The day instagram goes full Reddit is the day I probably stop using it. Thankfully I'm still just barely getting by with the website, but usually logged in.
The 'Fuck You' Pattern
461–470 of 619 posts
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
Go an and run a site that serves massive amounts of cat pictures for peanuts! Well, yes, serving static HTML is easy. Serving images is kind of not hard either, because you have free unlimited traffic, don't you? Some hosting plans offer it. They just limit the egress bandwidth. So maybe you need a few more servers to cope with it, just like $50 a pop. You're not gonna need any CDN, people further away from your DC w…
Sounds like overkill, mate. I’ll go with your comments parent. Maybe 5 peanuts. In all seriousness, I’ll agree on cdn at 20 a month plus 3 @ 15 dollar nodes running out app and db, let’s go multimaster with a local db node on each app server, screw the c go for a and p, and yeah a single haproxy hardware thread, ha, so make that 2 single core nodes 1gb will do fine for 300k connections per second, um you mentioned st…
You think that Facebook and Google build these huge warehouse-size data centers all over the world for fun?
You think they wouldn’t rather have the cash?
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about running ads but not letting them dominate your product? I see nothing wrong with running a costs-plus business model but VC comes in and demand all these stupid companies dominate the world so they can get their 500x return or whatever. Then they go public and now the only thing that matters is shareholder value, fuck the users and OG supporters... Every one of these companies start with a nice mission and…
Its really really hard for a company whose ultimate goal is profit, to give up opportunities to do so. Its just not gonna happen. You can have all the ethical people you want, but people change and it takes just one "smart" engineer/product manager to realize how much money is on the table, then use that to grab power and get the same changes everywhere. Relying on people doing the right thing is an unstable equilibr…
I don't think it's hard per-se. I think it's hard if you have investors.
I know plenty of founders who would be happy with lower constant profits, less employees, in order to have a company which doesn't actively psychologically harm its users, a less stressful working environment.
Gumroad is the perfect example of this.
The problems come from VC money, which force a company to chase 500x returns or die trying. More in general, whenever there is centralisation of resources, problems ensue at some point later on.
Regulations are not the answer - established companies find a way to arginate them (look at Google playing with cookies), smaller companies trying to go live and compete have a slower time to market and die, benefiting the established companies.
On top of this regulations introduce a different set of problems. What if I'm okay being on a website which doesn't respect my privacy? What if I care more about reading a news article and never visit that website again more than I care about them respecting some rules regarding what kind of tracking they do?
Instead of assuming we, the lawmakers, are omniscient and perfect, I think we should just get out of the way of the market and limit governmental influence to reduce the number of monopolies and corruption that gets into the real world - and then bubbles up in various ways, chasing infinte growth being one of them.
To 100 more Gumroads.
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how does this explain why Windows 10, which I have paid like $150 for per license, is now infested with ads, tracking and online presence - and close to impossible to buy without that. They aren't even trying to put a $ figure on what they think it's worth - because they can't be stopped from doing it. There is no implied agreement, it's exactly as stated.
The single killer feature of windows, unrivaled by Mac or Linux, is playing video-games. Expensive professional software is often available on Mac. Probably the target market for windows evolved to become people who tolerate advertising (or at least that's what PMs at M$ think). Half the price is paid in the license fee. The other half is a lifetime of ads exposure.
The killer feature of Ryan Air is that it costs £10 to get to a stag party in Malaga, for people who are too blitzed to care about comfort, basic customer service, getting hijacked by foreign governments, etc. The difference is, there are still professional-grade alternatives to Ryan Air, and the company you work for isn't going to make you fly them for business every day. (If they do, you should really quit).
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how does this explain why Windows 10, which I have paid like $150 for per license, is now infested with ads, tracking and online presence - and close to impossible to buy without that. They aren't even trying to put a $ figure on what they think it's worth - because they can't be stopped from doing it. There is no implied agreement, it's exactly as stated.
The single killer feature of windows, unrivaled by Mac or Linux, is playing video-games. Expensive professional software is often available on Mac. Probably the target market for windows evolved to become people who tolerate advertising (or at least that's what PMs at M$ think). Half the price is paid in the license fee. The other half is a lifetime of ads exposure.
I would pay twice as much upfront but that's not an option. So instead I pirate Windows 10 Enterprise which is an absolute dream OS for a prosumer.
I'd buy it but I haven't been able to figure out how to.
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#466I love instagram. It's the best social media site. Last time I checked, I couldn't even make an account from my desktop computer. I'm not gonna even try to install their app on my G-free phone. When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles consist of a bunch of embedde…
I don't know if it's just me or what, but I can no longer view Instagram posts while logged out. Other people report being able to, but it just sends me straight to a login page.
Same. I've never had an account, and for as long as I can remember everytime I end up on their page I'm greeted with a login screen.
In fact, I've always found it perplexing how little information or incentive there is on their landing page that would encourage me to make an account. I only even barely know what that site is for because of osmosis and image previews from sites that link to it. Makes me wonder how they got critical mass to even get started.
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how does this explain why Windows 10, which I have paid like $150 for per license, is now infested with ads, tracking and online presence - and close to impossible to buy without that. They aren't even trying to put a $ figure on what they think it's worth - because they can't be stopped from doing it. There is no implied agreement, it's exactly as stated.
I guess someone could argue that it only costs $150 because of the ads. Windows 95 cost well over twice that when it was launched (inflation adjusted). Maybe in the same way that airfares are way cheaper than they were in the 90s, but with much crappier included service.
How many more copies of windows 10 were sold compared to Windows 95?
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess someone could argue that it only costs $150 because of the ads. Windows 95 cost well over twice that when it was launched (inflation adjusted). Maybe in the same way that airfares are way cheaper than they were in the 90s, but with much crappier included service.
How many more copies of windows 10 were sold compared to Windows 95?
How many more engineers work on Windows 10 compared to Windows 95?
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have your attention and they're going to connect you to organizations who will pay for it. "The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts. It's the addictive dark patterns and montezation/tracking that costs millions. That's the irony.
Go an and run a site that serves massive amounts of cat pictures for peanuts! Well, yes, serving static HTML is easy. Serving images is kind of not hard either, because you have free unlimited traffic, don't you? Some hosting plans offer it. They just limit the egress bandwidth. So maybe you need a few more servers to cope with it, just like $50 a pop. You're not gonna need any CDN, people further away from your DC w…
This guy infrastructures.
Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have your attention and they're going to connect you to organizations who will pay for it. "The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts. It's the addictive dark patterns and montezation/tracking that costs millions. That's the irony.
Go an and run a site that serves massive amounts of cat pictures for peanuts! Well, yes, serving static HTML is easy. Serving images is kind of not hard either, because you have free unlimited traffic, don't you? Some hosting plans offer it. They just limit the egress bandwidth. So maybe you need a few more servers to cope with it, just like $50 a pop. You're not gonna need any CDN, people further away from your DC w…
That's an amusing reductio ad absurdum, but most people don't have that much of an objection to ad-supported media in principle, it is a time-honored business model.
But being an asshole about insisting that everyone log in so you can target them individually isn't actually a requirement for the business model to work and be profitable.
At most, you can justify being an asshole about insisting that the user not be using an ad-blocker (with the user having the option of logging in with a paid account for an ad-free experience).