The dialogue options and scenario possibility outcomes were very impressive for its time. Still kinda is today. It's more in depth than you'd think. The levels are pretty sandboxy with how they allow you to approach missions and it still holds up today. Deus Ex came out in that period of time where stealth games were popular, so there's a lot of emphasis on subterfuge mechanics.
I think the problem is that the app store is perceived as a general computing platform compared to what it was originally birthed from: Built in immutable applications on a mobile phone.
But I also, I guess, kinda just have a dumb thought about this whole ordeal. Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us. Not for any other reason that would shield us from harm or prevent risk, but rather because the corporation's products are so successful a lot of people use them too much! But wait! That's not actually true because there's enough products on the market that we don't actually need to use this product...but we like it because its incrementally the best and the chat bubbles are blue and applications run better and seem higher quality (which is a selling point of the product we are now actively dismantling but I digress...)
I know its tiring to use food cliches, but imagine if like, I make a business selling apple pies and my apple pies are incredibly successful and everyone eats them all the time and now all of a sudden I need to also guarantee that my business can make cherry pies because my apple pies sell so damn well. But truth is, its not really about the apple pies at all. It's about my baking trays. We actually just want to make sure that the baking trays of my business are now capable of also cooking for cherry pies even though that's got nothing to do with my fucking business. I sell apple pies. I'm so confused
Apple is dictating the behavior of every business operating in the digital market (Apple itself brags that this amounts to over $1 trillion, with a T, in economic activity), with the App Store, which has 70-80% profit margins, and numerous dev horror stories. Rejecting your update over something they previously approved, or something they let all your competitors do. Forcing their IAP system on you. Dictating what links you can put in your app, how you present prices (don't call out the Apple tax), what you can tell consumers in emails. Forcing their direct competitors to have an inferior user experiences (can't subscribe in Spotify, can't buy books in Kindle; oh, and bundling Apple Music/Books/TV with the OS, and advertising them throughout the OS). Threatening retaliation if you complain publicly ("If you run to the press, it never helps.") Blocking VPNs or secure messaging in authoritarian countries, and you can't sideload. Sabotaging the web to keep their monopoly (even trying to kill PWAs recently).
Apple feels entitled to a higher profit margin on your business than your business will ever achieve for itself! That's nuts!
Large corporations with large marketshare can easily do significantly uncompetitive things, with little effort on their part.
No monopoly required.
All that is required is that they have large marketshare, an important product, and it is difficult for users to change to alternatives, or avoid its uncompetitive behavior.
Choosing a phone involves balancing numerous features of devices. There is no phone market with the thousands of competing devices it would take to really cover what a customer might ideally want. So choices often balance so many things, involve so much practical investment, that they make switching devices over a few things, or even many things, from awfully unpleasant to very difficult.
And, with great market power, comes great responsibility: to not become a barrier to competitive innovation and hard work.
By definition, Apple's strict gatekeeping App Store, a significant feature on a significant general purpose computing platform, is anti-competitive. There is no technical reason why side loading or side-stores couldn't thrive, on such a general purpose device intertwined in all our lives.
Onerous fees and terms and selective limitation (relative to Apple's own offerings) for developers make it even more anticompetitive.
Of course, anyone who likes having fewer options, or just the options they have now, is free to not explore others. For now and forever. Amen.
> Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us
Yes, because it's "we the people" not "we the corporations".
What you're seeing in the drop of value of diamonds also reflects the general shift in tastes of different generations with income. I'm a person that likes to go to flea markets and antique stores on the rare occasion and the value of the same items on the market has drastically shifted in the last 10 years as boomers are no longer in the collectible age bracket. Younger people don't really care about Tiffany jewelry
Depends a lot on the demographic. It's still popular with young people who express status and success through culturally relevant jewelry styles (often influenced by hip-hop and sports culture).
It's more status-forward than authenticity-forward consumption, and many jewelers can assure you that it's very much still in vogue in some areas.
When discussing market shifts I think the relative nature of all these points needs to be considered. There will of course always be pockets of exceptions, but on a relative basis the prior comment is correct.
Getting married is less common which in of itself is a huge reduction to diamond jewelry demand. Of course there’s probably some town that marriage is at an all time high.
SEBI wasn't bold at all. They saw them do this in January, told them in February to stop, and they persisted until they finally shut the operation off. They were tipped off as early as November 2024 that this was happening. If anything SEBI was incredibly slow at reacting lol
UIs tend to have a universality with how people structure their environments. Minimalism is super hot outside of software design too. Millennial Gray is a cliche for a reason. Frutiger Aero wasn't just limited to technology. JLo's debut single is pretty cool about this aesthetic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYfkl-HXfuU
>It is unusual to be interviewed by someone more than three levels above the position you are applying for.
This happened to me, and it was by far my worst interview ever.
Early on in my career right after graduating I got interviewed for a Jr. Sysadmin position at a high frequency trading firm of approx ~1000 employees. The first few behavioral interviews they repeated the exact same questions, including some soft linux knowledge questions (what would you use to troubleshoot network problems lol). Then they took me for a 4 hour on-site gauntlet where they asked the same questions, again, and then I had to do a python leetcode whiteboard problem which I immediately bombed because I hardly did much coding back then. The application said "familiarity with bash/python scripting". If I remember right the problem involved binary search trees which I had no idea about at the time. I didn't know my ass from my hole.
Suffice to say after that, we had lunch. all 4 employees on my team. And all 4 employees that were in the office at the time, which was pretty much empty, because apparently nobody really went in. They gave me a really cold, wet, and soppy burrito. This was the off the mark "vibes" interview where they shot the shit and pretended to be friendly to gauge my personality. I embarrassingly had to play along even thought we all knew it was a total waste of fucking time.
Afterwards, I was shuffled into a big empty meeting room where the CEO interviewed me on screen from California. I was asked the exact same fucking behavioral soft questions down to what I would use to troubleshoot network problems, then he asked me to walk through an example. But at this point I was pretty much mentally blown up from the whiteboard problem and had no motivation to continue. My mind went blank. I could visibly tell he was upset he even had to talk to me.
Had a similar experience with a VP recently... not >3 levels up, but still. "I could visibly tell he was upset he even had to talk to me." feels close to home.
I made time during a family emergency, and attended a call on US west coast time while living in EU (was supposed to be 9PM for me but they pushed it to 10PM right before due to recruiter messing up the invite and having it off by a week).
He didn't ask any relevant questions. He didn't seem interested. He just looked like he was doing a favor to someone that asked him to give me a shot. Original call was supposed to be 1h, then after reschedule it was 30m, but he thanked me for my time after 20 minutes. Ofc I got rejected after, even though the people before had good opinions of me.
All in all, if you're doing hiring, at least try to look interested. phew.
Want hotel quality and safety with apartment perks? Just go to an apartment hotel! It costs more than a hotel/AirBnB but you're also not at the whims of random hit-or-miss listings and shady shit. And they clean your room if you want them to!
They're not nearly as common as Airbnb apartments in most countries. I also trust Airbnb listings and reviews more than what I find on most booking sites.
I don't trust AirBnb reviews much at all. When I've found the same place on AirBnb and Booking, the difference was always clear: AirBnb has only glowing reviews with nothing wrong at all, while Booking reviews were much more realistic with also some critical but fair observations included.
The AirBnB review system feels fairly useless. I've had some pretty poor experiences with AirBnB, but I am loath to give severe ratings or write anything too awful. I would like to give fair warnings to subsequent guests but it never feels like it would help. Instead I do try to give direct feedback to hosts if they are available.
Maybe some way to secretly write problems, and get next guests to agree/disagree with each concern?
Repeatable patterns of problems (rather than one-off bad luck) are what I'm most interested in avoiding.
I find booking.com has been more reliable, and less risks of unexpected costs. AirBnB is usually way less professional.
When writing reviews in-app, there's a certain pressure to not fuck someone over.
For instance, hypothetically, there might be a listing that mentions plenty of clean towels, a swimming pool, and a walk to a convenience store. I get there and there were two towels, the swimming pool was one of those above-ground models, and the convenience store was a 20 minute walk.
Leaving a negative review on AirBnB might fuck the guy over in search results or certain incentives, so I wouldn't really delve into the definition of "plenty" and how a "swimming pool" should mean "a pool that's large enough to swim in" and not "a big puddle that's perfectly suited for splashing around in, but less so for actual swimming". I might mention them in a private note to the renter or something, but it's not egregious enough to sabotage the otherwise-perfectly-fine service I was provided.
There's no such direct gamification with a third-party review site, so I might bring these things up there.
It's similar to leaving a thumbs up for an Amazon driver who walks on the lawn because he didn't notice the paved walkway. Was it "perfect delivery"? No. But is it something I'd want the guy to have negative employment ramifications over? Also no.
The problem I've seen with those is that all those places have turned to using Airbnb to manage guests and bookings. The whole little industry that spawned is beyond bizarre to me. Like everyone wanting to hyper optimize and the uniqueness disappeared.
commercial toasters, tvs, washing machines, you generally can't go wrong with spending a premium for something that was built to last a LOT of use. Speedqueen makes commercial washing machines with a consumer lineup that's serious about lasting a while. Easily set me back $1600, but then looking at the build quality and 10 year warranty I was like "ok, they probably mean it".
One thing I noticed about commercial build quality: simplicity. No touch bullshit. Small LCD displays. Here's some buttons and maybe a rotating knob. knock yourself out.
