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And this is exactly why emojis suck and should never have been invented

Tracking ads is also a problem, just a different one. The whole point of ads is to manipulate your behavior. There's plenty of reason to not want to make that more effective

The entire goal is to use money to change your behavior. They're inherently manipulative by definition. It's literally weaponized mass manipulation. There's no way to spin that as a positive effect.

If you think about it in terms of it's effects, advertising is the closest thing we have to mind control: companies are paying money to change the behavior of millions of people. Even without any concrete examples, you can easily see how dystopic it really is when you just think about the intention alone

You're talking about Thunderbird, a project they basically abandoned to the community. Thunderbird survives in spite of Mozilla, not because of it. Meanwhile their main product Firefox is still bleeding users down into the single digit percentages while receiving half a billion a year from Google. It takes a lot of skill to run such a company so deep into the ground.

Firefox actually had tab groups way back, but Mozilla, in their infinite wisdom, removed it because apparently their main mission now is to antagonize all their loyal power users.

I don't think the car manufacturer is getting that data, but iirc the part of Android Auto that runs on the head unit does collect data when disconnected, then send it to Google when the phone is connected.

That's not going to get you Thunderbolt, mate

Pull up resistors have solved the same problem much more simply for decades. Even with ICs, manufacturers can still make weak cables that lie about their capacity then burst into flames. The IC is not what making the cable safe, it's the manufacturer. And if all else fails, the host can still directly measure cable resistance with some help from the client.

I’m not a big fan of Apple, but the lightning connector is just better, physically. It’s way more durable in practice since it’s just a solid piece. I wish USB-C was designed that way instead of what we actually got.

In theory, USB-C should be better, but in practice, the quality control is all over the place.

All of my micro USB cables and ports have lasted just fine. I used one daily with my phone for 10+ years with no issues, and I've only had maybe two cables ever actually fail. Meanwhile, I've already had at least 5 USB-C cables or dongles that have fully failed, and plus the primary USB-C charging port on a laptop just completely die. I wish it was better, but it just isn't.

Also if USB-C was just replacing just micro USB I'd be ok with that. But the problem is they're also replacing USB-A, and Type C is not nearly as durable as Type A since it's so small, it's just physically impossible. I wish they made a larger version of the Type C port. Same shape, same pins, just bigger in every dimension. As large as Type A, for durability.

I'm not a big fan of Apple, but the lightning connector is just better, physically. It's way more durable in practice since it's just a solid piece. I wish USB-C was designed that way instead of what we actually got.

Perhaps a controversial opinion here, but the usefulness of reversibility is vastly overrated. It's not a game changer, just a tiny first-world luxury that's nice to have, but it does it by introducing a bunch of unnecessary complexity that I'd rather avoid. Not worth the trade off IMO. I can count on one hand the number of minutes USB-C has saved me by being reversible and I honestly don't care

You can do cable detection with just a few resistors. Why make everyone use active cables just for basic functionality? Aside from exceptional rare circumstances, consumer grade cables should be passive devices IMO.