Chuq Von Rospach

Some of the Mac people I follow seem to be begging Apple to build a PC-like box: - https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much-of-the-co… - http://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/11/04/2230 - http://www.libertypages.com/clarktech/?p=751

If I ran YouTube I would censor the living heck out of it. The lack of effective moderation has turned the comments section into a niche tool. Many people, maybe the majority, aren't eager to add a new comment in the midst of a wall of obscenity... it isn't worth it. I like the "biker bar" analogy, per http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/ When it comes to law, I'm against almost any form of censorship, and wish we had less of it than we do now. So I would be strongly against any law that would force YouTube to censor themselves. I wouldn't support a law banning doctors from blasting DubStep in their offices. But I wouldn't choose a doctor who did so. I don't support forcing companies to censor users, but I prefer to visit ones that moderate their comments.

I'm not blaming, just trying to better understand what's going on. #1 I'm not grumpy with Consumer Reports. I don't know that I would have caught the debug mode bug. For future, I'd encourage them to contact reviewees when something seems out of whack. Their only mistake was a weak mea culpa. I can't speak to that. Consumer Reports has done excellent work in the past. Our society is better for their efforts. But I'm disappointed that they haven't adapted to digital media. I now refer to The Wire Cutter more than CR. How'd that happen? #2 Apple's laptop line is being screwed by Intel's new CPUs ship dates slipping. I can't find the specific analysis right now... I thought it was Chuq, but this is all I've found: https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much-of-the-co… https://chuqui.com/2017/01/apples-2016-in-review/ #3 I have no idea if the Touch Bar is any good. But I'm glad Apple is doing it. Just like I was excited by switching from gorilla glass to sapphire. OLED is the future and Apple needs build that core competency. Better to try and fail than not try at all. #4 I'm worried that Apple dropped their screens and wifi hubs. If they can persist with the Apple TV, then they can keep those other niches products alive. #5 I worry about the Mac Pro. I don't like the feeling of abandonment. I'll always need a desktop and it's about time for me to refresh. There's been lots of suggestions; I like Matt Yglesias's notion about making the…

I don't think discovery on Reddit itself matters to users. Google "mechanical keyboards" and the second link is r/mechanicalkeyboards. Good enough. And the sidebars generally provide curated, related subreddit links. Unless you want reddit to be your total, all-consuming news stream, but most users already have other, better sources for that. The actual problem with Reddit is described very neatly here: <http://gawker.com/so-long-reddit-1717315112>. Why it won't be fixed is described neatly here: <http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/>.

HN's CMS doesn't interpret your angle brackets correctly; the first yields "No Posts Found" and the second 404s. Here is the correction for the second: http://www.chuqui.com/2015/07/the-death-of-reddit/ but I wasn't able to figure out what to do with the first.

The article reminded me about another proposal of how to fix reddit: http://chuqui.com/2015/07/fixing-or-replacing-reddit-some-quick-though… I see a problem with this but there are some valid points. Maybe mastodon.social is heading there: So I wouldn’t host the stuff. But I could build an easy to install environment that would be a standardized system that could be installed on effectively any hosting site. Start with WordPress, WordPress’s P2 theme, a forum plug-in, the Disqus commenting system and a couple of weeks of hacking some custom work, and you’d have something that could be easily installed and run by a non-geek on any hosting service that supports WordPress. There are big advantages to this: If someone really wants a topic to exist, they can get it going for well under $100 (including domain name) and keep it running for $10-20/mo. Most of these sites will be very low traffic and a lot of them will in fact be pop-up and collapse as people figure out running sites is work and audiences don’t appear by magic — but the good ones will thrive and grow, and for most of these, it’ll be cheap enough to operate that most people can run them out of pocket. By building it as an independent site, though, that person would have the option of doing advertising, or running a Patreon or GoFundMe, or find other ways to pay for hosting the content of the site. It also shifts the liability for the existence of the content to the owner and host of the site and away from the…