cblconfederate

Blame popularity and popular culture, it skews history. He didn't even seem to promote the narrative, but people at large think Zuck invented the internet like elon invented rocketry.

Fun fact, a few weeks ago we were asked by the reviewer of the (EU-funded) H2020 research project in which we participate to add google analytics and twitter to our website so we can give her stats about our website visitors. Even despite our protest she insisted. People need to stop seeing the EU as some kind of pinnacle of rationality, GDPR is an unworkable implementation of wishful thinking that will be obsoleted by technology (which can already perform the same amount of tracking with AI and side channels).

analytics is important to grow an audience. A big website doesn't need to care about SEO or analytics or anything really. Metcalfe's law

Human rights also include access to learning, education and news. Having them for free online is the best option. But you cant have both at the same time

Citation needed i think, especially for european sites.

Is that enough? If a company uses google services , they are liable if google decides to take a bite at this data (because e.g. NSA asked them to). And it's not enough if google makes a contract that promises not to do so. the company is essentially liable for the NSA

- Ironically, if Google does create an EU spinoff just to run analytics as a free service, it will kill the local competitors

- The NSA is not "exempt": https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/eu-court-again-rules-n...

The solution is to make a worldwide framework where people OWN their data. That's not what GDPR does, it in fact prevents people from selling their data at will.

(People's privacy is protected by constitutions. That is orthogonal to the ability of people to choose how to use their data)

> but if I would start a SAAS site today, I wouldn't try to sell to the EU.

You 'd still be liable for GDPR by non-europeans since you are located in germany

It's like the EU is pushing entrepreneurs to emigrate.

posthog seems to be hosted in Digitalocean - an american company

plausible.io is hosted on AWS - an american company

snowplowanalytics.com seems to be hosted in digitalocean as well

as I understand they are equally illegal now.

[Self-hosting and maintaining is not an option for the vast majority of mom-and-pop shops]

What's the end goal of all this? Information (data) technology has essentially left europe

The EU is never held accountable for the laws they make, and i m not aware with them consulting with local entrepreneurs. It seems only lobbyists and politicians have access

It's not a monopoly, it's a vertically integrated business that is using its cash and marketing to lure in and lock in more developers, who in turn end up being working as unpaid labor for them, increasing the value of their app store, and the virtuous cycle continues. Noone else had pulled that before, apple could do it because phones peaked usability-wise and ended up becoming a fashion item. As long as developers keep being on apple's train, she calls the shots. There is no way to win this game, only to bail.

It will be forever sabotaged by mountains of cash

The companies that don't take their business out of app stores deserve all the pain in the world. I'm with apple on this

Are we supposed to be rooting for monopolies now? Of course not.

But you are right, HN used to be about the little David entrepreneur. Since ~2012 it's all about "fuck making a startup and go work for The Man"

were all the other positions taken?

Cloudflare's blocks get in the way of many websites who are simply trying to get a "link preview" of the page, even if it is only a single request from a new IP. I wish they would offer some kind of alternative for the pages they serve instead of a captcha block.

will something terrible happen if i just convert my tables to utf8mb4? Will i have to upgrade each column?

couldnt emoji fit in 3 bytes as well? I don't think there are that many ...

This is great because, finally we can start selling ads with verified "proximal views" to advertisers and make more money! In fact we can think of all the wonderful product synergies here. For example, we can increase the number of proximal views by automatically locking the smart lock in their room so they can't get out for the duration of the ad. Or we can lock the doors of our smart cars while the ads are playing, that's up to 6 verified viewers all at once! We can have ad screen on toilet stalls that autoplay when someone s(h)its. Your phone can start playing ads whenever you come near it! The possibilities here are endless

> Hiring experienced desktop application devs to build a quality native app for each platform is going to be expensive,

So it looks like software would vastly improve if silicon valley companies moved to india or russia or some other place with abundant supply of capable developers.

Regardless, what you said doesnt show that it was a strawman, it was still a valid conclusion, but you re offering the real reason behind it.

> Do you think web development is anywhere near what it was 20 years ago

why not compare web dev to where desktop was 20 years ago. The question from the user perspective is not whether this or that type of development is getting better, but whether software offers us new affordances today, which it does, but most of them rely on server-side processing and cloud data.

I think you bring up a great example. Which kind of application has gotten better than its past desktop counterparts because of the improvements in javascript? (counterexample: we lost Flash)

Most of the "client"/desktop software does the same things that it did in 1997. Most/all of the 'advanced' features such as AI/voice recognition are done server-side because reasons.

If the quality of desktop software was going up, it would be doing more than it did in 1997. I don't think it does, in fact it is being dumbed down to look like mobile software (which is inherently lower quality due to limited UI). So how come the quality is going up but the user benefit (i.e. time it saves) has not changed?

> "Teens and college students said they dread the ostracism that comes with a green text. The social pressure is palpable, with some reporting being ostracized or singled out after switching away from iPhones."

This can't be true, because if it is there is bigger problem than some google's protocol. Why are they still torturing kids with these parades? Get some celebrities to make the green texts cool, this is madness.

> How many messaging systems has Google had over the years?

many, but also, Gmail

They should really add a "pause" that freezes the pic so people can feel less trapped.

Amazing to see that the plane belonged to Olympic airlines. This was an airline started by Aristotle Onassis which later became tha national carrier of Greece, and finally merged with Aegean airlines. How it ended up in oregon ... another matter.

I was fooled for a bit thinking that people might be coming to their rational senses, but it does seem there is a media campaign to minimize covid.

so just like 3

Why do you think 3 is enough but not 4. That's not rational, its just psychologically comforting

I wonder if sociologists can explain the americans obsession with politics in everything. This is not normal, there seems to be something exceptional about how it is normalized to discuss natural phenomena with political lingo