mthoms

[delayed]

You answered a different question than the one I asked.

There is emotional abuse and there is physical abuse. It’s obviously not physical abuse, so can you articulate what makes it emotional abuse?

Wouldn’t emotional abuse require both a perpetrator and victim?

I hope you’re right but this is exactly what I thought about his first term. Yet, here we are.

Important distinction: Google’s official, publicly declared policy is to follow the government names. Apple has never publicly declared any such policy. It was a choice.

(If Apple have indeed said this somewhere I’m happy to be proven wrong)

Or, if you're the IDF, and the bunker is filled with neutral UN Observers monitoring for war crimes, you also send in a laser-guided bunker-busting airstrike. Then you insist it was an "accident" while refusing to cooperate with the subsequent investigations.

https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2015/07/24/history-july-25th-2006-m...

Of note, just days before the strike, one of the Observers sent an unencrypted email home to his wife noting that he was observing Israeli war crimes and would be reporting them.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/un-officer-reported-is...

"When in doubt, send in an airstrike."

That's not what a "right" is.

Privacy requires immense trust. Ignoring user preferences the minute there’s some money to be made erodes that trust.

One of primary reasons people value online privacy is because advertisers are incessantly “nudging” them to do things that aren’t in their interest.

It’s exhausting.

People don’t want to be nudged. They want to be respected.

Well, if that's the bar we're arbitrarily setting, then I guess so.

It's slowly getting worse. For instance, the update nag for Pages and Numbers Applications towards their newer subscription-capable equivalents can't be disabled in the MacOS UI. Selecting "Not Now" still results in the nag appearing every. single. day.

The frog is being slowly boiled.

The principle of respecting user autonomy.

In all sincerity, people take it seriously because it helps them sleep at night.

I'm stuck in this dilema too.

This is one of the very techniques under which the entire Apple Empire has been built. They take the "sweet spot" for $product and intentionally offer options on either side of that sweet spot. They also nerf the lower-end option in other ways (i.e. fewer ports) so to make the upgrade more enticing. This enables them to offer "Prices starting from...." that are dead-end options (like 8GB RAM or 128GB HD's).

Lots of companies do this across various industries. But it works best when the brand name is really strong and/or the competitive landscape is very weak.

I've grown to accept that it's just how they operate.

If you understood the history then it would make more sense. Mullenweg is himself a notorious bully. There have been Mullenweg related uhh... "controversies" going back roughly two decades. People are tired.

Is the WP community toxic? No, it's absolutely lovely. But there is a dark cloud over everything when it comes to the project's direction and governance.

Mullenweg yields enormous power and is famously vindictive, so people can't speak up in healthier ways. I think this is the result; when a leader constantly wields his power to destroy critics, they tend to move underground.

But nobody posts this stuff "with glee". Quite the contrary.

(For the record, I think some of the critique goes over the line as well, but that's just the internet. I don't think it's as prominent as your comment seems to imply).

>We still have the web at all basically because of Wordpress.

I strongly disagree with the premise.

Aside from that, "WordPress" is 100% controlled by one guy. A guy who has repeatedly demonstrated total and complete disregard for the community. Ergo "we" don't "have" WordPress; It's something we're allowed to use (until Matt decides to ban us for an arbitrary, petty reason that doesn't even require articulation).

That's not something that belongs to a proverbial "we". That's the point.

Dinosaur is often used to describe someone who has grown out-of-touch with their industry. It aptly describes the technical skills Matt was just breathlessly boasting about.

In case you missed it, Matt's boast was part of his attack on people like me who disagree with him ("stupid people swayed by bots") and his direct personal attack on YouTuber Theo Browne, whom he described as having "two brain cells".

In the context Matt established himself, "dinosaur" is pretty tame, no?

Yes, two wrongs don't make a right. I'll tone it down. But if you're going to police the comments, kindly consider applying the policing equally. Just because someone is a quasi-famous tech celebrity, it shouldn't give their behaviour a pass.

Edit: I just noticed that elsewhere in this thread he calls his opponents (myself included) "idiots", yet there's no policing on that comment. Apparently, it's only "dinosaur" that crosses your red line.

Elsewhere in this thread people are describing you as having many traits associated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Suddenly, you show up out of nowhere and... compare yourself to Steve Jobs?

Also, let's be honest. You haven't done either of those things in a decade and a half. A lifetime in this industry. You're a dinosaur.

I think the point is that the code path to deny network access for arbitrary apps exists (at least according to this comment):

> I also found out the Chinese version has the ability to block an app for accessing both mobile data and Wifi/WLAN data.

Yet Apple is choosing not to enable it for everyone. It seems like it would be an easy and obvious privacy win, no?

This information is all derived from overhead (satellite and aerial) imagery combined with street level imagery (like from Google street view). No road owners required.

I responding to you saying:

>If you're going to claim that we're very desperate for such things we would of course have to act as a country of desperation and secure aluminum, oil, and critical minerals perhaps at all costs. I wonder what that would look like? If we don't take desperate measures, maybe we aren't desperate yea?

Which I presume is an allusion to war ("secure... at all costs"). The implication being that since there's no war, then the phrase "desperate for oil" simply cannot apply. I only realized you were using that extreme interpretation when you... you know... alluded to war(!) At which time I pointed it out.

But go ahead Eric, carry on with your desperate[0] flailing.

[0] So there's no confusion, the intended meaning here is this one (from your source):

ˈde-sp(ə-)rət: "involving or employing extreme measures in an attempt to escape defeat or frustration"

Huh? That's exactly what I described and linked to.

"If I choose to adopt the most extreme definition of the word 'desperate', then I'm technically correct, and I don't have to support my assertions, or argue with facts!"

You know very well that the intended meaning of the word "desperate" in the comment you replied to isn't what you're now desperately pretending to be confused about. Stop it.

From the HN community guidelines:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Where does it say "it's pretty easy" to do this via Canada? Canada isn't even mentioned in your source. Only Asian countries are. Please stop repeating as fact nonsense you vaguely half-remember hearing somewhere. It's very Trumpian. The whole world isn't out to get you.

I'm not saying trans-shipping doesn't happen. I'm sure it does. But your framing was entirely baseless.

>It's pretty easy right now for certain goods to bypass the US tariffs by being transshipped through Canada and enter the USA without tariff because of minimal processing.

This talking point keeps getting repeated on HN. Always without sources because the only source is a dubious White House "report" that is nothing more than a manufactured reason for buying an expensive new AI system (probably from a big donor). https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Gr...

That same report equally names the European Union, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan alongside Canada. So literally every modern western economy is making this "pretty easy"? Yeah, ok.

It's amazing how confidently some people speak about a topic they know nothing about.

>Let's set the framing correctly because I think we're starting off on the wrong foot. The US is not in a desperate need of any product from Canada. Nice to have and super important? Yea. Desperate? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Literally yesterday:

“This country desperately needs aluminum,” Trump said. “Selfishly, we need aluminum in this country. We don’t have it. We get it all from Canada for the most part, and we need it badly.”

Note that Trump said this within hours of claiming "we don't need anything from Canada". What else does the country need that Trump has lied about (that you seem to have bought hook, line, and sinker)? Have you considered another source of information?

Well you can start with potash (very much a critical need according to the United States Ambassador to Canada), and oil (according to the US voters), electricity (according to several million American households).

That's not even to mention current and future supplies of critical minerals. Remember how much Trump panicked when China cut off critical minerals? You'd better hope that doesn't happen again.

First, I agree with your complaint about that wording.

Aside from that, the "obvious" dairy tariffs you speak of are almost entirely theoretical. Those are anti-dumping tariffs that kick-in only when a certain threshold has been met. It never has.

That's not to say there aren't trade barriers. The US side argues that there are market barriers that make reaching those quotas impossible [0]. It's a fair point and worth discussing. But let's call it what it is: it's a dispute about opening up a potential new market. Nobody has been over-charged and no American farmers have been "ripped off" (quoting DJT).

If the end result is the same, do the details matter? Absolutely. Being overcharged or ripped off is something that gets people heated, (which is exactly why Trump uses that inflammatory language). Being denied market access because of administrative hurdles to a small-ish niche in a relatively small market like Canada? Not so much.

Please don't repeat the falsehood that dairy tariffs are an "obvious" example of where Canada has imposed fees on American companies. The truth is more nuanced.

[0] https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-policy/the-real-story-behi...

Reminds me of using AltaVista search back in the day. Yes, it was that bad.

3) Elon Musk has fascist leanings and many people don't want to live in a world where such a person has ever increasing wealth, influence and power. Especially since he has no qualms about using that same wealth and influence to subvert and distort elections, both domestic and foreign.

Memory bandwidth is one of the most important factors. The Max machines typically have higher bandwidth than Pro (you should look up these exact models to verify though). Having said that, you could run bigger models with 64GB.

I went with a 64GB M2 Max a few years back even though it stretched my budget and I'm glad I did. I'm not sure what I'd pick in this case. Tough call.

Unless you can explain why the American stumpage fees are inherently "correct", this is simply a case of one country having a bigger supply of something and therefore being able to offer it much cheaper. You know... Capitalism working exactly as intended.

Isn't that kind of America's thing?

"No, not like that!"

All the rest of this is designed to distract from the real issue: Americans love Capitalism, except in the rare cases where they don't come out on top. Then everyone else is being mean and unfair.

It's funny. When European governments charge high fees, Americans deride them as socialist and anti-capitalist. When the American government does it (as it does here)? Why, it's the natural order of things! Our fees are the "correct" fees. It's everyone else that's wrong!

Please.