stinkytaco

> I didn't accept any deal by clicking a link that took me to a webpage. I don't think anyone using Python, which is GPL-compatible, expects it to come with a "and you'll see our popup advertising for donations if you visit our site".

On the other hand, they didn't make any deal not to show you pop-ups. And they have no obligation to you as a user, nor does it seem they have incentive to change their approach.

In the physical world, common spaces can be regulated. Signs, billboards, radio waves, public right of way and similar goods are public property and often the government will lease common space in exchange for some benefit to the commons. This might be revenue (collecting some fee for the license to put billboards on the highway) or a more abstract benefits (the public benefit of information dissemination when leasing radio spectrum). This at least allows citizens to participate in the process and benefit from the outcomes, even indirectly. In exchange, private companies use various methods (including ads) to recoup their costs.

On the internet, though, it feels like the balance has been disturbed. The benefits the public get from the maintenance of the infrastructure that provides these services (cables running through public and private lands, radio spectrum for wireless services, maintenance of domain services, etc.) isn't really commensurate with the massive profit organizations get from using them. I'm not sure how we got to the point where Google can cash in so much on the commons and we get popup ads as a thank you. I don't know what regulatory framework will work, but I hope we find one.

This could also be an investment in future happiness. Part of the point of journaling and documenting is to later revisit and unlocking memories one might have not accessed in some time. This is part of the reason Spotify Wrapped and similar "recaps" are enjoyable. People enjoy seeing what they were like. In many ways we are the product of things we do (whether that be consuming or creating) and exploring those things at a future date is to be in conversation with ourselves.

Things like this are also a way of expressing and sharing gratitude, which is a cathartic exercise to engage in periodically. Putting into words "these are things I enjoyed" is worthwhile, in my experience, and sharing it is a small extra step. Additionally, sharing it can be a gift to the future. I can't tell you how much I appreciate effort my parents took to document parts of my childhood (vacations, accomplishments, daily life, etc.) and I know other children feel the same. It's the kind of window to the past that is only open through efforts like this.

Having served in the military once upon a time, it always makes me chuckle. Now, I didn't do much related to information technology or security, but "unbreakable" is not a term I ever associated with military equipment.

I remember listening both to the few PDQ Bach albums my parents owned and then his excellent radio show on music theory and concepts. I found some old episodes online and have been enjoying them again the last few days.

> And the majority of us will be outliers are on any bell curve

This cannot be possible, by definition. The majority of us will be within one standard deviation of the midpoint on a bell curve because that's how bell curves work. And that means basic evidence based health and fitness advice applies to the majority of us. Not bullshit like "oxidative stress".

No, seriously, I had an uncle that smoked 3 cigarettes a day and lived into his 90s. I've started smoking a pack a day and I'll live well past 100, right?

I wish we, as humans, understood odds better. All health advice is about stacking the deck in your favor, but outliers always exist. I'd be more critical, except I'm sure there's some area where I apply a similar ignorance of the basics.

The above advice is good, since the most important thing is getting all major muscle groups regularly.

But you might also look into calisthenics, which is enjoying a surge in popularity, it seems. Lots of good stuff out there on bodyweight training with a variety of adapted equipment.

One thing I've found in fitness is that people need to do what will keep them active and for many, that requires specific guidance or goals. General prescriptions like "use your muscles by being active" is fine, but what does active mean? Some people like bodybuilding, or powerlifting, or powerbuilding, or crossfit, or hiking, or basketball or whatever and if those things get them active, then that's good.

The current physical activity guidelines call for 150 minutes of moderate intensity cardiovascular training per week and at resistance training on at least 2 days per week. There's lots of ways to get there, and maybe strength training is the way to do it for some people. Even if that's not the focus, however, people should set aside some time to focus on resistance training because it provides a number of long term benefits.

Yeah, I get it. I was mostly joking, but a few things:

I strongly suspect most people buy either the official case from the manufacturer or maybe they go to Amazon or buy one from their local store (Best Buy, Verizon, etc.). They are high markup items and thus readily available in places people shop already.

I find secondary markets that are essentially universal interesting. Imagine selling a TV, but not including a remote control, that seems absurd. What I strongly suspect is happening here is that the market does not favor phones that don't need cases because people want to buy cases. When you're talking about toting around a generic black rectangle everyone else has, there is a desire to make it unique and expressive through the case. I think even with plastic phones, cases would still sell.

Exactly. Why make more durable phones when you can make an extra $30 by selling a case, too?

Half of them provide discord access and 75% a custom rss feed for a subscriber only podcast in my list. And frankly, I only take advantage of a couple of those. Mostly I just do it to throw a few dollars to stuff I like and don't use the perks. I can't be the only one.

I'd like to see a post like this on HN where someone revisits their organization 10 years later and decides if they were right or not.

It's not that all organizations don't have disfunction, but as a younger person I was very fixated on everything I saw that was wrong and ignored either the problems I myself was introducing which were (and probably still are) numerous or the systems and programs that made the organization successful. Now that I'm older and in a position with a different perspective, I'm far less likely to find systemic fault. Perhaps I'm just lucky in my career atc? I don't have a blog to go back to, but this author seems insightful and I'd like to see what they think in 5 or 10 years.

I think this is a problem specific to your library. A very quick check shows the average age of our collection to be about 6 years (at my small to midsized urban library). That's extremely rough because new editions of classics will show a much more recent copyright date than an average person would consider them, so a collection can still be seen to skew much older than the data suggests. However, it's still dominated by recent titles, especially of popular literature. Technical books are harder for me to comment on because at a public library, that's generally out of our domain. We try to keep up on the popular series for tech stuff like "Learn Visually" or "Dummies", but the circulation or those dwindles as either fewer people need them or are more likely to use the internet for solving their problems. Depending on your needs, you might see if your library has a subscription to O'Reilly books or similar platform for your area of interest.

What you are suggesting does exist, at least partially. SimplyE is the largest open platform I can think of, but it does work by leveraging partnerships with traditional vendors like Overdrive. There's also Ebooks Minnesota and likely similar platforms in other states, though those are often run using proprietary platforms even if they contain open access material. There's also Internet Archive and Open Library, but both have been in some trouble. One I'm unfamiliar with was also mentioned in the original article.

I'll say that given my experience in identifying and spending funds for nebulous projects like software or service improvements, I'm not optimistic. It's easy to buy a bulldozer and shop and get the best price and then show you have a bulldozer. That's much harder to do for software and it's why so many government platforms seem to suck and why I think Overdrive will be comfortable at the top for a while. I'd like a world where libraries had control over the electronic content they purchase, but people will migrate to easy and we have to follow them there.