> Sure, there is still and will always be a market for larger glass and more pixels, lower noise levels, ergonomics etc. - but why in 2024 GPS, Wi-Fi, uploading to Instagram and similar functions are not standard in ALL cameras is beyond my understanding.
Specifically on uploading to social media and having apps that depend on external APIs — maybe it's because putting Android on such devices and having to constantly keep the social media apps updated "dates" the camera and forces consumers into an upgrade cycle because of software bloat.
I've noticed that for some reason, cheap Android phones tend to objectively slow down over the years even without software or app upgrades — as if the cheap Mediatek chipsets and RAM are designed to eventually degrade. Something similar happened to some of the wi-fi connected printers I have owned, which slowly become sluggish and unusable even after factory resets.
On the other hand, I can still use my 16 year old full-frame Nikon D700 DSLR purchased in 2008 very, very well. Even back then, it supported a GPS attachment, though it's utter trash compared to in-phone AGPS these days.
>> I was routinely refused service, despite it being illegal to do so
> Which years it was? I have never experienced that over course of last 15 years
Not the parent, but I've seen this a lot. Taxi drivers "changing shifts" at Clarke Quay, Orchard, and other popular nightlife places, picking and choosing where they want to drive to since they provided all the demand pre-Grab/Uber.
> Well, WordPress made it 20+ years without a huge fuss over the fact that everything was controlled by Matt. And it only happened now because Matt himself blew things up!
I think most people in the community were willing to overlook Matt's previous petty, vindictive behaviour (e.g. Thesis, Wix, Pantheon, GoDaddy, Tumblr) since he's fairly charismatic in his writing, and was otherwise mostly benevolent.
It also helps that at least one of those (GoDaddy) has one of the worst reputations for a tech company out there.
I don't know if they still do it, but GoDaddy was notorious for just "early buying" domain names if you use their domain search engine (or any affiliated ones; it's why you really shouldn't search for domain names on random sites, GoDaddy controls a lot of domain search engines) to ensure you can't see if they're the cheapest option. Matt being upset with GoDaddy is easy to overlook because they're just plain awful already and it's a sort of "we don't agree with that in specific, but GoDaddy is a genuine problem so like, it's easy to overlook".
By contrast, WP Engine is just another general purpose hosting provider. I haven't found much evidence of them being particularly worse to their customers outside of their funding being a bad long-term choice. A lot of Matt's problems with WPE are well... Matt's problem and he can't seem to grasp that to everyone else, his smearing just makes him look like a petty dick.
> Is it possible for some clever business person to start a non-profit, amass a bundle of money, convert to for-profit, and then own the bundle of money to do with as they see fit?
Not a lawyer, but as the Ghost Foundation is not a charity, the trustees can currently do whatever they want with the money.
Their about page claims non profit, Wikipedia and others say registered in Singapore but I don’t see anything under “ghost” as a society [0] or as a charity [1]. For something that has “believe in being transparent” in the about page, the lack of any registration number or a link to the touted constitution is odd.
> Their about page claims non profit, Wikipedia and others say registered in Singapore but I don’t see anything under “ghost” as a society [0] or as a charity [1].
Ghost Foundation is a Company Limited by Guarantee [1] in Singapore. The UEN is 201605007D.
As I wrote above, it's not a charity, and therefore doesn't need to have charitable goals.
Seems like it’s filings and meetings are done about this time of year. [0] The move to Singapore is super interesting, esp with dsivers input. Thanks for linking to it.
> Maintainers reading this might say, "oh, great, not only are people going to open up spurious issues and feel entitled to my time, but you're asking them to be a peanut gallery trying to hold me accountable to democratic mechanisms. What a pain in the ass." This is a solid objection which I do not have a good response to.
As someone who's interested in community dynamics like these, I think pure drive-by democracy wouldn't work (I dislike bikeshedding [1]), but a system where people who've contributed either money or quantifiable effort over a recent period of time in exchange for voting rights to elect administrators might.
"A recent period of time" is important, as communities don't really appreciate some old founder-type who's not active in a project anymore trying to use their clout to feed their ego.
Saying their names and getting all feely wont help them with their current, quite difficult, financial situation. It should have been launching a crowdsource campaign instead
Specifically on uploading to social media and having apps that depend on external APIs — maybe it's because putting Android on such devices and having to constantly keep the social media apps updated "dates" the camera and forces consumers into an upgrade cycle because of software bloat.
I've noticed that for some reason, cheap Android phones tend to objectively slow down over the years even without software or app upgrades — as if the cheap Mediatek chipsets and RAM are designed to eventually degrade. Something similar happened to some of the wi-fi connected printers I have owned, which slowly become sluggish and unusable even after factory resets.
On the other hand, I can still use my 16 year old full-frame Nikon D700 DSLR purchased in 2008 very, very well. Even back then, it supported a GPS attachment, though it's utter trash compared to in-phone AGPS these days.
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