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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Certainly many others would have tried to invent something like the web.

    HyperCard predated the web browser and had the concept of easy to build pages that linked. Lots of people were working on ways to deliver apps over the Internet.

    I think in some alternative timeline we’d still have a lot of interactive content on the Internet somewhat like the web, but probably based on different technology. Maybe more proprietary.




  • I think there are different aspects to it.

    Amazon’s delivery service is better than ever. You get products in half the time, with less packaging, and fewer miles traveled to deliver it to you, without any significant increase in delivery fees.

    Price is still competitive when you take into account delivery cost and speed. If you don’t care about those, Amazon isn’t the cheapest.

    Search and reviews are down the tubes. It’s like Amazon no longer cares if their site is overrun with crap products as long as people are buying them.

    Amazon still works great if you only buy name-brand products that are fulfilled by Amazon.
















  • Actually I’m going to disagree strongly with that statement.

    Small business are far, far worse at abusing workers. If a small business fires you, you’ve got absolutely no recourse. They can lay you off with no severance and then hire someone new a day layer, and who’s going to do anything about it? They don’t have that many employees so there’s no pattern and no class-action, and you can’t afford to hire a lawyer to spend years fighting them in court.

    In comparison, when you work at a big company, they have rules and an HR department to make sure they’re going everything legally. Your boss wants to fire you? First your boss has to give you a negative performance review detailing exactly what you’re doing wrong. Then they have to give you an opportunity to correct it. Only then can they fire you. At an absolute minimum, it gives you a chance to start looking for a new job. Often it gives you a chance to transfer within the company, if you were otherwise a well-liked and valuable employee.

    If a large company wants to let you go, they’re going to give you severance pay and extended benefits.

    Of course you hear about the occasional incident where Elon Musk fires someone on the spot or a Disney employee gets reprimanded for something silly. But those incidents are extremely rare, and most of the time they end up settling behind the scenes for a nice severance.

    Now, I know, I know. The HR department is there to protect the company, not you. But that’s exactly why the HR department ensures employees are treated well, even when they’re fired - because they don’t want a lawsuit later.


  • I have a hard time reconciling that with my observations in Europe:

    • People travel significantly faster than in the U.S., for example on the autobahn
    • Taxi drivers routinely do things I consider crazy in order to get around old European cities, like driving up on sidewalks, passing on narrow two-lane roads
    • There are a lot of narrow mountain roads and people seem to drive way too fast to be safe

    I’ve never felt like European drivers were “more safe”.

    The only differences I can think of that are positive for Europe:

    • Less drunk driving
    • Traffic circles instead of stop signs