This is all needed to continue to iterate on software. It’s not as needed for the ossified state Twitter has been in for many years, as the parent pointed out. Acknowledge there is _some_ work needed, maybe refreshing certs (though software systems I have built have always been set up to do that automatically), apply security patches, keep an eye on dashboards. But this is a job for a skeleton team, not 7500 engineers or whatever. It’s honestly kind of sad it took that many people to basically “keep Twitter up” all these years.
I believe that 7500 is total headcount, not just engineers, but yeah software development can be terribly inefficient, when all problems are solved by throwing money at them, like VC funded startups like to do.
We'll see what happens now, when there seems to be a drought.
F117 and Have Blue were both developed there, or at least tested. It’s been a while since I read Skunk Works. Maybe they’re not there right this second, but I took the comment to be giving some examples of secret things that have happened there, not necessarily things there right this second, because we really can’t know what’s happening there this second because I assume that’s secret.
Otherwise the comment is unnecessarily aggressive for no reason, and I think I detect a tone of condescension, which is unwarranted.
I guess I didn't write that comment very well and I have no idea what the current money toilet out there is. The Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago, SDI was canceled 30 years ago, the F117 was retired and hasn't flown at TTR for 30 years, and that goofy drone was public disclosed 30 years ago.
Happened where? At "range 72"? That was what the comment I was replying to claimed.
F-117 and HAVE BLUE testing primarily occurred at Area 51, not some place called "range 72". They were developed and built at Lockheed in California.
I don't believe I was particularly aggressive. The commenter posted a bunch of incorrect information. I called them out. That's how it should work. I see far worse on HN when it comes to programming language/editor wars.
"You don't know what you're talking about" is aggressive and rude; like you're calling them stupid. "Actually, I don't think that's right", along with some, "Can you clarify?" is not aggressive, and welcomes them into a conversation.
>I called them out. That's how it should work.
There's a way to do that constructively. See above.
To be fair, I did look at this in the best light possible and took your overly aggressive tone and hanging your hat on a scriveners error like putting a “2” instead of whatever other number when it was clear what the poster was talking about to be an EQ gap on your part and not malice.
I was a user of Notion for a while but ended up moving to Obsidian, which solves a similar set of problems without the bugs. I’m seeing in this announcement that rather than focus on making a better product or fixing things that are broken, they’re jumping into the AI hype train. Seems like I made the right decision to switch to Obsidian, and over the last year have really enjoyed it.
That’s because your data is stored locally, so special characters in the title = special characters in the filename, which isn’t possible. Small but very worthwhile tradeoff.
The file title is the file name so what ever's invalid for a file name is invalid as a title.
But there are some work arounds:
- Disabling inline title and setting the document title yourself with what ever characters
- Using aliases (in the YAML front matter) so you can search a document with it's special character title, and auto-set a link's custom text
I had the same thought process. I still use Instagram, but only post stories. It’s fun and less pressure than posts, and get to share fun and irreverent things with friends.
From your own site this seems like another crypto scam:
“QBUX is currently an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum protocol. In the future, versions of QBUX running on other protocols may be developed, exchangeable 1-1 with the current QBUX token.”
Maybe you’re not willing to cop to it being “crypto” but it’s in essence the same.
Have you even clicked https://github.com/Qbix/Platform? Qbix is an open source platform that doesn't require a token for anything. You can use it, with absolutely no encumbrances or needing to buy any token at all. There is zero need, right now, for a crypto token. And going forward there will never be a need to do anything it currently does now. Qbix is like Wordpress. So please explain what the scam is, I am lost.
The QBUX ecosystem is something that is planned for 2024, to denominate micropayments between sites, if they choose to pay each other for content. For example, monetizing open source plugins, digital content, journalism, user attention, and so on. Right now, the Web ad-supported model is broken, as the Ecosystem page explains. Qbix does plan to have sites (not people) settle balances with each other in something eventually. For micropayments between sites to be possible, there has to be a unit of account.
If it's planned for 2024, why does https://qbix.com/ecosystem put it front and centre? Between that and the mouse pointer twinkles, most people are probably going to bounce right away; the site clearly sends the message that this is not something to be taken seriously, and may well be an outright scam.
There are a few other things that immediately put me off as well, though they may be just wording/messaging. Let me dissect just half of the first sentence from https://github.com/Qbix/Platform, and what springs to mind reading it:
> Our company spent 10 years building a decentralized Social Operating System for the web
Who is the nameless "Our company"? Even if we know who they are, building on open source projects controlled by a single company is often a bad idea. How did you spend 10 years on this? Is it the open-sourced corpse of a failed commercial endeavour? Also bad to rely on. Or is it new?
Most people that spend 10 years building something in private with no users end up building the wrong thing. "Decentralised" may be true, but screams "trendy buzzword". "Social Operating System" doesn't seem to make the slightest bit of sense. "Operating System for the web", oh, so it's like Linux or FreeBSD, or maybe WASI? How is that social or web-specific? No, it's not like that at all; reading a bit further shows that it's not anything like an operating system (AFAICT), and is actually a web framework (I think?).
There are plenty of other things that look like warning signs on that page too.
These immediate first impressions together with the apparently off-topic self-promotion of your first comment explain the down votes. (For the record, I upvoted.)
That's a good question. The Qbix.com/ecosystem section is the section of the site that discusses the broader ecosystem we are building. QBUX is at the center of that ecosystem. But you don't have to participate in it, if you don't want to. You can, for example, run Qbix applications on a wifi mesh network in a rural village anywhere in the world, allowing people to make plans, date, organize events, make appointments, go to school, learn things online and much more.
Please tell me, what software would you use today to do all that?
> "Social Operating System" doesn't make sense
It even defines it right there under https://qbix.com/platform ... what social applications are. Did you see the video, or really anything?
> "Who is the nameless Our Company"?
Qbix Inc. The company behind https://qbix.com -- it's right on the site.
Automattic is behind Wordpress. No, it's not a corpse of a failed commercial endeavor. NGinX took 10 years before it was commercialized. MySQL took 7. And commercializing it didn't really add much value to it... MySQL was simply forked to MariaDB. But both NGiNX and MySQL were in fact "controlled" by one entity for quite a while, before they became big. This is normal.
What are the other things that look like warning signs? And why did you not look at anything besides "QBUX"?
My goal was to understand and explain the quick down votes, but I read enough to determine that it didn't seem useful to me. I followed the first two links in your original comment, so didn't see these other pages, and didn't want to watch a 7 minute video.
I understand what social applications are, what operating systems are, and what web frameworks are. I can't see anything resembling an operating system on any Qbix page I've looked at, but I do see things like a web framework, which is what you call it in some places. I've now watched the video - I think you should put Qbix's capabilities of identity sharing and friends but not websites knowing your private info in text form up the top, as not many people will watch a 7 minute video to figure out what something is (since that feature seems kind of neat and unusual).
I think the GitHub page should mention that the company is also named Qbix, as that's kind of confusing.
Some other things I interpreted as warning signs on the GitHub page are:
- The overly-ambitious goals like "We aim to do to Facebook and Google what the Web did to AOL and CompuServe" - almost no one stating goals like that will achieve them.
- The screenshots are mostly American politics, which is to many people the worst aspect of social media, so quite off-putting.
- "Build once, run everywhere". Developers have heard that before, and it's never been correct before, so seems dubious now.
- In several places there seems to be a lack of distinction between the open source software platform, and the online platform Qbix runs (controls?), e.g. "If your app turns out to be very useful, we can discuss giving it a head start by making it available to everyone on our platform.". I can't tell if it's actually the case, but that makes you sound like gatekeepers in some sense; isn't an app I make already available to everyone?
Those are good examples of open source projects controlled by a single company, but people using them are running the software on their own systems, isolated from the company. Qbix the software sounds more entangled with Qbix the company. I've now read a whole lot more, but I still don't really understand.
I found some broken links on https://qbix.com/platform, on the left "For Developers" etc. don't do anything when I click.
That's a really long way of saying "yes it is cryptocurrency related"
But it doesn't really matter. You asked why people were downvoting.
And the reputation of cryptocurrency has sunk so low that a lot of people aren't going to stick to see exactly what a product is. If they get even a hint that something might be cryptocurrency adjunct, they leave.
> That's a really long way of saying "yes it is cryptocurrency related"
No, it's not, though.
In the future it might be cryptocurrency-related. But currently it is not.
I'm sorry that you don't stick around to read 99% of the site that doesn't mention cryptocurrency, but see something that sort of seems like cryptocurrency and leave. That sounds like the attitude of many on HN to other nitpicks (e.g. comic sans, maybe, used somewhere... and then the person announces they stopped looking at that point)
I think the comment you’re responding to answers your response. Pricing isn’t opaque because they cannot determine a standard price, but because they don’t want to scare people away.
I’m expecting spacex is different because we already know intuitively that launching something is expensive and we know there are only a small number of vendors with which to do so. So space launch companies probably don’t have the same issue…
If that price tag is big enough to "scare away" a customer, then that'll be true with or without the extra contact info collection and sales call(s) and email spam. Like I said: might as well not have the vendor and customer mutually waste each others' time with a bunch of sales ceremony that has no hope of actually producing a sale.
This is cool. My single favorite app I. This category is MapOut. Seems to be pretty similar, 100% offline topo maps with additional things like route planning, detailed trails, GPS, etc. The killer features for me are the detailed offline mode so it works great no matter my reception, and that I can email GPX or any other export format and within 30 secs the route I emailed is showing up on my app. Really makes it easy to route create on a computer and send to MapOut with no fuss.
I have no affiliation, but it’s the only paid app I appreciate as much as I do.
This is great! Mine is definitely more of a proof of concept that probably shouldn't be used outside of well-marked trails. This looks like the alternative I've been looking for. Do you know if it requires registering an account to use?
I just checked my app, it does not. Seems like an account is required to email upload routes maybe? Which would make sense. But seems like no login needed for most functionality.
I have, they’re both good. I really do spend many many hours on trails every year, in the mountains, in all seasons. MapOut is a clear winner for me, the interface is the most intuitive for all the basics and I’m always stumbling on new, useful features.
An example of something I stumbled onto: have a route open on your screen, zoom into some portion of the route, tap the screen and it adds markers on the route telling you the distance of the segment on screen, which persist when zoomed out. This seems silly, but highly useful way for me to zoom to where my location is (say) at bottom of screen and next route milestone is at top, and getting the exact distance to go between current location and desired location on the fly.
This is interesting. The zooming in though, the script seemed to cut it when it’s not zooming. When I’m zooming in from wide area imagery, I usually zoom quickly to the general area then pan to the thing of interest that caused me to zoom.
Is the takeaway from that part really that they’re zooming in on nothing?
I think the script may just be grabbing the time when it's actively zooming and not the time while it's zoomed in. A lot of the time it does look like they're just idly zooming in though.
I don’t see this form of protest as effective nor do I agree with the methods at all. However, we as human beings can only focus on so many things at a time. Sometimes something bad happens that causes us to suddenly become attuned to or care about an issue. This seems to happen a lot when people undergo a horrible tragedy like being a victim of a mass shooting or contracting ALS or getting breast cancer.
I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all that someone had something nearly bad happen to them (wildfires encroaching on their houses) and that caused them to become attuned to an issue and start taking a form of action to curb it (funding protestors).
Again, not the actions I would take and in my opinion they’re ineffective actions, but we shouldn’t guffaw at people for becoming attuned to something through tragedy or near tragedy.
I agree with you, but I think that when we are talking about extremely wealthy people, it changes things. An oil heiress knows people in the oil industry. A kennedy knows people in politics. These people paying randos to throw soup and glue themselves to paintings is already ridiculous, but to hear that they're doing it because their mansions (which contribute much more carbon than wherever the randos live btw) almost burned down is just stupid and will not help anything. They could try to pressure the oil people they know. They could try to pressure the politicians they know. But they don't! Instead they are paying to destroy art that millions (billions?) of people from all over the world enjoy.
Someone who smokes cigarettes whose partner dies of lung cancer from a lifetime of smoking who then decides to quit smoking and become an anti-tobacco activist should not be written off just because they're "only doing it" because it directly affected them via someone they love. Someone who is extremely rich because their ancestors made a killing selling oil who decides to become an "activist" after their mansion almost burned down due to wildfires should be mocked. Anyone can throw soup at a painting. Only the super rich can influence politicians (in america at least).
> but to hear that they're doing it because their mansions (which contribute much more carbon than wherever the randos live btw) almost burned down is just stupid and will not help anything.
They are not doing it "because their mansions ... almost burned down". They are doing it because they know that this will distract people from their real actions. And they look like philantropists now which is far from reality.
On the other hand, maybe destroying priceless art is a more effective way of sending their powerful relatives a message than, I dunno, reaming them out over Thanksgiving dinner.
that's unfortunate of course. it's almost certainly going to be able to be restored though. I wouldn't put the frame of a piece of artwork into the "priceless" category though.
I think you may be right. Most people don't get to experience fine art except in reproductions, so for most people the physical destruction of all the originals takes nothing from their experiences.
People who do love and adore fine art are not limited to the super-rich (this was after all on public display), but I bet it cuts the super rich who can afford to hang originals on their bedroom walls a little deeper than most.
That said, I do know I'm not normal in many ways, perhaps more people than I assume care about originals.
> However, we as human beings can only focus on so many things at a time
Those kind of protests do one thing : discredit those organizations who made them.
Just notice that there are mainly very young people who carry those "protests", who are easily fooled to do such things. Unfortunately for some of them can be a harsh lesson (jail time).
Rich people funding the dandy version of terrorism deserves scorn. These are people with money and many powerful connections. Go fund a nonprofit solar development project or plant a forest and actually do something. Don’t cultivate “awareness” by paying poor people to glue their head to shit in a museum. Or if you’re going to, at least do it yourself.
What they are doing also risks destroying cultural heritage. Causing damage to great works of art will do nothing to endear me to your cause. Why did they even go after this painting in particular, if not for sheer attention seeking?
The article indicates that the activists knew that the paintings would not be damaged, as there is a protective covering for the art. The quote:
"How do you feel when you see something beautiful and priceless being apparently destroyed before your very eyes?"
Being as they said, "apparently", and that a similar stunt was pulled previously, of which also had protective covering, seems to show that nobody intended (or did) destroy anything.
I'm going to be upfront and say that I'm glad it was protected, but that doesn't make it right. If you are an average person, you probably read this headline and did not envision the art being behind glass. Your first thought was probably intrigue about what the damage looked like, and then hoping the damage can be reversed.
If you are an activist, or you condone this kind of thing, it is important to realize that the average person is not going to delve any farther into this story in order to give the activists the benefit of the doubt. They are going to be upset that an innocent work of art was vandalized - even if it wasn't actually harmed in any way. They will associate the cause with unhinged and irrational people.
> The article indicates that the activists knew that the paintings would not be damaged, as there is a protective covering for the art. The quote:
all it takes is a single copy-cat to ruin a less protected piece.
their message is shocking and attention-grabbing, not responsible.
They won't take responsibility but when Joe-Bob runs into the next museum and legitimately destroys something whilst emulating their antics it will have been their fault for instigating this recent spree.
To be blunt, the public obviously includes people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia delusions that make them believe they are an ambulance[0] and therefore "drive" into a painting where someone is injured in order to rescue them or something.
Or bored kids with crayons will try colouring it in and/or peeling off gold foil[1] if it has any, or well meaning idiots will try to restore it like that Jesus picture, or a hundred other things because the public isn't just the best of us, it's all of us.
If art isn't protected, it will be damaged. Failing to take preemptive defensive measures against predictable threats is not as blame-worthy as the actual proximal causes, of course, but it's still blame-worthy.
[0] I've met someone who had to be sectioned after something similar made them think they were a car and therefore started walking along the middle of a lane.
That's the point: something shocking that gets massive media attention.
I don't support their actions. If straight-forward conversations how the earth is going to become uninhabitable doesn't change people's patterns, then I doubt shock-media will either.
"Raising awareness" feels good to lazy people and doesn't require any real commitment or systematic effort. It's more "glamorous" than painstaking work in the paltry manner of a sassy tweet.
Maybe next time, they should try self-immolation instead. It might spare a painting.
