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Have a fucking website

otherstrangeness.com

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Re: Have a fucking website

#341

Post by cxr »

Gigachad wrote: post #182
avhception wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many local places here, the only way to get the menu online is if a customer posted a photo of the menu on Google maps or something. And 1/3 of the time, that photo is too blurry and off-angle and whatnot to even read properly.

I can’t help but think what this means is just that the menu isn’t that’s important as a marketing tool. If having an up to date website and menu resulted in a noticeable boost in business, every restaurant would have it. Average person either finds the place through google maps or a TikTok video, checks a few photos of the food or venue, then goes. Doesn’t matter what the exact menu is because there are plenty of op…

You are moving the goalposts, subtly.

The conversational context did not involve anyone making any claims about the viability of businesses operating sans info. You can check—nowhere does the person who you're responding to (or any of the ancestor comments in this thread) write in their comment that companies are losing business because of the lack of up-to-date information, whether on their own site on through Google Maps.

The context is people, very reasonably, making a plea that that info be published on the open web.

Re: Have a fucking website

#342

Post by kkfx »

Well, more than just a website, I'd call it a domain name to be used for various personal services, starting with email. A domain name is like your home address in the physical world; not having one is like not being a citizen of civil society.

As for the domain, well, one can also have a website to introduce yourself to the world, the usefulness is marginal for the average person, but yeah, you can have one. It can be used as a sort of business card, an interactive CV, or your own little corner to tell the world what you think; it has many uses and each has implications to consider. But the domain is the essential part. It's about having your own mail even if you use GMail (for domains), so that one day you can switch providers without changing anything for your contacts. It's perhaps hosting XMPP or Matrix for yourself to talk to friends, family, and sometimes even total strangers without depending much on other people's services. It's about serving your own web apps to yourself on the go. The website itself matters less in all of this.

Re: Have a fucking website

#343

Post by bix6 »

rpdillon wrote: post #336
achenet wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google and Facebook? Minecraft? Most recent music?

That's Gen X. Google's founders were both born in 1973 and Notch was born in 1979. Zuckerberg was born in '84, so he's solidly a millennial.

Zuck was birthed in the pits of Isengard so he’s actually Gen I. That’s why it’s all about him!

Re: Have a fucking website

#344

Post by TeMPOraL »

threetonesun wrote: post #337
TeMPOraL wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, they're right. In fact, "self-service" is one of the biggest value transfers from people to capital owners, a society-wide "fast one" the computing industry pulled over everyone. It's cool that you can do something yourself with a computer, whether it's ordering food or picking clothes or booking a trip. But, market doing market things, that can quickly became a have to , which is much less cool. It's a problem…

All of the demos of booking travel using AI are hilarious to me. This used to be a job a travel agent did, and planning a trip was either a fun conversation or you could be like "send me somewhere warm" and let them do it. Is it cheaper now that you can swear at flight booking software yourself, and scream at the hotel when they cancel your rooms that you got from a third party site that went through some other inter…

> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way!

And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

Re: Have a fucking website

#345

Post by dazc »

twodave wrote: post #317

For some things I get this. Restaurants? Yes. But other things? Landscaping? Electricians? Plumbers? I’d much rather speak on the phone with someone who is going to come on my property and do work. I could care less if they have a website because that’s just marketing for them. I source almost 100% of these types of workers via referral from friends/family.

I used to work in construction in a previous life and always said I could judge how good a tradesman is simply by their appearance. The same goes for their website. If they have pride in their work it will show; if they do just about enough to get paid it will also show.

Re: Have a fucking website

#346

Post by alnwlsn »

Arainach wrote: post #14

Someone wrote and deleted a comment saying > I don't get it. LLMs are supposed to have 100% bridged this gap from "normie" to "DIY website." What's missing? This is an all too common thought process among technologists, so: Where to even start? Well, let's start that every single "AI" company is massively overhyping everything to try to avoid any unfortunate realizations about the emperor's clothes regarding their Ca…

I saw a meme one time that went something like this:

"AI is so cool, I asked ChatGPT to combine a card game with a flight simulator and it did it!"

"Yeah, that is pretty cool I guess."

"My question for you is, what do I do with the code it gave me?"

"What?"

"Where do I put the code to make a game?"

Re: Have a fucking website

#347

Post by hackemmy »

The thing that gets me is how many side projects and indie products only exist on Twitter or a GitHub readme. Like you built something cool but I have to scroll through your tweet history to understand what it does? Even a single page with a clear description, maybe a screenshot, and a link to try it would go so far. I recently launched a Chrome extension and the number of people who told me they almost did not try it because there was not enough info upfront was a wake up call.

Re: Have a fucking website

#348

Post by TeMPOraL »

nandomrumber wrote: post #257
TeMPOraL wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, they're right. In fact, "self-service" is one of the biggest value transfers from people to capital owners, a society-wide "fast one" the computing industry pulled over everyone. It's cool that you can do something yourself with a computer, whether it's ordering food or picking clothes or booking a trip. But, market doing market things, that can quickly became a have to , which is much less cool. It's a problem…

Correct. The smartest people in academia get promoted to positions that used to come with administrative staff. Now they’re expected to do all of that with a computer , which is easy right? So now they spend 30% or more of their time administrationating their position, rather than delegating those duties to their admin staff. That’s less time teaching and innovating. Meanwhile, the increase in administration costs of…

Same is true in all white-collar work, too. I mean, not to look too far, it's very obvious in our own industry if you look for it. Highly-paid engineers hired for high-skill engineering work, but spending most of their time doing their own task management, calendar management, memo writing, presentations, trip planning, trip expensing, filing HR documents, and such? Heck, even the proliferation of ideas like "devops" or "devsecops" or whatever-ops, lauded as breaking down siloses, is just using buzzwords as cover for another iteration of headcount reduction.

Re: Have a fucking website

#349

Post by swiftcoder »

nandomrumber wrote: post #257
TeMPOraL wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, they're right. In fact, "self-service" is one of the biggest value transfers from people to capital owners, a society-wide "fast one" the computing industry pulled over everyone. It's cool that you can do something yourself with a computer, whether it's ordering food or picking clothes or booking a trip. But, market doing market things, that can quickly became a have to , which is much less cool. It's a problem…

Correct. The smartest people in academia get promoted to positions that used to come with administrative staff. Now they’re expected to do all of that with a computer , which is easy right? So now they spend 30% or more of their time administrationating their position, rather than delegating those duties to their admin staff. That’s less time teaching and innovating. Meanwhile, the increase in administration costs of…

Yeah, the bit where there are 10x as many administrators in higher education, but professors now all have to do their own admin, always drove me up the wall

Re: Have a fucking website

#350

Post by swiftcoder »

argee wrote: post #247
komali2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The richest person I know talks to robots all the time. I've noticed this too, but I always thought of it as mostly people fooling themselves. If you're rich (let's say anywhere above 10mil), it's practically guaranteed that you can allocate resources in such a way that more effective engineering, or science, or whatever, is done in less time than if you tried to do it yourself (rather than spending your time alloc…

I don’t think John Carmack likes to tell people what to do, regardless of wealth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26170052

I'm not sure that he doesn't like to, so much as that the position he ended up in as a result of the Oculus acquisition had no actual authority attached to it. He was functionally a glorifier adviser, to trot out at trade shows (and reading between the lines, this was a pretty frustrating position to end up in - he'd rather have had a real job, even if it was to build something he didn't fully agree with)
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