Interesting... I submitted 2 photos of Mao Zedong, one time it came back blank and the other time it error'd. It also came back blank for Xi Jinping & Jack Ma.
No, this is Ultra Cruise. It was GM’s competitor to Tesla FSD on city streets. Cruise (GM’s L4 robotaxi unit) is different from Super Cruise (L2 hands free highway ADAS) is different from Ultra Cruise.
GPT-4: “In Gnostic texts, particularly those found in the Nag Hammadi library, Thomas is often referred to as "Didymos Judas Thomas." The name "Didymos" is Greek for "twin," and "Thomas" is Aramaic for "twin." In the Gospel of Thomas, one of the Gnostic gospels, Thomas is depicted as having a special understanding or connection to Jesus, but the text does not explicitly state that Thomas is Jesus's twin in a biological sense.
Instead, the "twin" designation may be symbolic, representing a spiritual kinship or a metaphorical relationship rather than a literal familial one. Gnostic texts are known for their symbolic and allegorical language, and the exact nature of Thomas's relationship to Jesus is subject to interpretation. It's also worth noting that Gnostic beliefs were diverse, and different texts might portray the relationship differently.“
Leaving aside GPT as a source you're saying agreeing with OP that Thomas is not traditionally understood to be Jesus' twin brother, except in perhaps a spiritual sense so the summary is wrong.
What part of where I said I knew that "Thomas" means "the twin," and that no one but apparently whoever wrote this website blurb about this Gnostic gospel has ever thought Jesus had a twin brother suggested to you that I was commenting on the work itself, much less Gnosticism as a whole?
The US should focus on breaking up the app store duopoly that charges 30% on all digital items. Apps are not even allowed to link out to their website or tell users that Apple/Google is taking a 30% cut!
Apple & Google don’t have to pay the app store tax & have products that compete with books, audiobooks, Spotify etc — this is the most blatant antitrust issue. I hope the US lawsuit leads with this.
What % should they charge then? It was my understanding that 30% was/is a fairly standard cut taken by retailers in general and they are just aligning with the industry. A quick search seems to confirm this idea with articles like this.. https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
I am guessing the 30% quoted is specifically for digital goods because 10-15% is the fair price for connecting buyers with sellers of physical goods. At least that is the case with platforms like eBay, Walmart, and Amazon.
Maybe someone can explain how the selling/labor costs of digital goods are twice that physical goods and justify 2-3x the commission. I would like to hear it because I am admittedly ignorant when it comes to the costs of content delivery - all I know is that egress can get expensive.
How about we go by European credit and debit card interchange fees capped at 0.2%. Credit Card CEOs seem reasonably happy, healthy and well fed. Maybe we'll get some cultural surplus value out of it if Valve is actually forced to make a video game again, Half Life 3 might actually happen, or maybe we'll get a new Portal or Team Fortress out of it.
If the market was actually open, people would compete on different cuts and the % would eventually drift towards whatever the right number is.
Epic seems to do just fine charging 12% on their PC games store, vs Valve's variable (maximum of 30%; lower for big rich game studios) cut on Steam.
Apple and Google have also both put in place a lower cut for independent developers, which is further evidence that 30% isn't the 'right' number. It's just a number the market has no choice but to put up with.
I certainly don't blame them for wanting to pocket 30% of the filthy billions of dollars kids and gambling addicts pump into stuff like Genshin Impact. That's free money for Apple.
"The losses primarily stem from the millions the company pays game developers to ensure their newest titles are temporarily exclusive to the Epic Games Store"
Isn't 30% standard across pretty much every App Store? Steam does not have lock in and yet I thought charged 30%, GoG is 30%, etc.
Obviously other app stores could in principle charge lower amounts because they don't actually have to do any development work, unlike google or apple who both actually do real development work for products after they've been sold. Despite that GoG and Steam seem to charge 30% anyway.
I'm curious what you think the development model for companies that aren't just store fronts should be if they aren't able to make money from development, especially given they appear to be charging that same amount as those companies that aren't doing anything other than providing a store front? Maybe software updates should cost money again? Or you should only get one year of updates for a device? Maybe free apps should be banned as well? After all supporting those costs money but makes none?
I'm genuinely curious how you think development should be paid for when 15-30% is too high for developers but fine for store fronts?
> Apps are not even allowed to link out to their website or tell users that Apple/Google is taking a 30% cut!
What business in their right mind would want to sell or stock a product that comes with a label that says, in effect, “Don’t spend your money here, go somewhere else”?
A large number of products are being sold with some docs that has a link to their own merchandise store and promote them? Apple doesn't have to tell about the competitions on their app store, but they should allow each app whatever they want to do.
> Apple doesn't have to tell about the competitions on their app store, but they should allow each app whatever they want to do.
So you think it's OK that Walmart doesn't want to sell a product that says, "Hey, don't buy this from Walmart", but you think it's wrong for Walmart not to want to sell a product that links to a website, where the website says, "Hey, don't buy any more of our stuff from Walmart"?
Why not? The former enforces Walmart to do something they don't want to do and the latter enforces Walmart not to do something someone else don't want to do. There is a discrete difference between those two. I don't understand why you don't get this simple old idea?
Is that not pretty much exactly what happens when you buy say a Nintendo Switch at Wal-Mart?
Nintendo will encourage you to buy from their online store, competing with Wal-Mart selling physical media (and maybe digital codes too on their own store?).
So to be clear: if Apple printed on every iPhone box, "This phone is 30% cheaper on Apple.com", you feel that Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, %LOCAL_TECH_STORE%, etc. should be legally obligated to stock those iPhones?
Why should they be obligated to stock them? Grandmas that live in cities with walmarts and no apple stores will just buy a samsung or whatever is available in the store.
A better question is, why aren't iphones cheaper at apple stores?
A business that effectively feels consumer pressure. With their oligopoly neither Apple nor Google are feeling any consumer pressure to behave as good actors.
But this is standard in every other business. Want to buy a samsung phone? You can buy it at a samsung store directly or from amazon/walmart/your local telco. Printer? hp.com, or amazon, or walmart or whatever. You can even buy apple devices directly from apple stores or from other retailers.
Why is suddenly “able to install another App Store” a thing or even a necessity?
I think this entire situation has been blown out of proportion. There are a few “loud” voices lobbying for stuff that are of no consequence or just false.
It seems like a fundamental right that I should have full control of a device which I own outright.
That control, over something I paid for and ostensibly 'own' will be used against me, as in the case of App Store cuts and digital payments. Why should that be allowed? If I own it, it is mine, and control over its technology should be mine as well.
So you’re saying Apple should put a sticker on the box saying it’s a device designed to operate with a specific OS? Then you can make an informed decision and purchase something else?
That would be really nice to have in general. I don’t think an antitrust action is helpful to achieve it though.
Why not some legislation instead? For example, I have a friend who likes to tinker and they would love to be able to “own” their Tesla car, or Samsung smart TV (both also currently running as a black box of sorts… with even less security and transparency than iOS).
One of my favorite museums that I've visited! One thing that particularly struck me were the figurines in handstand scorpion pose and other various yogic postures. It proves that the indigenous people had a movement culture, so much so that it revered poses like scorpion!
Sketch is Mac-only, its interactive prototype mode was clunky and you couldn't even check it on mobile without a "Sketch Mirror" iOS app. This was a software by MacOS designers for MacOS designers.
yeah, but the point stands. that’s how Adobe took over the world, as well as Apple products like the iPad, the iPhone, etc. “by Mac users for Mac users” is historically a very strong opening position.
Not anymore, most work software is web-based and collaborative/multi-user by default. Sketch didn't do that and was quickly overshadowed by Figma. I doubt future software in this area will be desktop app-based.
I think things evolve in a spiral, where old ideas are recycled with a twist that makes them more appealing.
The tools before the mobile era, the canceled Adobe Thermo (aka Flash Catalyst), Microsoft Expression Blend, and recently Framer (which now is a website creation tool like Webflow), tried to fill the gap between design, prototyping, and implementation. But, they failed because web frameworks move fast, and nobody wants a vendor lock-in of unmaintainable code.
Maybe the Figma killer finally finds a way to solve it in a way that makes designers and developers happy.
I think (or hope) it's some combination between using real code (such as Storybook) in combination with a GUI. This has the following benefits:
- There is only source of truth and it's the code
- People who can't code (most designers) can still build prototypes with available components
- No (manual) synchronization between code a drawing tool (Figma, Penpot) needed
At the moment it looks like UXPin is going in this direction.
Yep, I agree. And I agree that designers can't "code", but to be more specific, it's more that they shouldn't be implementing functionality. So if a designer is designing a calculator, and the calculator returns 1+1=3, then the designer is not liable for fixing it.
On the other hand, if by "writing code" we mean the literal act of writing something that both a human and a computer can understand, then that's a different question. Designers need to express nuance, and GUI tools are limited in their ability to handle complexity. There's a reason visual programming tools haven't overtaken code.
What I'm getting at is that there very well could be a "language" specifically tailored for UI/UX designers, that allows them to specify their design decisions for the presentational layer of the application. If you had such a language, you could create a toolchain on top of it, which produces real code for developers to consume however they wish.
I have actually seen the diamond "start" symbol [0] on ONE consumer-ish appliance! It was an office coffee machine at my old job, big green membrane IEC start button.
These symbols are ubiquitous on industrial kit (and in your car, surprisingly enough), it's kind of a shame they are barely used at all else where. There's a pretty wide vocabulary of symbols.
Photocopiers? Yeah, I saw that symbol on some of them. But then even some of the image results show that manufacturers of photocopiers and printers, particularly targeting general consumer market, let their designers get creative with the shapes, colors and labels on the buttons.
Although this is a common criticism of utilitarianism in the Bentham traditition, it is not in fact how utilitarian ethics work as a whole. For example John Stuart Mill would say that whether or not an act in a specific case is ethical can be decided by whether or not it is in violation of a general rule, and whether or not the consequences of the general rule are positive or not. Taking clients funds and using them to go double or nothing would clearly lead to lack of trustworthiness and the consequences of this would be clearly negative in general so this is very clearly unethical according to Mill.[1]
> To maximize your expected value, you must aim for it and then march blindly forth, acting as if the fabulously lucky SBF of the future can reach into the other, parallel, universes and compensate the failson SBFs for their losses. It sounds crazy, or perhaps even selfish—but it’s not. It’s math. It follows from the principle of risk-neutrality. [0]
I think he figured in a million realities, the expected value is net very large. He just happens to live in a reality where it collapsed, but how much of his wealth is due to these games? I don't know if the probabilistic method is common among EA. For instance, if you gave me a chance to bet my entire net worth on a 51% odds game, sure the expected return is positive and if i had a million realities and netted everything out, I should take the bet. But most people would see that as insane
It did tell identify Yao Ming though!