> I can hand my physical books to my literal children and grandchildren when I die. […] The fact that this isn't guaranteed for DRM-locked ebooks
In fact, the opposite is pretty much guaranteed. To my knowledge, you can’t inherit Amazon Kindle licenses, and you definitely can’t give them away otherwise (which is the obvious next thing to do when inheriting books you think somebody else has a better use for than you).
Personally I don’t use it for anything I can find pretty much everywhere else as well, but there are still a few people whose posts I consider interesting that only post on X.
But then how would I know where to get more regular updates as somebody following them there? It used to be a bannable offense to even link to your presence on a competing side; not sure if it still is.
> It used to be a bannable offense to even link to your presence on a competing site
Huh? This sounds like you mean before elon "free speech!" musk but I can only imagine that, if it ever was a thing, it was a thing after. At some point a competitor's links were being blocked, a little 'oops'ie with 'the algorithm' of course. Facebook also pulled some of those over the years. I don't know about outright bans though, especially concerning Twitter before Musk
I can't tell if you're being satirical or if this is some 1984 re-writing of history, but Twitter definitely banned linking to other social media websites under Elon's rule.
> "We know that many of our users may be active on other social media platforms; however, going forward, Twitter will no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms on Twitter," the company said in a statement.
It's the same principle that makes so many people unreasonably sympathetic to the concerns of those much wealthier than themselves: The statistically implausible assumption that they, too, will soon be part of the 1% somehow. Better start acting the part early!
It also seems to have significantly better availability than chess.com, where I regularly had games end abruptly and be completely removed from my game history due to what I can only assume is a server restart.
Even my diamond platinum extreme chess.com subscription (or however the third-best tier of a dozen or so is called) has much less functionality than Lichess's only tier.
Is it complaining to ask for a workaround and point out HN guidelines?
> It's ok to ask how to read an article or to help other users by sharing a workaround. But please do this without going on about paywalls. Focus on the content.
I am earnestly curious to read a recounting of what was said by the Trump official.
OpenClaw (the idea) is amazing: Obvious in hindsight, deceptively simple. In the end, it’s really just taking “what if we gave an agent access to personal data and communication channels as context” and running with it, nevermind the consequences. But so are many groundbreaking new ideas!
OpenClaw (the software project) is one of the worst messes I’ve ever seen in any git repository. Security, capabilities, simplicity, and they chose at most one.
These things take both time and massive political will.
As somebody living in a city that's quite bike friendly, all things concerned, but still not close to Dutch or Danish levels of biking safety, I'll take any "technical solutions that try to solve social/political problems" I can get to make my commute safer.
Also, anything that makes biking feel safer will make more people try commuting by bike, which in turn increases the political will to change traffic laws and space use. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
I agree you need to get more people commuting by bike. This is in itself creates a virtuous circle of safety. More cyclists means everyone pays more attention to them, meaning it becomes safer to cycle, meaning more people will cycle, repeat. (And ofcourse more political will etc.)
This is btw also why cyclist's rights organizations (e.g. fietsersbond in NL) should be _against_ mandatory use of helmets. Helmets make it less convenient to cycle and reduces perceived safety, in turn reducing the amount of cyclists and as a result _actually_ making cycling less safe (and the vicious circle ensues).
Even only suggesting that it would be beneficial to use a helmet has this effect apparently, hence the organizations are only willing to state that they are "not against the use of helmets".
Just an interesting second order effect I think. You want to always be careful to optimize for the absolute number of safe rides, and not solely for the relative number of safe rides that might significantly reduce the absolute number of safe rides.
>should be _against_ mandatory use of helmets. Helmets make it less convenient to cycle and reduces perceived safety, in turn reducing the amount of cyclists and as a result _actually_ making cycling less safe (and the vicious circle ensues).
Not mandatory and at your own risk IMO, but as a simple thought exercise on your argument, answer me this: if a car hits you on your bike or another cyclists knocks you off your bike and your head hits the concrete/kerb, are you gonna escape better off from the accident with or without wearing a helmet?
Spoiler alert from my GFs sister who works at an ER in Austria: helmeted patients walk away without permanent brain injury which she can't say the same for those involved in accidents without helmets. Helmets saving lives isn't a lobby issue, it's a medical fact.
People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts. That's like saying governments should be against mandatory seatbelts and airbags in cars because their added safety encourages a cycle of unsafe driving leading to more accidents, and that without them divers would be forced to drive more carefully and lead to more safety.
It's perfectly fine to militate for the utopia of building of safe cycling infrastructure everywhere for everyone, but please let's not unnecessarily put people's lives at risk by promoting this FUD that helmets don't increase safety, just so people can literally die on this hill.
By all means, each individual should do of course as they see fit according to their desired risk profile of where they live and how they want to live their lives, just don't ask others to put their lives in danger in order to emulate the lifestyle where you live where the risks for not wearing a helmet are much smaller.
> People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts.
No, they simply have different ethical frameworks/moral philosophies (consequentialist vs deontologist).
I’d mostly agree with you in that I find it unethical to not promote bike helmets at all, even if this were to somehow increase aggregate safety, especially if that increase is delayed and hard to measure.
But I do see the point against making them mandatory if that makes people take their car instead of a bike.
It’s not like not wearing a bike helmet is a dangerous, addictive substance that people are somehow defenselessly exposed to and that they need protection from, and it’s ultimately their own decision if they value their hairdo more than their brain.
In the basis we seem to agree. Note that I am not trying to discourage helmet wearing (nor for governments to do it), just arguing against making it mandatory or even officially advised (for healthy adults) to wear them.
Actual cycling safety is in numbers, more than in individually taken measures. This is all discussed in way more depth on reddit btw [0].
> but as a simple thought exercise on your argument
I realize could have written the sentence you respond to better, I should have written "and [mandatory helmet wearing] reduces perceived safety", also I said "should" in the sentence preceding the one you quoted, but I should've said that the NL ones ARE against making helmets mandatory for exactly the reasons I specify (and that my opinion is that other rights' organizations SHOULD be against it). Quoted directly from tbe website of the, quite well-regarded and not off their rocker, Fietsersbond [1] (under the header "Veilig gevoel?", translated by kagi):
The Fietsersbond (Cyclists' Union) isn't against wearing a bike helmet. If you feel confident, you cycle more safely. It can be wise to wear a helmet in high-risk situations, for example, for seniors on e-bikes. Unfortunately, it has been proven multiple times that forcing people to wear a helmet actually backfires. People start cycling less.
A helmet mandate makes cycling feel more like a dangerous activity—something you should be afraid of. Getting around by bike also becomes more complicated. After all, what do you do with that helmet when you're not wearing it? And what happens if you forget the helmet or if it gets stolen? These are all factors—whether justified or not—that make choosing a bike less convenient.
So yes, given that you got into an accident, it is very obviously better if you had worn a helmet (and knee, elbow and wrist pads). However, we don't want only to reduce mortality rates on accidents, we actually want to reduce the amount of accidents wholesale. The above point (and the point in my previous post) is that given mandatory or officially encouraged helmet wearing, you are more likely to get into an accident in the first place, further reducing the number of people willing to cycle, and thus safety for all those who still are willing.
I wanted to react to your car/seatbelt point, but I realize now you are the same person arguing about what constitutes starting points in the sibling thread. I don't mean to spread FUD and I also disagree that this is indeed FUD. I'm sorry that Austria is not as nice a place for cyclists as you would like it to be. I hope with this oil crisis you will find a way to foment some change re the emancipation of cyclists in your locality or even country.
In fact, the opposite is pretty much guaranteed. To my knowledge, you can’t inherit Amazon Kindle licenses, and you definitely can’t give them away otherwise (which is the obvious next thing to do when inheriting books you think somebody else has a better use for than you).
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