This sounds quite short sighted to me. You can’t imagine needing links being sent in everyday workflow at the office, yet I can’t imagine not using links in emails.

How would people interact with vendors and salespeople that send links to product specs, troubleshooting articles, etc?

If it is a vendor you are buying hardware from, they could send a part number, for example. The workflow should be go to their site, and search it up.

I don’t think it is short sited. Actually, I think if it has a flaw it is the opposite one. Workflows that involve mailing around links are convenient for quick little in-the-moment thrown together actions. It’s liberating. I’ve done it too, sure. But, in the long run everything should be integrated somehow or another and sending links should not be necessary. One might say it is ridiculous to expect every process to reach that end state. Possibly true, but it is a good goal…

In general, if a program is not a Web browser, I do not want that program getting clever with displaying a URL as an active link. Just show it as the URL, https prefix and all, so I can see where it will be taking me if I copy it into the browser. (This is one of my very few gripes with Google docs.)

Beefman, could you tell us more about how you know this?

The Drake equation? We can see the stars, we can see the planets (and there are lots of them). We can infer the number of earth-like planets. So where's all the intelligent life?

Does the drake equation takes into account the timeline earth-like planet have to be inhabitable to carbon-based lifeforms?

It could all still be at a relatively early stage like us. Grabby aliens hypothesis predicts this and models it quite well actually.

1. https://grabbyaliens.com/

It's actually pleasant to interact with the flight attendants. They have nice things to share, like snacks, drinks, and food.

Every time I fly First, the best part of it is that the attendants are non-intrusive. If I were to go and convert that into an interrupt-driven experience I think it would be a massive downgrade.

"Yes, I'd like to be woken for meals alone, please". Lie down, effectively teleport a few thousand miles away, wake up to eat, teleport the rest of the way. One time, I was so tired I just went to sleep in London and woke up in San Francisco. Captain Kirk had nothing on me. The plane was a teleportation chamber.

Now I'm sure the thing that many people like is talking to flight attendants, but personally when people wait on me I prefer it completely in the background with a minimum of questions and interruptions.

Are you paying for business class to chat with flight attendants?

Well, anyone who does will get a nice chat, just saying! :)

Personally, the best chats I have had were near the back of a partially full flight. The ones in first and or business rate right up there.

I like to talk with the crew when they want to. One learns all sorts of stuff and or just talks right through a long flight over before one knows it.

Great. You can have virtual flight attendants interrupt your day every 10 minutes if you like.

> actually pleasant to interact with the flight attendants. They have nice things to share, like snacks, drinks, and food

I'm generally a book and chat flier. But most people aren't. And I'm not all the time. My limited rebuttal is to the claim that for some reason front cabin passengers won't want an escape.

Hell, I could see e.g. Delta having a VR stream that makes it look like you're super-manning when laying flat.

What sets the Apple Vision Pro apart from VR headsets is that you can interact with the flight attendants.

Is that cheating? Seems difficult enough for me, still.

Literally literally.

Only if they are lucky, retaining limbs is not a contractual obligation for Foxconn.

I see a juggler handling five balls. I succeed at three balls. I fail at four balls. Have I proven that it's impossible to juggle five balls at once?

I see a juggler handling an unspecified quantity of balls. They will not tell anyone how many balls are being handled. How do I know what they accomplished? How would I replicate it without knowing?

You've proven that the juggler's instructions alone are insufficient to juggle five balls. In this case, the juggler presumably has muscle memory you don't, which is equivalent to running an experiment on equipment that behaves differently. Or perhaps the juggler didn't convey the special trick you need for four or more balls.

Maybe the juggler was juggling 5 balls, but they made a mistake with serendipitous consequences and then told everyone they juggled 5 balls, when they really don’t know how they were juggling 5 balls. In fact one of them might have been a different sized ball or maybe it was a cube.

Worse still, they won’t let you check their original balls to see if they actually are capable of being juggled.

Lol ball juggling /s

I'm curious if a class action lawsuit for Kia and Hyundai customers would make more sense.

I also wonder if auto insurance companies might refuse to insure Kia and Hyundai vehicles until this is fixed.

I believe the second has already begun, now that they offer a software patch to fix it (in theory).

Mobile browsers were a painful experience before that. Mobile keyboards were a painful experience before that.

I think Blackberry was the only one that did both OK enough to take seriously. I know people loved the Sidekick, but I never used it and don't recall if people used a web browser on it, or just text messaging.

The first iPhone was more impressive than a Blackberry.

I legitimately think it's trendy to hate on Elon. Both Elon and Zuckerberg seem to have come to the conclusion that there was a lot of dead weight on their staff. One is hated on, the other is not.

I'm still using Twitter and only seeing improvements to the platform, plus promise of upcoming improvements.

Community Notes is a big deal. Company badges are helpful. The "Show more" gate is now properly hiding SPAM instead of "wrong think". The "For you" algorithm has actually improved, too.

Uhh Musk and Zuckerberg both get a lot of hate (rightfully in my opinion, but that’s not the point). People definitely hate Facebook and Zuckerburg. They even made a major motion picture about how much of an “asshole”[0] he is!

[0] Literally quoting part of a line from the movie: “But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.”

Overall, that movie painted him in a good light. "Strong leader bucks the system and makes a product that we all love" was the message I got from it.

My point is that the recent mass layoffs have negatively affected Musk's reputation and has not had an impact on Zuckerberg's. I think your illustration of his rep having a negative aspect as far back as the movie is in line with that.

With Musk's purchase of Twitter we've seen a lot more attention on alternative platforms such as Mastodon and Bluesky (?). I don't see anything like that with Facebook, other than the old struggles of any aging hangout spot. Also, note the difference in reaction to paying for verification on Twitter Vs. Instagram. People get mocked on Twitter for having the "blue checkmark". It's just silly.

There's been more new features and innovation on Twitter in the last 6 months then there has been in the last 6 years. The mental gymnastics you have to do to say Twitter is failing makes me tired just thinking about it.

I thought I had a vague sense of why they stopped doing AMAs, but for the life of me I can't remember why now. Those were great.