devney

It is interesting to me that you have income and outflow so tightly coupled that you think in terms of "N% of income".

I did that for several decades. These days I take pains to decouple income and outflow. That is: I judge the expenditure on its own merits, whether I need or want it by itself, without regard to what % of income it might be.

Think of it like a leaky bucket: my paycheck goes in the top, and I control how much leaks out the bottom. Of course, I am lucky enough to have that luxury. Many people (most Americans) don't have enough income to decouple outflow from it, and are forced to think in percentages of income.

I am frankly astonished by this article and all of these comments. Right now I have only 3 digital subscriptions totalling $20.58/month. (Admittedly that's low right now; I usually have an additional 2 streaming services, rotated every few months, for maybe another $25/month).

The key thing to remember is that any recurring subscription costs us theoretically infinite money (given infinite time). Obviously we won't have that subscription forever, so it's up to us to calculate how much it will cost us over the next month, year, decade.

Any time someone says "Just $N per month!" all I hear is "costs infinite money unless I do something about that." This thought really helps me resist leaking money like that.

"The people at this company actually believe in the mission of bringing the world closer together. They recognize and embrace the huge responsibility it puts on us."

Bro if that were true then the end product of Facebook would be significantly different.

Seems like dude stays at this company that pays him well because, as he says, - that's not true - that's blatantly, superlatively not true - They let him play with the lives of billions of people - And they pay him well with good perks.

Yeah sorry JK Jensen, I read your post and all it says is you're greedy and avoidant. You love the great pay and great perks, and you lie to yourself about the impact you're having.

The main point to remember is that the fones we carry aren't for us. They are data-gathering tools for various spy enterprises. Any utility we get out of our fones is largely incidental, or at best it's bait to get us into the trap.

It's interesting that most of the replies here focus on the children aspect, while the same spy-device paradigm applies as much or more to adults.

The bottom line is I just don't get enough utility out of my devices to justify spending all that privacy on them. Plus ads make the internet unusable on them. I'll just use my laptop because it's more convenient.

I just feel like this author could have chosen a better example. The if/else block that he complains about is easy to read and simple to understand. The ternary he advises raises the bar significantly for anyone trying to read the code, while having no practical effect on runtime or usability.

Based on my 25+ years of experience I strongly believe that the "if/else" that this author complains about is actually BETTER than the ternary he recommends. This is yet another example of the endemic problem where software engineers think "harder to read is a virtue".

Not really related to the discussion at hand but I often wonder if that's the right way to make laws? "Intent is king" is the watchword of modern American jurisprudence but I ask you: If you killed 3 people, are they less dead if it was an accident? If people knew they would be punished for consequences instead of intent, would people be more careful about considering the consequences of their actions? Would that make for, just in general, a more observant, more considerate, more intelligent populace, with less collateral damage? By extension, might that result in more just/fair laws just in general?

I'm fairly confident this "intent" thing is absolutely the wrong way to build a society. I would love if someone would engage with this idea and offer criticisms for/against but so far nobody has.

Discussion question: If something is immoral and debatably illegal, does documenting it in the quick start guide make it somehow less immoral? Or does that just mean it was documented?

Of course there's more nuance to this. As I mentioned, these cases usually involve coercion (someone held a gun to your head and made you sign the contract) or not speaking the language (interpreter wasn't available/translated wrong/deceived).

This question then rests on: Can the user reasonably be expected to read 10 pages of dense legalese?

I think the real-life answer is an obvious NO. Current law generally assumes YES, except in cases where it doesn't. You see how there's some conflict here which I expect to be clarified by some court soon.

"If you could have read the document but didn't, that is your own fault and the contract stands." That's the point, isn't it? Gideon v. Wainwright clearly established that no non-lawyer can be expected to win against a trained lawyer. Since BigCo has a team of trained lawyers making the EULA impossible to read, ... Well, Gideon didn't go this far, but if we extend the logic in that ruling, there's certainly a major precedent that nobody can be expected to understand the EULA, and thus it might be void.

That raises whole other legal questions....

One basic pillar of contract law basically everywhere is that one can not be bound by a contract that they didn't read, even if they signed it. Usually these cases involve coercion or not knowing the language. If nobody can read the EULA because it's 10 pages of densely written legalese, can they even be bound by it?

Since BigCo deliberately made their EULA harder to read than necessary, that probably counts as "acting in bad faith" which is an entirely different legal avenue for the EULA to be void.

On the surface this seems blatantly illegal: after the sale is made the no-longer-owner removes functionality.

Can someone please explain how this is legally not some sort of theft, or bait-and-switch, or ... something?

I read comments about firmware licensing, or Japan's camera noise thing. Those sound like Samsung problems, while disabling a camera sounds like an actionable user problem.

That's great! As other commenters here have mentioned an online menu accessed by a QR code can have lots of extra features: multiple languages, filters for gluten/nuts/etc.

Meanwhile since I, speaking the local language and not having special dietary needs, want to look at a paper menu while my fone stays in my pocket.

I don't think anyone is actually arguing against having the QR/online menu. That's a great thing. What we're complaining about here is that restaurants have taken away the IRL menu.

We could talk about why all day long but I want to make this fact super clear to any restaurant workers/owners: If you ask me to get my fone out of my pocket then I leave and give my business to your competition. Literally all it takes is a menu printout taped to a wall and you can keep my business. Make it happen.

Adblock doesn't break sites. If your site doesn't work with adblock, that means your site is broken.

27% of American internet users use adblock in some form. Better go check right now that you're not losing 27% of sales to it.

For years I've been asking: Why does my toothbrush have to connect to bluetooth? Why does my refrigerator twitter? These were always useless mis-features and we can hope some of them can get pared down now with the shortage. Bring back old style dumb appliances!