holler

It's hard to say of course, we don't have all the information, but I can tell you it was very resource intensive, and at the same time the core product (newspaper/website) was bloated and burdened with ads.

Honestly to me it felt like the historical newspaper model just simply stopped being as effective, and rather than face that reality, downsize, and innovate, these companies sold their souls to the devil (advertisers).

The online platforms did the same thing but found a way to be more effective.

I'm against gov overreach and have serious doubts the government could even properly audit a paper to see whether those funds were used directly for journalism.

> At least try to tell us. Give examples.

Sure, here's one. At the time (~12 years ago), Groupon was a booming business. This newspaper (and many others) decided to try and get in on the action by creating their own local versions of daily deal sites. That team just focused on the local newspaper's version of daily deal probably employed at least 20 people, including resources from the web team that had to build and maintain a deal site akin to Groupon.

All of that in sum likely had a high price tag, and like Groupon itself, eventually puttered and faded away.

Is it their fault for trying to find a way to increase revenue? I don't know. At the same time they were doing that, the newspaper itself (both print and online), was bloated with advertising, to the point where the website was almost unusable.

This is ridiculous, and it passed 46-6 which is quite baffling but not surprising given it's California. I worked at a local newspaper in the past and I can't tell you how many people they employed for things not central to core journalism.

Reflecting back now, it's not wonder they eventually downsized significantly and had to vacate the large building they'd been in for decades. They could have cut huge swaths of people, just focusing on journalism, and saved a ton of money.

> and I'm surprised no one has created a challenger site.

Have been building an alternative at https://sqwok.im, the twist is that it uses realtime chat instead of comments, and no voting currently.

Building a public chat network / alternative to Reddit/Twitter/Discord at https://sqwok.im

Create post -> share url -> instant chatroom based around the topic -> live chat with anyone on the net in seconds (hopefully have fun). Open to feedback :)

Just looked it up, awesome, didn't realize they had another single-rail coaster in CA. I've been to Silverwood Theme Park in Idaho, close to their HQ but they hadn't built Stunt Pilot yet. Wonder Woman is essentially a bigger version of those two, and by pure chance I happened to be in the very back like you. Wildest ride I've ever been on, must be similar experience.

Will be interesting to see if they come out with the rumored t-rex track at some point.

For me it probably started around middle school when I first discovered roller coasters, while simultaneously playing the game Theme Park[0], and later Roller Coaster Tycoon. One of my childhood best friends and I would get our parents to drive to Six Flags Magic Mountain as often as we could.

Many years later I still check in on https://screamscape.com from time to time to see what the latest coaster news is. It's always refreshing considering the daily struggle against doom scrolling and regular news one contends with.

I enjoy reading about what makers of coasters are up to, what they're engineering and how they're innovating.

Riding Wonder Woman: Flight of Courage[1](probably best/craziest coaster I've ever been on) and Twisted Colossus[2](also great) got me to discover a tiny company called Rocky Mountain Construction[3] based in Northern Idaho, who've been innovating by taking existing wooden coasters and revamping them with steel track, among other things. There's a real culture of engineering and innovation that I think many of the HN crowd would appreciate. Also discovered a company called S&S in Utah innovating with a new axial rotating design[4]. Many other companies such as B&M and Intamin are constantly building cool stuff too.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_(video_game)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeKaiP7F48I

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL9L-U-AKFs

3: https://vimeo.com/259906484 https://www.rockymtnconstruction.com

4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3czHe2gZ-k0

> "the future is human"

I concur strongly, there are seemingly daily new "ai" chat bot apps and yet I personally don't see human behavior fundamentally changing any time soon. Chat will always be primarily about humans and not bots.

Instagram is a website with billions of people on it.

whoa, cool to see https://sqwok.im mentioned. There were some issues with posting from firefox on linux but according to the author they resolved in latest os upgrade.

I guess my point isn't that they shouldn't build a quality dm feature, it's that most people don't consider e2e part of that. The average person cares about ease of use/utility and that's about it. The people who do care more about privacy already use apps like Signal.

So, you realize Instagram, Pinterest, and a whole host of other unicorn software companies started out with python (often using django) right? And many, many current startups continue to do so.

Faster compared to who? Twitter wasn't build for dms, it was never the primary purpose, and even if it is a standard feature for all social apps, I highly doubt 99% of users care about e2e.

I felt that same feeling in ~2009 when I first joined Facebook, before it had ads. I think new communities in general tend to feel more "pure" in the beginning. Of course keeping that intimacy long term is the challenge.

There's a different problem I'm not sure if they've addressed, namely that Google chooses what it wants to index and finds relevant, meaning it's not certain your data will be indexed.

Brutal.

One thing I always wondered was why Facebook never started their own cloud services offering like Amazon did with AWS? They have the scale, expertise, and infrastructure to do it yet never have.

While a lot of large companies constantly churn through new product ideas to see what sticks, Amazon hit a home run early on with AWS, and Facebook could have easily started their own many years ago when it was clear how the market was developing for cloud.

Edit: Found previous thread about it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22667025

No problem!

For anyone curious here's my video from watching the launch live at Isla Vista park on South Padre Island.

It's hard to state just how loud and insanely massive Starship is in general and compared to Falcon 9 (which I was fortunate to see launch twice recently). My bones shook and my ear drums felt like they might burst.

Incredible experience watching and meeting people from far and wide.

Highly recommend getting out to a future launch if you can!

https://youtu.be/1snFbRby7Ew

I guess they haven't read https://peps.python.org/pep-0008/#indentation

"Use 4 spaces per indentation level."

Hey, if you find any please let me know as I'm going to be visiting Austin and would love to meet some like minded folks!

China has banned nearly all US social networks already so is this really surprising given the current status quo?

Google should go back to being strictly links as the results, nothing else. At most 1 paid ad on the top or just below the fold.

I don't see how ChatGPT and social apps relate? To me, social implies social interaction with other humans, not with a machine learning model.

Me: Deletes instagram.

Instagram: Your account will be deleted in 30 days.

Me: ...

Me: Login on day 29

Instagram: Welcome back.

Same here, hello from the Space Coast!

This reminds me of my own college experience where I had accidentally parked in a beach lot late one night without seeing the no parking sign, and 15-20 mins after checking out the surf we got a phone call from our friend who had been passed out in the back of the car.

She was hysterical after waking up and discovering the car was on the bed of a tow truck barreling down the highway.

I can't recall exactly how the tow truck driver was alerted of the girl in the back seat, but they brought it back and released it.

So yeah, humans in/on vehicle getting towed prevents them from towing.

For some yes, but I'm specifically talking about the cohort who choose that lifestyle and wouldn't take housing no matter what. They prefer to live in a tent in the hillside, with not a shred of responsibility or authority telling them what to do. Many use substances. Our modern society has largely given them the Ok to live this lifestyle with minimal friction, and so they will continue to live it because it's what they desire to do.

What a sad and cynical view of life. All the negatives you mention are natural parts of living, of being alive, of the circle of life.

You're leaving out all of the joy, the triumph, the beauty, and the awe of having a brief moment of consciousness on this planet, in this universe.

Nice, I host a public chat app off lambda https://sqwok.im