I can remember when a lot of widespread network platforms were niche. Twitter and post Twitter started this VC instant popularity expectation.
I don't mean to advocate for Mastodon or anything else in particular, but these things sometimes have a way of being niche until they're not.
I also think part of the parent's argument was that in encountering obstacles like this, groups of nonprofit institutions such as art museums could leverage their position to promote decentralized systems, rather than simply throw up their hands and go with a sensationalized move.
Then again we are here discussing it. But then again if they banded together to post on some decentralized platform we'd probably be talking too.
Actually I'm shocked to read this because I have the opposite reaction. To each their own — you make a good point about the accuracy of their inventory information — but to me the Home Depot website is on of the worst websites I have ever used.
It's unbelievably slow for me, a perfect example of bad JavaScript. Product menus appear at the worst possible moment, inexplicably spreading across the page after I've looked for them and given up. It's impossible to bulk edit lists you've bookmarked. I could go on and on.
It's like someone took this beautiful inventory database and layered this textbook example of bad but typical modern web design on top.
> It's like someone took this beautiful inventory database and layered this textbook example of bad but typical modern web design on top.
This is so common. I can't count how many times I wished someone just exposed a normal desktop DB browser or an Excel sheet instead of their bullshit web storefront / SaaS service. Hell, I actually semi-jokingly suggested just that in a startup I used to work for[0]. I've given it some thought then, and I realized the reason for offering subpar experience is often because the vendor wants to railroad the users into a very specific workflow. This... well... is not how I want to do computing[1], so I tend to avoid SaaS whenever I can.
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[0] - Wasn't totally unwarranted, given that our main competitor was a company literally selling an Excel plugin. Even with us having stellar people doing the frontend part, it was pretty clear we spent more time reimplementing a fraction of spreadsheet functionality in the browser, instead of working on the "unique selling point".
[1] - My full thoughts on this are too large to fit in this comment - this approach can be the right thing to do by the user, sometimes.
I have that same problem too -- the Home Depot site is painful to use because it's so slow.
I prefer Lowes, but I can't use it while on my my work VPN because they think I'm a bot, so when my wife sends me a link to look at while on VPN, I can't see it until I log off VPN at the end of the day. So we stopped using Lowes. I complained about this to Lowes and asked them to whitelist my company's VPN endpoint, but got a generic response back about cyber security and keeping me safe.
Interesting, informative article that raises some good points.
I've always been leery of holidays that celebrate, even if superficially, single individuals. If anything, this shows the danger of doing so. I'd prefer formally recognized holidays be something attached to an idea or value, or something that arises from grassroots origins over a long period of time. So, for example, Thanksgiving or Juneteenth, but not MLK day, Presidents' Day, or Columbus day.
FWIW, I like the idea of eliminating Columbus Day (or another day) and replacing it with an election day holiday. Seems more functionally appropriate, and to place value on something actually critical.
OSX, to make the instances and windows of a given program that are running more immediately and passively visible. It's too easy to lose track of open windows in the background on OSX (yes I know you can swipe to see them, but that is something you have to do distinctly of other interactions with programs. This is something Windows and KDE gets right.
Also, the ribbon bar on desktop MS Office is inconsistent, with some things accessible via tabs/ribbons, and some not. in a ribbon UI, everything should be accessible through the same interface.
I generally leave them be or take them outside. House centipedes are a different matter. Those are usually eliminated on sight.
I do have as a general rule that anything univited into the house I can do with as I want as a boundary issue. So sometimes things end up getting exterminated. But spiders don't really damage anything so I don't harm them.
Jumping spiders I actually like for some reason and am kinda happy to see them.
FWIW, sucralose has also been linked to C diff infection.
It's worth maybe pointing out that this study was based on sucralose, just because it seems this sweetener is worth tracking separately in general. I don't really consume things with artificial sweeteners but sucralose is starting to become a concern of mine (eg for my daughter).
I should edit this by saying I was confused: sucralose does seem to affect gut microflora, but only trehalose, as far as I know, has been linked to C diff.
Still think it's worth keeping track of artificial sweeteners as they're not all the same in their effects.
I should edit this by saying I was confused: sucralose does seem to affect gut microflora, but only trehalose, as far as I know, has been linked to C diff.
Still think it's worth keeping track of artificial sweeteners as they're not all the same in their effects
I think (I would have to reread it more carefully) is Parisi's argument is that probabilistic models can sometimes be necessary even with deterministic systems that are well-characterized because the systems are extremely sensitive to information that might be difficult to obtained (i.e., measure).
I think compression/algorithmic complexity frameworks are relevant in that they imply in complex systems deterministic-like prediction with very narrow posteriors will require larger and larger computational resources. Ie the concentration of the predictive posterior depends on the computational resources available.
I agree with the parent that the cited "fact" is sort of questionable (along with some other things on the site even though I really enjoy it overall) because of ambiguity in definitions, assumptions, and so forth.
However, the law of truly large numbers, as you frame it, is something you experience firsthand working in high level severity hospital settings in large metro areas. There's a large enough hospital catchment area that you start to see, on a fairly regular basis, the medical outcomes of all the bizarre and unbelievable things that happen rarely to any given person. It gets to a point it's difficult to know how to explain because the details of each case would be potentially identifying given how strange they are. And yet something happens all the time. Maybe not that one thing, but something of similar impact. It gives you a distorted sense of risk.
