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Brendinooo

Re:Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament on Saturday October 31, 2026 @10:23AM (#50316488)
> It was an amazing achievement

Yeah, the thing that really strikes me is that their movement _did not exist_ in the last election. Went from scratch to power in three years. Whatever you want to say about their politics or their ability to lead...sure. But that's an incredible thing to do.

Re:Serbia just elected the world's brainiest parliament on Saturday October 31, 2026 @10:21AM (#50316474)
"Winning was easy, young man. Governing's harder."
Re:My favourite PowerMac is a Nintendo Wii on Saturday October 31, 2026 @07:38AM (#50315115)
So, yes, I agree with you and I frequently make this point about music, that everyone thinks music peaked when they were in high school.

(And if I were to make an argument about a childhood console being peak, for me it'd be the 64 or GameCube!)

But I think the Wii was a singularly unique console because it brought a particular kind of casual gaming to the masses that no console before or after has been able to do. Looking back, it's wild that people wanted to buy a bunch of custom hardware to play Rock Band! And the Wiimotes are probably the best TV controllers ever made.

Re:Patrick Stewart has died on Friday October 30, 2026 @06:58AM (#50302262)
it is in no way weird, especially not for anyone who would have watched Star Trek on broadcast
Re:Patrick Stewart has died on Thursday October 29, 2026 @08:46PM (#50298472)
There was a bunch of tumblr content awhile back that explored the premise that humans are collectively wild and irresponsible and also tremendously innovative, it's a great head-canon explanation for your gripe. I won't spoil it trying to quote it, just check it out;

https://cheezburger.com/13685509/tumblr-thread-the-staggerin...

Re:CNC Stone Carving on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @08:11PM (#50282740)
I agree with you about the vernacular thing, and a note that it does sort of contribute to its own beauty intrinsically because there is a harmonizing design language across any particular area in a variety that goes from place to place and even complements its environs
Re:CNC Stone Carving on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @04:36PM (#50280535)
>Perhaps a low quality, poorly performing, ecologically irresponsible building is what you want ?

I would call this a false dilemma. There are a bunch of examples in Manhattan of beautiful facades that are extremely ornate but are painted cast iron. It does not have to be styrofoam.

>I'd rather be paying for what I consider important for a building (longevity, ecology and thermal efficiency) than some esthetical addendum

First of all, I'm not even sure that modern buildings achieve these goals.

Like you are saying, you are speaking of cheap buildings for the masses. And a sibling comment talks about how people only look at the bottom line. If a building is beautiful, it is loved; if it is loved, it is more likely to remain. And a building that remains is best for ecology.

And also, buildings are not just for the owners, they are public works, and should be designed as such. An "esthetical addendum" is not mere vanity, it is an important contributor to quality of life in a city.

Re:CNC Stone Carving on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @01:54PM (#50277979)
I would love to see a statue of a guy designing the statue at the computer
Re:CNC Stone Carving on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @01:53PM (#50277965)
Perhaps this is because I've let Twitter radicalize me on this particular subject, but it seems like modern architecture is totally ideologically captured to be against this stuff.

There's this insistence that forms have to be "honest", so ornamental facades are out. Any attempt to revive a form is called "pastiche" (except modernist, which...uh, has been around for awhile now!). People always insist on "deconstruction" and "contrast" so they can never just build a rowhouse that looks like the other rowhouses. Etc.

There's study after study that shows that regular people are way more inclined to let things get built if it just looks good, and when people are presented with choices they'll basically always pick the classic-looking building. And yet we never seem to get them.

The more charitable read is that cost is part of the equation and people don't want to pay it, but that's 100% not the whole story. (Another part of the story is that people who buy the plans care the most about internal space with tons of light coming in, which probably drives a bunch of decisions on the outside.)

Re:Show HN: Encarta 95 Web on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @06:39AM (#50257075)
Straight to Mind Maze for me!

(Mouse is VERY touchy though)

Re:Apple Music 404 Not Found on Friday October 23, 2026 @02:36PM (#50213472)
I think I asked in HN last year if anything was happening in this space now that the click wheel patent expired. I ended up buying a $50 Chinese knockoff for one of my kids. It...feels like a $50 knockoff, haha.
Re:The Rise and Fall of Jev on Friday October 23, 2026 @02:34PM (#50213454)
>I think Jev is a good example of how great marketing fizzed out in the face of reality.

My read on Jev was totally different, I guess.

I first heard about it here. I found a video demo and thought it looked amazing, I saw a lot of discussion about it because other people probably also thought it looked amazing and imagined the possibilities, and then things quiet down because real-world use-cases for it are going to not happen right away, and definitionally it seems like Jev is more about supporting other stuff than being the thing itself.

All the other stuff about ambiguity and jargon and drama don't really register to me, I dunno. But it was interesting to see the author's take on that stuff, I suppose!

Re:Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All on Monday October 19, 2026 @12:19PM (#50154274)
The purpose of my first sentence was to establish that I was I bringing in some associated thoughts into an article where some alleged collusion is happening, so it's not correct to read it as an attempted refutation of the article.

If there's actual collusion: sure, that's bad! But to be clear, this is not the total solution to the egg price puzzle; we don't know the extent to which this impacted the market.

I guess I just don't like the idea that every price spike is read as greed, because you lose the ability to tell cartel behavior from a supply shock, and actual bad behavior gets less scrutiny, not more. I'm seeing it in this thread: capitalism bad, republicans bad, khan good, etc. Perhaps I did the same thing in the opposite direction.

Re:Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All on Monday October 19, 2026 @11:51AM (#50153921)
I mean, given a lot of the rhetoric that happens around egg prices, it does seem like setting prices in response to market conditions is a problem to many.
Re:Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All on Monday October 19, 2026 @11:47AM (#50153869)
I guess during one of the last surges the question I had was: Isn't a big egg company damned if they do or don't? If I'm a massive egg farmer in an area that's untouched by bird flu, and I keep my prices low: then I'm the bad guy who's running struggling operations out of business. If I raise my prices to stay in line with those operations, now I'm colluding in some way. If we break up big companies so they don't have the kind of power over the market, we trade lower prices for more resilience since the lowest prices are going to come from the highest scale.

I dunno. It's a weird situation. And eggs are particularly weird because, as the article notes, people are definitely willing to pay more for them; the low prices have less to do with true demand and more to do with competition.

Reading through these comments, I'm wondering if it's better viewed as a purely artistic/fictional enterprise.

(Kind of like how McKay's VICE was really good as long as you didn't pretend it was actually a biographical film)

This is like saying it's stunning that fish don't know they're wet, imo
Re:Tesla Roadster on Friday October 16, 2026 @03:36PM (#50123411)
I've been pulling somewhere between 35 and 40 doing mostly hills and 45-55mph highways, I've been thrilled with that as well as the interior space. I'm very tall and I'm arguably more comfortable in this than in my minivan.
Re:Tesla Roadster on Friday October 16, 2026 @03:34PM (#50123382)
Haha I get that you don't want to share. I was just surprised to hear that! I got one a couple of months ago and am now wondering what kind of a risk I've been exposed to
Re:Tesla Roadster on Friday October 16, 2026 @02:36PM (#50122480)
Whoa, really? Where do you live?
Re:Tesla Roadster on Friday October 16, 2026 @02:08PM (#50122071)
Get an Elantra, keep the difference to pay for gas.
Re:Apple HomeView on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @09:18AM (#50087307)
I suppose there's a bit of irony here, because when the iPad was released people weren't sure what kind of niche it would fill. I mean, isn't a laptop more capable? Isn't a phone more portable?

So I don't want to rule out that it'll carve out its own niche. But I do think that they probably wanted this to be a $200 device and RAM prices prevented it. If this was cheap enough and customizable enough, it'd be...really nice to have this on the wall in the kids' bedrooms! They'd get a calendar, clock, intercom, access to music. That's actually a pretty compelling value proposition, but $300 is gonna be waaaaay outside of that for most people.

Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @05:04PM (#50078722)
If you read my lengthy reply and came away with "this guy hates to question Apple", you are not reading my reply at all.
Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @04:28PM (#50078215)
Yup, that's why I said "depending on when you bought it"
Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @04:10PM (#50077933)
Having spent a lot of time in the open source world, I'm aware of the concept that I can never know for sure if I can't see the code. (And even if I could, that wouldn't tell us with certainly how that the data that code creates/captures is used by the people using it.)

But I do think that, in general, Apple tends to be the least-bad actor among its mainstream competitors: it has a business models that does not depend on harvesting and selling data, and it has made this value proposition a part of its marketing, and people high up in the company have spoken about ways that they personally value it. And, for any story about ways in which Apple has failed here, there are certainly twice as many for any other company they compete with.

I mean, step back: Who cares more about my privacy - Apple or Google? Apple or Roku? Can anyone seriously argue the latter for either?

> I'm only asking if people put faith in Apples claims because they're, well, Apple, or do we _know_ their claims are valid.

If we _know_, then there would be no need for faith. Given the lack of options and the lack of certainty, people must place their faith somewhere (or take on a lot of technical burden to roll their own); given everything I've seen, it's more reasonable to place faith in Apple than basically anyone else in "Big Tech" in this regard.

(But again: if there's a product out there that is very similar to Apple TV in every way except that it is more private: please tell me what that product is. I'd be thrilled to consider it.)

Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @03:32PM (#50077334)
I think you read a bunch into my stuff and then responded to the arguments you thought I was making, then accused me of craftily dodging things, then implied I was a bot.
Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @03:31PM (#50077318)
> the OP carefully skimmed this part out

lol

>we're talking to a bunch of bots on here

Ah. Okay. In a different tenor of conversation I'd be happy to clarify but...not when I'm up against this.

Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @03:17PM (#50077100)
Since you clearly know something the rest of the world's regulators do not, you should file a multi-billion lawsuit and get your money.
Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @03:01PM (#50076868)
I want something that's capable, not fiddly, and reasonably respects my privacy. I haven't found a better product in this segment yet.
Re:New Apple TV 4K on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @03:00PM (#50076850)
>Yes, they did

This has nothing to do with the specific question I asked, and I'm not sure why you'd think so unless Roku has some kind of Siri-like feature (which wasn't what I was intending when I asked regardless). (also, that's a dead link)

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