrong in peace. Have a good day, and keep dreaming those sweet, sweet AAPL dreams!
apparent··on Apple HomeView
I am aware that anecdotes are not as good as large-scale evidence. That does not defeat the point that you are confusing necessary and sufficient conditions, rendering your own anecdotes even more useless than mine and @layer8.

Really weird that you keep insisting that you're right here. Some guy on the internet made a conjecture, other people disagreed with him, and you feel the need to keep boosting his claim. Yet every argument you make equally damages your own side, rather than showing that your side is stronger. Really weird approach.

apparent··on Apple HomeView
That's now how the logic works. If someone asserts "the market is XYZ" then they have to show that actually is the market. When people say "I'm in XYZ and I'm definitely not the market", that shows that the hypothesis is wrong. When someone else says "I'm XYZ and I'm in the market", that is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
apparent··on Apple HomeView
OP said

> The market is: people with homes and an iPhones. That is to say, a fair number of people.

The point of comments like mine and @layer8's is that the market is actually much smaller than this. The fact that you are considering one does not mean the market is any category that includes you. It means that it is some category that includes you (and excludes me and @layer8). We don't know how big that market is, but if longtime Apple fans are not even considering the device, then probably it is not "all people with iPhones and homes". It could still be a big market, but it's glib to say that it's so large.

apparent··on Apple HomeView
You can also use a HomePod/mini.
apparent··on Apple HomeView
Well, I'm a big Apple fan and and also have an iPhone and a home (and various cameras in it) and I am not even considering getting this device. I am considering dropping 9x as much on a new iPhone, on the other hand...
apparent··on Apple HomeView
If it auto-rotated to face the person speaking, that would make it much more useful. Having to manually move the thing around (especially in the kitchen, where your hands are likely to be dirty) doesn't seem great.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
> To a lawyer, there's no such thing as the Spirit of the Law

This is untrue. And when I ask questions like the above, I am wondering what the spirit was they were going for. It's too vague to know.

> Ya'll know what a law is supposed to say, but weaponize language in order to invent ambiguity that any sane person would say isn't there, and as a result, a law that should only be 4 sentences ends up being 4 pages full of synonyms in order to make sure there's no loopholes.

This resonates for people who have never needed lawyers and think that lawyers just make things worse. They certainly can, but they can also make things better by pointing out when things are ambiguous and need to be clarified. Or helping parties realize where their interests align and how they can work together.

apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
You think there aren't sign up buttons on the front page of websites?
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
Sure, plenty of startups are small businesses and have customers all over.
apparent··on Show HN: BetterWispr – Free, open-source dictation for Mac
Interested to give this a try. I've tried Wispr Flow and found it to be quite good, but a bit pricey for my taste. I guess I assumed there were equally good models that were cheaper, and I suppose this is one of them.

I'll be curious to see how the existence / popularity of tools like this end up affecting the pricing of paid tools like Wispr Flow.

apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
You skipped over the part where the cancel button isn't on the front page of literally any website. It's somewhere in account/settings/subscription/edit. No word if this is allowed under NYC's desired regime. I don't have a lot of faith in their reasonableness, considering the politicians that are getting elected there these days.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
I think the most helpful thing is not to add language to the regulation, but to add 4-6 examples that illustrate what is considered to be ok or not ok.

The lack of examples/specificity makes it easier for the government to capriciously enforce this law against companies they disfavor. I'm surprised that on a startup-friendly forum, most of the comments are from folks who are worried about malicious companies, not malicious enforcement.

I totally hear you on Comcast. I've filed FCC complaints against them several times. But these rules apply equally to very small companies, who may not have the resources to make sure that they're in compliance with the spirit and letter of every rule in 50 states and 100 countries.

apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
This is actually a hilarious point. Some companies might end up making the sign up process more complicated in order to make clear that their cancellation process is equally "simple"/"easy". I guess godaddy is ahead of the curve on this one.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
This is exactly my point. It's never going to be as easy to cancel as to sign up because signing up just requires entering cc details. Canceling requires authentication to an account to ensure that the one being canceled belongs to you, and of course finding the settings and the place where the subscription is modified. That's always going to be more clicks than landing on startup.com's website, clicking sign up now, and entering your cc details.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
What does malicious compliance mean to you? I've heard it used, but never in a way that makes sense in this context. If they had examples, it would be clearer what the intent was, and businesses would be able to be held the appropriate standard. As it stands, I can't figure out if many of the businesses I deal with are in compliance, and anyone who claims to know is naive, or simply hasn't read the rule closely.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
The last thing I'd want is to have to end up in court in NY to figure out what is or is not in compliance with this law. They should include examples, like many regulations do. We don't need more lawsuits for laws that could have been clarified in the first place.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
Where does it say they have to send even 1 email prior to renewal, let alone 2-3? That would be spam in my book. I'm pretty sure companies like Netflix don't do that, and I'm sure Cursor doesn't. That doesn't mean the requirement doesn't exist or isn't added by this law...but it would fundamentally change things.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
I wish it were that simple. The language I quoted gives two additional requirements, however, and no examples for what does/doesn't meet them.
apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
The HN guidelines ask us to "assume good faith", and I try to do so here. Comments like yours take a good faith question like mine and treat it as if it's being asked by someone who is "intentionally misunderstand[ing]" it.

You say:

> I honestly don't think this is one is hard to understand at all. If you can sign up through the web you should be able to cancel through the web.

If that's all they were trying to do, they would just say that it has to be the same medium. But they don't stop there. They say you have to have a "simple cancellation mechanism" and it has to be "as easy to use as the mechanism that the consumer used to provide consent". Then they layer on the same-medium requirement that you think is the only actual requirement.

I've read a lot of rules, laws and regulations in my day (lawyer), so I know that when there are 3 distinct requirements, then you can't just meet one of them and think you're in compliance.

apparent··on NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect
> A person making an automatic renewal or continuous service offer to a consumer must provide the consumer with the option to cancel at any time using a simple cancellation mechanism that is as easy to use as the mechanism that the consumer used to provide consent and that is through the same medium that the consumer used to provide consent

So if a startup lets someone sign up using Stripe, for example, does this mean that they need to have a way to unsubscribe that is as easy as Stripe? Lots of companies have a way to unsubscribe electronically, but it requires logging in to your account, going into settings, saying you want to unsub, and possibly declining various offers to stay.

Surely at some point a company could cross the line of "a simple cancellation mechanism that is as easy to use as the mechanism the consumer used to provide consent". But where is the line exactly? Surely you don't have to have a big red cancel button on every page of your platform, but at the same time surely it can't be hidden 8 levels down in the settings.

Some examples would be helpful to let businesses and consumers know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

apparent··on Anthropic reported diary entry to police, woman faces felony charge
I don't understand how she violated this law:

> Heller faces a charge of making a written threat of violence under Florida law. Florida Statute 836.10 makes it a second-degree felony to send, post, or transmit a written or electronic record threatening to kill or injure someone, carry out a mass shooting, or commit an act of terrorism.

She didn't threaten anything, she wrote down that she was going to do it. A "threat" is more than a mere statement, especially when written in what is described as a "diary".

> A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office.

Obviously I don't want anyone to shoot up anything, but this seems like a weak case legally speaking.

apparent··on Apple Says iPhone Duo Has Replaceable 'Cover Layer'
I don't love that this is necessary, and I wonder how much it will cost without an AppleCare subscription. If you have to pay $15/mo for coverage and the layer is likely to need replacing after a year, then you're looking at $170 between the monthly fees and the $20 charge. Of course, you'd also get the other coverage that comes along with AppleCare. Maybe they'll make non-AppleCare replacements expensive enough to make it seem like a no-brainer to get it since you'll want to replace the screen layer sooner or later.

I also wonder how many more bad-news bits they'll drip out in the weeks before the Duo is available for pre-order.

apparent··on Apple's HomePad smart home hub launching on Oct 13 with iMac G4 design
Makes sense that they waited until Siri was better to roll this out. I wonder how it will be priced. If it's a HomePod plus a screen plus more processors/RAM, it could be even more than a Mac, and not just the Neo.

The wall-mounted version might be cheaper if it doesn't have the pricey speaker included.

apparent··on macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess
Even with the latest update? Having seen the reviews of iOS 27 on newer devices, I was thinking that it was finally getting capable.
apparent··on We’re forgetting what darkness feels like
I bring my hammock on vacation so I can sleep under the stars. It's always one of the most enjoyable aspects of the trip, even though I'm asleep for most of it.
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