Ever since covid, I playfully ask people if they can guess why a lot of COVID non believers stocked up on toilet paper and food at the beginning of the lockdown.
Of course many say "they somehow thought it wouldn't be available later stupidly!" But I look past that one, and ask for possibly other reasons.
I have asked probably 100 people at this point.
Not a SINGLE person has said "in case they were wrong about the virus, and it was actually dangerous, they wouldn't want to leave their house to go get stuff"
That was the reason my family bought. And some of my anti COVID friends. And no one has guessed that. And they almost can't believe it or understand it.
And this is coming from people who took the virus seriously, but apparently didn't think ahead to not have to leave their house for basic dry goods?
I'll answer your question: 100% of web browser users do not care about which underlying engine the web browser is built on. And when they care about their web browser at all, they care about features and functionality.
I had a similar experience at Apple as well, except I took the punches for almost 4 years--you can take more punches when you're younger. I feel like a little bit of my soul died there.
If you’re passionate about this idea, launch it! Your initial costs will be on the low end. If it does grow to the point you need to worry about costs, that’s a good problem to have which you can then handle appropriately at that time.
> He was seen as a power broker who moved in elite circles and whose legal work often pushed ethical boundaries
I have always wondered what drives someone to enable elites who tend to so destructively prop themselves in society at the expense of others. Surely it can’t be only money or power? So is it influence alone?
If you mean "Who is the earliest known recorded individual in human history?" wikipedia says "The name "Kushim" is found on several Uruk period (c. 3400–3000 BC) clay tablets used to record transactions of barley." [0]
I looked into creating a simple Firefox extension for ChatGPT which would let me branch a conversation off into a new chat so as not to "pollute" or interfere with the existing chat.
I had success extracting the existing conversation and adding it to a new window, but gave up after trying to modify the ChatGPT UI (i.e. to format what I'd just pasted in so it'd look like the conversation left off where I branched). The UI just kept re-rendering/re-painting itself non-stop, overriding what I changed. I didn't try to push past that. I'm sure I could use JS or something else to massage the UI further, but it didn't seem like a non-trivial task. Maybe something to look into some weekend.
If you're someone like Musk, then attention is one of the most valuable assets you can get. If you can capture someone's attention, you can influence their thoughts. You can shape their perceptions. Even if what you share is outright false, once an idea is planted it becomes part of someone's mental landscape and with enough effort even their reality. Musk's acquisition of Xitter, supposedly in the name of free speech, and its degradation into a cesspool of violent, right-wing extremist, and downright pornographic posts gives a hint of just how Elon wants everyone to think of the world (even when it's not like that).
After blocking like 1000 accounts and adding tons of words to my mute list, and seeing the same crappy timeline, I finally just deleted my account and joined Bluesky. Browsing Bluesky honestly feels like a breath of fresh air.
> What is the inherent value Verisign offers here?
Given most other TLDs have a similar price, it’s fair to assume that’s roughly what it takes to run a TLD. For the 2014-era of gTLDs, you already start with a $180k/year ICANN fee before you even have a DNS server online.
> Is it hosting an entry for my domain in a database somewhere that someone can lookup using DNS?
I’d say the main value comes from making sure the DB record isn’t tampered, so you can trust that you own the domain and no random actor can take it from you. Value would tank significantly if you couldn’t trust that. Although most of that work is done by the registrars nowadays, it’s on the registry’s behalf.
> can't we just solve that problem using some sort of decentralized solution
There are over 1500 TLDs and Verisign controls only a handful of them. For me that can be seen as decentralized already.
"Good intentions" can easily pave the road to hell. I think a book that quickly illustrates this is Animal Farm.