I believe you're being disingenuous. Perplexity is running a set of crawlers that do not respect robots.txt and take steps to actively evade detection.
They are running a service and this is not a user taking steps to modify their own content for their own use.
Perplexity is not acting as a user proxy and they need to learn to stick to the rules, even when it interferes with their business model.
I'm always fascinated by the posters here who insist on second-guessing the writers and the scientists who spend their whole lives studying a topic like this.
No one needs to read your post fessing up to your profound ignorance and the fact that you didn't really read the link.
I second this, and it tends to be a sitewide issue. HN has really changed over the past 5+ years: went from healthy or interesting skepticism to reddit-style snarkiness and shitposting.
You don't think it's changed? You've been here about as long as we have. At some point you can't rely on it being a noob illusion if a place actually does change. The guideline is not a magic incantation that prevents it from never becoming false. Snarky replies used to be routinely downvoted swiftly, now they are not.
I don't, Meta discussions like this have happened since forever on HN. And attempting to curb them is a good thing.
OPs "comment" on what should be correct behavior on HN is now the top comment and surpasses by far the few people that he is critiquing. And hence our discussion now is all about this meta thing, which means we are not talking about the article.
I mean, I can scroll through the hacker news history to 2016 when I started reading, and the comment quality and submission quality is much higher IMO.
As I've said before, there's a reason why my entire social group of programmers (and a lot of programmers I've met from outside it) refers to this pejoratively as The Orange Site.
It definitely feels much more homogeneous than it did 10+ years ago. I notice now that in discussions on for example women's rights we exclusively have men talking about how they perceive women to be affected, but "back in my day" it was not uncommon for actual women to share their perspectives. HN has become such a cold house for anyone outside the preferred demographic that they seem to have almost entirely left.
The downvoting here (as well as comment scoring) is probably my least liked thing about the site. It exacerbates the already prominent issue of hivemind and seems to actively lower the quality of discussion. People seem to mostly vote based on emotional reaction. On paper, a downvote just doubles the value of a vote. Meanwhile the graying of comments that never deserved to be downvoted to begin with is infuriating and seems to mostly stifle interesting conversation.
Personally, I advocate for abolishing the downvote and the scoring and switching to randomized comment order.
I'd argue ranking comments per se isn't the issue, it's whether the culture is preserved that encourages useful application of the voting system. Whether any community can preserve their desired culture is arguably the most important factor and it's what the grandparent post is essentially referring to.
On HN the main goal of upranking is if one comment is more interesting/informative than another (or as a group test to see how robust its argument is if the voter has no experience to judge directly). Downranking ime isn't meant to be the method used shift the order of comments but rather to discourage a post that doesn't fit the HN culture/guidelines. OTOH most popular gamified discussion systems don't discourage use of reactionary downvoting, which can creep into other posting cultures.
The problem the grandparent post raises is if signals that voting users would ordinarily use to shape the continued posting culture (eg: downranking comments that don't fit in tone/substance) aren't used like they were intended to be and if the guidelines discourage meta discussion then there isn't any other avenue to inform users what the desired culture should be in practice.
Certainly one can post non-meta comments showing what type of comments one would like (and thankfully for most strictly tech topics here it's still reasonable) but if the culture shifts enough among the silent voting users then the concern is this erodes the quality of discussion as the signals for what is wanted/not wanted get skewed.
I’m not arguing either side. Just saying that the meta discussion is a discussion that the guidelines try to discourage.
IOW, it’s not really relevant to the article, so it’s not promoting curious, interesting discussion.
So both this discussion as well as the snarky comments you’re arguing against are both not following the guidelines of trying to keep discussion curious and interesting.
There’s always been some of that but it does feel like it’s getting worse. I think there’s a general shift in how people approach Skinner-ized apps and social media, where a couple of generations have been trained to prioritize a number going up, but also something about how politics became both post-factual and unavoidable even in communities which used to avoid it, all of which has driven a lot of former contributors away.
I’m not sure how to rebalance things - and certainly won’t claim to be perfect about not taking the bait myself – but it seems to be slowly starving a lot of communities which don’t have some in-person anchoring.
Arranged like a Skinner box -- something which dispenses reward stimuli for desired behaviours with the aim of maximizing those behaviours.
Interestingly, a Skinner box can be made to dispense rewards randomly after a while, or stop dispensing them entirely -- but the desired behaviour is likely to continue. Think doomscrolling, slot machines, loot boxes, dating apps, etc.
mlekoszek answered very well, so I won’t duplicate their comment but I will note that I used to work with a bunch of neuroscientists and a number of grad students were recruited by tech companies specifically to use their knowledge of human behaviour and addition to boost “engagement” and revenue. There was some talk about ethics but even back then people knew those companies meant it about as much as big tobacco had.
I was on usenet in 1995 but I have heard that was too late and usenet already sucked then.
In all fairness too, my 17 year old self who knew basically nothing about the world ,really did add absolutely nothing of value to the usenet discussions I participated in besides noise. Of course, at the time I thought the complete opposite.
The thing that amuses me most is at the time there would have been a lot of "pro communism" in my responses on anything society related even though I knew absolutely nothing about communism and even less about economics as a whole.
I think this is just the way semi-anon discussions with big age and generation gaps go.
If you live long enough, you might look back at your understanding now and say the same thing. Maybe what we should learn is not to be so certain about our current knowledge.
> In all fairness too, my 17 year old self who knew basically nothing about the world ,really did add absolutely nothing of value to the usenet discussions I participated in besides noise. Of course, at the time I thought the complete opposite.
That's hardly isolated to this site. COVID did a number on us.
Fwiw, people have been saying this since the site started. Don't worry. There will always be a safe space for rich assholes to divorce themselves from reality and romanticize their exploitation.
I'm probably guilty of making comments that read this way at times, but it's almost always out of curiosity and a dash of invoking Cunningham's law.
Lately I've started feeding my questions into LLMs to explore these ideas. Given that I will almost certainly never make a decision where an improper understanding of astrophysics is at fault, I'm willing to run the risk of hallucinations leading me to improper conclusions. :)
(It's funny, I've seen people say that they generally don't even bother with spell checking questions to LLMs because it doesn't seem to make any difference. I was tempted to rerun this before posting to fix the disorganized thoughts in my questions, but I ain't got time for that.)
I think this is due to a big flaw in the link aggregator website model. In the forums of yore, we had a post creating a discussion that was a must read, and everything was contained in the same place. Links were part of the post but as side dishes sprinkled over the OP.
In the aggregator model, which is arguably a dumbed-down model of forum, there is no OP. Or more accurately, what can be interpreted as the post is the title of linked content, not the linked content itself. Clicking and reading to an external link is a burden and a disconnection to the discussion on the aggregator. In the end, a lot of discussion occurs based only on the content visible in the aggregator, that is the title. One might regret it, but it's the format pushing this behavior.
Also since there is an endless stream of content instead of threads being dumped, I feel comments are more fire and forget.
Science cannot be trusted anymore. Journals don't validate anything they submit. Departments are rewarded by how much money they wring out of the government, not by whether what they say is true. Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.
Also you don't sound "fascinated", so if you're complaining at least be honest about it. There are many more descriptive words than "fascinated".
> Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.
Isn't that what's they're supposed to do? "Hey we found this thing, here's how we did it." Next week: "Yeah I checked your data and got different results, let's figure out what's different." A few months/years later: "We've figured out where the problems were and now have a better understanding of this."
Yeah - people forget that the true advantage science has over other methodologies is that it accepts that what is believed today could be proved wrong tomorrow by new data.
There are no absolutes, we're just formulating theories to best fit what data we have now, and, if new conflicting data (or even existing data that was misunderstood/misread/misclassified as being irrelevant) disproves our theory we formulate a new one to try and account for the extra data.
Someone I know put this well: "science is just as gullible at following the latest trends. The difference is it corrects itself, where trends never do."
I like that - and it's true, eventually science will correct itself, even in the face of ridicule from its own stalwarts (eg. the way that Robert Atkins was treated by the scientific community, right up until his theory [which was recycled] was proved with empirical data)
I think this is a real problem but your post is an exaggeration. There are cases of fraud in science. There is a reproducibility crisis in some areas. There are political angles and rent seeking wrt grants. But how widespread is it? You're assuming it's close to 100% without evidence. I don't claim to have the exact number but intuitively yours is extraordinary (so it would need extraordinary evidence). I think these issues affect some areas much more than others and some regions more than others. I still believe science is the best way of enquiry for the natural world.
I'm not assuming it's close to 100%, I'm countering the GPs criticism of people who are skeptical about the title. He's saying "how dare you question these science experts!?!" And I'm saying the reason people do that is because scandals like LK99 erode the credibility.
I think on average trusting the experts is the right thing. And by the way LK99 is not even particularly damning, as far as we know it was science working as intended
> Science cannot be trusted anymore. Journals don't validate anything they submit. Departments are rewarded by how much money they wring out of the government, not by whether what they say is true. Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.
I feel like my tax dollars are wasted and the college students are being lied to with their ever-increasing tuition that somehow promises them a future when their departments are led by liars.
It sounds like you just don’t like American universities. Good news is you don’t have to attend them or send your kids to them. There are plenty of universities in the world that are not American.
I love that so many people here think they can think about the problem for 10 seconds and come up with a solution that hasn't already been considered a thousand times and discarded.
Someone hardcoded that field 50 years ago and it's impossible to change the type. It would be easier to just abandon planes altogether, and set up a parallel transportation system.
That comment explains the issue but exaggerates the impact. Sure, a change can be made and alphanumeric may not be right. No it won't be anything like the recent Crowdstrike issues. The impact of making a change on downstream systems is solved by planning it out. Communicating the intent and setting a switch over date. Some people may not heed the notices and their systems will crash. That's unfortunate, but just like Y2K or other mandatory updates, it must be done and when a crash happens it will suddenly become very important for that downstream app to issue a patch and at least they will know where/why the break happened.
In terms of datatypes, I like the idea of just going with a 5 digit integer. It seems fairly straightforward to change in most databases/systems. And while having a much smaller upper limit, it's 10x bigger than the limit that's taken us 60 years to reach.
Also, he mentioned no Alphanumeric datatype in Excel Format Cells. It's called General, because it's the default and most of that apps user's don't know what VARCHAR is.
> Some people may not heed the notices and their systems will crash
Some of these systems are indirectly responsible for keeping people safe and alive. This "oh well, you should have paid attention and taken care of it" attitude won't fly.
Seriously, this is something that could have been rolled out over the course of years. They could have talked about it at industry conventions and otherwise socialized the idea of updating dependent systems. Are those mission critical systems just willy-nilly connecting to these systems? Or is there some authentication? Because if there's authentication, there's usually some record of contacting the admin of that other system. Like how API service providers know who the owners of API keys are. Make it a required step of their annual FAA filings to certify that they have become 5 digit compliant (or whatever it gets called). If there's a way to make them prove it, make them prove it. If it has to be done to each aircraft, require it.
You get my point, there's so many practical ways to handle this. That's not to say it's easy but it's possible. Even just an audit of systems relying on communications to these legacy system(s) for actual flight operation would be a useful thing that I'd think most airline operators should have documented somewhere.
My thought in that comment was the further way from mission critical systems are the ones that will be more likely to unintentionally ignore the switch over notices and have a crash. At that point we're talking about Kayak.com going down or something that is absolutely not mission critical.
We need to have a way of rationally solving this issue that's not just some throw our hands up and ignore the problem until it's critical type situation. It a reality of our technical world that old stuff will require some breaking updates at some times.
>They also still have fun with flight numbers for instance running flight 1776 between Philadelphia and Boston; flight 1492 to Columbus; AAA777 to Las Vegas;
The "AAA" is a typo, they probably mean "AA777" for American Airlines 777[1].
A far as why the number 777 is amusing, it's gambling. The combination 777 is a jackpot on a slot machine, Additionally AA777 is a great hand (full house) in poker.
A competently designed system should be able to convert between "internal" and "external codes" using only trivial string manipulation (e.g. no external dependencies, nor any databases to load at runtime; while adding or removing the code type magic-prefix is trivial; and computing/veriftying/concatenating/trimming any check-digits should also be straightforward, like a CC or VIN check-digit.
...basically, copy what Stripe does (except I wish Stripe would announce a far smaller and reasonable length-limit for their Object-Ids instead of handwaving around a vague reference to needing as 255-char database column - because it messes-up all of my RDBMS query-plans' memory grants because it allocates (N rows * 255 bytes) whereas in reality all of my Stripe Object-Ids are well-under 32 chars in length, _le sigh_.
This suggestion is also obviously trivially discarded: it is safe to assume that many, many, many systems expect only numbers in those fields, and will blow up if they encounter letters.
Obviously, the solution is a blockchain and matching cryptocurrency where miners can generate flight IDs which the operators can then buy off of an exchange. I've already pre-mined all convenient and vanity flight IDs for a smooth launch, each ID will be sold at an automated blockchain auction with prices starting at $1000 each. IDs cannot be reused.
You're no fun. Obviously any such 10-second solution is unlikely to work in practice. The interesting part is why, specifically a proposed solution won't work; proposing some and having more knowledgeable commenters shoot them down is a way to map out the complexities of the real problem quickly. It's a very good way to learn.
Still, the speculation is more interesting than the mockery of it. If someone is interested in the topic and wasn't invited to the airlines' internal discussions, they are necessarily going to repeat some of those internal discussions.
Yeah, I really don't understand the point of coming to a commenting website where people comment on stories and not expect comments about how they'd do it. Everyone does it at least in their mind, and the speculation as a group is the most fun about reading the news.
What's the point of reading the news if not to muse about "what happens next" or "how we should deal with this" in the story of the humans.
Should we sit there going "Welp, I guess someone knows more about this than me". If we took that attitude you'd never speak about anything.
It's because people don't understand that the problem is not finding a solution, but implementing it. This space is simply a mess, much more than even your normal messy IT.
If you like a similar problem to scratch that itch there is also the 37 dogs problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMxoGqsmk5Y - a database whose primary id had a maximum of 6 digits, but the id was encoded as roman numerals.
Stop codesharing with marketing flight numbers that are useless. Airlines do perfectly fine selling tickets without having the flight marketed by themselves and they can handle inter-airline agreements without it.
Customer behavior is key here. There’s perceived risk with the dreaded “Multiple airlines” option when booking tickets, especially for international flights. No-one wants to find out the hard way that there weren’t agreements or reciprocal status or matching luggage allowances, etc. The code-share is shorthand for “we’re responsible”.
It's safe to assume that if you book on Delta's site then any routings they offer you will have interline agremeent.
Let's say you are traveling from Incheon to Atlanta on a flight with a Delta number. Would you go to the Delta desks to check-in? Maybe... is it a real Delta flight or a flight operated by Korean Air but marketed by Delta? I think getting rid of codesharing would make it much easier for travel novices.
There are so many agreements for crediting frequent flyer miles that while yes it can help reassure people, there is a million more routes that still credit miles without codeshares to the point where it's useless
There aren't that many solutions. You can go to 5 digit numbers, or use 4 characters with an expanded alphabet, or do nothing. What other solutions could there possibly be?
I'm fascinated by how so many comments here seem to assume that Bankman-Fried is playing some long strategy, when the simplest answer is that he's mentally ill and can't stop himself from engaging in compulsive behaviors, even when he's been appraised of the consequences, repeatedly.
As long as we’re throwing out random theories, I submit he is just a cocksure asshole who still thinks he’ll get away with his scam based on who mommy, daddy, and their friends are. Pardon the language, but I think it is the most apt.
This sounds plausible. He probably haven't suffered any serious consequences of his actions ever before, and his bail agreement, which is pretty mild, only reinforced him in the illusion that this is nothing, it'll all be ok, consequences happen to other people.
Mental illness or conspiracy theories also dilute his actions: he's either not guilty by insanity, or extremely intelligent by manipulation. We don't need to make any excuses for him: he's just an asshole sharing someone else's most intimate information.
> so many comments here seem to assume that Bankman-Fried is playing some long strategy
People like to feel that they're in on a conspiracy. I think because it means they're smarter then the others who "can't understand it". Its especially prevalent in technology-enthusiast circles, internet-culture, etc.
Endless validation on the internet reinforces this. If you want to believe the Earth is a simulation you can go find a forum or podcast exactly to that effect. Heck YouTube will put a chain of videos at the top of your recommendations.
"because it means they're smarter than the others"
That may be part of the reason for conspiracy theories, but I think there's more to it. A lot of people take comfort in the idea that there is some grand order to the world (regardless of it being good or evil). It can be hard to accept the alternative - that the real world is chaotic and that no one is actually in control.
There's also the fact that history, politics, business, etc. is full of actual conspiracies, just not of the "lizzards and aliens" kind, but of the people acting covertly, intimidating, bribing, working together, etc. to further their private interests kind...
The most popular conspiracy theory is The Rich People Rule The World Conspiracy Theory. No amount of debunking seems to move the needle. People think a wealthy elite control everything and that all or most human problems can be solved by taking money away from them.
This is your second off-topic comment to me, that focuses on Trump, in this thread.
I take it you have taken to some kind of crusade in the comment section, because I wrote something in some other thread and post, potentially months or weeks ago, in support of Trump? God forbid anybody ever does that. Then they are bad people, with bad ideas, and the good people must go from thread to thread to tell them so.
Not that it would be diffucult to just answer: "More like the wining and dining with business owners and oligarchs from several countries, to use your father's influence, with his full support and abuse of his position, to get bribes and do them favors, and then using the same power to thwart the story in the mainstream media for years". Seems like the world is more complex than bad guy vs good guy, "my side, right or wrong", but who cares when there's partisan fun to be had...
Alain Juillet, former head of the French CIA (DGSE) recently claimed in a youtube interview that "if you do not know what is happening in the African freemason circles, you can't understand the current geopolitics of Africa". He was the head of several lodges/masonic confederations.
> In the neighboring countries of Mali and Guinea, the same expansion phenomenon is observed. Amadou Toumani Touré, overthrown on March 21st, and Alpha Condé oversee the destinies of the Grand Lodge of Mali and that of Guinea, respectively. As for Blaise Compaoré, he was - until he gave way to Djibrill Bassolé, his head of diplomacy - grand master of the Grand Lodge of Burkina, which counts among its ranks numerous ministers, diplomats, and businessmen, notably a part of the management of the national chamber of commerce. Further south, Beninese Thomas Boni Yayi, a known evangelist, has always denied his affiliation to Freemasonry but maintains close relations in the field. Togolese Faure Gnassingbé keeps people guessing, causing some of his brothers to smile: "This young president quickly understood the means to control his elite," they note.
> Endless validation on the internet reinforces this
Yet they have been wrong time and time again.
First he was never going to face any consequences because something something connected. Then there were never going to be charges. Then he was never going to see the inside of a jail. etc etc etc
Even more delusional than those that cant see they dont have any clue - are the ones who claim "they only pressed charges because "WE" forced them into it by shining a light on the conspiracy"
> People like to feel that they're in on a conspiracy.
People like to feel that people always make the best informed decisions and so there's always "more to it". That's especially so for established professionals or "successful" people.
The idea is if so and so is successful they must be doing things right - at every step.
Where did anyone say he (or anyone else) should not be held responsible for his unlawful conduct?
Even in the so-vanishingly-rare-it-almost-doesn’t-exist-outside-fiction case of someone being found not legally culpable for a crime by reason of insanity, that almost always comes with things like compelled inpatient mental health treatment instead.
The Dan White “Twinkie Defense” was so astounding because for once something like that worked. (One guess as to why it happened to work for him, but here’s a hint: Cops celebrated when the verdict was announced.)
> when the simplest answer is that he's mentally ill
I'm sure his lawyers would love to claim otherwise, but affluenza isn't a real medical condition. The simplest answer is that he's lived his life believing that he can do anything he wants. These "consequences" people talk about are for poor people, not people like him. His behavior makes perfect sense with that in mind.
Sounds like a perfect candidate to run a large, unregulated financial institution. /s
The government has said it is going to show he was conducting a "political influence campaign" using customer deposits and using "political straw donations" as part of a money laundering scheme.
My baseless theory is that he hasn't realized his minders have cut the cord. This stuff happens from time to time. Someone who is propped up and aided by a government agent begins to feel like they are an insider. When they screw up, their agent goes to bat for them. But if they screw up and are no longer needed, the agent acts like they've never met.
At least that's how it works in all the $7.99 paperback thrillers!
Which mental illness are you speculating that he has? I listened to and read a lot of his words in the months leading up to the FTX collapse and he came across as sharp as a tack and not unstable.
I think people are conflating diseases of the mind (mental illness) with being mentally unhealthy (toxic, impulsive, egotistical, narcissistic,...)
An unhealthy mind can be trained to be healthy. Like going to the gym.
Mental illness is chronic and medical and requires medical intervention.
Neither absolve the person of responsibility except in very narrow cases (imho) where a medical issue has impaired cognition in such a way the person committing the crime saw the actions in such a radically opposite way to how society (composed of people with varying mental health) sees those actions.
Both mental illness and being mentally unhealthy require compassion. Let's face it, anyone whose pursuit of wealth at all costs has this outcome is unlikely to be very happy or feel very good much of the time.
Elon Musk vibes. For example when he was shilling dogecoin, or bragging about not caring at all about the $420 SEC settlement. It's oddly fun to watch such exceptional narcissists, both when they rise and when they fall. They're so invested in their image.
One of the three he certainly wasn't important as a source of money (X/PayPal), as that is where he got the seed money for the other ventures you are diminishing his involvement in.
For Tesla he was an original source of money but has also been the CEO since 2008 (the same year they began production of the original roadster). So all the things people know Tesla for today (and have made it a hugely valuable company) happened under his direct leadership as CEO.
For SpaceX the idea that he is just a source of money is clearly ludicrous, given that it is entirely his brainchild. Since founding the company, he has done an excellent job of hiring all the right people that have made the company what it is today, and is clearly leading the vision and focus of the company.
Being a source of money alone was not enough to establish a successful private space launch company. There were plenty with even more money available and even actual institutional support that never got anywhere.
What the creator of DOGE said is completely irrelevant to this discussion. If you think there's nothing morally wrong about abusing your position to swindle your fans in technically-legal ways, then any further discussion is pointless.
For what it's worth, I have the same level of disdain towards all celebrities/public figures who abuse their power in this way. It's alarmingly common these days.
It was a judgement of personality traits/disorder. Not of commerical success.
SBF, Musk or Trump behave like privileged children that believe rules/law do not apply to them. They want everyone to know and admire them for their awesomeness, in fact it's their awesomeness that buys them an infinite number of get-out-of-jail cards.
Yes, Musk is the most useful out of all of them, by a mile. Still, the personality type/disorder is the same.
You dont want the government silencing people. You dont want to go down that road. Eventually it leads to you.
The way you combat these people (and I didnt look deep into this persons views) is to call them out and provide truthful information. And then people have to decide for themselves. You will always have a fraction of people who are fools (on any topic) but most people will side with rationality.
I support the government silencing people causing egregious harm (which the government has the burden of proof to prove). “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Calling them out and providing the truth doesn’t work. Ask the 42 year old who tried to break into the Cincinnati OH FBI office and is dead after a shootout with police. There is a significant amount of the population where there is simply no inoculation against conspiracies and other incoherent reality models.
I think this is a really naive view. Attempting to expand the "fire" in a crowd limitation to many other speech areas is reckless. The government are just humans, and humans are conniving and motivated by politics. That road leads to an obvious end.
You list small examples of when free speech goes bad but I can assure you not having it goes bad in a bigger way for many more people.
What you call naive, I call rational and pragmatic. Your mistake is giving too much credit to the average human. I encourage you to consider the position when you’re at the business end of a barrel held by someone who isn’t functional enough to think critically/rationally (of course I don’t wish you actual harm if that’s in question). Its easy to pontificate from safety. I was previously a free speech absolutist, but realize the operating environment has changed over the last decade and my beliefs have changed accordingly.
I believe that the government must be held accountable and to a high burden when rights are in question, but I also can demonstrate with receipts that there are a lot of batshit crazy people out there.
Government is run by a collection of humans. Why do you give them the benefit of the doubt when you do not give such benefit to the commoner? I can understand giving bother or neither the benefit of the doubt but to pick one seems capricious. Perhaps it is you that is pontificating from safety.
"Your mistake is giving too much credit to the average human" again the government are just humans. You seem to think its a single point of godly knowledge and wisdom void of mortals. Its just a small group of people who control a larger group of people and they have private motivations often times not in the public interest.
The government (small group of people with outside interests) is constantly wrong and biased on many topics, I would never want them to have a monopoly on free speech or decide what is truth.
A piece of paper written hundreds of years ago is always up for interpretation. The rule of law is interpreted by the living, not the dead (with my apologies to Thomas Jefferson).
I too am curious how this specific court case will shake out.
Sorry, I don't buy this "Twitter == town square" stuff. I've debated it a lot on HN and elsewhere, and I'm not convinced by any of the arguments I've seen. I know you want it to be true and likely do sincerely believe that it is. I just don't.
If that were the standard then the entire public health apparatus in most countries would have been banned many months ago. Clearly it's not. You can spread as many lies as you want as long as it's in favor of vaccines and masks.
Anyway Berenson has been reliably ahead of the curve on this. He is FAR more accurate and trustworthy than governments have been. The tweet that got him banned said something like "It doesn't stop infection" and pointing out that because the vaccine only reduces symptoms without reducing infection, that makes it a therapeutic. Which is correct.
1. Masks work. Nope. Only N95’s are proven. Every study prior to covid deployment showed that masks did not work. All studies comparing the issue show no impact.
2. Vaccines prevent spread. Nope. Government kind of knew this.
3. Vaccines will prevent you from getting covid-19. Nope, natural immunity is probably the only way through it for most of the populace. Sweden’s and Florida’s science based approach turned out to be correct, targeted preventions for at-risk groups.
4. Virus came from a wet market. Anyone going against this insane theory was attacked so viciously that the social media groups cowered in fear of the government. Look what is now being accepted as an option.
The government based their approach on a hope that everyone would concurrently get the therapeutic vaccine and freeze the virus to prevent transmission. The problem was the inability to think about the logistics.
The hardware looks nice but it's not for normal people getting normal work done. Things have gotten marginally better since Ive left, but they still have a long way to go.
I disagree, having migrated multiple family members away from shitty plastic laptops full of bloat ware and ads and shitty Android phones full of the same they are much more able to use their devices.
I also find as a dev that iPhones and MacBooks “just work” and let me get my stuff done, much much more so than a Linux desktop environment or windows laptop.
I guess we may be talking about different things though if you’re saying the apple ecosystem isn’t living up to its full potential, but IMO the rest of the phone/computer ecosystem is full of cheap shitty plastic crap with windows installs that OEMs have had free reign to install whatever they want on (and even without that, why tf when I install windows 10 do I get ads for “candy crush” on my start menu?!)
This is absolutely not the case; such comparisons always leave something out that isn’t important to the person doing the comparison but would in fact bloat the price on the PC side if it were truly equivalent.
Wait, what? I think I'm missing something because the price difference is still there. This argument is old as the hills but has generally held up.
The 2020 MBA (to avoid having arguments comparing ARM and x64 cpus) launched at $1000 started at a 256GB disk, 1.1GHz two-core i3, and 8GB of RAM.
A quick search will find the 2020 Acer Swift 3, $700, with a 512GB disk, 1.8GHz eight-core Ryzen 7, and 8GB of RAM. It looks pretty sleek, metal, and thin too.
I do mean this sincerely, am I missing something? Because I don't know of any perspective where the price-spec gap disappears with Apple laptops. When people talk about buying Apple "for the hardware", I really don't think the argument is about the specs.
I’ve done this exercise, and the non-Apple laptop always has a worse screen, or way slower SSD, or slower RAM, or a combination. Just looking at the top-level numbers isn’t a great comparison.
I looked at the 2020 Acer Swift 3 you mentioned and it’s the same sorry: 1080 250-nit display, and IT Pro’s review says it’s “mediocre in several areas – the screen, build quality and design are all underwhelming, and the keyboard and battery are middling.”
The impression I get is that is all already "known".
Over the past 10 years, I think the assumption is that Apple laptops cost more for equivalent computational specs, but are prettier* and built better (controversies aside), and have MacOS (which is a plus for many.) (I did pick this laptop for comparison because its RAM and SSD sounded good above its base numbers.)
I guess my main argument is that there's not enough here to "debunk" this trend, even with deeper insights into hardware. This might be different with the M1, which I have no experience with.
(*This is a quality that I don't mean to dismiss. A better screen is important for a device that might see >10h of use in a day.)
I think the issue is that if one was to buy a typical laptop I'm sure one would be perfectly happy with it, and (that specific laptop aside) there are definitely PC laptops that are pretty decent. The Razer Blade has been reviewed well, there are some good ThinkPads, etc.
But if you've ever actually owned an Apple laptop and then use ANY of these other ones, it's completely obvious right away what you're paying a little more for. Apple has issues too (I had a previous model with the shitty keyboard, my current Touch Bar is dying, and it was a horrible idea in the first place), but even if I didn't care about macOS I'd still never even consider getting a different brand because those shortcomings are so stark.
The screens are great, they don't flex or creak, the touchpad is amazing, it's not covered in plastic, and it doesn't feel like you're paying for maybe a great processor and SSD but everything else is crap.
Those differences don't show up on a spec sheet though, so for many people it makes no sense why people pay a little more for Apple, and that "little more" really isn't a whole lot when you are actually trying to compare equivalents. When you get a similar-specced PC laptop and the MacBook is maybe $100 more, that $100 is actually going to better components in general. E.g. both have a trackpad but Apple's is significantly better.
Another example is monitors: why pay $1700 for Apple's Studio Display? Well, because literally no one else sells a 27" 5k display except for that one from LG which was widely known to have tons of reliability problems. Why do you need a 5k instead of 4k? Retina text. If you haven't lived with it this doesn't matter, but if you have then moving back to 4k kinda sucks.
Ubiquitous 5K displays has been a wishlist of mine since 2009.
Thankfully DisplayPort 2.0 compliant GPUs starting to surface (both the upcoming AMD and NVIDIA GPUs will do it) may finally see the start of their ubiquity in the coming years.
Been doing multi 1440p (or 2560x1600) since 2005, because I refuse to give up logical area by going to 4K. 3x5K will be happy days for me.
I really hope so... my iMac is starting to age and depending on what products get announced in the next year or so I may end up replacing it with a Mac Studio. If there are other displays to compete with the Studio Display I'd happily look at them to save some cash.
I guess what I meant to express is that, I think most people are roughly aware of these things as explaining the spec-cost gap. I thought there might have been something more? (My own experience is lacking-- I haven't used Apple laptops for more than a few weeks at a time, and I haven't used any of the recent M1 laptops.)
Based on experience, I would assume all of the components in the Acer laptop are lower quality than the MacBook Air.
Once I learned about “binning” years and years ago, I stopped paying attention to specs and instead just pay attention to commercial/business line branding. Or Apple in this case, which does not have a business line, but has earned a reputation for not using bottom dollar components.
I think you mean a lot more plastic crap, right? For a PC laptop of the same price (eg Lenovo X1), I find that they are a lot more flimsy than a aluminum unibody construction. In fact, I mostly moved to Apple to get away from plastic.
If I’m wrong and you have specific examples, let me know. But the last time I checked, PC quality price per price was still pretty bad compared to Apple.
Comparing Apple's hardware to shitty plastic laptops is a false equivalence though. Once you spend Apple money on hardware, you get much better stuff in return.
Apple is perceived to be high quality because they only serve the high end. When you compare ecosystems, you should at least compare the same market segment. There are also market segments that Apple has no products in (convertibles, for examples, or sub 600 dollar laptops).
Candy crush hasn't been installed by default for years now. There's plenty wrong with Windows 11, but the spam has severely reduced and the user experience has improved in many points (and made worse in others, i.e. not being able to dock the task bar to the side, though you can't do that on macOS either).
I would not qualify entry level MacBook Airs as “high end”, yet they are unmatched for the tasks that 80% of people require from their laptops. And it has been this way for 10 years.
> I would not qualify entry level MacBook Airs as “high end”
They aren't high end, but if we're comparing to other laptops, $1000 is far from entry level. Entry level is $200-250, and mid-level, probably good machines tend to start around $500; for $1000, you usually get either good specs or nice aesthetics and sometimes both.
Of course, for some users, the $250 laptop has more than enough computing power for their needs (as long as it has a half-decent SSD, cause windows 10, and I assume 11 can't stop thrashing a spinning drive and there goes your perceived performance; I've never dug into it like in this article though, swapping in an SSD is good enough)
I have never seen a laptop for sale for $250. I have probably seen laptops for sale for $500, years ago. Which I assume came with malware, a 30min battery, and the worst quality components that lead to significant odds of failure within a few years.
There is somewhat of a correlation between price and quality of product. After a certain price, any lower, and you start getting into the “it’s more expensive to be poor” scenarios, where the amortized cost the product over its lifetime ends up higher than the ones that cost more upfront.
I still remember the standard advice of buying a Windows consumer laptop was to reinstall the OS after buying it. In what world should that be acceptable? In my accounting, that time and effort spent installing an OS gets added to the price.
Have you been shopping lately? For $250, you can get something from almost everyone. It's likely to have an Atom processor, or something anemic from AMD, probably only 4GB ram, but most will have a (small) SSD these days. It may or may not come with preinstalled garbage, but you can usually uninstall that lately. Or just live with it. If these computers fit your needs, the junkware isn't going to impact you that much anyway. Some models even are upgradable at these prices, but soldered parts do save costs, and you have to accept cost savings if you're buying at the bottom of the market.
Sure, there's some correlation between price and quality, but if you're worried about longevity, 3-4 laptops of questionable quality are likely to last longer than a $1000 laptop anyway. And, screen aside, the 3rd and 4th cheap laptop might end up with better specs than the single quality laptop. If screens are important to you, then that's not going to work, and that's valid; but a lot of people get a fancy hires screen only to run it in 2x mode and push 4x the pixels for a small difference in experience; it's certainly worthwhile for some people, but it doesn't make a big difference to me and many others. In an ideal world, you could pick between screens on a laptop; there's a huge spectrum of screens that meet different needs and wants, but most manufacturers aren't giving options beyond glossy (eww) or matte in a normalish resolution, and on higher priced machines maybe one higher res option with no choice in finish. Sometimes, business oriented laptops will have a couple adjacent sizes available with the same bottom half of the chassis, but that doesn't happen for consumer laptops.
> I still remember the standard advice of buying a Windows consumer laptop was to reinstall the OS after buying it. In what world should that be acceptable? In my accounting, that time and effort spent installing an OS gets added to the price.
A lot of people say a lot of things. Windows works fine out of the box, most of the time. If you want something that values your time, Chrome OS devices are better: works out of the box; cold boots in a couple seconds; no junk (other than google login, but you can run in guest mode if you don't need persistence); updates are done in the background, reboot whenever, none of those long waits at startup to finish stuff like MacOS and Windows. Plus, they start at even lower prices: usually something for $100, something with a mainstream x86 processor around $200.
I used an x86 Chromebook from Acer running Ubuntu for years at work, as a light meeting and trip machine. Still holding up really well 8 years later. Just put a bigger ssd in it. C720.
I have honestly, earnestly tried. I have tried to find a laptop that is for my needs and purposes truly equivalent to an Apple Macbook Pro. Or better. I always end up going with an Apple machine. There has always been a significant part of the assembly that just isn’t as good. It’s often disk speed or display quality. Build quality too.
I want to underline that this is true for what I need out of a laptop.
The opposite has been true in desktops. I have a Ryzen 3900X box and there still isn’t anything from Apple that I would replace it with. Not even to run macOS on it (which I do on the AMD box, using GPU passthrough).
The opposite has been true in desktops. I have a Ryzen 3900X box and there still isn’t anything from Apple that I would replace it with. Not even to run macOS on it (which I do on the AMD box, using GPU passthrough).
My MacBook Pro 14" is pretty much on-par with my Ryzen 5900X CPU-wise (the M1 Ultra would surpass it by a wide margin). The GPU of the M1 Max is nothing to sneeze at, but I'd love it if they'd bring eGPU support to the M1 line. (And if one can dream, if NVIDIA would also make CUDA available.)
Comparing e.g. geekbench results for the M1 Ultra https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14664498 and a decent 5950X (PBO) result https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14665931 it looks like a lot of Apple's multicore score is attributable to AES (which uses special fixed-function HW). And with other tests, different CPUs win different benchmarks. 5950X notably wins in clang :)
> bring eGPU support to the M1 line
Probably not M1.
marcan tweeted recently that Apple's PCIe integration has been is broken in the same way as on Broadcom's RPi4 SoC — mapping PCIe BARs as normal memory (which allows unaligned access) doesn't work. I can't find the tweet (deleted??) but here's the RPi thread: https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss... Basically there's no quick kernel level workaround for this, if you really want a GPU to work on such a broken platform you need to patch every single thing in userspace to avoid unaligned access.
We'll see soon if that's fixed in M2, but I suspect they don't care…
No contest! – The thing is mostly that I can mess with the Ryzen box, and run a bunch of different OS-es at full speed, and use various add-in hardware like video cards.
They are running a service and this is not a user taking steps to modify their own content for their own use.
Perplexity is not acting as a user proxy and they need to learn to stick to the rules, even when it interferes with their business model.