This is just clickbait. Yeah there is brain rot on there, and what he was presented with is questionable, but he hadn't used it in 8 years. If he started using it, he would see more of what he's interested in. It's not a mind reader.
Why bombarding him with a single kind of posts instead of showing him various things he might be interested in? That would give the algorithm a chance to learn faster and be more effective.
Besides that, with all the tracking Meta does around the web it’s fair to assume they have a more precise profile of the author they could have used
Yeah, some local ads but mostly for games, rest are all posts by friends and groups I follow? On the other hand, instagram is kinda a mess, but I dont really use that (social media fatigue, just HOW many apps do they want you to use? I guess the answer is: yes)
Advertisement commoditizes attention, which incentivizes tech companies to exploit and manipulate people to get their attention. Thats unacceptable. The proposal was to get rid of ads online to combat that. Its a bit drastic, but the logic is clear
Viewing this thread, and the back and forth of it, I need to say something.
Advertising sucks in this thread too.
By that I mean, people are not speaking plainly, and it is almost ingrained into our societies now. We "sell" our position in a discussion, a debate.
For example, regulation does curtail freedom. Completely.
However, lack of regulation can harm people. Significantly.
Thus, regulation does not give people more freedom, it can however reduce harm.
In democratic nations, often judges will weigh these two things, when determining if a regulation passes the muster. In my country, we have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and often judges will determine if a challenged regulation is of sufficient, required public good, whilst not overtly reducing freedom of the individual.
This is a mature conversation.
Advertising is not.
A primary example I've seen in the US, is people calling immigrants "undocumented" on one side, and "criminals" on the other. This is, of course, a reduction in nuance, and designed to advertise a position merely with the words used. And it is a societal sickness.
An illegal alien is just that, and using that term confers no judgement, for it is simply fact.
There was a time when politics were not first and fore in terms of the use of language. The current trend to be "touchy feely" over use of language, and find great offense at the use of language, does nothing other than stop debate. Reduce discussion. Cause schism instead of collaboration.
>Thus, regulation does not give people more freedom, it can however reduce harm.
If there were no regulation against someone picking you up off the street and chaining you up in their basement, they would be more free in this scenario and you would be less free. You might be able to say regulation can curtail freedom and at the same time increase freedom.
>An illegal alien is just that, and using that term confers no judgement, for it is simply fact.
Well, it also has a connotation just like the other words. "Illegal" and "alien" both evoke meaning that goes beyond the specific condition, and that phrase was generally the predecessor of "criminals" in this example. Those who use different terms are also incentivized to convince others that their chosen word is the one that is most "simply fact" and not "touchy feely" language.
> Thus, regulation does not give people more freedom, it can however reduce harm.
When I say regulation is freedom, I'm borrowing from dialectics. The only way we figured out how to move forward is to leave something behind.
So when you see regulation, the absence of a given right, let's say to carry a deadly weapon in public, you have to see this is the tailend of the synthesis of a long debate, where we agreed that the risks of arming the population outweighs the benefits of self protection.
So regulation is freedom because freedom is choice, and to choose is to leave something behind. Regulation is just the manifestation of the consequences of that choice.
Completely fair, but I was responding to someone who doesn't think that it curtails freedom but that is the total opposite, you cannot be free if you are dead (except for a few niche philosophical definitions of the word), so human centric regulations like the asbestos ban are orthogonal to freedom, even if I admit in the strictest definition of the word yes, a regulation can curtail your freedom to harm yourself and hypothetically could curtail yourself from positive benefits as well.
But the thing is that statistically the likelihood they were discussing in good faith about this is near none, instead their way of speaking are telltales of a libertarian, where they have a almost religious believe that regulation is their biggest enemy and will never admit that the lack of it could harm or even kill them, I have wasted many many hours talking with such kind of people and don't aim to waste more arguing in good faith giving nuanced responses.
I disagree, most advertising is just an attempt at manipulation, not just a genuine "our products exist and you might like them." I would consider not being legally manipulated, especially by financially interested groups, more free than the reverse.
Have we come to such a low cultural point that ads are seen as some kind of basic human right?
Fuck ads. What's absurd is tolerating them and the damage they do to media, consumers, kids, lesser and/or more honest businesses, culture, products, and so on all the way to the Windows and macOS system UIs.
We're on a startup entrepreneur site. I'm not surprised it's seen as the lifeblood of the industry here. It sort of is.
At the same time, this has the same energy of "if we release all the files, the system will collapse". Maybe we need the billionaires to feel some pain sometimes (even if yes, we'll feel more overall).
Are you willing to share rough numbers? Totally understand if not, just curious. Been thinking about something like this to get away from the AI force-feeding.
Very variable depending on a combination of local/state regulations and what kinds of projects you're willing to tackle. The bottom end of the spectrum is a $50 a month general liability policy.
I mean, someone got paid for driving trucks dumping toxic waste in the river. I would support policies that ensure you don't lose access to healthcare or suffer in deep poverty from losing a job, but I'm not sympathetic to perpetuating such waste and harm on the basis of "it creates jobs".
People have been brainwashed and legal systems have been paid and bought for to consider them as such, just like corporations have been whitewashed to be treated as "persons".
In any case, we regulate all other kinds of speech as well: explicit content, libel, classified information, cigarette ads, and so on.
Let's start there. Corporations being persons is a legal fiction to allow them to consolidate capital. Giving that fictional person human rights is abhorrent to humans. It is a crime against humans. It degrades us.
Shouting fire in a crowded theater is also speech. So is publishing a highly detailed plan for anyone to kill the president and usurp power. So is child pornography. There's a long list of precedents that free speech in America is not absolute.
And this is about Europe, which has never had an absolutist view of rights to begin with. In Europe, rights are seen as intended to be balanced against each other instead of maximizing an arbitrary set of them to 100%. You have the right to free expression (except in... most countries, so let's call it a theoretical right) as well as the right to not be preyed upon. Although it's legal to distribute chemicals, some of them are highly addictive so they're restricted. Same with social media.
That’s not even true in the United States (they’re ‘commercial speech’, which carries a still significant but lesser set of protections), never mind in Europe.
Different people are different. Any change in demographics — such as an increase in wealth inequality or number of smartphones — causes a major cultural shift. What is the evidence that this particular cultural shift is very bad?
"major culture shift" != "they will turn your country into the country they fled from".
Regardless, the culture is that of a nation of immigrants. I don't see how anything here can cause major cultural shift away from that. I am willing to bet you won't be willing to elaborate either, so next goal post move please...
That's no longer immigration; that's an invasion. You can't just let unfettered immigration into a country because that would drain resources and have a negative cultural impact. Yes, people in a country pay taxes and as such should enjoy protections against invaders.
Far from getting a break, you guys are paying tax on tax. You indirectly pay for import taxes every time your companies import raw materials needed to finish their goods (added value) and then that final value (cost of import + added value) has its own sales tax. AFAIK there are no input credits for US sales tax. Then you also have VAT but at least VAT is only on the added value.
Income tax is way better as you can reduce the tax burden by including expenses/deductions. You cannot do the same for tariffs, sales tax and VAT as an end consumer. VAT is only beneficial to businesses as they can subtract inputs from outputs.
> You indirectly pay for import taxes every time your companies import raw materials needed to finish their goods (added value) and then that final value (cost of import + added value) has its own sales tax.
This isn't really any different than any other kind of taxes. You pay income tax and then pay sales tax using the money that was already taxed as income. The construction company pays sales tax when it buys a backhoe, which increases construction costs and therefore real estate prices, and then you pay property tax on the higher real estate prices, and make the bigger mortgage payment with money that was already taxed as income.
The only way you'd really get something different with tariffs is if the supply chain for some product passes through the local country multiple times, i.e. it gets imported, exported and then imported again. Which probably happens occasionally but isn't the common case.
Meanwhile how many times something is taxed isn't really the relevant thing. It's, how much in total are you paying in taxes? If you pay ~10% three times, that's not really any worse than paying ~33% once. It is, of course, worse than paying 10% once.
> This isn't really any different than any other kind of taxes. You pay income tax and then pay sales tax using the money that was already taxed as income
It definitely does make a huge difference. From sibling comment I got to know US does not even have VAT. It only makes the situation worse as the businesses operating in US cannot offset input credits against their output liability as Sales Tax has no such concept. So you are paying tax-on-tax-on-tax all the way to your raw materials that have been imported APART from paying tariffs. No wonder prices are so jacked up in US and to compensate that, you all have inflated salaries. The US Government is fleecing its citizens dry. Please study how VAT/GST works in EU/India/Australia and compare it with Sales Tax regime in US and you will know why Sales Tax is so bad.
> Meanwhile how many times something is taxed isn't really the relevant thing. It's, how much in total are you paying in taxes? If you pay ~10% three times, that's not really any worse than paying ~33% once. It is, of course, worse than paying 10% once.
You are not paying 10% three times. Assuming raw material was imported at $X + %10 of $X (tariff is 10%), value add was say $10, then the IRS is collecting say sales tax of 10% of the total value: 10 % of (($X + %10 of $X) + $10). Now this is just the simplest chain where raw material -> imported by manufacturer -> sold directly to consumer. But that is not how it is done. You typically buy from a retailer who buys from a dealer who buys from a wholesaler/manufacturer. So that would be 10% every time ON THE FULL VALUE (not just on value added).
To demonstrate a simple raw material -> imported by manufacturer with value added -> sold to dealer/distributor -> sold to retailer -> sold to customer, this is what it would look like:
1. Imported by manufacturer:
$X + %10 of $X
2. Value added ($10) and sold to dealer/distributor:
10 % of (($X + %10 of $X) + $10)
3. Dealer stocking/shipping charges added (say $10 again) and sold to retailer:
10% of (10 % of (($X + %10 of $X) + $10) + $10).
4. Retailer stocking/service charges added (say $10 again) and sold to consumer:
10% of (10% of (10 % of (($X + %10 of $X) + $10) + $10) + $10).
The longer the chain, the more tax-on-tax you are paying (in some cases the total final tax can even go above the actual cost of making the product). This nonsense is solved by VAT/GST where the tax you pay for acquiring raw material or processed inputs comes back to you as input credits, which you can use to offset your output tax liability. There is no compounding of tax in VAT/GST.
My answer is based on typical definition of what sales tax is. I have no idea how it is actually implemented in US and how it avoids tax pyramiding and if it actually can or not. But I know for a fact that ST has no concept of input tax credits unlike VAT/GST.
EDIT: Turns out US sales tax indeed works like I described above [1]. There are definitely some instances where B2B sales can be exempt from paying sales tax but it does not seem to be pervasive enough to be worth highlighting: because supposedly 40% of business transactions are taxed at intermediate stages (are paying sales tax at every stage).
Quoting from article:
"Some studies estimate that around 40% of the total sales tax revenue comes from taxes levied on business-to-business sales."
> because supposedly 40% of business transactions are taxed at intermediate stages (are paying sales tax at every stage)
That's not what that says.
If a business buys office furniture because it wants to furnish their offices rather than because they're in the business of selling office furniture then they pay sales tax on it even though it's a "business-to-business" transaction. This isn't any different than when they buy real estate so they have offices and then pay property tax on it. They're the end customer and the end customer pays the tax.
This results in "double taxation" (they pay the tax on the furniture, they pass the cost on to their customers as higher prices, the customers pay more tax on the higher prices), but that's the same as any other overlapping set of taxes.
What it doesn't do is cause longer supply chains to pay more in taxes, because that's the case where they can get the exemption when they're buying something for resale.
It does say that (cascade effect where tax is added to each stage of the supply chain):
"The lack of exemption can make the business the end consumer, meaning that the sales tax burden falls on the business and cannot be credited, as there is no mechanism to do that. Therefore, taxes on intermediate stages in the supply chain on businesses may result in a cascade effect where the tax is added to each stage of the supply chain leading up to a final sale to consumers. Some studies estimate that around 40% of the total sales tax revenue comes from taxes levied on business-to-business sales."
Even the scenario you gave me is handled in VAT/GST type of systems easily through input credits. So yes what you are saying is true too but that is not cascading tax. The 40% being talked about is cascading tax that is applied on value-add.
> This results in "double taxation" (they pay the tax on the furniture, they pass the cost on to their customers as higher prices, the customers pay more tax on the higher prices), but that's the same as any other overlapping set of taxes.
No the cascading tax is not this scenario (even though the scenario you said is true too but that is not what the 40% figure represents).
> they buy real estate so they have offices and then pay property tax on it
No it is not the same thing. There are property taxes in GST/VAT regimes too. Property tax is direct tax. GST/VAT/ST is indirect tax. Both are totally different categories. You would still have to pay property tax irrespective of which indirect tax regime you are in.
> If a business buys office furniture because it wants to furnish their offices rather than because they're in the business of selling office furniture
In VAT/GST regimes, these have input credits (which can be utilized to offset output tax liability), however they are not classified as raw materials/inputs either. They would be classified as assets (specifically under the heading "plant and machinery"). So instead of being inputs for whatever you are manufacturing/producing, they would be considered for depreciation (% of the total purchase is considered expense which you can spread out over many years until asset depreciates and is salvaged).
So your scenario is correct only in the limited sense of it being purchase of assets. Whereas in both Sales Tax and VAT/GST regimes it won't be considered an input. Here we are talking purely about inputs (raw materials or other inputs) that are used directly for producing outputs (manufactured goods/value-added goods). These have cascading effects in Sales Tax regime as opposed to VAT/GST.
It's like punching yourself in the face and then taking Tylenol for the pain until your friends do what you want. It's psychotic, doesn't work, and they're probably not going to want to hang out until you get some help.
Even with 90B in tariffs collected this fiscal year (since October) the government still spent 600B more than they collected.[1][2] Tax cuts would be great, but if you cut taxes without cutting spending you're just borrowing that tax cut from future generations. (270B of that 600B hole is interest payments on debt incurred by previous generations doing exactly that to us.)
Oh no no, we still have tax cuts for the wealthy, $800B in debt servicing, and $1T/year in military spending to pay for. The tariffs were a regressive tax to compensate for the tax cuts for the wealthy.
You act as if they don't have loopholes for this or that there will be consequences when the military industrial complex is behind things. Were there any consequences for Iraq WMD BS
Zero effort, and they animate. Components that have animation baked in are drug-like in how they hook in designers and devs who are only thinking about the visual presentation.
I'm going to make the case that it's actually the opposite. Rails might seem simpler out of the box, but this is all surface level. Rails is massive and extremely complex, especially its ORM, which encourages really bad database practices in my experience. And it doesn't have strong typing.
If you went head-to-head with Rails on a slightly complex project with say shadcn/ui, Convex DB, and TanStack Start, I guarantee you, the TypeScript app will be much simpler and give you more power than Rails, especially when building the UI. And to top it off, you will have strong typing everywhere -- from the DB schema to the URL routes.
And bonus, deployment is simple. ConvexDB already takes care of the backend and the frontend could be deployed to something like Cloudflare Pages.
Why would you not be able to build a "web analytics tool" with what parent comment mentioned? At the end of the day it is just data and if you are just starting out pretty much anything will scale and if you already have millions of customers you also have capital and people to think about how to make some homegrown solution to specifically cater to that.
The market for these new breed of frameworks is not huge companies with crazy scaling needs but freelancers and your very early stage startups who haven't even found a product market fit since they are starting new they don't have anything to loose with newer stuff and chances are that newer stuff also helps them do more quickly like I haven't used convex but on it's marketing page it does mention a lot and same for other frameworks like pocketbase or SvelteKit combined with a db etc. Like always there is no silver bullet and every stack can seem "random"
While these technologies are interesting, React has built a moat with its component ecosystem. It doesn't matter how intuitive or simple your new frontend solution is when I can `bunx add` a component from shadcn/ui and be instantly productive. Not to mention most companies with frontend integrations are shipping their own React components. You get composability and familiarity.
And while there are decent component libraries in plain JS, the top talent is building in React.
