4 ms·

> In tech, there is no common protocol to speak. You are a surf of the platform you find yourself on. Can you expand on this statement? It's a bit ambiguous an

> In tech, there is no common protocol to speak. You are a surf of the platform you find yourself on. Can you expand on this statement? It's a bit ambiguous and I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. Other than that, I agree with your comment. Even doing independent contracting on the side seems like a minefield w.r.t. quarterly tax payments, estimated tax, etc.. in the US at least. I'm sure I could figure it out but just earning income for some side work seems like a liability and a big headache.

jonas21 1y ago
> Even doing independent contracting on the side seems like a minefield w.r.t. quarterly tax payments, estimated tax, etc.. in the US at least. I'm sure I could figure it out but just earning income for some side work seems like a liability and a big headache. It's really not hard -- it takes maybe 15 minutes per year, and if you own any stocks outside a 401k, you probably already need to make quarterly estimated payments. If it's too much trouble, you can just hire an accountant to take care of it for you. At any rate, it shouldn't be a significant obstacle to contracting.
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  > it takes maybe 15 minutes per year It takes at least four times that per quarter, really. And especially if you're small enough to not be able to afford an accountant just yet.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    The shortcut I always used was to take my effective tax rate from last year's return (i.e. total tax owed / gross income), multiply my self-employment income for the past quarter by that rate, maybe round it up somewhat, and pay that. It usually worked out to be close enough that I didn't owe any penalty for underpayment of estimated tax and it was much easier than using the IRS suggested calculation.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  > if you own any stocks outside a 401k, you probably already need to make quarterly estimated payments. That's true, and I do. I guess I'm referring more to the accounting side of it. My brokerage reports/tracks all that for me and hands me a form later. With contracting work, it's all up to you to track and there might be better ways than a text file with some dates and amounts but maybe it really is that simple. I'm not sure.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
immibis 1y ago
The word they meant is serf: a low class in feudalism. Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Does everything their master says, or is killed. More importantly, avoids all the emotional outbursts one would trigger by using the word "slave".
- throwaway13337 1y ago
  Yes. Thanks. Serf. Share-cropping on the lord's land. The lord gives you exactly as much as you need to live but can extract the rest. This isn't good for anyone as, history tells us, people are less motivated that way.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Anyone using slavery as a metaphor for participating in tech platforms is out of touch with what slavery really is. Nobody is owning you as person and forcing you to work for them without any freedoms because they opened an app store or let you make a Facebook book. Minimizing the brutality of actual slavery by drawing comparisons to putting apps in app stores (or other tech platform things) is really distasteful
  - immibis 1y ago
    > More importantly, avoids all the emotional outbursts one would trigger by using the word "slave". Thanks for providing an example. A serf also did not feel like a slave, being forced to do things. A serf felt his lord was being generous by letting him use the lord's land, for the low low cost of whatever percentage of his crops, plus being required to go and fight in battle and sometimes die, when there was a battle. Which is oddly analogous to how we feel about tech companies. We don't feel like we're being forced to use e.g. YouTube; we feel Google is being generous by letting us use it, for the low low price of endless advertisements, having our minds altered by propaganda, and randomly getting banned by AI. Although obviously not as much actual death is involved, but then again, Google can unperson you.
throwaway13337 1y ago
Monopolies become entrenched because of network effect. Phone companies had the same problem until the government stepped in. Web standards are great. And the web is really something special. No one owns the web. I can publish my own website with a ton of different vendors offering hosting. There's a power law distribution of provider success but it's still a fair game. App publishing is owned by two companies. Messaging is siloed. Discoverability is pay to play. There is no townsquare not owned. The way to solve these problems is forcing platforms over a certain size to open their protocols. So We can make on own messaging client that communicates with the gatekeepers. We can offer, without the app stores, our software to their users in the same way that the gatekeepers allow. Monopolies kill markets. Allowing a fair market on network effect platforms would make the categories competitive. Smaller businesses could compete. The margins would lower for the gatekeepers. The consumers would benefit from lower prices and more innovation. Most of all, we'd finally be able to reverse the trend of cynical software - 'enshitification' - that comes when a monopoly understands that they no longer need to compete.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  I see what you're getting at now, thanks. I left a comment on a thread about iOS recently[0] where Apple is only making their things open in jurisdicfions where they're forced to which was kinda infuriating/nonsensical to me. Governments have obviously caught onto this but Apple is still trying to squeeze out as much rent as possible while they still can. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822302
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Discoverability is pay to play. There is no townsquare not owned. And yet anyone can publish a website, like you said. Anyone can create an Instagram or TikTok profile and start selling things. Millions of small businesses do this all the time and grow on these platforms without "pay to play". > So We can make on own messaging client that communicates with the gatekeepers What does this have to do with letting people create businesses? Who's going to pay you (one way or another) to use your messaging client to connect to these open services when they can use the official client or anyone else's client? I think idealists imagine a world where tech giants are forced to open their platforms for free and they can use their own apps to connect to Reddit and YouTube and other platforms while avoiding the ads. It's a pipe dream to imagine that regulators will come in and force businesses to be unprofitable for the good of the public. Platforms need to make money to exist. They can either charge admission or show ads. There isn't a third option where they're forced to become a public good so that other businesses can freely benefit from their infrastructure.

jonas21 1y ago

> Even doing independent contracting on the side seems like a minefield w.r.t. quarterly tax payments, estimated tax, etc.. in the US at least. I'm sure I could figure it out but just earning income for some side work seems like a liability and a big headache. It's really not hard -- it takes maybe 15 minutes per year, and if you own any stocks outside a 401k, you probably already need to make quarterly estimated payments. If it's too much trouble, you can just hire an accountant to take care of it for you. At any rate, it shouldn't be a significant obstacle to contracting.

stronglikedan 1y ago
> it takes maybe 15 minutes per year It takes at least four times that per quarter, really. And especially if you're small enough to not be able to afford an accountant just yet.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  The shortcut I always used was to take my effective tax rate from last year's return (i.e. total tax owed / gross income), multiply my self-employment income for the past quarter by that rate, maybe round it up somewhat, and pay that. It usually worked out to be close enough that I didn't owe any penalty for underpayment of estimated tax and it was much easier than using the IRS suggested calculation.
hypeatei 1y ago
> if you own any stocks outside a 401k, you probably already need to make quarterly estimated payments. That's true, and I do. I guess I'm referring more to the accounting side of it. My brokerage reports/tracks all that for me and hands me a form later. With contracting work, it's all up to you to track and there might be better ways than a text file with some dates and amounts but maybe it really is that simple. I'm not sure.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

immibis 1y ago

The word they meant is serf: a low class in feudalism. Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Does everything their master says, or is killed. More importantly, avoids all the emotional outbursts one would trigger by using the word "slave".

throwaway13337 1y ago
Yes. Thanks. Serf. Share-cropping on the lord's land. The lord gives you exactly as much as you need to live but can extract the rest. This isn't good for anyone as, history tells us, people are less motivated that way.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Like a slave but with subtle differences that don't really matter. Anyone using slavery as a metaphor for participating in tech platforms is out of touch with what slavery really is. Nobody is owning you as person and forcing you to work for them without any freedoms because they opened an app store or let you make a Facebook book. Minimizing the brutality of actual slavery by drawing comparisons to putting apps in app stores (or other tech platform things) is really distasteful
- immibis 1y ago
  > More importantly, avoids all the emotional outbursts one would trigger by using the word "slave". Thanks for providing an example. A serf also did not feel like a slave, being forced to do things. A serf felt his lord was being generous by letting him use the lord's land, for the low low cost of whatever percentage of his crops, plus being required to go and fight in battle and sometimes die, when there was a battle. Which is oddly analogous to how we feel about tech companies. We don't feel like we're being forced to use e.g. YouTube; we feel Google is being generous by letting us use it, for the low low price of endless advertisements, having our minds altered by propaganda, and randomly getting banned by AI. Although obviously not as much actual death is involved, but then again, Google can unperson you.

throwaway13337 1y ago

Monopolies become entrenched because of network effect. Phone companies had the same problem until the government stepped in. Web standards are great. And the web is really something special. No one owns the web. I can publish my own website with a ton of different vendors offering hosting. There's a power law distribution of provider success but it's still a fair game. App publishing is owned by two companies. Messaging is siloed. Discoverability is pay to play. There is no townsquare not owned. The way to solve these problems is forcing platforms over a certain size to open their protocols. So We can make on own messaging client that communicates with the gatekeepers. We can offer, without the app stores, our software to their users in the same way that the gatekeepers allow. Monopolies kill markets. Allowing a fair market on network effect platforms would make the categories competitive. Smaller businesses could compete. The margins would lower for the gatekeepers. The consumers would benefit from lower prices and more innovation. Most of all, we'd finally be able to reverse the trend of cynical software - 'enshitification' - that comes when a monopoly understands that they no longer need to compete.

hypeatei 1y ago
I see what you're getting at now, thanks. I left a comment on a thread about iOS recently[0] where Apple is only making their things open in jurisdicfions where they're forced to which was kinda infuriating/nonsensical to me. Governments have obviously caught onto this but Apple is still trying to squeeze out as much rent as possible while they still can. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45822302
Aurornis 1y ago
> Discoverability is pay to play. There is no townsquare not owned. And yet anyone can publish a website, like you said. Anyone can create an Instagram or TikTok profile and start selling things. Millions of small businesses do this all the time and grow on these platforms without "pay to play". > So We can make on own messaging client that communicates with the gatekeepers What does this have to do with letting people create businesses? Who's going to pay you (one way or another) to use your messaging client to connect to these open services when they can use the official client or anyone else's client? I think idealists imagine a world where tech giants are forced to open their platforms for free and they can use their own apps to connect to Reddit and YouTube and other platforms while avoiding the ads. It's a pipe dream to imagine that regulators will come in and force businesses to be unprofitable for the good of the public. Platforms need to make money to exist. They can either charge admission or show ads. There isn't a third option where they're forced to become a public good so that other businesses can freely benefit from their infrastructure.