Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Engineered Addictions

masonyarbrough.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 467 posts

Re: Engineered Addictions

#421

Post by mch82 »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #243
sailfast wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet probably less alone than when using polluted and terrible social media. I would pay, FWIW. I am actively looking for a decent community of humans online that isn’t run by selling data to AI farms or trying to get my eyeballs all the time. Unfortunately social media ate many of the places I previously used to call home.

[flagged]

Those interested in this branch of the discussion might find Dave Winer’s blog series about building an open social network on top of the RSS standard worth a read. Here’s one of many posts: http://scripting.com/2025/06/28/211301.html

Re: Engineered Addictions

#422

Post by carlosjobim »

Jensson wrote: post #374
everfrustrated wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and didn't need a violent revolution to make it happen You really need to read more history about Europe.

There was no such revolt in the country where I live, and in many others. Also if you are talking about France it was to create democracy, not to change the economic system, with democracy you can change the economic system without a revolution.

I think the majority of European countries had a violent revolution. And the German invasion of many neighboring nations had the same characteristics, they were welcomed with their new world order by the populace in many places.

The war in general ushered in new economic systems.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#423

Post by j7ake »

jajko wrote: post #379
j7ake wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name a few such places

Switzerland... the best actually long term sustainable and working capitalism I've seen. All freedom US craves so much for (and much more) while stronger social state than next to nothing US has for its weaker part of society

Switzerland is not a good place for working moms. It is a very conservative country, for example working moms are systematically discriminated. The society, police, insurance, and banks enforce a conformity to a conservative, male-dominated society.

https://www.businessinsider.com/female-breadwinner-moved-swi...

Re: Engineered Addictions

#424

Post by s1artibartfast »

Ekaros wrote: post #142
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that it's even simpler: The company is the product. When we have that mindset, we absolutely don't care about the thing that we call "our product." It's just food for the actual product, where we want to fatten it up, and sell it to the biggest slaughterhouse. That starts almost immediately. You can't even get an A round, without an "exit plan." I feel that the very existence of an exit plan, dooms the user. N…

When you really think about it, this also applies to very many publicly traded companies. Tech especially, always searching to present next growth area. And then often shortly abandoning it or wasting massive resources on it... Really does make me cynical on investing...

Companies do this because growth is often possible. failed investments are the cost of growth. Overall, the returns are positive.

Is it growth itself you are opposed to?

Re: Engineered Addictions

#425

Post by justcool393 »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #300
justcool393 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think that people vastly overstate the costs of this sort of thing and it's super bizarre. if you're treating this as a big official corporation™ and such and want to pay 500 devs like $200k/year or something to make work, then yeah you're gonna have problems. but if you want to build a social network and aren't dreaming of being gazillionaires for it (which is quite reasonable), then you can get by very easily. ho…

I like stories like these, but I think you just never hit a breaking point with the infra and approaches you got. You've never exceeded your ext4 volume size, so no need for object storage. You've never had a server die, so one dedi box is fine. You've never had a paying customer call you with an issue, so oncall support is not needed. So I totally agree with your approach.

yeah, i mean i guess what i'm trying to say is that the breaking point is very far up there as computers have gotten towards breakneck speeds, especially on the technology side, for the goal being achieved. it's downright difficult to hit the limits unless you're throwing effectively a DDoS at it.

i think the big thing though is that it's a community and so people are actually willing to support that even if it means the amount of 9s of availability is slightly fewer (although in practice, many providers bust right through their "9s" SLAs without a care in the world) and given a migration from a VM provider to the dedi occurred, migrations obviously can happen if failure presents itself.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#426

Post by s1artibartfast »

nradov wrote: post #240
dehrmann wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis...about your company, you will not succeed. Halfway true. There's a famous quote: > In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. At some point, strong fundamentals will catch up with you.

In the short run if you can get acquired then the long run fundamentals don't matter. They just become noise in some larger company's financial statements.

They might not matter anymore for you, but they still exist, which is the sentiment the relevant sentiment for the quote.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#427

Post by trinsic2 »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #415
trinsic2 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So "Common Good" is directly related to "Common Law" which showed up in 509-27 BC Rome during the Republic period and it was a way to have a common understanding between the "Common People" when Rome's political state was trying to use political law against non-Romans. The common people needed a way to protect themselves from the rising emperors and their decrees. So I understand that you think its about families, bu…

Again that is not what common good is and it does not originate in the Roman Republic. I'm honestly not sure it's worth responding here or what you're trying to say about Rome. It sounds like you may be confusing the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, which started much later in 31 BCE. For one thing the Roman Republic did not have an emporer. For another it wasn't expanding militarily or ruling non-Romans. And yo…

No the original meaning of "Common Good" is related to "Common Law" And that actually originated in Rome between the Republic and Empire periods. Your focus on the specific dates have nothing to do with the actual originating use of the saying.

It can mean "ordinary" or "plain", but not in the context of "Common Good". I think you are trying to obfuscate the meaning by focusing on the peripherals of the context.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#428

Post by Nifty3929 »

jrowen wrote: post #407
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are correct, the root problem is that the targeted advertisement model is far more profitable than any paid model, thus outcompeting every sustainable alternative. I personally think the solution is simple, yet fairly draconian and therefore hard to implement due to the inevitable political backlash: ban all targeted advertising. You can still run ads on digital platforms, but the outcome of the heuristic…

This is completely wild to me. I honestly do most of my clothes shopping through Instagram/Facebook ads. I enjoy that targeted advertising shows me new products and companies that I'm interested in, often very niche stuff that I don't come across otherwise. I would so much rather see that than ads for life insurance, penis pills, ambulance chasers, or whatever other bullcrap goes to the lowest common denominator. The…

If I'm going to pay for something by watching ads, I much rather watch fewer, higher value, more targeted ads. Untargeted ads are less valuable (to me, the advertiser, and the ad publisher), so I would have to see a lot more of them to pay for the content I consume.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#429

Post by Nifty3929 »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #315
Nifty3929 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

But even paid business models get polluted with the usage driven metrics over time. Netflix is paid but now has advertisements. They have stated that their main competitor is sleep, which is obviously detrimental to the user. How do we prevent this from happening for such a paid social media?

Netflix introduced an additional billing model to cater to those folks who would prefer ads to a subscription fee, but has not removed the no-ads model for a higher fee. I'm happy to pay for my ad-free Netflix, and I respect that others might want to choose differently. This is not a dark pattern, it's a light/good/gold (?) pattern.

Re: Engineered Addictions

#430

Post by lrvick »

sotix wrote: post #362
lrvick wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No cell phone at all as I do not wish to have my location sold, rely on proprietary tech, or to be reachable at all times. I also use cash exclusively IRL so my digital footprint away from home is virtually zero. I am happiest being intentional and present in whatever I am doing. I am reachable from my desktop by email, matrix, or VoIP SMS, when I am at my desk and have been able to run a profitable security research…

Which mechanical watch?

My go-tos are the CIGA Eye Of Horus and the Bradley Element, both using a Leatherman Tread for a band with TreadLinks adapters so I always have some basic tools with me which get used a surprising amount.
Post reply on HN