cdirkx

I have never used in conversation, but sometimes use it in writing. My native language has a gender neutral pronoun, so it did not take too much getting used to in English. You say the double usage of 'they' might be confusing, but in pratice believe it has been around for long enough on the internet that I have a high enough confidence that most readers will understand it's use or at least not be too distracted by it.

There is a difference between ignoring abuse reports and being immune to a raid by law enforcement. For these authors there is a trade-off between convenience, cost and security: using already available infrastructure is probably easier than to set up your own complicated hosting solution.

If any of them end up getting caught because of the information gathered by this raid they obviously misvalued one of these aspects in their trade-off analysis. Humans all make mistakes.

You could use a macro :)

  macro brw($expr:expr) { &$expr }

And use it like 'brw!(x)' instead of '&x'.

This is the model some crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter work with: they call it "all-or-nothing funding" [1]. They mention the same benefits, reduced risk for backers if the target amount has not been reached.

[1] https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005047893-...

If you are scaling up, profitable (or speculated to be very profitable in the future), and eventually get big enough to do an IPO, then yeah why not? Booking.com a CRUD website making hotel reservations, and called a tech company.

What is missing however in the picture of "someone building a site" is the other points mentioned in the essay: network effects, building a platform and forming an ecosystem around you. Everyone can do it, but not everyone succeeds. This is why there is such a big rush within tech startups to be the first in a space.

Yes? The wish for companies to make money is indeed not new, however, the ways tech companies achieve this are. Technology has enabled extremely low marginal and transactional costs as the essay explains. Build once, sell an infinite number of times at nearly zero cost was not really a possibility before, thus in that sense companies that take advantage of this really are _new_.

I keep seeing this discussion and people arguing over that some definition is too limiting and that industry X is obviously also technology. But they are missing the point: yes hardware, manufacturing and media companies are also using tech or making tech, but in the context of the stock exchange and evaluating a companies potential this doesnt matter.

In that context a "tech company" specifically refers to a company that is able to take advantage of new business models or ways of operation enabled by tech that allows them to scale and make large returns on investment. Thats it. Thats why they are attractive to investors, which in turn is why every company tries to convince people that they are also "tech".

But the site hasn't been updated and that issue dismisses them as not a problem?

Many comments are addressing the fact that there is a difference between the clockwise and counter-clockwise symbols and that they should not be confused, but they are both on the website?

> assuming it's because men took on some dangerous role that women didn't (war, hunting, etc.)

One possible hypothesis is that polygamy itself is the cause of this: the higher competition for wives drives the men to extremer forms of acquiring status (war, hunting, etc).

Although the wording is ambiguous he probably (correctly) meant that the number is 1242 9's long: 999999... and not 9^1242 or 1242 x 9

Ants are estimated to be arround 20% of all terrestial biomass, so clearly they are succesful. And yet, can the ant survive without the colony? Many individual ants are so highly specialized they cannot survive by themselves. Queens cant forage for food or defend themselves, there are soldier ants with jaws so large they require others to feed them and worker ants cant reproduce. Even we humans, sometimes touted as nature's best generalist, have become more and more specialized as we organized in larger and larger groups. We require others to produce our food, keep the lights on and help us when we are sick, too old or too young. Sure there are still people who survive on their own, but that is becoming rarer every day. Is that really a criteria for being 'alive'?

Why is the skin cell not an organism though? The definitions for 'organism' vary, but a common theme seems to be an interdependant system comprised of 'organs' with different specific functions that together form a greater whole. But is a cell not comprised of organelles? Mitochondia have their own dna and it is theorized that they were originally a seperate lifeform in a symbiotic relationship. The same goes for other specialized structures like chloroplasts in plants. On the other end of the spectrum, would we classify groups or societies as organisms, with individuals carrying out specialized purposes? Is a society, nation or company alive? Perhaps not in the biological sense we commonly use the words, just like Alice. But that might just be our own carbon-based bias ;)

Just today I noticed Google serves a different version of search to Firefox on Android when compared to Chrome. It is missing some features and harder to use. Apparently the fix is to change your useragent string so Google will give you the full version [1].

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1202615

A couple of years ago I visited a startup which also tried mapping worldwide coordinates, what3words [1]. They map 3x3m squares to a combination of three words (language customizable). For example: the Eifel tower would be at combos.cove.split. They had some clever tricks for mapping short memorable words to densly populated areas and longer ones to the middle of the ocean. Their aim was similar, to enable talking about a place without the existing infrastructure of adresses and streetnames and for example make it possible to deliver mail in slums.

[1] www.what3words.com

Looking at this Keybee layout it seems not very usable. The biggest change when typing on touchscreen is using your two thumbs instead of ten fingers, and IMO for the flow is more important that letters alternate the left (L) and right (R) thumb, instead of minimizing distance. This way one finger can move while the other is pressing. I'll take their "Hello there is a starman waiting in the sky" as an example. On a qwerty layout the letters you type with L and R are evenly distributed and the longest run with the same thumb is 3: "There" is LRLLL. On Keybee however, the same sentence is typed almost entirely with the right thumb (dominant hand, so I would probably use it to type the middle letters W, H, A and space). Now the longest run is 16! I guess this would be a bit more balanced is I figured out which of the middle keys to take with my left thumb, but it doesnt seem worth it especially with the enormous keyboard. As part of the younger generation I can type blind and relatively fast and error free on touchscreen. If you really need to type a long email just switch to a regular keyboard, having ten fingers typing is much faster than any layout using only your thumbs will achieve.