The worst curse put upon us is XNA games engine, which was unable to distinguish primary from secondary clicks. So players who swapped mouse buttons at the OS level were out of luck.
Most developers assumed that left click = primary click, but that's only true about 95% of the time.
There is a comment somewhere on HN where a person described implementing ads for a small, hobby website.
Users complaied about the price to go ad-free (something like $25 per year).
The commenter revealed that the actual revenue from ads was much more than $25 per year. Every person who purchased the ad-free option actually cost them money.
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The lesson I took away is that ads pay more than we expect, though i didn't know the specifics of YouTube.
By providing an ad-free option, they are really allowing the user to out-bid the advertiser.
I think for most people, they would not be willing to pay more to avoid the ad than the ad seller is willing to pay to show it. It's a weird conundrum--but people are very cheap.
I used to use all sorts of small websites in 2005. But by 2015 I used only about 10 large ones.
Like many changes, I cannot pinpoint exactly when this happened. It just occurred to me someday that I do not run into many unusual websites any longer.
It's unfortunate that so much of our behavior is dictated by Google. I dint think it's malicious or even intentional--but at some point they stopped directing traffic to small websites.
And like a highway closeure ripples through small town economies, it was barely noticed by travellers but devestating to recipients. What were once quaint sites became abandoned.
The second force seems to be video. Because video is difficult and expensive to host, we moved away from websites. Travel blogs were replaced with travel vlogs. Tutorials became videos.
I am not sure about the legal implications. But, I do see the concern.
Someone else mentioned the analogy of patients preferring physicians of a given sex.
I would not be surprised if they find a way around this by just having riders 'select which driver you want'. Effectively putting the onus on the customer to do the discrimination.
> Add to this fatuous criminal charge the sad reality that the process is often the punishment. Even after Mr. Left's innocence gets determined by a jury, there's the strong possibility that he'll depart the courtroom to go home to the Poor House.
> See: Wall Street Journal 8 November 2015
> I Was an Oil Spill Scapegoat -- I helped cap the Deepwater Horizon well, The Justice Department then turned my life into a legal nightmare
> -- Kurt Mix, BP drilling engineer, who published a blistering commentary about the US Justice Department immediately following a major revision to the case. After two years of expensive, life-upending dealings, all of the felony charges got dropped, and, "I would plead guilty to a minor misdemeanor for deleting a set of text messages without BP’s permission—something I had acknowledged doing from the very beginning."
> Good luck Mr. Left...
I thought this was interesting on went down the BP prosecution rabbit hole.
There have been _3_ rabies transmissions in the IS in 50 years?
The writer suggests this likes it is rare. But organ donation is rare. And rabies is even rarer. That it has happened _three times_ seems surprising to me.
Hmm, having read that, I am starting to sympathize with Google if they are going to be punished for being open.
No one seems to care that Apple has never allowed freedom on their devices. Even the comments here don't seem to mention it. Google was at least open for a while.
Or maybe no one mentions it just because the closed iPhone is a fait accompli at this point.
We definitely are straining the rules. I think we actually want a federal government like this. The reality on the ground is that most people want things like FDA and FCC at the federal level.
Maybe we just need to change the constitution--which I know is technically possible but im practically it's frozen. It's like a legacy API no one wants to touch.
Hmm, I've never heard of this. My initial gut reaction is that this sounds good but the definition of 'single subject' is dubious. With enough leeway and creativity, anything can be a single subject.
This is going to be controversial because it steps into the shutdown blame game.
I think I am more interested in the mechanics of how this happens. Why do we need to attach riders / sneak in legislation? What changes could we make to the constitution to avoid this?
For one, we are just discussing financial ruin. Not deaths by guns or cars. And it does not impact you. Or else you would need to just regulate poor spending habits. At worse.
I think in principle just about everyone agrees in freedom and liberty where it does not affect society. We usually disagree just about what constitutes 'affecting others'.
I happen to enjoy sports gambling and would be sad to see it disappear.
I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take that decision away from everyone.
Most developers assumed that left click = primary click, but that's only true about 95% of the time.
Terraria, among others, still has this bug.