I have this one notification asking me if I want to enable the Personal focus when I’m at home. I don’t want my iPhone to care if I’m at home or not, so the past two years whenever it pops up I click Later.

It will probably never stop asking.

It will. Once you accidentally mis-click once and then suddeny there is no way to back out of it.

I think this should be called the ratchet theory of consent because it only tightens.

I beat you to it by a couple of years :)

https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/

Haha! Great minds think alike. (Although they do also say that fools seldom differ...)

I've got bad news for you then :)

Not sure about the focus pop up but most/all of Apple’s other nags (like set up Siri, try Apple Music and the like) go away permanently if you go to the settings app and click “later” from there (as opposed to the button in the pop up which has the exact same label).

You can delete the Personal focus.

Google Play Store has a notification to enable notifications. You didn't read that wrong. It shows a badge and everything. I said no for years except that last time. Now I can't find how to turn it off again.

Can’t you just disable notifications for the Google Play Store app? Maybe it’s because I’m on GrapheneOS, but I can just enable/disable notifications like any other app.

This is like an in app Envelope icon thing.

or they need/enjoy the spectacle of asserting dominance over shaking hands.

> The hidden cost, of course, is that the NSA learns everything there is to know about you and your customers.

I think it’s fair to assume that for most companies, cost is essentially zero on the company’s side.

Who says you get a vote against AI-powered drones though.

> what if GPT-3 hadn’t worked? What would we have to look forward to, in this alternate 2026?

One would hope maybe boring things like healthcare, better living conditions, better functioning societies, and so on.

Not as exciting as flying cars and thinking machines for sure.

But if you point your LLM at it and say you want something like this, then it’s all ok. :) If you can’t legally copy it, just launder it through AI.

> how much office "networking" was always kinda delusional.

I think different people benefit from it differently. Most people regardless of remote or in-office, put on their headphones and barely talk to anyone else all day, and being in the office has zero if not negative networking benefit for them.

Then there are a few "social butterflies" who know everyone in every department, and they benefit in various ways internally and externally. Internally maybe they can move a difficult cross-department project because they have friends there, which then comes back as praise and rewards. Externally maybe one of their friends get a better position somewhere else and poach them, etc. etc.

I can't speak beyond my own experiences, but yeah the "social butterfly" phenomena is also a bit of a lie.

It's rare to see someone just walk into a business as a total outsider and charm their way in. See how well they handle unfamiliar people. Most of them will stay in their bubble. When you and your unfamiliar people are all nerds, you're actually in the best position to figure them out. They try to take the easy way out with flattery. Something like: "Oh, you all are so smart I couldn't possibly comment." before running back to their people. Does that really seem like a "social butterfly" to you?

Networking is one thing, but nepotism is another. I don't like working with people who can drag everyone else down. Small businesses are more vulnerable than anywhere else, yet that's where you see it most often.

I think you're trying maybe a little too hard to see this from a product/horses-for-courses angle, but the subway analogy doesn't make sense. Subways have very practical and technical reasons to run on their tracks and exclusively operated by professionals. AFAIK there's no subway out there that isn't a closed ecosystem, and it's unclear if there'd be any benefit to their passengers if they weren't.

OTOH we know tablets, smartphones and cars can operate in an open manner, and their users benefit from this. Apple choosing not to make such tablets and phones is similar to cars that could operate on any road and fed any brand oil, but Apple choosing not to for their own benefit.

A bus works just as well and satisfies your complaints. Many people neither need nor want the full flexibility of car ownership. Many people neither need nor want full control of their computer. Apple being a locked-down walled garden is absolutely a selling point for many of their customers.

Microsoft's illegal monopoly over the web browser market was also "a selling point" for many lazy customers. It was also notably illegal.

Do you know how does Herdr compare to native “claude agents” view?

Not to be a gatekeeper, but should there be Show HN’s from users with 5 karma, right on the front page?

Maybe not in this day and age of LLMs.