So you’re just reimplementing the current model but with the extra layer of a browser in between.

No, I’m removing the layer of the native code that launches whatever flavor of Electron they’re running under the hood in favor of the browser and webview that’s already installed on your device (or whatever other one you’re interested in switching to).

Installing a PWA is the same as installing a native app, except instead of running it directly you also have to have a browser installed to run it.

…which literally every single mobile device already has. Seriously, you can’t uninstall webview if you wanted to.

Plus, you only have to install one browser for the entire system, Come on. You can’t honestly believe that the dozens of reproduced copies of the same codebases that live on your phone right now are a good use of your phone’s storage or memory.

It’s adding a significant amount of complexity […]

I don’t know what complexity you think it’s adding. It’s removing a bunch of native code, and replacing it with web-standard code that (in the case of most apps) was already written for the native app anyway, or at least was written for the web app.

[…] for no good reason.

Ever wanted to mod an app? If it was a web app running in a browser, you could. Would you like to use ad blockers on the YouTube app? Or use a userscript to hide stories about a particular person? Or automate the function of one of your apps? With native code you can’t. With web apps you can. Web apps are more accessible, they adhere to published standards, they’re not as heavy on your operating system, they’re more resistant to privacy-siphoning attacks and surveillance, they’re more easily able to share code…and, to be honest, they’re also easier to develop. The only reason for corpos not to do this is because it gives the user power that they would rather be able to sell to the user instead.

Browsers are huge attack targets.

Security is not improved by forcing users to switch to native apps. For one thing, most companies’ apps already are web apps; if they’re not already hardened, wrapping them in native code and putting them in the Play Store or App Store won’t magically make them more secure, because decompiling native apps and sniffing API endpoints is still a thing. Also, it could be argued that browsers are more resistant to security issues, since you can patch them once and mitigate certain vulnerabilities in every app without waiting for developers to ship a fix.

I’m also an American. And I am frankly livid about the tariffs.

Oh no? We’ve had browser storage and cached web apps for twenty years now. The technology exists and could be improved, if we stopped forcing everything to be a native app.

I mean, honestly, most “native” apps are webviews displaying cached content. Clearly we can make it happen, it just needs to be more discoverable and have smoother integration.

Oh, to be clear, I don’t think the US has been dethroned on the world stage in terms of being the largest single elephant in the room. It’s just that the weight between the US elephant and all the other elephants (combined) has evened out quite a lot.

These tariffs might well do a lot to swing that even further.

Or we could give up on native apps and just use a browser for everything. In a lot of ways I wish we would.

You’re very kind, thank you.

They will if the conservative media machine falls apart and they start actually seeing reality.

It’s possible…someday…maybe…

Yeah, the US has a lot of economic weight to swing around, but the world has also spend the decade (!) since Trump was first elected finding other business outlets and generally needing the US less, meaning that the relative weight of the US and the rest of the world has normalized significantly. The EU is stronger, China is stronger, Canada is stronger. The US withdrawing from the world economy would hurt everyone, but it would hurt the US a whole lot more than everyone else.

He failed to sell alcohol and beef to Americans

The only thing harder to do is to fail at selling sub-prime mortgages before the 2008 recession

which he also did

Ok. The bottom line is, either it “won’t do all that much”-- meaning it won’t affect prices, it won’t affect the economy, it’ll be basically useless–or it will be disastrously expensive for ordinary people. There is no other option. The “disastrously expensive for ordinary people” is the only thing that will cause any amount of the change Trump promises: it’s the mechanism by which the plan operates.

There is no option where companies just eat the tariff costs, or countries pay them. Maybe a few scattered companies and countries do, but by and large, not a chance.

Every country in the world needs all the other countries more than all of the other countries need it. There’s just no real leverage, because we’re all interconnected; you can snip one country out, and it’ll slightly hurt everyone, but it’ll wreck the country that was snipped out.

Let’s just say this happens a lot in my house.

I need to get on that, I guess.

125% agreed. I was responding only to “If it’s clogged, you’d know beforehand when you look in the bowl.” I think there’s potentially an engineering solution–a fluid dynamics engineering solution–but definitely not an app.

Oh, absolutely. I was responding only to “If it’s clogged, you’d know beforehand when you look in the bowl.”

An app for a toilet is a stupid idea, full stop.

They can still have both. A foot pedal for those who want it, a standard handle for those who don’t or can’t. In fact, retrofitting existing handle-flush toilets to add foot pedals could make a lot of sense.

Yeah, not to mention, adding any sort of electronic components to the thing would be dicey at best. A lot of bathrooms don’t even have power outlets anywhere near the toilet.

I’d prefer some sort of pressure-activated valve or something, but this is an engineering challenge that’s beyond my meager skills.

I have a wifi-enabled garage door opener whose manufacturer discontinued the Google Home connection for so that you have to use their app and see their Amazon or Walmart ads. I also have a wifi-enabled alarm system whose manufacturer apparently doesn’t care about Matter integration or whatever. So leaving the house in my car requires the use of two different apps (three if I also need to turn off lights).

In actuality I just use the physical buttons. But there was a time that I had a beautiful dream of getting a smart lock and setting my house up to lock the doors, close the garage door, and arm the alarm when I pushed a button in the car–and, more importantly, undo all of those things in reverse when I got home.

Toilets can appear to have flushed fully, but still have…material…stuck in the U-bend that hasn’t completely evacuated the toilet. A subsequent flush won’t work, even though the water in the bowl is clean.

Ask me how I know.

That said, this could almost certainly be better-solved in other ways. Maybe by preventing the tank from refilling if there’s still something in the u-bend (then you’d know it needed attention because there’d be no water in it)?

Toilets can appear to have flushed fully, but still have…material…stuck in the U-bend that hasn’t completely evacuated the toilet. A subsequent flush won’t work, even though the water in the bowl is clean.

Ask me how I know.

more sanitary

Foot pedal flush really needs to become a thing.