SocratesV

This. Externalities need to become accounted for when we want to completely evaluate the cost of an activity.

Just because those companies or us as individuals don't need to pay for the future damage, doesn't mean that cost doesn't exist, and by not accounting the externalities, the consumption of said products is incentivised since they become "cheaper" than alternatives that are presented to the end user with a higher cost.

This whole thread by Dr. Sarah Taber is quite interesting on how it's all about the context when it comes to growing meat vs. growing crops.

https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/100636377572388864...

She summarises it in a single tweet at the end:

  In places where there's limited land and a surplus of water, 
  it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land. So there, grow & eat crops.
  
  And in places where there's a lot of land and limited water, 
  it makes sense to optimize for water. So there, grow & eat ruminants.

P.S.: There are also other things to take into account, but think that already shows how we should balance our view and not advocate for a single form of subsistence everywhere.

So where does this leave sticker albums (Panini, etc) or any other collectable that does not serve what is seen as a generally practical purpose in the World? (don't think that digital vs. physical should play a part in this)

In gambling you are mostly doing it for a clear financial gain: you play for money/fiat. Loot boxes, sticker albums, and so on, the primary purpose is not a financial gain. That is a byproduct and secondary, which some elect to make it their primary purpose for engaging in it.

IMO this is a symptom of people not being able to manage their finances properly and identify potentially destructive behaviours. This would push the solution for the problem to Education, how schools should help people in learning the skills necessary to both manage their money and notice when a certain behaviour they are about to engage in, or repeat one too many times, will produce a generally negative outcome for their mental and financial health.

And no, I'm not a fan of loot boxes. Never bought one and think they are mostly used by the publishers in a very bad, and silly, way.

Doesn't it?

> A new study led by a Michigan State University business scholar suggests customer-service workers who fake smile throughout the day worsen their mood and withdraw from work, affecting productivity.

EDIT: formatting

And a +1 here. Would just add that we also need to look at the offer of product lines that Apple provides to better understand their decisions.

Also, IMO, people are becoming more and more desensitised, always expecting big leaps in innovation and specs and not noticing the small steps, cornerstones of the vision Apple has for its user's experience.

> If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Going to potentially be controversial, but we need (might be a strong word here) genetic manipulation with strong ethical and humanist values attached to it (and a lot more knowledge).

If we are to deny natural selection its role, then we might want to still prevent people from passing on genes which effectively handicap them when they don't have access to certain facilities and technology. Prevention in this case is not eugenics, but gene manipulation/therapy.

Having said this, what we most certainly don't want is genetic standardisation (good path for extinction) and even the manipulation of genes, that seem to cause "problems" (today's problems might be tomorrow's cure), needs a deep understanding of implications, which at the moment we probably don't have.

P.S.: Hold the similar view regarding GMO in food.

3-D Secure doesn't always requests a 2FA code sent to your phone.

Most that I've used are fixed passwords (and they ask you for the character at certain positions) while others will ask you for personal information that is rather easy to obtain.

This is at least my experience. From the handful of cards I've used from different banks, only 1 used to send me a code via SMS.

(this was in the UK)

Believe that the address validation only checks the numbers present in the address, not the rest of the text, at least that was what I read in some gateway's documentation. Imagine the level of what they check may vary.

This is of course if the merchant/gateway even cares about that level...

Going interplanetary is not so much because of Earth not being sustainable but more about survival of the species: extinction level events on Earth (and not talking about us making it a wasteland, but rather non-anthropogenic in origin ones) will be less likely to terminate our species.

> Despite my initial impressions, I really like the keyboard.

Have only tried typing a few lines in store and I also enjoyed it, but might be personal preference: use keyboard with Cherry MX Brown at home and got used to light/low-force actuation.

Getting a maxed out 13'' to replace my 2008 one.

Maybe we should aim to create within the next century a near perfect simulation of us and our world, run it at an incredibly high speed and see if any knowledge regarding this, and many other things, emerges. ;-)

What's the market share for USB-C compared with USB-A/B?

Would hope that as it passes USB-A/B, it becomes as cheap as, or at least close to.

Also people will start to name & shame bad cable manufacturers, both when they are the ones not reading the cable specs (in which case it will alert people to do so) or when the cable specs do not match the actual cable capabilities (in which case the cable manufacturer is liable).

The other thing is as mobile phones/tablets change, you'll also get cables bundled with the device, which will probably be of a decent quality at least (they don't need to be Thunderbolt 3, just not fool the devices by violating USB-C specs).

This was fairly recent, 2013. The houses were otherwise perfectly good. Painted, with normal windows, normal doors, etc. Didn't seem like a they had been "completed" on a best effort basis (non-matching cheap windows, dodgy doors, etc).

Went to Crete a few years ago and was surprised by the number of (what seemed residential) buildings with unfinished roof/terrace, but otherwise being used and perfectly normal. You could see the concrete pillars with the steel bars coming out on top.

Imagine it is some kind of way to dodge taxation since it is still considered unfinished?

Have also read Michael Lewis' "Boomerang", which also has a lot of similar anecdotes about Greece (and Iceland, Ireland, etc).

All your base are belong to us.

Please read my comment again, I did say:

> I'm assuming cable makers will stop doing sub-par ones and just stick to Thunderbolt 3 capable

For me knowing that soon, once peripherals makers and also cable makers catch-up, I'll be able to use just one type of cable to connect to anything (and I'm assuming cable makers will stop doing sub-par ones and just stick to Thunderbolt 3 capable), is probably a huge win. No more USB/HDMI/MagSafe mix (with the different ports on the peripheral side to increase complexity).

After that, wireless.

Late 2008 Aluminum 13'' Macbook here. Going to upgrade.

Can't really understand all the fuss. It's Apple. Making this polemic decisions has been their bread & butter for a long time, always dropping standards that have peaked for new ones. Causes a pain in the short term, yes, but it's certainly not something new.

Would be interesting to know, a few months from now, the percentage of those complaining that actually switched to Linux/Windows and bought a non-Apple laptop.

Apple has always done this. Always. In the end people adapt and things progress.

Like with HDMI cables? (though it doesn't fry ports...)

It's a cable maker problem. Buy the one that supports the super-set from a brand that doesn't try to fool customers.

Not doubting the price you were seeing in NewEgg, but find it hard to believe you couldn't build your own PC with the same CPU and equivalent RAM, GPU, cheaper by sourcing the parts from retail stores yourself.

Was it a case where Apple was getting an incredibly good deal on those?

Those that do need more RAM are probably are already using desktop options. I understand it would be nice to have more RAM by default or optional, I would also like it since I tend to keep my laptops for a long time (current one is a 2008 13'' Macbook Unibody), but there's always a reason for not doing it, either it be technical, economical or commercial. It's not a decision you take on a whim.

They introduced a major piece of hardware to the configuration and reduced size and weight. Making other changes would be increasing the risk of something going wrong. That's my take at least.

You can probably expect the specs bump within the next year. :)

If you are going for price, criticising Apple's pricing is by now a tradition. I thought we had established that Apple is not where you get more bang for your buck. You buy it for the OS and construction quality (and now the ecosystem of services).

I remap my CTRL to CAPS LOCK because it's more convenient.

Have come across a lot of Vim power users that do the same with ESC. Or buy the model without the Touch Bar.

Can we stop with the drama now? It's becoming pathetic.

Apologies for the bluntness.

P.S.: more RAM and CPU? Get a desktop or buy another laptop. Since when was Apple the fastest, more bang for your money? This was clearly not a specs bump iteration.

Understand that for most, yesterday's event was a disappointment. For me it was a good step in the right direction, despite the boring presentation.

(I'm speaking as an Apple user, not claiming Apple came up with all these first)

1. Touch

First they made Apple users get used to, in laptops, working with a trackpad for more functionality than just moving the mouse and clicking. Then they reduced the profile of the keys. Now they've introduced a touchscreen in our keyboard area.

Wouldn't be surprised if we see a move towards a full touch keyboard. How? Not sure. Today "me" would think of some kind of glass like material that could display any layout and image while molding its surface to it (or at least something like the Optimus keyboard done properly). Tomorrow "me" will probably thinking of completely getting rid of it and using the future AirPods as wireless brain interfaces (you can ridicule me for this if you want, I know I would).

Nevertheless, we got physical keys replaced by something more flexible and that will give us a more meaningful interface for what you can do depending on the context we are working in. Alpha-numeric shortcuts will always have a steeper learning curve than an good icon or descriptive button (some real estate issues there for the number of combinations, one for UX to solve).

Know that this doesn't seem much, but it is once you start thinking of the possibilities and that it's only the beginning of what's to come.

Will talk about Microsoft later in this comment...

2. "Standard" ports

Finally! Thunderbolt 3/USB-C.

Dongle fest? Maybe in the first year or two. Then it means every single peripheral (power, external SSD, network, screens) will only use one physical interface to connect to your Apple laptop (others have also started doing this, so the wheels are in motion already).

What about your old peripherals? I'm a hoarder when it comes to tech, so still have PS/2 keyboards and mice at my parents'... Remember then? What about Serial? Sure, it was over a longer period of time, but things evolve quite faster now, especially when you are trying to simplify and make things smaller, lighter. Different physical interfaces are the enemy in these cases.

As I've previously said, was surprised that the iPhone 7 didn't come with Thunderbolt 3/USB-C. Imagine it was either some control issue they wanted to maintain or didn't want to rebuild/refactor that part of the device just yet. Would expect the next iPhone to make the jump and join the USB-C family.

Have addressed the issue of SD Cards and such in comments in the iPhone 7 thread. The future is wireless, which is also valid for cameras. Pain in the short term, bliss in the medium-long. My 2 year old Panasonic compact camera has Wi-Fi, others have Bluetooth (and I'm not saying it's the best experience as it is, mostly due to poor attention to the software, since cards are still the preferred way).

3. Apple TV

They now seem to be a bit more serious about Apple TV. Why? Remember when they used to go silent for years?

Sure, nothing groundbreaking or that it hasn't been done by others, but it is becoming a more enticing device now that they are at least catching up to the rest of the devices. Still think that using it for socialize during sports is grasping at straws. You know you want full screen for the transmission and just use your smartphone/tablet to comment... Maybe work on a better integration there?

4. What about computing (CPU, memory, graphics) power?

Need more than 16GB of RAM at this stage? Better graphics card? Mac Pro. Want a laptop? Not Apple at this point.

Wait for the next iteration. This wasn't one of those, as you only change so much between them to minimise complications.

5. What about the Air?

Look at the Macbook and the new Macbook Pro? The Air was the spearhead, the prototype that made both possible and prepared the audience, it will potentially die, which kind of makes sense (the amount of choice was becoming overwhelming and probably not that efficient from a production POV: more lines to manage and maintain, less focus on each one).

6. Microsoft

Yes, their new computer looks nice, for people in graphic design and audio/video editing maybe.

Going to be polemic, but I think the dial is a gimmick and will be the source of a lot of frustration. You can already do a lot with touch and I reckon physical device feedback is still better than bland plain touch. However apart for a niche application, I don't see the general public using it.

Big touch screen? Unless they revolutionise the way we do touch and interact with the OS, and I hope they do, it will get boring and a pain to use for most people that simply browse, watch videos, listen to music, send emails and play some games. Kids? You probably go for an iPad Pro or equivalent, something you can carry around easily.

Final thoughts

My take on Apple at the moment is that, despite what people say, that they've lost their way and are doomed, I think that's not going to happen, they do have a vision for their ecosystem and they are focusing on it, both on the hardware as well as well as the services side and experience.

They are slowly introducing changes which minimises the risk (of going down the wrong path) and allows them to learn more from users as they go. Think that 5 years from now when you look back, the evolution and experience will be quite clear (and again, the mostly mocked AirPods are going to be pivotal in this, not because of the sound or current function but because of what, as a device to be developed, they'll enable).

We cannot expect big bang innovation every year or even every few years and when it does happen, you then take a while to refine it and make it better.

Potentially relevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Man_of_Restelo

Some of the ones that made me move out of London:

- pollution;

- poor quality in most housing;

- small apartments (shoeboxes really);

- high rents and difficult to buy;

- crowded (streets, public transportation, roads);

- both of which leads to people being pushed to the outskirts and taking a lot of time to travel when you want to meet with friends;

Personally I got a bit tired of it, loved it in the first few years. Lots of money to be earned, and quite a lot of facilities, but for me I just grew tired of the place.

That's assuming you buy Lightning headphones. They are clearly pushing for Bluetooth.

Until you do, dongle, and you'll be able to use them.

P.S.: I also agree USB-C would have been preferable and was hoping they would make that move in this keynote.