aclsid

If every single utility and app start charging $3 or $5 per month then it becomes a problem. Software as a service is a good concept for something that is truly changing all the time, but I find it absurd that a Photoshop subscription or a huge IDE cost as much as these utilities thst used to be shareware in the past.

The old business model works but you have to keep innovating and diversify your product line. Microsoft was the best example with things like Encarta, Age of Empires and other tools like Project.

This new trend of doing these apps once, with far easier programming languages in a connected environment with plenty of docs, crash report data and things like stack overflow really makes it look that we are talking about cheap people trying to make a quick profit not unlike those free to play games.

In my case I go for simplenote, but yeah same deal. If somebody creates the same experience in a less resource intensive framework I'm a in.

I'm with you on this one. During the end of the 90s there was a similar phenomenon for the exact same reasons, which was Java desktop apps, with their write once run anywhere motto. With the added insult that they had this awful non-standard UI most of the time. They eventually died down except for the corporate app world and things like JetBrains IDEs.

But now with Electron, which I don't like for the same reasons, as a friend once told me, allowed me to have some of my favorite apps running in Windows, Linux and Mac almost flawlessly with a good interface that finally the promise of Java was fully realized.

So while I would like people to follow more the Sublime Text approach, there is value in these Javascript based apps that lower the barrier of entry, provide widespread availability and are definitely easier to debug. Also sometimes I don't get to decide, since my org for instance makes it extremely convenient to stick with JetBrains stuff.

But hey, I'm the type of person that considered a Gentoo machine running Fluxbox far more useful than the very polished MacOS.

That doesn't seem to match reality, where you have some men living past 100+ years. But I'm not a doctor so...

They certainly don't go on counting pennies

By that argument we should block all non-national apps or services and create national networks instead, since you are assuming everybody is fine with the US as a country imposing their views and values to every country.

I can see Middle Eastern countries getting offended by several things we are used to. In short, anything that is not Western would be difficult in that sense, but even among Western democracies, there are taxation issues for these services and different views on privacy.

Well, think about it. A mosquito bite seems harmless, while getting torn to pieces by a shark, in a medium where you cannot even run it is scary as hell.

Just get a proper antivirus and it will probably disable the built-in security suite for you

I agree with the main sentiment, but I have made my peace with it. Mainly Java and Electron based apps because they do provide us with a nice thing that was impossible years before unless you wanted to become a digital hermit: Linux on the desktop.

I can now use simplenote, discord, slack, the jetbrains dev suite, visual studio code, and this is without including separate developments like Steam, which has made it effortless to switch between Windows, Linux and Mac.

That being said, I still consider Mac OS the superior OS (this call home issue from the article aside), mostly because the font rendering still works better after all these years, Windows and Mac still have better quality software available for them, and Mac still does not have the forced updates as Windows does. Also I have noticed that in Ubuntu, some electron apps like Simplenote, the copy and paste of text is funky at times, like not even letting me select stuff.

This, the only way to prevent stuff like this from happening is to actually decouple the system from business interests. These kind of incidents repeat themselves over and over because it is based on a flawed logic where if you help businesses it will have a trickle down effect that ends up helping productive people. Same thing that happened when GM got a whole bunch of money and then they were using their private jets and collecting the nice CEO bonuses.

Governments by their very nature, and democratic ones especially, are supposed to be about charging taxes and redistributing that wealth for the better good. There is this big concept about having a powerful middle class which in turns make the extremely poor or the extremely rich a problem for the system to deal with.

The SBA could have helped all of those businesses directly through a coordinated effort with the IRS. Through the IRS they will know who is effectively a small business doing real work recently. How hard is it to just phone or email people asking for their bank account and fund the small business directly? If 6% of funding was all that was available at least a public raffle would have been a fairer system.

But even this stuff doesn't solve the question of what do you do with people that are out of a job, have a disability, mental issues or in general people that are unable to work like the elderly. Do you just let them die out of starvation out in the streets?

I saw that video and it proves my point. Taiwan is not recognized as an independent country, and the reporter, which is from a Hong Kong network, knows perfectly well that situation and wanted to ask a pointy question, so don't be surprised by the result. The staffer just did not know how to answer that well without getting into political issues since he's just trying to do his job.

But if you think this is definitive proof of a conspiracy, then you should check where the financing for the WHO comes from (China is nowhere near the top list), and second China actually ignored some recommendations from the WHO during the initial stage of the outbreak.

There are areas of Colombia that are a sovereign country because they are controlled by guerrillas. The same goes for Russian controlled areas of the Ukraine and Georgia.

What makes them sovereign countries with a right to be in the UN is the amount of recognition they get from their peers. I don't have anything against the Taiwanese, but they are embroiled in a conflict just like the previous regions I described. Until they solve those issues one way or another and gain more international recognition they will not be able to participate in the UN, the Olympics or other places as a country.

This is a tough question because on one side freedom of speech is something that ought to be protected and it is somebody's opinion of what means misinformation or not.

But on the other hand, if you allow people that spread extreme ideologies like fascism/nazism, communism, hatred between religious or ethnic groups, that is where you should draw the line.

In here, supporting freedom of speech and therefore the ability for deniers to have a platform sets a dangerous precedent for the whole population. Just like anti-vaccine groups, they are creating a massive hazzard for people that disagree with them, so just like the law says, your right ends where mine begins.

Doctors are the one driving people away from hospitals in China, since they act like a normal bureaucracy where they don't earn much.

I have experienced it first hand and I can tell you that on all honesty, healthcare in general is the biggest issue affecting the Chinese. Most of them don't realise how bad it is because that is what they know but even places in Latin America have way better patience care with less developed infrastructure