This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.
>Some users like iPhones since they are reliable and consistent, exactly like a phone should be.
That is just the bare minimum. Its 2023, every phone is like this.
Anyway, any teenager can tell you what its like to have the wrong kind of bubbles. They are extremely susceptible to in-group bias. Heck I wore Abercrombie and American Eagle, it wasn't because the clothes fit.
I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart.
At some point, its denialism to think in-group bias doesnt exist. Not that someone exploited can easily admit to it, its far too difficult to imagine your brain being incorrect about something. Much easier to say things like "they are reliable and consistent" than to accept that marketers have exploited us.
> I even had a single buddy, age 30, recently get peer pressured into getting an iphone because his sister said "I don't date green bubbles". He took it to heart.
Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way. People do the same thing about cars, shoes, clothing, alcohol, zip codes, etc. The only upside is that it lets you very quickly identify and avoid them.
In the messaging case, it’s important to remember that Google is currently funding a huge lobbying campaign trying to get governments to restore the market position they gave up a decade ago. SMS messages have been green on iOS since the first iPhone – and shortly after the App Store launched most people were using Google Chat since everyone using Gmail was on it and it even federated with other XMPP services. Google spent the next decade pushing users away with a bunch of poorly conceived and executed attempts to lock users into their proprietary system. Only after those failed did they start picking up RCS, but most of their catch up with iMessage work has been proprietary extensions which help sell carriers on Google’s Jibe cloud service.
I like the idea of open protocols but Google is acting out of self interest and I have no doubt that they’d try to lock things up in a heartbeat if they think they could get away with it.
Let them park for their own PR, and we can talk about more open alternatives.
>Shallow people are shallow, and it’s hardly like Apple made them that way.
Oh yeah its not a Apple thing, its a human thing.
Apple takes advantage of that weakness in humans and reinforces it with their marketing. I personally don't have the ethics to take advantage of people who are class insecure, but Apple stepped up in the tech space.
Anyway, the original point was that Apple gives less freedom and its fine because they sell a social club, not necessarily the ability to compute. If they aren't selling a social club, they are doing a poor job at letting people compute.
> Anyway, the original point was that Apple gives less freedom and it’s fine because they sell a social club, not necessarily the ability to compute.
Yes, that’s the claim but it’s glaring how it’s an emotional position presented as a given but completely unsupported by any evidence and bears a striking resemblance to a competitor’s PR campaign. If this was true, it’d be easy to point to things like ads or marketing material disparaging SMS users – not to mention some effort to extend this outside of the United States where apps like WhatsApp are far more popular.
> If they aren't selling a social club, they are doing a poor job at letting people compute.
Here’s the thing: most people don’t buy phones (or computers) to “compute”. If you look at an Apple ad, it’s full of people doing things like creating photos or videos, sharing moments with their friends, traveling, etc. – that’s what they’re selling and the repeat purchase rate suggests most people feel like they are getting what they were promised.
I get it may help you feel more confident about your Android preferences to concoct these weird theories about iOS buyers being brainwashed or part of some weird social club but you might want to consider why you need to justify your preference this way. Most iOS users are buying something which they find useful and you’d be far more successful in your advocacy if you focused on what tangible benefits normal people are missing out on. What you’re doing sounds insecure, not persuasive.
>I get it may help you feel more confident about your Android preferences to concoct these weird theories about iOS buyers being brainwashed
No, we learned this during my MBA. Apple is basically 50% of your marketing classes. I'm not sure you want to call academics incorrect here. They were spot on, they knew you'd come to apologize. Your identity is wrapped in Apple. An attack on Apple, is an attack on you.
Meanwhile I hate google and microsoft. I'm agonistic and trying to find anything better. Heck, I even think Linux isnt great for consumers given all the USB issues I've had.
Do Apple fans complain about butterfly keyboards, international high stakes security breaches, and holding your phone wrong? Or do they rush to Apple's defense. Weird you don't see people doing that in Google and Microsoft threads.
Exactly. The power over iMessage is in Apple’s hands. Yet Google, with their RCS push, have not made something open-source were they have less power than Apple.
Google doesnt control RCS. Its a general format. Apple could implement RCS. At most, they are a loud voice. Any phone can adopt it.
This is completely different from a closed imessage that cannot be adopted by others. Not to mention, imessage has been pretty anti-consumer with all their security problems, inability to accept high quality video, etc... None of this is good for the consumer.
What is good for the consumer is that the color of the bubble are different, this is important for status seeking individuals who want to be part of the in-group.
Back to the parent comments, RCS is better if you want a computing device. iMessage is the best if you want to buy your way into an in-group.
Google does control the proprietary extensions to RCS they use to try to catch up to iMessage on security and features. The developers of apps like Signal, etc. have been asking for access for many years but Google chose to exclude them as they try to build their user base. Similarly, most of the carriers in the US haven’t actually implemented it themselves - they’re just paying Google’s Jibe subsidiary to host it for them. This is not open in practice even if there’s a theory where it could eventually be open.
I don't think it makes sense to confuse the preferences of teenagers (a market group who, overwhelmingly, don't buy their own phones) with adults. In other words: the fact that teenagers prefer the same kind of free devices as their friends have is not particularly strong evidence that adults make purchasing decisions based on just chat bubble colors.
I'm in that group. I like the "openness" of Android more. But the iphone 7 gifted from my mother is still supported while the samsung i bought in 2019 is not anymore.
I don't really care particularly about the icloud/imessage ecosystem but all close people around me have iphones (the network effect was not the primary reason for the switch).
>This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment.
This is such a funny take I see so often parroted by the self proclaimed ‘out-crowd’. Your need to feel different and therefore superior clouds your judgment. Likes this post.
Yeah, there isn't anything going on beside out-group cope. Really glad most plans have unlimited text these days. Having spam texts where the person I'm communicating with just parrots what I'd just typed with the words "Liked this" would have driven me insane back in the days when you only got a thousand texts for the month.
> "I think you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who wants an unreliable and inconsistent laptop"
All you have to do is search HN for "linux laptop", look:
"newer laptops still have their fair share of issues. When I bought my thinkpad A485 kernels wouldn't boot without additional parameters, the graphics would freeze at times and cause a hardlock, sleep and hibernation have been fixed and broken again intermittently over several kernel versions, the wifi card's AP mode started causing segfaults in kernel 5.2 due to the driver's rewrite but has since been fixed, the fnlock key LED didn't update properly, which I spent a while debugging and submitted a kernel patch for, and while over the years the fingerprint scanner has been implemented, it's a pain to install and support for fingerprint scanning in linux is still in a very sorry state. Oh and bluetooth still can't connect more than one device at a time" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32964872
Reply: "With Wayland, Gnome and KDE have no way to adjust the scroll speed on a laptop trackpad. Not the pointer speed, the scroll speed. In 2022."
"I have a slimbook pro (the model before the silver keyboard) and sadly I am very unhappy with it, I got a fairly maxed out version and it's fans are always on full blast and I have found no way to keep the power management under control except throttling the CPU - so it is constantly overheated, suspend is not working properly and the chassis is not strong enough so the fans stall unless you have it on a flat surface. [...] Still I will keep buying these things.. eventually someone will figure out how to make reliable laptops that align with the ethos of free software. I've researched system76, puri.sm and also lately the way too expensive MNT reform, but really the only laptop people seem to be happy with is thinkpad x220 / x230 which came out 12 years ago.... This makes me sad. I would pay a lot for a super sturdy laptop which works (and aligns with the free software ethos)." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23925729
NB that they say what they want is 'super sturdy which works' but their actual behaviour, and the market signal they send, is they pay a lot for an unreliable and inconsistent piece of junk, knowing and expecting it will be that way, and that they will keep doing so indefinitely as long as companies keep making them, and as soon as companies make a good thing they will stop buying. Hmm.
We tried this at a previous company I was at, it was incredibly tough to maintain and tune. We ended up using databricks which made it significantly more productive.
Well, the comment you're replying to reads (too me) as being sarcastic of the article author. Along the lines of "why are you adding the persons country of origin in a negative way?".
Seems kind of similar to how authors from some countries commonly include the skin colour of people they're describing, as if it makes a difference. The US is a stand out example of it, though it's likely not the only one.
Conservatives need for the lab leak theory to be correct as they were wrong about basically all other points on covid. They refused to believe in masks, lockdowns, and social distancing and paid the ultimate price at a much higher rate. [0]
i had no idea the lab leak theory was conservative. i suppose it was silly of me not to realize every opinion that a person can have has already been claimed by liberals or conservatives, such that holding that opinion means you're more liberal/less conservative, or more conservative/less liberal.
Unfortunately, American politics end up being very divisive. The right has been calling this the China virus since the beginning. Anything that can be used to show that's 'true' will result in the right's echo chamber amplifying it.
As for the left, well I am not sure there is an official position other than waiting for more data. China is definitely sus but they are always like that from a western perspective so I don't know that I weight it much.
Other than the smugness in watching the right be wrong again, I am not aware of anyone on the left that is invested in either outcome.
It's a matter of waiting for the crucial data being found. How long did it take us to pin point the source of other pandemics?
In anticipation of vindication, does the "left" not themselves then hope for the release of information which runs counter to their opponents, thus by consensus, a sword to fall on? Since without it their silly little sports team would be on the losing side. And of course in the event they're wrong they can run back to their echo chambers and self-manufacture plausible deniability. As will the right if proven wrong. In both cases either side wants to be correct — just for that little hit of "I told you so."
Of course this is all just silly bullshit. I have some inkling of hope that the truth will be made plain, but that's so implausible given current regimes and political paradigms that the only reasonable thing to do is ignore whatever is concluded, at least anytime in our lifetimes.
> i suppose it was silly of me not to realize every opinion that a person can have has already been claimed by liberals or conservatives
It's a political topic, so it naturally has positions staked out by both sides. There's not much reason to care about it one way or the other unless you have a tribal viewpoint.
I don't think your link proves your point like you think it does. It's a correlation, not causation. The question is, what other variables may impact conservatives.
One of the main factors in if you die from getting covid is age. And conservatives tend to be older.
I would love to see an age normalized version of that data. I'd bet it would be about a wash.
The only people in my circle of friends and family who died from COVID were middle age or older obese men who were ideologically opposed to taking a vaccine. I do have a number of conservative friends & family who did vaccinate, none of them got more than the sniffles.
Anecdotally, there are plenty of people with obesity or other risk factors who died despite being fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, I had a confirmed COVID infection early on, before vaccines were available, and had nothing more than the sniffles. I then had two more confirmed infections after having three vaccine doses, and had the same sniffles.
These anecdotes, like yours, are not very useful since they only confirm what we already know: no vaccine is 100% effective, and no risk factor is a death sentence.
Huh, the vaccine uptake where I live was aberrantly low. Highly conservative. I know lots of older people, including many retired, of retirement age. I don't know anyone who has suffered a fatality from the disease - and many of those I do know who contracted would have contracted the alpha variant prior to vaccine deployment.
conservatives want the lab leak theory to be correct? They controlled the levers of power at the time and didn’t do anything about it, didn’t get redress for the death, suffering, loss, and economic harm. I would expect they’d want the waters as muddy as possible.
Wow, what a statement considering literally everything you just listed turned out to be a complete joke. I could not have made a better argument to prove a point.
As someone that believed in masks from the very beginning. The CDC and Fauci himself said masks were useless at the start of the pandemic. Stop being a pawn.
My understanding is that they said that as a path to avoid hoarding of N95 supplies which they knew were in short supply for those who most needed it at the time, medical professionals.
That doesn't aren't right, precisely because it validates conspiracy minded people.
The point is that Fauci and the CDC lied to the public about the efficacy of masks, even if they lied with "good" intentions. They simply could've explained that supplies were low and asked people not to hoard them. Instead they lied (one of many times) and acted surprised when people started distrusting them.
> That doesn't aren't right, precisely because it validates conspiracy minded people.
That’s putting it far too lightly. It proved a “conspiracy” 100% true. I had masks early in the pandemic only because a “nutty” colleague said “they’re going to try to take the masks from us” and he brought me a box.
That's the explanation they came up with for why they were lying, but these people are self-admitted liars so why would you believe their lies any further?
If you are in charge of government and worried about mask availability, the right thing to do is pass laws seizing mask supplies. This is easy because they were almost all being imported from China anyway.
The worst possible thing to do would be to assert with 100% confidence that for scientific reasons masks don't work to the entire population including healthcare workers, and then later invert your position over night. Anyone who thinks this is a reasonable way to manage material logistics is clearly far too stupid to be in charge of anything, let alone critical government functions.
Lockdowns were a failure, hence why millions of children were irreparably damaged by them socially and academically.
The legacy of lockdown proponents is plummeting test scores and massive IQ drops, because children were merely collateral damage to their hypochondria. [1] [2]
It’s my understanding that the Russian air campaign in Ukraine was rather unsuccessful so they ended up pulling their jets back.
> By June 2022, Russia had not achieved air superiority, having lost around 165 of its combat aircraft over Ukraine which amounted to approximately 10% of its frontline combat strength. Western commentators noted the qualitative and quantitative advantages the Russian Air Force had over its Ukrainian counterpart, but attributed the poor performance of Russian aviation to the extensive ground-based anti-aircraft capabilities of the Ukrainians.
They're safekeeping their jets in case of a NATO attack, using them to launch missiles from the Caspian. They've also moved some strategic bombers to Olenya airbase in the Kola peninsula, near Finland and Norway. Russian doctrine is based on multiple layers of anti aerial defense.
What Russia has is lots of Cold War era equipment that they are sending into Ukraine. It'll do, as they don't put a price on human life. It's a war of attrition at this point. The moment we give up on Ukraine is the moment they start winning.
That's not infinite either. They are already starting to run low on tanks and artillery. But yeah, this war of attrition has to go for some time before they run out of it to the critical level. So they put a lot of effort into pushing "negotiations" since they know they'll lose if this will continue. Good thing is that most understand it well and no one is buying their "negotiations" whining.
They started deploying increasing number of attack helicopters as a substitute for artillery that has been decimated in bigger numbers than usual in the recent battles. So they are either running low on it, or at least can't restore it fast enough that they risk expensive helicopters that they now also started constantly losing.
They're using the attack helicopers against Ukrainian tanks that are probing their Southern front. They've already destroyed several tanks and quite a few Western vehicles. I doubt they're using choppers as a substitute for artillery, it doesn't make sense to do that.
They usually avoid using them because they have very limited supply and can't make new ones fast. Now they are losing one a day at least. That's a lot.
I can’t downvote your replies (I’m pretty sure in general you can’t downvote any replies to yourself on HN) so you’ll have to take that complaint up with someone else. Anyway, what, I’m “more than welcome” to add these points but in some other, unspecified way than I did that you would have preferred? I’m not really sure what your issue is. I think it’s encouraging complacency to say these things happened in the Orient decades ago and not they’re happening right now, every day, in our own backyards.
The GP quoted the article and found interesting anecdotes of said quote in history and brought them into the discussion with background information backing up the anecdotes. That’s interesting and additive to the discussion! Your comment did none of that except to slander another side of the world. This is not to say that there are not examples that would support your point, you just apparently don’t feel the need to add anything more!
Working with you on being a better citizen of society (please update your terminology…) is also not interesting or additive to this thread. So I am going to leave it at that. Have a nice day.
I'm familiar with the connotations of the term "Orient," but that was kind of the point of using it in this instance -- I think having Maoist struggle sessions be the first thing that comes to mind is the same kind of thinking about how something is exotic and foreign when it isn't. Maybe you would have gotten my point better if I put the term in scare quotes. I think the attacks on me as "not a decent member of society" are just kind of personal attacks that aren't very germane to the discussion.
> Try to imagine the following world: the Chinese Communist Party accuses the U.S. of crimes against humanity in the Middle East, and Washington does not turn around and say something like, “What are you talking about! You have one million people in re-education camps in the Xinjiang Province!” In this imaginary world, I guess, US officials would respect the fact that China is only talking about the Middle East right now, and out of politeness refuse to talk about anything else. To do so would be crude whataboutism.
> Can you imagine that happening? Of course not. English-language commentators would contest the right of Xi Jinping to set the terms of the debate, and they’d use the opportunity to draw attention to human rights violations in China, which would be a good thing. Because, I think, it’s good when we expose and condemn any crimes against humanity, no matter the motivations for the revelation.
> Let’s try an arena much smaller than the geopolitical. What if a man comes home, and says to his wife:
> “Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says.
> “Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies.
> Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?
The problem with whataboutism is when it's used by an abusive party to try to get the other abusive party to jointly agree that each party's abuse is okay.
Other than that, yes, it's good to expose abuses (as long as over-exposure isn't being used to swamp out public awareness or caring of other abuses).
Mentioning the USSR in a thread about Western researchers researching phenomenon that happens in the West while in the West: not whataboutism.
Pointing out the thing Western researchers were researching about in the West on Western subjects might happen in the West: extreme, egrecious, purely churlish whataboutism!
That same president also claimed it would be gone by the summer of 2020. The same president even claimed it would never make it to the USA! Maybe this will be a case of a broken clock being correct twice a day but it was certainly thrown in with quite a bit of incorrect information that was being spewed at those daily briefings. I don’t blame anyone for being skeptical of the information coming out of the Trump administration during that time.
