In this context the word "leeching" has a specific meaning. In bittorrent, "leeching" is downloading, "seeding" is uploading. With a normal torrent client, every download has you starting as a leecher (downloader) and becoming a seeder (uploader), but this client skips that 2nd part.
Yes, I didn't think that extra nuance would help in this situation. The person I replied to wasn't familiar with bittorrent terminology so adding in the complexity of whether or not you have the complete set of files is unnecessary for this discussion. But yes, you are correct and my statement was technically wrong/incomplete.
to me the main feature that makes arc browser appealing is how they combine the features of open tabs and bookmarks into one intuitive system, and making switching an open tab into a tab in the saved section really frictionless, and allowing you to view a tab in the same section in the same manner as an open tab. It also then automatically takes care of the memory management aspect of closing unused tabs for you while keeping the visual representation of open/saved tabs the same, and letting you be confident that the state of the saved tabs section is persisted.
No browser that I've seen comparing itself to arc really does this.
I downloaded zen and looked at it for like 30 seconds and it doesn't look like it does this either.
much of it is measurable, and the measurable part gets acted on. that's part of why they give the sponsorship a special link or code with a discount, if people sign up with that link they track it, and probably attribute the revenue/profit from that sign up to that advertising campaign. If more profit is generated from that link than it costs the company for the sponsorship (including the cost for the time of the employees working in marketing), the company continues that advertising campaign. it doesn't measure everything though yes, but is enough to seem likely to me that online advertising campaigns do work
also i would propose that you should spend $100 on advertising (including cost of time reaching out to people etc) to generate $100.10 in profit(not revenue) if the return comes fast enough. you can estimate the opportunity cost of spending that money by seeing what interest rate somebody would loan you money for, if that .10% ROI is more than the interest rate on the money, then it's worth doing, even though it's only $0.10. then if you do need to do something else with the money you can take out that loan.
I guess it might be harder to calculate opportunity cost of your employees time since it might take a while to hire more employees, but you can estimate that based on their hourly salary. also hard to calculate opportunity cost of your brand reputation from doing more advertising. and yeah hard to calculate opportunity cost of your own time but you can just estimate a hourly rate and good enough. most of the math is clear though and companies go on that.
(disclaimer: i am not an expert on any of this)
video speed controller extension is automatically speeding up the video for me and I can't change it back on this website (due to the invisible divs covering everything I think)
it takes the form of a browser extension the user downloads that will tell the user if the javascript code is what it is expected to be. it checks this by verifying the code's expected hash with an endpoint hosted by Cloudflare. Whatsapp can publish new versions to Cloudflare but they can't modify them.
In this case it makes it so that you are trusting Cloudflare instead of just WhatsApp, but (as an amateur), I don't see why this couldn't be adapted into a standard that works with something like a blockchain or certificate authorities (or even something like a git host to go along with public source code auditing?). I think something like this should become a standard and be built into browsers, but currently not a lot of companies are using any solution at all.
The only other implementation of a solution to this that I found, which I think is pretty similar, is Etesync's pgp signed webpages library + browser extension (https://stosb.com/blog/signed-web-pages/), which allows the developer to PGP sign web pages so you know the code has not been modified by a malicious server without the developers approval. So maybe you can use that in your project I guess, or there are probably some other solutions that I haven't found
I think this problem might be called "Code Verification" in cryptography, if you want to look more into it
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think running old code and not updating the dependencies might make your site vulnerable to security vulnerabilities that get discovered over time and fixed with new versions of libraries. So if you want to keep your code secure you will need to update libraries. But those old versions of those libraries will stop being supported, and known vulnerabilities will start to accumulate that have no fix. And attackers will probably have programs scan the web for websites with known vulnerabilities and automatically attack them.
Versus if you use a library or platform (like Web Components) that cares a lot about backwards-compatibility, they will maintain the security while also supporting your old code for longer.
Can someone directly explain the understanding he is lacking of what is wrong with this / what makes it off-putting, such as not understanding "the human element", "power dynamics" or "people or human dignity"
Obviously many people in these comments sections don't seem to understand whats wrong with this, and there is such a thing as aspergers and the like. Maybe discussion can help people come to an understanding.
Is it that he is essentially valuing their time less than his and therefore not viewing them as equals? could someone who feels more strongly try to put their finger on whats so off-putting?
Sure. There are people like the author, who respect the autonomy of other people and believe that if there are two people who come to a mutually agreeable arrangement on the exchange of goods and services that’s ok. Then there are some other people who have an aesthetic revulsion for people who violate social scripts. So if you hire a maid, secretary, therapist or other kind of service staff that’s ok, but if you do something that doesn’t follow a standard script these people feel a sense of revulsion.
I don't think that's what people are "objecting" to about this (well, not even objecting in many cases, just... flabbergasted).
The author appears to do very little work, while he pays someone to sit there and be his surrogate mother, so that he can be a bit more productive.
It seems somewhat attention-seeking (I personally believe it's honest, though it does invoke Poe's Law). That's fine too, people seek attention on HN, but they usually offer something insightful in return.
This is more the equivalent of the Tiktok user who posted her "day in the life of an employee at (Meta? Airbnb?)" that involved very little work.
Also fine, work isn't the point of life. But when you're showing off a flamboyantly eccentric "productivity hack" that got you to work 80 hours in a month instead of 25, so you could spend more time starting blog posts, breakdancing, doing yoga, going to the gym, "unironically starting a company (it's in stealth, sorry!)", doing online courses (at least this is at least somewhat related to the job they are presumably actually paid to do)... many people reading are going to be amused at the very least.
It seems like they have time management issues that make this "experiment" only potentially useful to people who also struggles to get anything actually done due to battling severe ADHD while balancing working at a very casual pace, and shooting off in 10 different directions at once all the time.
They would very likely benefit from some combination of a reality check, therapy, counselling, or medication.
This blog post is remarkable because it demonstrates a hyper-exaggerated jumbalaya of first-world-problems, out of touch, unchecked privilege, and the "hacker" mentality, with a side of attention-seeking.
It's like Lucille Bluth's character from arrested development[1] and Bill Gates trying to guess the price of groceries[2] conceived a baby with Krazam's "Hustle culture"[3] and delivered it right into this unbelievably glorious blog post
I know, I'm being uncharitable, and I feel a little bad about it. I can even relate to the author with a lot of their struggles, interests, and activities. Best of luck to him.
