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Scott McNealy had a few choice words in retrospect[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40950311



> I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.

Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, OEM mobile app...Bluetooth??

Consider the business case of leased Comcast (as the largest ISP in the US) modems broadcasting open side-channel xfinitywifi SSIDs...essentially everywhere.


Similar in smell to political science degree --> career politician, I think pg nails it:

> The hard part of startups is product: knowing what to build, and being able to build it. And that kind of knowledge comes from studying computer science or mechanical engineering or molecular biology, not management or finance.

> Another thing that will tend to draw universities away from the optimal path is business schools, if they have them. Business schools were not designed to train founders. They were designed to train the managerial class of the large industrial companies that arose in the early 20th century; they're the West Points of industrial capitalism. That's why their official name is usually the School of Management. But while the skills they teach might be useful in running companies beyond a certain size, they're not the critical ingredient in founding them. And the skills that are are already taught by other departments. So to the extent business schools affect their parent university's strategy for preparing founders, it can only be by adding error.


Anyone in test for the domain able to attest that formal USB compliance verification would have detected the design defect that this hack resolves?


It absolutely would. This is an "didn't even read a 5-paragraph AI summary of the spec" level of a design defect.

If you need this fix, it will literally refuse to work with any spec-compliant USB-C device on the other side of a C-C cable. No way to miss it.


Wonder if there are USB C cable testers that detects this.

In practice, most if not all networking/hardware department carries a ethernet cable tester but somehow not true for USB cables.


It's not the cable that's the problem here; it's the device you're plugging into the cable.

You don't need a cable tester to detect this problem; just plug the device into a spec-compliant USB-C power brick with a USB-C cable and see if it fails to charge.


You don't need a tester to detect this (and it's not about cables).


> You have the right to a degree in XYZ...

No, you don't.


As in, you and the college can decide privately if they want to teach you XYZ in return for money from you. Getting tax payers to chip in brings in a 3rd party and then they have right to decide whether you get to learn or not.


I think the GP's point was that the college is also bound, privately by accreditation bodies and publicly by a duty to society not to devalue the meaning of a degree, to not grant you a degree in XYZ if you fail to learn.


> Except that three saturated-fat-laden strips of bacon for breakfast prevents the need for lunch

Said no overweight American ever.


It's a distinct signal of pure ignorance that you conflate the highest levels of publicly elected executive leadership with "government employees".


Data is on pragmatic lockout after 3 months, not 12.

For years, enterprises have been conditioned to lean into OneDrive and forget about it. Indeed, that dark pattern is a festering disease across consumer Windows.

This is classic Microsoft long rug pull.


> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman


That quote gets less convincing by the day. It has reached a state where it’s regurgitated without proper context or consideration and is now no more than a deepity. There are plenty of “unreasonable men” adapting the world to themselves. Bezos, Musk, Trump, they are all changing the world for the worse.


> There are plenty of “unreasonable men” adapting the world to themselves.

You say that like it's a counterexample, but is that not literally what the quote is saying? I mean what's the difference between that and:

> the unreasonable [man] persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.


I think Wikipedia does a good job of defining what most people understand by “progress”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress

> Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state.

I.e. progress is understood as positive advancement. Otherwise we use other words like “regression”.

The quote as it is typically used is advocating for the unreasonable man because they precipitate progress. My point is that we shouldn’t idolise this idea of advancement in the abstract, because pretty clearly it can turn everything to shit. We’re not benefiting from those unreasonable men, quite the contrary.


I think the use of "progress" in the quote is somewhat ironic -- "movement towards a perceived refined [...] state", as the definition puts it; an unreasonable person's perception of progress likely doesn't match up with a reasonable person's.

As I see it, the quote neither advocates nor critiques unreasonableness, but rather observes that unreasonable people are most often the ones responsible for change. Whether you take that as a lesson on the merits of unreasonableness, the dangers of it, or something in between, is up to interpretation, and depends on how much one values reasonableness vs progress (for the record, I've heard the quote more often in a negative sense by people who put reasonableness above "progress"). It also depends on one's definition of "reasonableness" of course, and whether something can be unreasonable yet still a positive.

So I guess my point is that the quote can mean just about whatever you want it to mean. It's an interesting litmus test. I do agree that people using it as carte blanche for unreasonableness in the name of some sort of nebulous "progress" is, well, unreasonable, though with context I'm certain GP was using it as more of a critique.


>Bezos, Musk, Trump, they are all changing the world for the worse.

But they are changing it. "progress" in this case doesn't imply change for the better, only the will to power.

It's obviously wrong in the sense that the world is full of unreasonable men who only managed to ruin their own lives and the lives of others, and because plenty of change has occurred through "reasonable" means by "reasonable" people. What separates Bezos, Musk, Trump and the like isn't their unreasonableness so much as the power their privilege gives them. Trump was a C-tier celebrity known for being rich and playing himself on tv, then he was granted the privilege of the presidency. Musk and Bezos have the privilege of vast wealth and the control of companies. They have the power to bend reality to their will not because of their refusal to bend to the rules of society, but because the rules of society consider it reasonable that wealth should equal power.

It's a Nietzschean statement about self-actualization undermined by the reality of capitalism.


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