Yes, it can get tricky if you have to scroll a bunch, e.g. moving a file in a big directory into a subfolder, trying to hit that one pixel where it will scroll up, or using two other fingers to attempt to scroll, while holding the drag finger down...(CLI pros, you win this one).
I would like a desktop pick and place that works like drag and drop, you click and then it sticks to the cursor, but you are free to do whatever gestures until you click again.
I'm not sure if this is common on other desktop operating systems but the 'Drag Lock' feature on macOS allows you to double-tap an item, then drag it without holding the button down to begin a drag. At that point lifting your finger continues the drag until you tap once to release it.
I would be amazed at how many people using macOS have never found this option except I'm not sure I've ever seen it being called out as a feature, and nowadays it's also buried deep under Accessibility settings (the irony) instead of just being a Trackpad option, so a lot of users might not even think to go there.
I never said it was intuitive, only that it exists ;)
I’d argue that double-click to open a file is also not intuitive, but it is now the expected behaviour. Documents don’t have to be touched twice in real life to have them open and reveal their secrets. Plus, I do use Drag Lock, so that behaviour now does feel intuitive to me.
There’s a lot to be said for what is effectively learned behaviour in intuition.
No need, because whether an online community is more thoughtful or smarter than another is very subjective. Almost by definition, HN is not it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all that. Of course, by internet law, HN (or a subset of its members) considers itself to be the smartest, more thoughtful online community.
There are communities I like better, which are smarter and more thoughtful, but I've no desire to argue with you.
Which disparaging remarks? I just claimed HN is ok/average, not "the smartest place on the internet", and that it's typical of online communities to consider themselves "the best".
The unsubstantiated claim that "HN is the smartest place on the internet" is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, which wasn't provided.
> Of course, by internet law, HN (or a subset of its members) considers itself to be the smartest, more thoughtful online community.
I would call that disparaging.
If we're going to be pedantic, the post you initially quoted said "it's entirely possible" and "it seems likely." That's not a claim, that's a suggestion that invites a substantive counter-argument. Just saying "uh no, it's obviously not" is not substantive.
"It goes without saying HN is not the smartest" is more of a claim.
It really should not be that difficult to actually attempt to make an argument rather than point out that someone else's is probabilistically not totally factually correct. It's just bad faith, pure negation. You're defending the lack of substance in your argument by saying someone else's argument lacked substance. Put something forth yourself.
I'm not just trying to debate here, I am genuinely curious to hear about what other communities people find "smarter and more thoughtful." If they can't even be named then yes I am going to call that empty posturing.
Well, to be fair the comment that sparked this subtree asserted (maybe in jest? I hope!):
> It's a website with the smartest people in the world. The level of conversations here are unrivaled in internet communities.
Surely that HN is without question NOT the "unrivaled" website "with the smartest people in the world" should feel neither disparaging nor a surprise to you?
By the way, you got me wrong: I'm not really making a probabilistic argument. I genuinely don't think HN is populated by the smartest people on the internet. Nothing I've read here, in many years of being a regular, has led me to believe people here are anything other than average internet nerds/hackers/entrepreneurs. Maybe slightly above average? There's certainly interesting conversation to be had here, but why would I think HN has the smartest people?
> I'm not just trying to debate here, I am genuinely curious to hear about what other communities people find "smarter and more thoughtful." If they can't even be named then yes I am going to call that empty posturing.
I've zero interest in going down the route of exchanging subjective opinions with you about what is or isn't smart, nothing good can come out of it. I will point out many "rationalist" communities do believe themselves to be smarter than HN (do I agree with them? Nope. But that's not the point, is it? The point is that most serious online communities will tend to believe themselves better, and HN is no exception).
I'm sorry you feel this is "empty posturing". Maybe I just don't fit with the smartest people on the internet :(
This is perhaps only tangentially related to formal verification, but it made me wonder - what efforts are there, if any, to use LLMs to help with solving some of the tough questions in math and CS (P=NP, etc)? I'd be curious to know how a mathematician would approach that.
So as for math of that level, (the best) humans are still kings by far. But things are moving quickly and there is very exciting human-machine collaboration, one need only look at recent interviews of Terence Tao!
> Billboards and other such ads, which were once commonplace are now solely the domain of ambulance chasing lawyers and car dealerships. TV ads are no better, production value has tanked, they look cheaper and shittier than ever, and the products are solely geared to the boomers because they're the only ones still watching broadcast TV.
This actually strikes me as a good thing. The more we can get big dumb ads out of meatspace and confine everything to devices, the better, in my opinion (though once they figure out targeted ads in public that could suck).
I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but I get a lot more value out of targeted social media ads than I ever did billboards or TV commercials. They actually...show me niche things that are relevant to my interests, that I didn't know about. It's much closer to the underlying real value of advertising than the Coca-Cola billboard model is.
> A lot of younger folks I know don't even bother with an ad-blocker, not because they like them, but simply because they've been scrolling past ads since they were shitting in diapers. It's just the background wallpaper of the Internet to them, and that sounds (and is) dystopian...
Also this. It's not dystopian. It's genuinely a better experience than sitting through a single commercial break of a TV show in the 90s (of which I'm sure we all sat through thousands). They blend in. They are easily skippable, they don't dominate near as much of your attention. It's no worse than most of the other stuff competing for your attention. It doesn't seem that difficult to me to navigate a world with background ad radiation. But maybe I'm just a sucker.
> This actually strikes me as a good thing. The more we can get big dumb ads out of meatspace and confine everything to devices, the better, in my opinion (though once they figure out targeted ads in public that could suck).
I mean the issue is the billboards aren't going away, they're just costing less and less which means you get ads for shittier products (see aforementioned lawyers, reverse mortgages and other financial scams, dick pills, etc.). If they were getting taken down I'd heartily agree with you.
> I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but I get a lot more value out of targeted social media ads than I ever did billboards or TV commercials. They actually...show me niche things that are relevant to my interests, that I didn't know about. It's much closer to the underlying real value of advertising than the Coca-Cola billboard model is.
Perhaps they work for you. I still largely get the experience that after I buy a toilet seat for example on Amazon, Amazon then regularly shows me ads for additional toilet seats, as though I've taken up throne collecting as a hobby or something.
> Also this. It's not dystopian. It's genuinely a better experience than sitting through a single commercial break of a TV show in the 90s (of which I'm sure we all sat through thousands). They blend in. They are easily skippable, they don't dominate near as much of your attention. It's no worse than most of the other stuff competing for your attention.
I mean, I personally loathe the way my attention is constantly being redirected, or attempted to be, by loud inane bullshit. I tolerate it, of course, what other option does one have, but I certainly wouldn't call it a good or healthy thing. I think our society would leap forward 20 years if we pushed the entirety of ad-tech into the ocean.
> If they were getting taken down I'd heartily agree with you.
At some point it won't be worth it to maintain them, hopefully.
> I still largely get the experience that after I buy a toilet seat for example on Amazon, Amazon then regularly shows me ads for additional toilet seats, as though I've taken up throne collecting as a hobby or something.
This is definitely a thing, I feel like it's getting better though and stuff like that drops off pretty quickly. But it still doesn't bother me nearly as much as watching the same 30 second TV commercial for the 100th time, I just swipe or scroll past, and overall it's still much better than seeing the lowest common denominator stuff.
> I mean, I personally loathe the way my attention is constantly being redirected, or attempted to be, by loud inane bullshit. I tolerate it, of course, what other option does one have, but I certainly wouldn't call it a good or healthy thing. I think our society would leap forward 20 years if we pushed the entirety of ad-tech into the ocean.
I hear you, the attention economy is a brave new world, and there will probably be some course corrections. I don't think ads are really the problem though, in some ways everything vying for your attention is an ad now. Through technology we democratized the means of information distribution, and I would rather have it this way than having four TV channels, but there are some growing pains for sure.
> This is definitely a thing, I feel like it's getting better though and stuff like that drops off pretty quickly. But it still doesn't bother me nearly as much as watching the same 30 second TV commercial for the 100th time, I just swipe or scroll past, and overall it's still much better than seeing the lowest common denominator stuff.
I'll second the absolute shit out of that. My only exposure to TV anymore is hotels and I cannot fathom why anyone would spend ANY money on it as a service, let alone what I know cable costs. The ads are so LOUD now and they repeat the same like 4 or 5 of them over and over. Last business trip I could lipsync a Wendy's ad like I'd done it my whole life.
> I hear you, the attention economy is a brave new world, and there will probably be some course corrections. I don't think ads are really the problem though, in some ways everything vying for your attention is an ad now.
See I don't like the term attention economy, I vastly prefer anxiety economy. An attention economy implies at least some kind of give and take, where a user's attention is rewarded rather than simply their lack of it is attempted to be punished. The constant fomenting of FOMO and blatant use of psychological torments does not an amicable relationship make. It makes it feel like a constant back and forth of blows, disabling notifications, muting hashtags, unsubscribing from emails because you simply can't stand the NOISE anymore.
> I know this is an unpopular opinion here, but I get a lot more value out of targeted social media ads than I ever did billboards or TV commercials. They actually...show me niche things that are relevant to my interests, that I didn't know about. It's much closer to the underlying real value of advertising than the Coca-Cola billboard model is.
You are describing two different advertising strategies that have differing goals. The billboard/tv commercial is a blanket type that serves to foster a default in viewers minds when they consider a particular want/need. Meanwhile, the targeted stuff tries to identify a need you might be likely to have and present something highly specific that could trigger or refine that interest.
Yes, I'm saying, as a consumer, I much prefer the latter, and I get more value from it. And it's only enabled by modern individualized data collection.
> It’s also vague as, what if I run a VPS provider and someone can upload images to a marketplace like thing, does that count as SaaS? How about if someone’s only use of my services is to run that image?
This strikes me as somewhat contrived. Like yeah, if you're gonna do some weird button-pushing thing, it's not worth it, steer clear, keep this product off your platform, easy. Is a piece of software really only of value to the open source community if any kind of unscrupulous use of it is allowed?
There's a million ways to get value out of source code that don't involve pushing the envelope. I've accepted every EULA ever without reading and never once worried I would get in trouble with any of them, it's generally pretty easy if you're not trying to invent ways to do so.
> Is a piece of software really only of value to the open source community if any kind of unscrupulous use of it is allowed?
It's not even open source in the first place if any kind of unscrupulous use of it is disallowed, as that would be discriminating on use case. It ultimately doesn't matter much to the open source community, as it effectively can't be used in otherwise open source projects, as the result wouldn't be open source and it is going to be license-incompatible with many projects anyways.
That said, I find it preposterous to accept this notion even ignoring that point. You shouldn't have to take it on faith that what you're doing is allowed by the copyright license—the whole point of the license is to make that clear. Everybody always shrugs off the risk of a malicious owner until Oracle acquires their dependencies.
I understand that it's not open source. I just see it as like, a spot where a company that would normally make a closed source product wanted to make it more open and hackable and did actually put the code up and take contributions, which should be a kind of good thing, but it's automatically assumed to be the worst, a rugpull, etc. What if I operated in an ethical gray area right around this pretty reasonably worded term?
I was trying to make the point that "unfree" software is not really useful at all to the "open source" community, and not because of terminology nitpicking but because of the consequences that has.
But anyway, my problem with a license like this is indeed the existence of gray areas. Open source licenses are in some ways clever attempts to make a social contract into a legal obligation. It isn't perfect, but the side effect is that you don't have to take it on faith that people will follow it: people can be sued for violating it, and depending on how that Vizio case goes, it's not just the copyright holders who are eligible.
But that's a two way street. In return, I shouldn't have to take in on faith that my use case is legal according to the copyright license: it should be clear as day with no room for interpretation. If it's not, then my best hope is to simply never get sued. That is not good. Hope is not a strategy here, not for individuals and not for corporate users.
Business/"fair" licenses seem to offer a good compromise, but it's a mirage: the software still has to be treated a bit like toxic waste in Linux packaging, won't be compatible with strong copyleft licenses, and ultimately, presents an uneven playing field for contributors.
There isn't much to be excited about from a hacking PoV.
With projects like these, you're probably already going to be submitting your code under an unconditional CLA, which essentially forfeits your rights as a contributor, then if it's this license, you also are giving the original copyright owner more rights to use your contribution than you even have.
I don't think this is a good or healthy status quo at all.
The only upside of this is that it protects someone's business model from competition. Well good for them.
But making the license look like MIT is just a bit of cosplay, yet another attempt to try to push something as being open source when it's not. This cognitive dissonance can't go unnoticed; it really does trick people if they don't fully think through the consequences. You're better off going with a license that makes no attempt to pass itself off as open source.
Before this O'Saasy situation, I hadn't fully understood how much ideological purity was baked into the the term "open source," which to be fair is not really implied by such a general term.
I still feel like it would be a happier world if open source was more of an umbrella advocacy organization containing free software and source available, but now I understand that that's not going to happen.
I'm not the one dismissing anything. I'm arguing for tolerance, goodwill, and cooperation. There are lots of practical concerns in life, there are tradeoffs, there is balance.
A few days ago you said "the impression the different groups have different ideals is correct." You've spoken mostly in mystical aphorisms so it's been hard to glean much.
> I'm arguing for tolerance, goodwill, and cooperation.
These qualities are not absent because people differentiate source available and open source. And you continued today to argue these qualities should be expressed by changing the meaning of open source.
> A few days ago you said "the impression the different groups have different ideals is correct."
Your point was what? You thought a group had ideals meant a group's only motivation was ideological purity?
> You've spoken mostly in mystical aphorisms so it's been hard to glean much.
No. And several other people communicated similar ideas.
The only major ideological component of this matter is that both the free software movement and the open source movement are concerned with the rights of end users, not the sustainability of businesses. That's really it. Open source has always been much less focused on ideology and more on practicality; I reckon that's part of why it is the more prevalent movement in the first place.
But just because it's not about ideological purity, that doesn't mean it can just be a lawless free for all, because it would essentially destroy the utility of open source in the first place. Please read this sentence carefully and understand the implications, it is extremely important: The AGPL is a less permissive license than O'Saasy, yet it is an actual true open source license. This is not because of ideology. This is because open source doesn't practically work without the constraints in the definition.
I already listed some serious practical concerns, along with the problem that it disturbs the balance between contributors that makes open source work on a social level. However, I honestly feel like it's just scratching the surface. If you keep itching at the practical implications, it only gets worse from there.
For example, let's say there are two MIT licensed projects. One of them wants to adopt code from the other. No problem at all: just copy it in and make sure to have the correct copyright notices attached. Done.
Now, let's say you have two projects with the O'Saasy license. Uh oh: this doesn't "just work" anymore, because there are two "original Licensors" and this clause conflicts with itself in the two different invocations.
If you can't even share code between projects with the same damn license, I really feel like your argument for how this still totally counts as open source is just weak as all hell.
Now I get that some people take issue with the fact that there even is a socially-held definition of what "open source" means, but if there wasn't, and it was a total free-for-all, the communal nature of open source simply wouldn't work. And the irony of all of this is that part of the reason why so many SaaS companies want to release their projects as open source is because of how amazing it is for their PR and early adoption. And that has happened because of the careful coordination of the open source definition, to try to gatekeep the movement. Not for ideological reasons, but literally to ensure that the utility of the concept is able to be fully realized.
It isn't a huge deal if shared source, source available, "fair source" or whatever else people want to exist exists. In fact, it's much better if we don't dilute the meaning of open source with stuff that is so practically different anyways. And if the concept of shared source projects is really so enticing, it should be able to gain relevance the same way open source did.
Of course, in reality, if we stop pretending and playing devil's advocates for five whole minutes, we can all admit to ourselves that companies that would use these licenses usually have very good reason to worry about their business model and the odds are very good that the software will either be unavailable or significantly more closed off down the road.
Some will argue that this isn't a rug pull. After all, it's free and you're entitled to nothing. And I do actually agree with that "you're entitled to nothing" part, but the trouble is when you start trying to take the valuable brand of a movement like open source as a marketing tool only to pull the rug later. And yes, it is a rug pull. Whether it's legal or perhaps even fair, it's still a rug pull. Like if I pull a homeless guy off the street and offer him a bed to sleep in and food, then cut it off abruptly 6 months later, most people would definitely see how it is totally reasonable for me to not have to indefinitely bear the burden of trying to support this person. The trouble isn't that they deserve my financial support, it's that I offered it and then simply abruptly cut it off. That's a rug pull. That's what MinIO did: they gave us an option under the same pretenses we've enjoyed software like Linux or PostgreSQL under, then decided to just simply discontinue it. No warning, it was just gone. Either pay for AIstor or your production infrastructure is now running unsupported code that will not be patched. Hope you didn't use it anywhere important. ("If you used it somewhere important, why not pay?" Sure. Now tell that to e.g. non-profits with shoestring budgets that chose open source because they couldn't afford anything else.)
And, I honestly believe that these unfair CLAs that allow this behavior have done immense damage to the "brand" of open source. It isn't just a niche thing: almost every startup does it now. Very few organizations use more reasonable CLAs that answer practical concerns while still ensuring that contributors are not taken advantage of. Even fewer organizations stick to just DCOs that fulfill the minimal legal obligations. Most of them are doing the same thing, for the same reason. And I'm sure that the founders may genuinely believe that they have no intention of hitting the big red button unless they need to, but I think it's fair to say that ignorance is not a good excuse here. We've seen this game play out too many times.
The "open source but not" license is just another extension of this awful practice, and it only serves to muddy the waters. We should celebrate rather than mourn the fact that open source has gatekeepers trying to ensure that the term doesn't wind up fucking meaningless in a pursuit to burn as much VC money as fast as possible so already well-off dudes can get richer. Ideological purity is mostly not of interest to me, other than my belief that open source should be about the rights of users. Other than that, the problems here are purely practical, and the practical problems are quite severe.
So what should SaaS companies do, then?
- If they really want to be truly open source, they should release code under the AGPL. The major cloud providers are immune to even touching AGPL code anyways, but even if they decide to stop pushing dumb FUD, for all it's faults, AGPL would ensure that they can't just run with it; they have to contribute their changes upstream.
- If they actually just like the practical utility offered by developers having source code access, they can release the software not under an open source license. Since the code isn't of use to the open source community, it doesn't matter much if it's a "shared source" license or not; a traditional EULA is just as fine, and doesn't feel like it is masquerading as if it's part of the open source ecosystem.
(Edit: though there are some clever other options, like the time-release licenses that go open source after a period of time. I honestly see far less problem with this sort of license, though to avoid ambiguity it would also be good to explicitly release old code under a pure open source license, just to avoid the question of whether or not the time-release concept would work properly in court. I have seen this done already. This seems like a neat workaround at least.)
- Or just simply don't even release the source. There is plenty of closed source software in the world and I really don't think most open source advocates are even bothered by this.
- If you use a CLA with your "truly" open source project, choose one that has a legally-binding guarantee that the code remains "open". That way, you use a CLA for all of its practical uses while being able to reassure contributors that they're not being manipulated.
(P.S.: I realize that the focus on contributors also is bothersome to some, considering how few external contributors many projects wind up with. However, contributions, IMO, are a major part of what makes open source tick, and the value of contributions is not weighed in the number of lines of code they diff. I really think creating an environment where contributors feel like they've been duped would do serious harm to the open source ecosystem. Or rather, already has.)
This is all very difficult for people to grasp because there are many who simply haven't managed to understand how serious the implications really are, or perhaps they have a vested interest in not seeing it. But I promise you, the "ideological purity" bit here is a red herring. I sincerely do not believe open source would work if there were such vastly different concepts under the same label. From a literal standpoint, it's easy to see "MIT with just one clause added" and not see how that's not "open source", but it's entirely about what the clause practically means that makes it such a huge problem for us.
> I am betting on attracting young professionals, academics, white-collar types that like books, language and the experience of a white page with classic, black typography.
This is cool, and I've auto-didacted a number of things with resources like this, and I know most here have as well.
But, watching the interview with the Duolingo CEO linked in this thread, he's talking about reaching the far larger set of people that don't have strong intrinsic motivation to learn. Which is arguably a much more difficult and more important mission. The natural learners (and kids of white-collar parents) are already pretty well-equipped by the general state of the internet. This is where I'm finding some appreciation for some of the techniques that might be considered low-brow or deleterious by that cohort.
Nobody I know believes Duolingo is in it for anything but the money. To make money, cast the widest net. The people serious about learning don’t use Duolingo because it is so ineffective. Maybe the Duolingo CEO is sincere, I don’t know, but it smells bad to me.
That's fair, I understand that it's not the best learning tool but is it doing "good" overall in nudging people toward learning, is it more "educational" than Candy Crush or Tiktok (which he seems to see as competitors)? Genuine question.
As far as CEOs go he did seem sincere to me in a half-business half-believer kind of way. The interviewer asks pointedly about his transition from academia to IPO-land.
This is interesting and a nice conversation, thank you.
He talks about how they wanted to let people know that they would stop sending them notifications after five days of inactivity, but that the "passive-aggressive" nature of that notification actually got people to come back. To me it illustrates that it's such a fine line to walk if you want to respect the user but also maybe push through their own lack of motivation.
(I'm not a user of Duolingo so I can't speak to where they land on that but it's clearly controversial)
The funny passive-aggressive communication style is something I personally consider Duolingo's thing. I kinda like it that they have a persona and stick with it in all of their communication.
If it was cold and to the point "you have missed today's lesson", I wouldn't come back.
Gamify it like Super Mario Brothers is a game. Concepts like "fun" and "progress" are good. Nagging, begging, and creating false urgency are bad. Gamification is fine if it doesn't "take over," which it will when business people are running the show.
I feel like there was a time when those coding problem websites with points and leaderboards and such struck a good balance between learning and a game. Then they seemingly all got co-opted by the interview prep industry.
That’s just not what user experience means, two products having the same start and end state doesn’t mean the user experience is the same. Imagine two tools, one a CLI and one a GUI, which both let you do the same thing. Would you say that they by definition have the same user experience?
If you drew both brushing processes as a UML diagram the variance would be trivial
Now compare that variance to the variance options given with machine and computing UX options
you’ll see clearly that one (toothbrushing) is less than one stdev different in steps and components for the median use case and one (computing) is nearly infinite variance (no stable stdev) between median use case steps and components.
The fact that the latter state space manifold is available but the action space is constrained inside a local minima is an indictment on the capacity for action space traversal by humans.
This is reflected again with what is a point action space (physically ablate plaque with abrasive) in the possible state space of teeth cleaning for example: chemical only/non ablative, replace teeth entirely every month, remove teeth and eat paste, etc…
So yes I collapsed that complexity into calling it “UX” which classically can be described via UML
I would almost define "experience" as that which can't be described by UML.
Ask any person to go and find a stick and use it to brush their teeth, and then ask if that "experience" was the same as using their toothbrush. Invoking UML is absurd.
You know some of us old timers still remember a time before people just totally abandoned the concept of having functional definitions and iso standards and things like that.
Funny how we haven’t done anything on the scale of Hoover Dam, Three Gorges, ISS etc…since those got thrown away
User Experience also means something specific in information theory and UX and UML is designed to model that explicitly:
Notably, the terms "UX" and "experience" are not present in that document. UI and UX are different things. UX is a newer concept that is more based on observing users and their emotional reactions to using the product.
UML and functional definitions and iso standards are still important, it's just not UX.
Good luck never observing users using your product. Not everything is a space shuttle, recall that we are talking about toothbrushes here.
It could be argued that it was part of "embrace, extend, extinguish" to attract developers to the platform by keeping it open. They would just figure out how to capitalize on anything that got big enough, much like Google.
Apple really pioneered the walled garden (which I would assume was previously taken to be shooting yourself in the foot), and it's proven to resonate with the wider less tech-savvy population.
I would like a desktop pick and place that works like drag and drop, you click and then it sticks to the cursor, but you are free to do whatever gestures until you click again.
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