monkeynotes

As an aside, I've been considering an EV as there are some tempting government rebates where I live. One aspect I keep thinking about is battery longevity. Sure you might get 1k km out of a brand new battery but what about in 5-10 years? After all, my phone's simple battery is basically done within 5 years and replacing a car's battery sounds like it would be very expensive.

Google lens does a pretty good job of identifying plants, along with everything else. I use it a lot in our garden and a majority of the time it correctly identifies.

If the crew is so late to the scene that the house has essentially burned down:

1) Anyone trapped may end up dying or being severely injured 2) Fire spreads to neighbours (in the case I described the owners and neighbours were hosing down the next door house at their own risk.

How do these volunteers get to their station, suited, and on the way in time for an emergency? Seems to me that a fire crew would be at work in different parts of the city and could take precious time to get equipped and on the way.

There are volunteer crews here in Canada, but they are almost exclusively for smaller towns less than 10k. Not much distance to travel to their station, however a house on my street burned pretty much to the ground waiting for the volunteer crew to arrive.

I don't understand this article. Is Microsoft criticizing it's own UI decisions?

I had no idea Windows worked this way, it seems like such an odd way of working to me. As for 'hidden' applications, all of my applications are hidden on my Mac. I exclusively use spotlight or Alfred to open an app, I can't imagine working any other way with any semblance of productivity.

> Do you have thoughts on creating peer-to-peer systems that don't enable surveillance capitalism?

Yes, it's call TOR. However, legislation is where we should start. Crippling/abandoning an incredibly useful technology which works very well just because it's often used nefariously seems to be a bit of an overreaction.

Until then, stop using social platforms, use an ad blocker, and use VPN if you really care about "surveillance capitalism".

As I explained, if the author wants to make HTML easily offlineable then inline CSS and Base64 images. Or, you know, make your website printable. If authors actually thought about the print to PDF "problem" it could be solved with traditional CSS and HTML. As someone else said, we used to do this. It used to be part of my every day web design job to make sure the page printed nicely.

The idea that the whole web is going to pander to edge case archivers is asinine. This whole conversation is about supporting the needs of the very, very few and romanticizing about the time when only interesting people used the internet. It's kind of elitist and self serving.

I tackled the premise. I think addressing the premise is the logical place to dismantle an argument.

JS in a PDF? You can do that in HTML, why not use the tools you already have that work together by design?

This guy is arguing that removing JS is what makes the web better. Having published, static, paper-like content is the way forward.

I don't buy that the problem with the web is that HTML is not inherently offlineable. HTML may not be inherently offlineable but it can be. PDF isn't inherently a web friendly format, but it can be. There really isn't any good argument for PDFing the web.

The guy outlines his whole case based on those exact points which are, as you have observed, technical quibbles and not a basis for abandoning HTML.

Under the hood it seems apparent to me that the real premise is an emotional one, not a technical one.

The internet is plastic not because of HTML, but because of money and people. When you have teens driving content it's going to feel plastic. When Walmart uses the internet to sell you crap it's gonna be plastic. Gossip / social platforms are trash, no matter the medium.

It could be argued that TV is an incredible learning platform ruined by HD. Back in the standard definition days we had proper news, documentaries that were substantial, and no reality TV. We need to go back to black and white standard definition.

Sorry, but the PDF web is not a solution to societal rot.

* PDFs are self-contained and offlineable

HTML can easily be offline-able. Base64 your images or use SVG, put your CSS in the HTML page, remove all 2-way data interaction, basically reduce HTML to the same performance as PDF and allow it to be downloaded.

* PDFs are files

HTML is files

* PDFs are decentralised

This should be "PDFs can be decentralised". PDFs aren't inherently any more decentralised than any other kind of file, including HTML.

The store is the thing that becomes decentralised, not the content.

* PDFs are page-oriented

HTML can be page-oriented. Simply build your website with pagination. PDFs can also be abused to have hugely long pages. Bad UX can be encapsulated in any medium.

* PDFs used to be large (bla bla bla Javascript weighs a lot)

Nope, PDFs are still objectively larger than the equivalent HTML. PDFs don't have any dynamic interaction, rip all that out and produce the HTML of yesteryear and your HTML will be tiny in comparison to the PDF.

Edit: I'm sorry, the more I think about this the dumber I feel. The web is useful because it's 2-way. I am excited by the web because I can interact with other people. I come to hacker news to engage with thinkers, not to just read a published article from one single author. I want to read ad-hoc opinions and user submitted content. PDF web, really?

Surely you can't be detained for more than 24hrs without charge?

We are already currently in a situation where "safety" trumps everything. People willingly prioritizing physical health in exchange for negative mental health, relationships, being with their dying loved ones, losing jobs, higher cost of living, and freedom in general.

Curfews prevent important positive social behaviour and incubate a fearful mindset that increases anxiety and depression. Animals are happiest when they are free even if it means risk. Take a look at caged animals, they lose their shit. Locking people inside is a net negative experience and detrimental to a healthy society.

1) People love drama 2) People say stuff they don't really mean just to perpetuate a drama in their otherwise predictable lives 3) Social media is a cancer on society 4) Statistics are sometimes nonsense

The dust bowl looks to have lasted 6 years, I wonder if what we are currently experiencing will differ in terms of longevity. If we are in for multi decade heatwaves this is something entirely different.

You should probably give some sort of reasoning behind your comment else it's just the opinion of a random stranger.

It was really a flippant comment on the state of the world today. I think it's still relevant. We are dealing with the affects very well, but not the cause. This is typical of how humans function and worth pointing out if only for gallows/morbid humour.

The answer to climate change is to wet a t-shirt and sit next to a fan in your damp armchair while watching the world burn. Talk about frog in a pot.

I assume you are living in a time where a perpetual pandemic is something you've considered as becoming a reality[1]. With Covid mutations pushing countries back into lockdown you must see where we are potentially heading. Young people have had their university experience revoked. So many people go to university partly for the education and partly for the social experience. Finding love, new life long friends, and getting an education is what university used to mean to people. This is no more and may never be again. We are living in a time where our old life is being disposed and we don't even know it. I feel like most people think this is just temporary, well it's been almost a year and a half and we are still here. Life won't go back to how it was, ever. Too many paradigms have changed, and we have band aids for Covid that are just about keeping our hopes up. This hope will wane and we'll be work ourselves through to the final stages of grief as we accept our new lives in semi-isolation.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/1c7266b1-1fad-458e-8585-12dc3164f... https://nationalpost.com/news/postpandemic/its-only-the-end-... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/13/moderna-ceo-says-the-world-w... https://www.businessinsider.com/when-will-the-pandemic-end-d...

Well obviously comparing an iPod to a home is stupid in the first place. An iPod is a consumer product, where a home is a fundamental life component. Most people evaluate a home in terms of size, location, and cost alone. People will move into a dump if it's the right size, location, and cost. In other words, people have been happily living in Creative Nomads for centuries and this "iPod" home is not going to disrupt that in any way at all.

The modular home does not innovate in the way an iPod uncovered a new consumer market. It does not exercise a cost advantage, or size advantage, nor does it out-compete a double-wide in terms of locatability.

It's really just a stylistic advantage that wealthy people will find appealing. So putting "ONLY $50k" in the headline is misleading as that is not the real story here.

Welcome accessory citizens to your new neighbourhood. A dystopia like this is not just on the horizon it's all but here already. "Middle class" is not meaningful any more. Working class has slipped into actual poverty and the middle class are now accessory to the wealth hoarders.

Educated twenty-somethings don't have much of a future to look forward to. They can't even afford the land to put an Accessory Dwelling Unit on, they'll have to rent one from an existing home owner. They will be living on a salary that stalled in the 90s, dealing with ever rising food and environmental costs, and subsisting in a world where we have a perma-health watch reducing their freedom to socialize.

The headline touts cost, I think it's fair to look at the actual cost benefits. If Apple designed the iPod and promoted it based on cost Slashdot would have had a point. Apple never says 'hey look how affordable our product is'.

This headline caught my eye as I'm interested in how the fuck people are going to afford homes in the near future. I am disappointed. The "home" is not somewhere young people can raise a family. It appears to be aimed at home owners who want more home which is entirely uninteresting to me.

> waitstaff gets "extra" tips for working hard

All tips are 'extra' that's the whole concept. It's money on top of what I am obliged to pay.

> you get good service with good management

Good management would pay a good wage and negate the need for tipping.

> I also simply just don't enjoy LARPing as a lord of my personal fiefdom.

Low blow. You are implying that I am less than you because I have some kind of financial control over waitstaff that I enjoy. A rather bad faith position to be in given how pious and understanding you are striving to come across as.

> most places pool tips

So now you agree kitchen staff get tipped too

> I tip the same if my service is shitty

Good for you. I don't think many people operate like this, so I'd say you are an edge case.

> it has zero to do with how hard they work, it's simply custom to tip waitstaff, even lazy waitstaff

Again, this is how you operate. Wikipedia lays out the common perception of tipping

"The customary amount of a tip can be a specific range of monetary amounts or a certain percentage of the bill based on the perceived quality of the service given."

I've experienced living in the UK without tipping, and in N.America with tipping. All I can say is it's night and day. Very few make a career out of working as waitstaff in the UK, plenty of people have a career in the service industry in N.America. Working hard for large tips can give you a living wage. In the UK because everyone is treated the same, waitstaff do the minimum for the minimum wage (there are exceptions, of course) and then find a better job. Since I left the UK this has begun to change, it's now reasonably common to tip in nicer restaurants, and guess what? The service is better and the waitstaff I assume are happier with more money in their pockets for their effort.

Maybe for you, I tip extra for working hard to keep my meal hot on delivery, water topped up, checking in at appropriate times. I honestly don't understand how you can say tips are not proportional to level of service and how level of service is entirely detached from working hard.

> Most people work just as hard without getting tips (like the people who are actually cooking thr food)

Most people get paid a real wage which isn't backfilled with charity from their customers.

At many good restaurants tips are distributed to the kitchen staff too. Obviously I have no control over that, and the world isn't fair either. None of this changes my argument.

Wait, restaurants are making you order from an app too?? So now you don't really need your 'exhausted wait staff' so much. Hire less wait staff as a portion are now are underutilized. Now some wait staff have no jobs, and the remainder work the same exhausting shifts. The reason these wait staff get tips is because they work so hard, with less service comes less tips. Now you have a whole industry of overworked AND underpaid staff.

Any efficiencies you are seeing will be refactored and stretched out as any business cannot afford to carry fat if they want maximum profit and competitive edge (price).

This whole inconvenience of a friend going to the bathroom is an incredibly weak argument for foregoing the tradition and ceremony of interacting with a person who will provide you with a meal. If you want to live in a McWorld where every step of your dining experience is as sterile, efficient, and touch free as possible then I am sad for you. That's not what a meal with friends and family means to me, it's not just about eating for sustenance.

Why do you draw the line at taking payment?

Where would I go? I have relatives living in France.

Hyperbolic? I used to live in Australia and how they treated indigenous people was partly a motivation for me to leave. The racism is open and unapologetic there.

"Given every country has a history..." This is not a history, there are survivors living today. This is an issue happening right now. Children as late as the 60s were stolen, abused, and murdered. I live on unceded territory, my house is literally on stolen land. Leaving would be a monumental part of my life, I'm not going to lie, and I'd like to try and make a difference before going down that road. But it does feel rather hypocritical for me to feel this way and not stand by my principles.

This whole "it's history" argument really makes me sad. The amount of people that feel ok with this being a reason to just brush off what is happening today is a little sickening.

"I feel like declaring your intention to leave is hyperbolic" You say this as if what you "feel" has some deep insight into how I actually feel. I feel very emotional about this stuff, and I "feel" like you don't have any useful introspection into my character.

My homeland has absolutely no bearing on this conversation, I think you just want to know so you can go and unearth some sort of horror in my home nation. For the record I don't have any desire to return to where I grew up, nor do I think it's necessarily better there. However, I can guarantee that my home country does not have a suppressed indigenous population, no children buried in unmarked graves, and the land is not disputed.

There are likely thousands of buried children yet to be found. This is not news, people have known about this for decades but it took a privately funded search to break the ground. Government has essentially brushed this under the rug until private citizens took it upon themselves and paid GPR specialists to search for the graves that everyone knew were to be found somewhere.

There is no statute of limitations on murder so why is there no criminal investigation? Someone is responsible for all these deaths.

Then there is this, which is admittedly unverified but if true would not surprise me: https://www.snopes.com/articles/347191/queen-kamloops-abduct...

I live in Canada as an immigrant and I am constantly ashamed of this history, and how indigenous people get treated to this day. RCMP often regard indigenous people as 3rd class citizens, like full on treating folk as criminals all the time. We have all this dialog about black lives matter and the disgusting reality is no one gives a single fuck about the most beaten down minority in Canada. I live in a very white province and work with many people of colour, but not one single native Canadian. All this HR drive to up our diversity but no one gives any thought, at all, to hiring indigenous people. I don't actually agree with hiring singularly for diversity, I believe in equal opportunity though. Even so, HR is up its own ass about driving diversity but this does not encompass native ethnicities. That conversation just does not happen at any level anywhere.

This all makes me so angry. Native Canadians had their children stolen, murdered, and buried in unmarked graves and there are people on this forum excusing it as being "best intentions". Can you imagine the reaction to this if the story was of African Slaves in the 1800s? These kids were murdered as late as the 1960s. And let's not forget the land that was stolen, the culture that was all but annihilated, the lives being ripped apart to this day through drugs and alcohol which is largely seen as a criminal nuisance rather than an epidemic that continues to marginalize and shun.

I could go on. The story is so sad, so dark, and still going on and covered up to this day. And we all gloss over it and pay lip service on CBC. Where is the criminal investigation? Where are the task forces looking for all the other mass graves?

I'm so saddened and ashamed by all of this. I've often thought of leaving Canada due to this shit, I live on unceded native territory for fuck's sake.