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Zohran and the Short Link

iamwillwang.com

31–40 of 237 posts

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#31

The problem with these short pithy urls is that their lifetime is limited - there's only so many initiative names and they're going to collide and be removed and replaced. Cool uris don't change[1]. Short, readable uris are great but they should be merely redirecs, and the mapping should be version controlled and exposed to the public as an immutable history. [1] https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

The lifetime of the programs they link to is also limited. There's no earthly reason, when running a website in 2026, to care what Tim Berners-Lee thought about the aesthetics and purposes of URLs in 1998. It's a nice nostalgia session, but "cool urls don't change" is ironically short-sighted and has lead to well-meaning dolts embedding GUIDs and other such constructs into them. The entire concept was posited prior to the advent of on-screen phone keyboards, which make typing long heavily-punctuated urls a pain in the ass. There are a thousand reasons to salute this document and let it recede into the mists of time.

A municipal website should be useful to the citizens who want to use it. This is a great example of doing something useful with the web.

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specific policies do you disagree with out of curiosity

Government subsidized groceries seems like something that was already solved by food stamps. Having the government run entire grocery stores at a loss seems like a worse implementation of the same thing. I guess it's nice for the voters who are too rich to qualify for food stamps, but in that case it would have been equivalent and simpler to just make the food stamps more universal (remove means testing). If you real…

I have my suspicions about what’s going to happen. I worry the demand is going to be too high to realistically deal with. But dammit am I excited to see someone try something a bit different to address a very obvious need.

State-run stores aren’t really that special. A bunch of states have state-run liquor stores. The military runs commissaries. These don’t elicit much fear-mongering or attention on cable news for some reason.

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#33
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government subsidized groceries seems like something that was already solved by food stamps. Having the government run entire grocery stores at a loss seems like a worse implementation of the same thing. I guess it's nice for the voters who are too rich to qualify for food stamps, but in that case it would have been equivalent and simpler to just make the food stamps more universal (remove means testing). If you real…

I have my suspicions about what’s going to happen. I worry the demand is going to be too high to realistically deal with. But dammit am I excited to see someone try something a bit different to address a very obvious need. State-run stores aren’t really that special. A bunch of states have state-run liquor stores. The military runs commissaries. These don’t elicit much fear-mongering or attention on cable news for so…

Exactly what problem does it solve that food stamps cannot solve more simply?

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#34
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works on my machine. Didn't see any grammar errors.

[flagged]

You didn't even specify which link had the errors; 'the first one I managed to make work' is something known only to you. Complaining about a problem while not providing any hints on how to reproduce it is not a great way to win friends and influence people.

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specific policies do you disagree with out of curiosity

Government subsidized groceries seems like something that was already solved by food stamps. Having the government run entire grocery stores at a loss seems like a worse implementation of the same thing. I guess it's nice for the voters who are too rich to qualify for food stamps, but in that case it would have been equivalent and simpler to just make the food stamps more universal (remove means testing). If you real…

Isn't the issue a lack of grocery stores in those areas? How would food stamps help with that? The issue isn't really affordability but rather absence of stores. It might not be profitable to run a store there but that's the point of a city run store in this case.

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#36

This makes a lot of sense if public participation is actually desired. Links need to be short, snappy, and memorable so they're easy to either type into a smartphone on the spot or be recalled at some point later when one has a spare moment. This kind of link is also more likely to spread via word of mouth. Traditional link shorteners only meet one of those requirements. Random strings aren't going to be remembered a…

At least some traditional link shorterners let you choose the string.

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#37
post #6

Given how untrustworthy the most popular social media providers have proven to be, it's madness that so many politicians and government accounts still use things like Xitter or facebook as their primary communication medium. Even ignoring the political misinformation that is rampant on these platforms and often promoted widely by the platform because it is inflammatory and gets lots of engagement, they also severely…

https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#38
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my suspicions about what’s going to happen. I worry the demand is going to be too high to realistically deal with. But dammit am I excited to see someone try something a bit different to address a very obvious need. State-run stores aren’t really that special. A bunch of states have state-run liquor stores. The military runs commissaries. These don’t elicit much fear-mongering or attention on cable news for so…

Exactly what problem does it solve that food stamps cannot solve more simply?

It's not discounted groceries. It's stores in food deserts.

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#39
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my suspicions about what’s going to happen. I worry the demand is going to be too high to realistically deal with. But dammit am I excited to see someone try something a bit different to address a very obvious need. State-run stores aren’t really that special. A bunch of states have state-run liquor stores. The military runs commissaries. These don’t elicit much fear-mongering or attention on cable news for so…

Exactly what problem does it solve that food stamps cannot solve more simply?

Respectfully, maybe spend 5 minutes reading about it from the horse’s mouth. The Mamdani admin has done a pretty good job, imo, of laying out the case, and explaining the plan for these 5 grocery stores.

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/mayor-mamdani...

Re: Zohran and the Short Link

#40
post #6

Given how untrustworthy the most popular social media providers have proven to be, it's madness that so many politicians and government accounts still use things like Xitter or facebook as their primary communication medium. Even ignoring the political misinformation that is rampant on these platforms and often promoted widely by the platform because it is inflammatory and gets lots of engagement, they also severely…

https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov

As I understand it, Bsky doesn't punish posts for including a link off-site, and doesn't require you to be logged in to view it. Whether they'll continue to behave in a responsible way forever remains to be seen, I guess.
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