The traditional way to square that circle is to say that someone who's interested in the answer should subsidize the market. Essentially they provide liquidity to the market which essentially pays people with accurate information to bet. Some work has been done to figure our effective ways of doing that. In practice, it seems like gamblers often provide enough liquidity that this is not needed
What I don't get is what are you really supposed to do if you don't want to buy a house and being a landlord is illegal? I often hear people online say that being a landlord is incredibly unethical, but I have no interest in buying a house. So I don't understand how someone is wronging me by renting me one. And I'm in a lucky situation where I probably could afford to buy a house if I wanted to. Many people could not.
That said, I would obviously support the government building a large amount of high quality housing, assuming they could do it at a reasonable price.
I would think there is less opportunity to manipulate your results with bayesian methods than with frequentist ones. Because the frequentist methods don't just require an alternate hypothesis, they depend on the exact set of outcomes possible given your experimental design. You can modify your experimental design afterwards and invisibly make your p-value be whatever you want
Wow, it's hard to think of a better example of a correlational study measuring something that would obviously be confounded by the thing being studied. Don't forget that most GLP-1 users are obese and many will continue to be after treatment (as it only causes a reduction in 10%-20% of body weight). And they're rich. So the headline is "rich obese people spend more in restaurants than average".
No shade on people taking the drug btw. I'm on tirzepatide myself.
> as it only causes a reduction in 10%-20% of body weight
This was simply when the studies ended. Weight loss for most definitely tails off, but doesn't completely stop if you continue longer than the 18mo SURMOUNT-4[0] study went for with Tirzepatide.
I also do not know if this was patients going on maintenance dosing, staying the same, or ramping up doses to the full 15mg max dose. Would need to re-read it as it's been some time.
fwiw Tirzepatide is actually around 25% average loss vs. 20%. My anecdotal evidence from my peer group shows that the vast majority can go further than 25% (if needed) and then maintain it - but that does require significant lifestyle changes to maintain. The few who simply kept eating junk but less of it had far less drastic results.
I do consider it a performance enhancing drug for dieting due to that fact. Those that use it as one tool of many seem to do incredibly well. Those that use it as the only tool have much worse outcomes. No surprises there, but it was surprising to me how durable so far those who decided to make life changes have stuck with it now over the course of around 3+ years.
My random guess would be that if you use it to break habits and establish new ones, you tend to become a super responder. I like to tell people it was perhaps roughly 60% of my weight loss (36% or so, but I tapered off due to hitting my goal) was due to the drug, 40% due to other factors like eating better and creating new workout habits. The drug simply made it much easier than previous attempts at dieting, and the results turned into a feedback loop.
Another pet theory of mine is that if you use it to break a food addiction, you end up being able to stay on the wagon easier. This is based on other life experiences with other substances - the longer you stay off, the easier it becomes (for most) to abstain. Especially if you create new habits in their place. I no longer crave those late night taco bell runs like I once did even when (mostly) off the drug itself.
I know I will be downvoted into oblivion for this but here goes: Im sorry to be crass but if someone makes lifestyle changes after taking drugs its 100% the drugs.
Kind of tired of people taking anabolic steroids and then claiming it's a smaller part of their success or people being born rich talking about hard work whilst being on the golf course.
Just be happy that we live in a time where drugs have been painstakingly researched and move on without the ego boost. Be humble.
> if someone makes lifestyle changes after taking drugs its 100% the drugs
Multi-variate causation doesn't losslessly or deterministically reduce to a single dimension. Particularly when the causes aren't independent.
The drugs facilitate behaviour change. Changed behaviour helps the drugs work. Both done together are stronger than independently, and the strength of that interaction (and the overall effect) is mediated by other inputs.
I think it depends on what you mean by "100% the drugs".
I don't think anyone is arguing that the outcome would 100% not happen if it weren't for the drugs, but I think it is useful to note that part of the benefit comes from the habits the drugs help you form rather than simply 100% the appetite reduction the drug produces.
Are they really habits when they go away when you stop taking the drug?
I take a tiny dose of retatrutide for IBS (works amazingly well, btw). I’m not overweight. One week I stupidly got my injections mixed up and I took what’s still a fairly low but standard dose.
I could barely eat 1/3 of my supper. Granted, I’m sure you get used to it somewhat but it’s no small help that it’s giving you and I don’t know if it would help make new habits. The whole point of what most of us non-overweight people do is not eat despite being able to eat more, or even still being hungry. How are you learning that habit when it’s hard to eat and you stay full ridiculously long?
> How are you learning that habit when it’s hard to eat and you stay full ridiculously long?
For me? By changing my diet, understanding what "full" actually feels like, and keeping certain things I know I will binge eat out of the house. Plus the knowledge that I can have a bad day or two and get right back on the horse of healthy eating and be totally fine - if I gain a couple pounds I know precisely how to take them off in a repeatable and successful manner. That mental bit is key.
But for food itself - it's eating differently. Basically avoiding carbs and sugars does 90% of the work. It's not a 100% cutting out of my diet like Atkins, but it's prioritizing lean proteins and then simply being fuller for longer.
And part of it is learning you can be hungry for a period of time and not indulge. Which is much easier when you don't have those snacks you can't resist in the house.
It's certainly nothing groundbreaking, but habits are built over time. Motivation fades. I'm certainly not motivated every day or week or even month to eat well - but now it's habit and routine so it's almost more difficult to break it to go to the store to buy junk, or decide to order take out.
Going to the gym on a regular strict basis? I'm not exactly sure what changed. Likely being able to look in the mirror and feel a little vain? And knowing now it's all just about consistency. If I miss a day, just make it up the next day and stay on schedule. No big deal.
All those things stayed roughly the same after I came off Tirzepatide and hit my goal weight. They became harder of course, and I had some rebound (I overshot where I wanted to be on purpose on advice from my doctor) weight gain like most do - but I've now been stable at a healthy weight for over 18mo now. Habits have continued and stuck in place.
The drugs were a precondition to them being successful in the changes or seeing the level of impact be significantly increased doesn't make it 100% the drugs.
Since you brought up steroids, plenty of people take a gram of gear and look like they don't even lift. I'm not saying that someone taking anabolic steroids should act like they've worked just as hard as someone who is natural and at the same level of musculature, but good results take effort and consistency in the gym, diet, and rest of your lifestyle. You get some benefit just from being on steroids, but and there might be some genetic freak hyper-responders that blow up without any of that, but the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to look like they're a steroid user if they're not pushing themselves very hard as well, and the sheer amount of mediocre physiques from people on gear proves it.
Similarly, if someone turns their lifestyle around with the help of a GLP-1, if they change up their diet from crap to decent or good, if they move from being sedentary to exercising regularly, does the drug get 100% of the credit? Do we throw away all of the other work done?
You can both take a drug and also put in significant work that you can and should be proud of. Both things can be true.
There are studies on that that showed: Steroids WITHOUT training produced more muscle mass and strength than training without steroids.
Bhasin et al., 1996 – New England Journal of Medicine
Belgian Blues dont really need to go to the gym, so it’s not really that hard to phantom.
Bhasin's study is fundamentally flawed in that it sampled muscle size while they would still have inflated muscle size from increased glycogen and water retention from the steroid use and didn't use a method of measurement that compensates for it. It is not a direct comparison of contractile tissue, which is presumably what we would care about.
Belgian Blues grow that large because of a mutation with their myostatin gene. This is hardly the same method of action.
"Kind of tired of people taking anabolic steroids and then claiming it's a smaller part of their success"
Sounds like you've never taken steroids brother, and with that mindset you shouldn't, because I'll tell you that no matter how much you shoot into your muscles, if you don't put in the work in the gym, there's no way you're going to get jacked.
That position does not appear to be supported by clinical evidence. [This study](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.12433) references several studies that show that taking low (in the context of gym users) doses of steriods and not exercising is more effective at building muscle mass than strength training and not taking steroids.
Steroids significantly increase glycogen/water retention in-muscle while on them and for a period of time while coming off of them. This would increase muscle size by the measures noted in Bhasin's study (the big one people reference here), but not increase the amount of actual contractile tissue. There's also a cap there - going up in dosage, going for longer, etc., is not going to continually increase overall muscle size at that rate because you've saturated the stores in the muscle for the glycogen and water.
You will gain some additional contractile tissue doing nothing on gear. The average person, if faced with the two options, will gain more actual contractile tissue opting to lift weights without gear.
You can find huge quantities of people in gyms that are on gear and look like they barely lift.
Bro science bullshit doesn't belong here. I'd rather take roids and not lift than do SS+GOMAD and listen to /fit/ memes. Rich Piana and Zyzz are dead for a reason.
It might be 100% the drugs, but just watching my friend group I can say it takes something more than the drugs to change habits.
I'm not offended by the suggestion. It just doesn't make logical sense based on first person evidence. Those who change up their routines seem to (so far, at least) be having much longer and durable success. Taking the drugs absolutely allowed them (and myself) to do so, but it doesn't explain why others did not and the nearly perfect correlation between outcomes.
It could simply be luck I suppose? I'm not sure what other explanation could explain differing outcomes.
The thing is - I honestly don't care. If I return to old habits again and the drugs get me off those, great. I'll take it for life. It's not a moral issue to me, it's a practical one. When friends of friends come to me for advice, I will continue to tell them that it's most effective if you use it as a means to performance enhance your dieting and then use that space and motivation from the results to change your lifestyle habits that got you there to begin with. It's simply what seems to work at a pragmatic level.
Telling someone "don't worry, the drugs are going to change your grocery shopping decisions, get you walking on a daily basis, and get you into a consistent gym routine 100% on your own" seems rather silly. I can't see how it's helpful to anyone. It sets far more people up for success if they also put effort into change from their end as well.
Re: Steroids - those who work out while on them are going to see larger gains than those who don't. They are called performance enhancing drugs for a reason, same as I think of the GLP-1 drugs - just in a different category. You certainly will get results with either, but they increase the results of effort put in as well.
In the end, do what works for you! The health outcomes of these drugs are amazing, and I think they will be up there with the most important medications ever invented in terms of quality of life years saved.
I don't know that there's a consensus on what the limit really is. Semaglutide is good for about 15%, tirzepatide about 20%, and retatrutide about 25%. Some people don't get that much, some people get a lot more. Personally, tirzepatide got me just over 35%. I never got anywhere near max dose, either, I am what is colloquially referred to as a super responder.
Super responders unite, I'm down 32% and shooting for 36% before I hit maintenance. I only made it about half way up the dosage chart before I had to back off due to losing too rapidly (!!). I took a 3 month maintenance and am back to losing again, it's been life changing.
The other wild thing is general health improvement - all of my bloodwork has gone from questionable to better than standard - closer to ideal values than I would ever expect. Liver values, cholesterol, lipids, blood pressure, everything. I expected them to improve but not to the degree that they have, my LDL has gone down by 60%. Actuarial tables say it's given me another ~10 years of probable lifespan, and even more if you think in healthspan.
Congratulations! It feels great, doesn't it? I was not quite pre-diabetic, but trending in that direction. Blood pressure elevated (but not quite 'high'), cholesterol and stuff in the sketchy zone. But now ... everything is really good! A1C was 4.9 at my most recent test. Cholesterol great, blood pressure ~115/70 every day now, etc. I went from what felt like a slow but steady decline through middle age and now I feel 20 years younger, the future looks not like decrepitude but way more active and exciting.
I also lost 35% body mass, from 318-208 today. It took from September 2024 to beginning of January 2026.
1) amazing, I can actually do things now. I didn’t realize how much I was resting and just not doing anything around the house. I managed to do my work with stimulants but that’s about it.
2) I did a scan and am currently around 110% for with 100% being the baseline for the average male my age, for my muscle mass. I did lose more muscle mass in the 230-210 loss than most of the previous, but I think that’s because I couldn’t ride my bike everywhere as it’s winter time. I had to chug protein shakes while losing weight and do physical therapy for a few body parts, especially my hip and my shoulders as they were easy to hurt. Going to the gym regularly solved this long term.
3) I guess I answered question 2
4) I’m now 27.1 BMI, although my percent body fat is only 18.9%, so I’m not concerned about the number since I have access to a body scanner and can see I’m fine. My visceral fat levels have dropped below concerning levels, which is great.
I also sleep way better, and the heartburn I thought was just a part of life went from “literally every day” to “once or twice a year, and only if I do something I shouldn’t have”.
I was also way more aggressive about just going to the dose and hit 15mg in April of 2025, and have stayed there. I might go for another 10 pounds mostly out of vanity.
> the heartburn I thought was just a part of life went from “literally every day” to “once or twice a year, and only if I do something I shouldn’t have”.
I feel this, too. I was on Prilosec indefinitely, gastroenterologist said I have a mild hiatal hernia and that I'll probably be stuck on PPIs forever. But after losing a lot of weight, I was able to switch to occasional Pepcid instead, with Prilosec temporarily if I get tolerant to the Pepcid. The hernia won't heal itself, but taking the pressure off has really reduced the GERD symptoms.
1. I feel wonderful. Things that were hard are now easy, exercise is invigorating instead of exhausting.
2. I have not. Considered it, but locally the scans are expensive and I could not convince myself what I'd do differently if I knew the numbers. My goals would stay the same.
3. I lift weights, but there's no way around it, losing a lot of weight means caloric deficit and I have definitely lost some mass. I'm trying to establish a slight caloric surplus now combined with a heavier focus on lifting-for-growth to see if I can claw back some of what I've lost. I got big enough at my largest (and I am just over 50 years old, which does not help) that now I have a little bit of loose skin on my belly, thighs, and upper arms ... I'm hoping that if I can regain some muscle that I can alleviate much of that. Otherwise I'll get a surgeon to do it.
4. Currently at 25.2. Could lose some more, but happy enough where I'm at and my test results are spectacular now, so I am no longer targeting further weight loss. I still weigh myself but I am now refocusing my definition for success in how I look and feel.
Not the original guy, but down 32%, for a point of comparison:
1) Amazing, like being a decade and a half younger
2) Not before, planning one in the next couple months, but I use skinfold and impedance and they say I've dropped from about 48% to ~20% as I've dropped from 272 to 186, lean mass seems maybe 5kg lower than I started with? Less lean mass loss than I expected.
3) Weight bearing exercise and medium-high protein intake (>80g/d)
4) Per above, starting BMI 37.9 -> ending BMI 25.9
Your stats are very similar. I started at something like 274 (though my overall highest point ever was 284 a couple years ago) and now I'm down to 181. It's a huge difference, as you say it's like being 15-20 years younger. Life changing.
To add my own anecdata, it took me a bit over a year (September 2024 to December 2025) to lose the weight. I averaged about 1.5 pounds a week consistently.
As you lose weight, your body needs fewer calories to run. That “needed amount” keeps dropping with your size, until it eventually equals what you’re eating on the medication. At that point you’re no longer in a deficit, so weight loss slows or stops.
That is true but requires some extra assumptions to explain why people don't keep losing weight - because the strongest influence on most people's appetite in the short run is how much of a deficit or surplus they're currently in. Thus as TDEE drops, so does hunger.
In "setpoint theory" there's an additional hunger drive based on whether you are below or above a given level of adiposity - your "setpoint". This is often given as an explanation for why people can't keep weight off, and is the sort of thing you'd need to posit to explain why people on GLP-1 inhibitors can't as easily get to lower levels of adiposity.
Lossy and lossless are essentially fundamentally the same actually. All state of the art lossy compressors use arithmetic coding as an example and they still do prediction. Eg. your favourite video codecs predict not only the next bit in the 2D frame, but also the next bit when modelling past frames (becomes a 3D cube of data at that point) and they also do things like motion prediction of individual objects in frame to help make a better prediction. They all use arithmetic encoders to encode the data.
Where the lossy part comes in is the point at which humans notice/don't notice data being thrown away. Got a bit that was waaay out of line in the prediction and going to cost you 10bits to correct? Perhaps to humans it doesn't matter? Can we throw it away? This throwing away of data is often done before the prediction+compression stage (eg. maybe quantizing the color space to 8bits from 32bits?) but from there on it's the same thing.
To simplify: lossy compression = lossless compression + a perception model that can tell you what aspect of the data you can safely toss away without anyone noticing.
Thanks! That's really enlightening. Maybe this can help me settle a question I've had. If I have 4k video and I want a smaller file size (but suppose I still have a 4k tv), I always felt like I should get better quality at that file size by compressing it further than by reducing the resolution. Rather than deciding for myself what data to throw away, why not let the compression algorithm do it?
Lowering the resolution to match the typical TV resolutions is sensible but beyond that trusting the codec is always the better way. The codecs will adaptively compress portions of the video differently. The top left area that's in shadow for the next 30seconds? Maybe that areas effective resolution can be lowered? Etc. They can do things like this!
If you change the resolution or color space of the entire file you do that without consideration to where the extra details might have been needed.
So resolution should match typical output resolutions exactly and from there it's all on the codec.
I think most questions on polymarket use order books now. But they used to use AMMs (where people bet against polymarket) and their FAQ says some questions still use them
I do stuff in my free time now that would have been a full time job a year ago. Accomplishing in months what would have taken years. (And doing in days what would have taken weeks.) I'm talking about actually built-out products with a decent amount of code and features, not basic prototypes. I feel like the vibe is "put up or shut up", so check out my bio for one example.
I think your logic goes wrong because you assume that more productivity implies less desire for engineers. But now engineers are maybe 2x or 5x more productive than before. So that makes them more attractive to hire than before. It's not like there was some fixed pool of work to be done and you just had to hire enough to exhaust the pool. It's like if new pickaxes were invented that let your gold miners dig 5x more gold. You'd see an explosion in gold miners, not a reduction. For another example, I spend all my free time coding now because I can do so much now. I get so much more result for the same effort, that it makes sense to put more effort in.
First thing I got was “browser not supported” on mobile. Then I visited the website on desktop and tested languages I’m fluent in and found immediate problems with all of them.
The voices in Portuguese are particular inexcusable, using the Portuguese flag with Brazilian voices; the accents are nothing alike and it’s not uncommon for native speakers of one to have difficulty understanding the other in verbal communication.
The knowledge assessments were subpar and didn’t seem to do anything; the words it tested almost all started with “a” and several are just the masculine/feminine variants. Then, even after I confirmed I knew every word, it still showed me some of those in the learning process, including incredibly basic ones like “I”, or “the”.
The website is something, and I very much appreciate you appear to be trying to build a service which respects the user, but I wouldn’t in good conscience recommend it to anyone. It feels like you have a particular disdain for Duolingo-style apps (I don’t blame you!) but there is so much more out there to explore in language learning.
Haha, thanks for checking it out! I really appreciate the feedback.
> First thing I got was “browser not supported” on mobile.
Yeah, I use some APIs that were only implemented in Safari on iOS 26. Kind of annoying but I use Android so I didn't realize until too late. I should fix it, but it's not a priority given the numerous other things that need improvement (as you noticed!)
> The voices in Portuguese are particular inexcusable, using the Portuguese flag with Brazilian voices; the accents are nothing alike and it’s not uncommon for native speakers of one to have difficulty understanding the other in verbal communication.
That's good feedback, thanks! I only added Portuguese this weekend (https://github.com/yaptown/yap/pull/73) so it's definitely still very alpha (as noted on the website :P )
> The knowledge assessments were subpar and didn’t seem to do anything; the words it tested almost all started with “a” and several are just the masculine/feminine variants.
Thanks, will fix this tonight. The placement test was just added last week (https://github.com/yaptown/yap/pull/72) so there are still some kinks to work out.
> Then, even after I confirmed I knew every word, it still showed me some of those in the learning process, including incredibly basic ones like “I”, or “the”.
Yeah, the logic doesn't really work for people who already know every word. It tries to show words in the following order (descending): probability_of_knowledge * ln(frequency). But if you already know every word, probability_of_knowledge is the same for every word and the ln(frequency) is the only one remaining, meaning you just get the most common words. I'll add a warning to the site for people who are too advanced for the app's dictionary size – as you pointed out, it's not a good UX.
> there is so much more out there to explore in language learning
There is! I usually recommend pimsleur to people. My hope is just for my app to be a useful supplement.
> It's not like there was some fixed pool of work to be done and you just had to hire enough to exhaust the pool.
I'm my opinion you are failing to consider other bottlenecks, a la the theory of constraints.
An analogy: Imagine you have a widget factory that requires 3 machines, executed in sequence, to produce one widget.
Now imagine one of those machines gets 2x-5x more efficient. What will you do? Buy more of the faster machines? Of course not! Maybe you'll scale up by buying more of the slower machines (which are now your bottleneck) so they can match the output of the faster one, but that's only if you can acquire the raw material inputs fast enough to make use of them, and also that you can sell the output fast enough to not end up with a massive unsold inventory.
Bringing this back to software engineering: there are other processes in the software development lifecycle besides writing code -- namely gathering requirements, testing with users (getting feedback), and deployment / operations. And human coordination across these processes is hard, and hard to scale with agents.
These other aspects are much harder to scale (for now, at least) with agents. This is the core reason why agentic development will lead to fewer developers -- because you just don't need as many developers to deliver the same amount of development velocity.
The same logic explains (at least in part) why US companies don't simply continue hiring more and more outsourced developers. At a certain point, more raw development velocity isn't helpful because you're limited by other constraints.
On the other hand, agentic development DOES mean a boon to solo developers, who can MUCH more easily scale just themselves. It's much easier to coordinate between the product team, the development team, the ops team, and the customer support team when all the teams are in the same person's head.
I "just" created a real-time strategy game before christmas because I could have Claude writing all the code and test it itself. It wrote the spec too, by me telling it to plan out a game "a bit like X but with A, B, C features instead".
It works. It's playable. I might put it online some-time when I get a chance.
[EDIT: My involvement apart from the code-skimming mentioned below was mostly play-testing after Claude had "play-tested", and giving it feedback on what to add or change]
My best estimate from having written much simpler games before was that it churned out many months worth of working code in days. I've not written a line of it - just skimmed some code and told it to make a few architectural refactors.
> I think your logic goes wrong because you assume that more productivity implies less desire for engineers.
Yes, this is the central fallacy. The reality is, we've been massively bottlenecked on software productivity ever since the concept of software existed. Only a tiny tiny fraction of all the software that could usefully be written has been. The limitation has always been the pool of developers that could do the work and the friction in getting those people to be able to do it.
What it is confounded by however is the short term effect which I think is absolutely drying up the market for new junior software devs. It's going to take a while for this to work through.
"Built out products" like you're earning money on this? Having actual users, working through edge cases, browser quirks, race conditions, marketing, communication - the real battle testing 5% that's actually 95% of the work that in my view is impossible for the LLM? Because yeah the easy part is to create a big boilerplate app and have it sit somewhere with 2 users.
The hard part is day to day operations for years with thousands of edge cases, actual human feedback and errors, knocking on 1000 doors etc.
Otherwise you're just doing slot machine coding on crack, where you work and work and work one some amazing thing then it goes nowhere - and now you haven't even learned anything because you didn't code so the sideproject isn't even education anymore.
> "Built out products" like you're earning money on this?
No, I'm not interested in monetizing stuff, I make enough money from $dayjob.
> Having actual users, working through edge cases, browser quirks, race conditions, marketing, communication - the real battle testing 5% that's actually 95% of the work that in my view is impossible for the LLM?
Yes, all of those. Obviously an LLM won't make a tiktok ad for me, but it can help with all the other stuff. For example, you mentioned browser quirks. I ran into a bug in safari's OPFS implementation that an LLM was able to help me track down and work around. I also ran into the chrome issue where backdrop effects don't work if any of the element's parents have nonzero transparency, and claude helped me find all the cases where that happened and fix them. Both of these are from working on the app in my bio. It's a language app too, so however many edge cases you think there are, there's more :D
I don't want to give the impression that it was not a lot of work. It was an enormous amount of work. It's just that each step is significantly faster now.
> and now you haven't even learned anything because you didn't code so the sideproject isn't even education anymore.
I read every line. You could pull up the github right now and point to any line of code and I could tell you what it does and why it's there and what will break if you remove or change it.
> What's the point of such a project?
I originally made it because I wanted a tool to help me learn French. It has succeeded in helping my enormously, to the point where I can have short conversations with my french family members now. Others seem to find it useful too.
Right but then you expect way more productivity from those teams. I'm wondering where that is.
I find when I'm in a domain I'm not an expert in I am way more productive with the AI tools. With no knowledge of Java or Spring I was able to have AI build out a server in like 10 minutes, when it would have taken me hours to figure out the docs and deployment etc. But like, if I knew Java and Spring I could have built that same thing in 10 minutes anyways. That's not nothing, but also not generalisable to all of software development, not even close. Plus you miss out on actually learning the thing.
I mean at work people are slowed down by management and getting alignment is even slower than before. As PMs and execs keep asking more to be done in the same-ish time, we are getting slow cooked.
Extra productivity at work is not being used at fixing bugs as well.
Yeah work, despite management's best intentions, is really failing AI by being that much relatively slower than engineering potential now. It's a bummer.
I suspect it might have been motivated by antitrust concerns, but safari is really not that bad. Check out Interop 2025: https://wpt.fyi/interop-2025
They generally are pretty caught up on features. They have webgpu, they support the web notifications API (once a PWA is installed), lots of stuff. My main gripe is that they make it too hard to install PWAs, but we're still waiting for an actual API for that. (Maybe in 2027? [0])
> And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement)
Safari is the worst browser by far, especially on iOS. Apple also does things their own way, ignoring standards, so that I have to have a real actual iPhone to debug their platform-specific problems, especially around touch interactions.
>Can you give an example?
Web Bluetooth API, and lots of others. My product could use bluetooth but we're forced to work around Apple's Safari limitations and use Wifi instead, which drains the battery faster. We do not want to write a specific app for iOS (which costs us money to build and maintain), which then allows Apple to extort us for a percentage of sales through the app. Bluetooth would be the better option, but Wifi works although is a bit more cumbersome to deal with. So sorry Apple fans, you have to use wifi with our product because Apple reasons.
I am going to open a bottle of champagne when the DOJ finally forces Apple to allow other browsers on iOS.
Personally my feel is Safari at least isn't dead in the water any more, does ship some stuff. It's much better than 2 years ago. 4 years ago it was a travesty.
But there's still all sorts of wonkiness they just makes Safari non viable. If you don't PWA install, your storage gets cleared alarmingly quickly. If you do install it's still cleared wicked fast. Notifications seem to have incredibly unreliable delivery issues and require PWA installs to work at all. The features are closer to parity than before but the base functionality is still sabotaged deeply. 'The user is secure' with Apple is amazing doublespeak (the second meaning being securely in Apple's pocket with no where to go).
It's worth noting that Interop participants meet and decide via unanimous consent what they are going to work on each year. The anti-trust case against Apple would be far stronger if they didn't show up & find some stuff to work on, to agree to. And with apologies as I break out the tin foil hat, showing up also gives them some leverage to shape what doesn't get worked on too.
Interop 2025 is a subset of web features, but Apple gets a veto on which features get included in each Interop round, and vetoes heavily. It doesn't reflect interoperability in general. Safari also consistently starts out the worst each year, and improves the slowest.
They don't support notifications correctly, they have a semi-broken implementation. Only a subset of sites will work, even though they'll work perfectly on Chrome or Firefox or even minor browsers. Even if you put the site on the homescreen.
>> And Apple purposely will never implement lots of APIs that only their native apps allow (which other browsers implement)
>Can you give an example?
Web Bluetooth, Web USB, Web NFC, Web Serial...
Of course Apple will uphold its usual charade to claim that it's about pRiVacy & sEcuRiTy to maintain plausible deniability. They could easily implement it and keep it disabled by default, such that users could make the conscious choice to enable it or keep it disabled. Any adequate analysis of Apple's behavior and motivations must mention Apple's conflict of interest, because Apple will be biased against technology that could diminish the value proposition of "native" apps which Apple has been taxing so unchallenged for all these years.
Chrome-only non-standards. Note that Firefox is against these, too.
> Any adequate analysis of Apple's behavior and motivations must mention Apple's conflict of interest
I've yet to see an adequate analysis that doesn't pretend that anything Chrome shits, sorry, ships is immediately a standard that must absolutely be implemented by everyone immediately.
You're right that Firefox also opposes some of these specific implementations in its current form, and that Google often rushes features. However, that doesn't diminish Apple's conflict of interest at all, so sometimes their arguments happen to align with reality just as a broken clock is correct twice a day. Apple applies many double standards e.g. they allow native apps to access these hardware features (where they happen to collect a 30% tax) but block the Web from doing the same (where they collect 0%). If privacy was the only concern, they would work on a safe standard, but instead they block the capability entirely to ensure that any of the App Store's rivals remain constrained and thus inferior such that the App Store's revenue isn't threatened.
> You're right that Firefox also opposes some of these specific implementations in its current form, and that Google often rushes features. However, that doesn't diminish Apple's conflict of interest at all
Funny how you agree that Firefox opposes these non-standards, and how Google rushes things. And immediately turn around and basically say "no-no-no, Apple is to blame and Safari (and, by extension Firefox) must absolutely implement these non-standard features from Chrome".
The rest of demagoguery is irrelevant.
BTW literally the moment Firefox relented and implemented WebMIDI they had originally opposed, they immediately ran into tracking/fingerprinting attempts using WebMIDI that Chrome just couldn't care less about.
>Funny how you agree that Firefox opposes these non-standards, and how Google rushes things. And immediately turn around and basically say "no-no-no, Apple is to blame and Safari (and, by extension Firefox) must absolutely implement these non-standard features from Chrome".
There is nothing "funny" about me acknowledging facts, that's what a reasonable person should always do, try it. What's not funny though, is how you're butchering and misrepresenting my arguments to such a gross degree. I've never stated that everybody "must implement these non-standard features from Chrome", instead I've made a much more nuanced argument about how Apple's conflict of interest is motivating them to reject entire feature sets for competing technology instead of helping to implement a safe standard, which is indicative of their bad faith motivations. That anti-competitive strategy has been essential for Apple in collecting billions in app taxes by systematically hobbling any competition before it can emerge.
>BTW literally the moment Firefox relented and implemented WebMIDI they had originally opposed, they immediately ran into tracking/fingerprinting attempts using WebMIDI that Chrome just couldn't care less about.
So? Just as native apps give users certain freedoms that can have problematic aspects, web apps should have _equal rights_ and be able to play on a level playing field. The choice and freedom should be the users' and not that of Apple's finance division. None of this gives Apple the right to uphold its anti-competitive strategy with its corporate double speak. And the fact that you're so hyperfocused on specifics while failing to grasp the broader argument, so you can cheerlead for Apple's anti-competitive behavior, is revealing a clear bias.
> Apple's conflict of interest is motivating them to reject entire feature sets for competing technology instead of helping to implement a safe standard
It literally is "everyone must immediately implement anything Chrome shits out". You don't even accept the fact that both Safari and Firefox team reject the entire premise on the same grounds.
Nope. "They must work on better standards for these features that Chrome ships".
> The choice and freedom should be the users' and not that of Apple's finance division.
Funny how in the paragraph you respond to I didn't mention Apple once.
> And the fact that you're so hyperfocused on specifics while failing to grasp the broader argument
There's no broader argument. You literally dismiss Firefox as irrelevant [1], assume that whatever Chrome ships is good, and assumes that Apple is both a bad actor driven entirely by money an must implement whatever Chrome comes up with (under the guise of "should work to implement a safe standard").
It literally is "everyone must immediately not implement anything that cuts into Apple's bottom line"
Apple has veto power over what becomes web standards now. If they didn't abuse that power, and also forbid other browser engines on iOS, then there wouldn't be a problem. They abuse their power in a way that hurts everyone but Apple, and the DOJ took notice.
You say Firefox doesn't implement the same APIs that Apple won't as proof of something, but Opera and other browsers do implement those APIs, so that really cancells out whatever argument you thought you had.
Back in the day, Microsoft invented XMLHTTPRequest, and if Apple had veto power over web standards back then, the web might still be "Web 1.0", hypothetically speaking.
But now Apple can block progress in web browsers now, and the DOJ will likely prove that they are abusing their position to the detriment of everyone that uses a web browser, so Apple can make a few more dollars from their app store.
It should not be so difficult for anyone to understand.
>It literally is "everyone must immediately implement anything Chrome shits out". You don't even accept the fact that both Safari and Firefox team reject the entire premise on the same grounds.
It isn't factually and certainly not "literally" that. I've explicitly stated that the problem isn't the rejection of the specific implementation in its current form, but the wholesale refusal of features to deny rival technology equal rights, instead of helping to implement a safe standard. That is evidence of Apple's bad faith motivation to hobble competing technology in favor of their App Store tax funnel. You consistently refuse to understand this and resort to deflecting from and distorting that fact.
>There's no broader argument.
There is, it's the one you've been deflecting and distracting from, because it refutes your biased talking points completely.
No I don't. You're literally making stuff up and ignoring the fact that I have actually even started my response with an acknowledgement of that point: "You're right that Firefox also opposes some of these specific implementations in its current form, and that Google often rushes features. However, that doesn't diminish Apple's conflict of interest at all, so sometimes their arguments happen to align with reality just as a broken clock is correct twice a day." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457938
>and assumes that Apple is both a bad actor driven entirely by money an must implement whatever Chrome comes up with
There is no such assumption, only the fact that Apple has a conflict of interest, which manifests itself in anti-competitive behavior, for which I've provided documented evidence. I've also never stated that they "must implement whatever Chrome comes up with", that's a gross misrepresentation, which you are stubbornly repeating, despite me having refuted it several times now. Your bias in this matter couldn't be more obvious, due to your dedication to distorting any evidence that refutes Apple's propaganda narrative, so you keep blindly repeating the same tired and old talking points despite evidence to the contrary.
> You're literally making stuff up and ignoring the fact that I have actually even started my response with an acknowledgement of that point: "You're right that Firefox also opposes some of these specific implementations in its current form, and that Google often rushes features. However, that doesn't diminish Apple's conflict of interest at all
Rule of the thumb is "nothing you say before 'but' matters". Apple's opposition to Chrome features is not just echoed by Mozilla. It is repeated almost verbatim.
And yet, you completely ignore all that, and go to say "well, Apple is bad, and conflict interest, so Apple must work on a better safe standard for these features". You don't even for a second assume that two of the three browser vendors oppose these features for the same reason. No. Chrome shipped them, so they absolutely must work to implement these features (in some form) because Apple bad or something.
> There is no such assumption,
"the wholesale refusal of features to deny rival technology equal rights, instead of helping to implement a safe standard." Yup. "Whatever Chrome ships must be implemented no matter the cost and despite any opposition for any reason".
> only the fact that Apple has a conflict of interest, which manifests itself in anti-competitive behavior
Which literally has nothing to do with Chrome-only non-standards. Chrome wants them. It's on Chrome to design and implement them safely. Neither Apple nor Mozilla owe them anything regardless of the amount of demagoguery around their decisions. Both Apple and Safari pointed out the issues they have across many discussions. Chrome didn't care.
Safari has multiple issues, that's true. None of them stem from refusing to support every shitty thing that Chrome vomits into the world and calls a standard.
Speaking of "denying rival technology equal rights". Do you know that WebSQL was implemented by Chrome and had approval from Safari, but got killed due to opposition from Mozilla? Did Mozilla "deny rival technology equal rights"? Or perhaps, just perhaps, they had valid concerns that lead to rethinking of the approach?
You can't even come up with proper rebuttal of Mozilla's and Apple's concerns (you don't even know about their concerns to begin with) beyond "but native apps" and diatribes about Apple.
BTW here's Mozilla relenting on just one of the hardware APIs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33995022 (sadly, the twitter account has been locked)/ Original quote: "Just a day after shipping an impl to Firefox Nightly, this is the first discovered case of WebMIDI-fingerprinting... Chrome still allows web developers to enumerate attached MIDI devices without user consent or even a notification, btw."
>Rule of the thumb is "nothing you say before 'but' matters". Apple's opposition to Chrome features is not just echoed by Mozilla. It is repeated almost verbatim.
And yet, you completely ignore all that, and go to say "well, Apple is bad, and conflict interest, so Apple must work on a better safe standard for these features". You don't even for a second assume that two of the three browser vendors oppose these features for the same reason. No. Chrome shipped them, so they absolutely must work to implement these features (in some form) because Apple bad or something.
It's absolutely insane how you keep repeating the exact same argument with no additional information like a bot who is incapable of processing new information, because you can't understand how it has been debunked several times now. You insist on distorting nuanced arguments into gross misrepresentations, because that's the only way you can uphold the illusion that your underhanded Apple propaganda is anything other than a whitewashing of Apple's conflict of interest that motivates every single one of their decisions.
>Which literally has nothing to do with Chrome-only non-standards. Chrome wants them. It's on Chrome to design and implement them safely. Neither Apple nor Mozilla owe them anything regardless of the amount of demagoguery around their decisions. Both Apple and Safari pointed out the issues they have across many discussions. Chrome didn't care.
Your framing around this is absurd, you're the one turning a technical discussion into some team sport where you try to inflate your argument by pretending it's Google vs A&M, when it has been proven that Mozilla accepted new iterations of proposals which you yourself have admitted! This collapses your entire false narrative, since it's evidence that, just because a current implementation is temporary rejected by Mozilla, it is not an eternal rejection similar to Apple's, whose motivations are not guided by (faux) privacy concerns but by fear of losing their App Store dominance and revenue. You however, take this to underhandedly create anti-competitive Apple apologia, where you downplay Apple's conflict of interest by writing your own "Google vs A&M" screenplay.
>Safari has multiple issues, that's true. None of them stem from refusing to support every shitty thing that Chrome vomits into the world and calls a standard.
Wrong. That's a claim which you didn't even bother elaborating on, because if you were to elaborate, it would become clear that your claim is not only wrong, but outright deceptive. Your biased and shallow rhetoric is not a substitute for an actual argument.
>Speaking of "denying rival technology equal rights". Do you know that WebSQL was implemented by Chrome and had approval from Safari, but got killed due to opposition from Mozilla? Did Mozilla "deny rival technology equal rights"? Or perhaps, just perhaps, they had valid concerns that lead to rethinking of the approach?
Irrelevant and misleading. Not every single feature is directly relevant to establishing equal rights for competing technologies, but when Apple realizes that it does, then they fear that it might threaten their App Store's dominance and they act accordingly. None of that diminishes Apple's conflict of interest either, but it makes clear how you're consistently arguing in bad faith to downplay Apple's conflict of interest. No matter how hard you try, you will fail. Apple makes billions from their conflict of interest, so as long as that conflict of interest exists, people have the right to make other people aware how that poisons Apple's motivations in relevant decisions.
>You can't even come up with proper rebuttal of Mozilla's and Apple's concerns (you don't even know about their concerns to begin with) beyond "but native apps" and diatribes about Apple.
Your rhetoric is so vapid and detached from reality, that it feels like I'm arguing with a LLM that loses context and forgets that I refuted that specific narrative ad nauseam. Again, you yourself have admitted to cases where Mozilla initially refused a specific implementation, but later have accepted it. This alone debunks your whole biased narrative. Your entire rhetoric is a constant regurgitation of that single spiel, but you can simply not move on, completely incapable of processing evidence that has debunked it, that's why you fail to realize how hollow and misguided your Apple propaganda is.
>BTW here's Mozilla relenting on just one of the hardware APIs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33995022 (sadly, the twitter account has been locked)/ Original quote: "Just a day after shipping an impl to Firefox Nightly, this is the first discovered case of WebMIDI-fingerprinting... Chrome still allows web developers to enumerate attached MIDI devices without user consent or even a notification, btw."
Amazing, this is exactly what I was referring to above. I swear, you're like a bot who constantly and stubbornly regurgitates the exact same debunked points, regardless of how many times your talking points have been already addressed and refuted. Finally, you do not even realize how that anecdote and precedent you so enthusiastically shared, thinking it would support your narrative, actually undermines and invalidates it. Wonderful.
Are the Chrome features useful? Are they open? If it’s bad for users (e.g. some new ad tracking) or if it’s proprietary and thus expensive to license or reverse engineer that’s one thing, but if it’s not that, then refusing to ever adopt those standards (or to provide their own alternatives) is either foolish NIH syndrome on Apple’s part or it’s greed.
> If it’s bad for users (e.g. some new ad tracking)
Yes
> but if it’s not that, then refusing to ever adopt those standards (or to provide their own alternatives) is either foolish NIH syndrome on Apple’s part or it’s greed.
Firefox gets paid by Google. A lot. Maybe part of their agreement is to not implement some features because it would compete with Chrome. I don't really know, and I don't really care what Firefox does or doesn't do. I only care that Apple does not allow other browsers to use their own browser engines. Opera mobile also implements the APIs I need (on Android). Even MS Edge supports the APIs. Firefox can join Apple in being lame, I don't really care.
"Every browser that doesn't jump when Google says 'jump' is driven by malicious actors and intent that I can't articulate beyond some tin-foil conspiracy theories" is not as good an argument as you think it is
I really don't care what browsers do or don't implement. I only care that Apple doesn't allow other browsers to use their own browser engines on iOS. That's it, that's all, and it also got notice from the DOJ, which is one of many reasons Apple is getting sued by the DOJ.
Until Apple lets other browser engines on iOS, they are behaving like greedy tyrants.
> I really don't care what browsers do or don't implement.
Oh yes, you do. To the point of inventing contract clauses for Firefox.
It's just extremely unfortunate that Safari is now between a rock and a hard place (only because of Apple) as really they are the only web engine of note to withstand "whatever Chrome spits out is standard now"
Please stop this now. You are in breach of several guidelines, notably these ones:
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
I can't fathom how a subthread about browser engines became so toxic. HN is a place for curious conversation and it is only a place where people want to participate because others make the effort to raise the standards rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make this place better not worse.
I mean, @lepton literally wrote this: "Maybe part of their agreement is to not implement some features because it would compete with Chrome" about Firefox. No smearing required.
> Your deceptive rhetoric in defense of Apple's anti-competitive business practices i
I literally say nothing avout Apple's business practices. All I'm talking are a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards that people on HN pretend are standards and claim that everyone must immediately implement them
>I mean, @lepton literally wrote this: "Maybe part of their agreement is to not implement some features because it would compete with Chrome" about Firefox. No smearing required.
Then you should have been more specific, but that is still not even remotely a conspiracy. It is a completely valid potential thesis. Thus, your attempt to hastily dismiss it as "conspiracy" is factually an act of smearing.
>I literally say nothing avout Apple's business practices. All I'm talking are a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards that people on HN pretend are standards and claim that everyone must immediately implement them
Your diatribes and foul language against the Chrome dev team have been in constant service of justifying Apple's actions at all cost, while outright ignoring and downplaying their evident conflict of interest. Furthermore, you need to stop with these gross misrepresentations of "HN pretend are standards and claim that everyone must immediately implement them" which is a distortion, that you keep forcefully putting in people's mouths, despite many people calling you out on it numerous times throughout this thread.
> but that is still not even remotely a conspiracy. It is a completely valid potential thesis
I dunno, man. It's claiming a literal conspiracy between Google and Firefox to make Firefox worse. In reality, it's an outlandish proposition because Google already holds such high market share for Chrome, they need Firefox as a viable competitor to avoid antitrust concerns. The idea that they'd contractually (or behind-closed-doors) engage in hobbling Firefox is fantasy territory -- literally conspiracy theorizing. Because of the huge legal and financial risks that would entail if ever discovered. So, when something's an actual conspiracy theory, it's right to call it out as such.
> Your diatribes and foul language against the Chrome dev team... you need to stop with these gross misrepresentations...
I'm Ctrl+F-ing here through troupo's comments and not seeing anything like that. Their points seem perfectly reasonable, that Firefox also doesn't implement these features, and therefore Apple's actions might be very reasonably explained as having the same genuine reasons.
On the other hand you're the one saying things like:
> Apple will uphold its usual charade to claim that it's about pRiVacy & sEcuRiTy
> Your bias in this matter couldn't be more obvious, due to your dedication to distorting any evidence that refutes Apple's propaganda narrative
> It's absolutely insane how you keep repeating the exact same argument with no additional information like a bot who is incapable of processing new information
> that's the only way you can uphold the illusion that your underhanded Apple propaganda is anything other than a whitewashing of Apple's conflict of interest that motivates every single one of their decisions
> Your rhetoric is so vapid and detached from reality
> It's incredible how you insist on being so obnoxious
> That reads like an #ad that Apple would pay for
It looks like you're the one imagining conspiracies in Apple's behavior -- "that motivates every single one of their decisions" -- and attacking others in your own "diatribes". And you're the one using incredibly insulting and inappropriate language. It seems to be your comments that have a lot of inappropriate tone for HN, which is presumably why I see a lot of them downvoted. Maybe you should think about whether this is really the best way to engage here, maybe re-read the HN guidelines?
> That's why you didn't even bother discussing the evidence I've provided
I don't engage in argument with people who accuse me of having another account. If you want to have productive discussions on HN, I suggest you rethink the way you go about them.
This is false and it's against the guidelines to accuse people of shilling/astroturfing/coordinated activity. You've posted enough in this thread, and the thread is days old. Nobody is seeing these comments other than us moderators. Please stop.
Rollout should be within a minute. Let's say you ship one thing a day and 1/3 things involve a backwards-incompatible api change. That's 1 minute of breakage per 3 days. Aka it's broken 0.02% of the time. Life is too short to worry about such things
You might have old clients for several hours, days or forever(mobile). This has to be taken into account, for example by aggressively forcing updates which can be annoying for users, especially if their hardware doesn't support updating.
Why is that controversial? Is it expected that the majority of shareholder proposals would be things that you would be criticized for not voting for? It's a bit like saying that someone voted against 91% of bills in congress. That could be good if they were bad bills!
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