Apple really fucked up by keeping the connector proprietary. Sure it helped them slim some phones but it didn't exactly help long term, and now we have a technologically inferior connector that took even longer to come to market.

I can't forgive Apple for that.

Good engineering, early to market, mired by greedy and short sighted businessmen.

Don't let them off that quickly. We've been making electrical connectors for well over a hundred years. There are books on high reliability connectors many hundreds of pages long. Connectors for aerospace, the military and industry have made connector technology highly advanced and connections very reliable.

Fact is USB connectors are shitty because they've been made as cheaply as possible—cheap manufacturing takes precedence over reliability and user ergonomics.

The trend of mass producing rock-bottom cheap connectors started in the early 1950s with that abominable super cheap RCA audio connector and it's continued ever since with consumer products. There's no end of crappy designs, the F coaxial connector for antennas, the DIN audio connector, the Belling Lee coax and so on.

Trouble is too many consumers are prepared to tolerate the crap without complaining so it continues.

I can personally speak to the seeming reliability of the springs on lightening, but thats anecdotal and would only apply to devices I’ve interacted with. Truthfully USB-C has been almost as reliable (only seen 2-3 ports with issues over literally hundreds, vs the 0 for lightning over a smaller sample).

I guess at some point the argument is moot, but I do like digging lint out of USB-C connectors a lot less- it is a lot more worrying to do.

I don't even understand the thought process here. Taxes are not being used for productive investments. Some spending is growth, but probably not half.

I could see expecting the median citizen to be flat over their lifetime as a goal.

I wonder if AI will avoid the inevitable pitfalls their human predecessors make in thinking "if I could just rewrite from scratch I'd make a much better version" (only to make a new set of poorly understood trade offs until the real world highlights them aggressively)

Being parented essentially means rules applied that are in your long term interest despite your own preferences (typically shorter term). When I had to go to bed on time, it sucked. When I had to eat my vegetables, it sucked

The kids who didn't watch soaps, didn't have phones, didn't get to see 15 films... etc, were fine in the end. This isn't a new concern. Every other generation of parents has done it.

> My only real hope to escape this dilemma

I simply don't see a dilemma.

Or depressed and suicidal because of being socially excluded in formative years. Let's roll the dice, what's the worst that can happen, more mentally sick adults? Clearly if we look around this is not backfiring in any way.

I don't have a remotely decent mental model of fallout etc from modern nuclear weapons - my assumptions are they're still toxic enough to be a bloody terrible idea anywhere near someone you like.

Alliances might get reshuffled as everyone realizes they need to reassess their nuclear defense and deterrence. It would fundamentally change the nature of modern warfare, not for the better. Let us hope this never happens.

Pitch me on this utopian outlook, because nothing about any of the Frontier companies points away from dystopia to me

On some level that's just the price of wanting to go out and not wanting to drop a bunch of cash on a taxi (assuming you can get one to come).

2-3 drinks on a Friday night when you're supposed to drive home is different. I'd also say "I can drink because the law is wrong" is also not exactly a neutral take.

There are two key components:

    - I believe the law is overly proscriptive / strict / wrong.
    - I believe I won't get caught

Sure, that's a problem, but...

> Dane gets a list of callbacks to return — no lost leads.

Yeah. So. I'm still going to hang up, phone somewhere else, and you get no business. I'm also doubly annoyed because not only did you waste my time speaking to a computer, it couldn't answer the question so I'm now worse off than if you'd ignored the call.

The data the bot has to work with is stated to already be available the website. Therefore, I'd never call on the phone to find those answers -- but those are the only answers the bot has to offer.

The only reason I'd ever call is for answers that the website (and therefore, the bot) does not provide. Calling on the phone and getting a bot that insists on giving me data that I already have would only serve to waste my time and frustrate me.

It would probably frustrate me enough to hang up and call a different shop immediately, and name-and-shame the place.

I know how to Google shit. By the time I start dialing telephone numbers, I've already Googled this shit.

When I call a local shop I want to talk to someone at that local shop (or at very least, their voicemail) -- not a regurgitating bot.

But, again, that's just me.

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So I'm imagining my dad, who's in his mid-70s and has never Googled a single thing in his entire life. At least superficially, he sounds like an ideal candidate that can be helped with this automated receptionist.

Except: When he calls the shop and has to talk to the bot instead of a person or their voicemail, he's also definitely hanging up immediately and calling the next place on his list. This doesn't help him at all, nor does it help the shop.

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For the shop, the cost of frustrated people who vent to their friends about the experience may very well be higher the cost of not always being available to answer the phone.