pembrook

55 ms·

901.
by pembrook 3y ago
You're right, however nearly every single point was also true 50 years ago, when we built many of these things around the globe (and many are still going, pumping out the cleanest energy the world has ever seen). The real difference be
902.
by pembrook 3y ago
If only the bitcoin algorithm had been designed with a slow-but-steady inflation rate built in. That would have eliminated the speculative "store of value" incentive and created a true currency. Inflation is not a boogieman. When
903.
by pembrook 3y ago
You can check my comment history, I have never purchased a cryptocurrency in my life and have been loudly critical of it since the first mainstream mania in 2017. However, I do not believe banks, which we allow to exist, should be allowed
904.
by pembrook 3y ago
Regardless of how you feel about crypto (I have never been a fan), the fact that banks and credit card companies have become non-elected dictators regulating all of global commerce should be alarming to you. A banking license, granted by th
905.
by pembrook 3y ago
Ahhhh yes. A fun case study in how democracy can devolve into byzantine bureaucracy.
906.
by pembrook 3y ago
I didn't say advertising is not necessary, just that it does not create demand. It only directs it. Again, products are created in response to consumer needs/wants, not the other way around. Look at the history of Kellogg to see w
907.
by pembrook 3y ago
> Advertisement used to be fact based, but it's nowaday all emotional trickery...Targeted advertising has already changed governments, caused hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies, family trouble and breakups, and many sucides. Wo
908.
by pembrook 3y ago
The truth is, there are far more complex reasons behind American kids being fed sugary cereal than "the dumb people got duped by the evil advertisers (but not me of course!)." It turns out kids like sugar, incomes have been stagn
909.
by pembrook 3y ago
> The main point of advertising is to convince people to prefer a product for reasons other than cost/benefit. This is false. If you've ever run ads before, the best way to get people to convert is to offer a higher cost&#x2F
910.
by pembrook 3y ago
> the government is the solution to when business gets too much power. I totally agree with this. But are personalized Facebook ads really an example of this? And what's the solution when the government gets too much power? Especi
911.
by pembrook 3y ago
Governments have a monopoly on violence. And as history has proven (especially in the EU), they tend to use it. Even in good times, in countries with mostly balanced institutions, the government can lock you up in prison and throw away the
912.
by pembrook 3y ago
Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soa
913.
by pembrook 3y ago
On the contrary, I only care about receiving email from bulk senders. I pretty much exclusively use email to read newsletters and handle communication with companies/accounts. Any 1:1 communication with real people pretty much exclusiv
914.
by pembrook 3y ago
The truth is, most small businesses cannot figure out how to add DNS records to their domain. So they will no longer be able to inbox. And the more complicated and difficult Gmail makes it for companies to access your inbox via open tech li
915.
by pembrook 3y ago
Not even spammers want to waste time & money emailing people who have already marked their emails as spam (that's as clear a signal as any to move onto the next victim). The real problem is, for legitimate senders, the people who s
916.
by pembrook 3y ago
The authentication stuff is all standard practice so no big change IMO. However the hard spam limit with Gmail in particular will get interesting. I predict this is going to create some insane headaches for indie Saas startups. Gmail is the
917.
by pembrook 3y ago
You do realize that Europe has 3X the population density (and subsequent urbanization) as the US right? That alone explains literally every difference between Europe and America, in everything from public transportation down to socialist po
918.
by pembrook 3y ago
If Europeans are going to voluntarily allow their government to continuously scan all of their private data 24/7, can the rest of the world stop wasting time caring about GDPR please? Moving every cloud service to be EU-hosted is going
919.
by pembrook 3y ago
You’re correct, it’s unfair of me to insult newer FAANGM employees without also insulting the lazy, overpaid, freeloading lifers who set the wrong hiring targets at said companies. I use the term freeloader because the truth is…network effe
920.
by pembrook 3y ago
That’s one way to look at it. Or, it could just be that, during the covid boom years they overhired to support growth that never materialized, and now they’re stuck with a bunch of overpaid freeloaders (sitting at the top of each salary ban
921.
by pembrook 3y ago
Everything that becomes successful is an improbable anomaly. Any company in the S&P500 is an extreme outlier. That’s the whole point of the venture model — you know 95% of startups won’t succeed, but 5% might return multiples of your
922.
by pembrook 3y ago
> the scale of what I've seen so far in Finland is nothing like what it is in the United States This is because US housing was already insanely cheap by comparison globally. Just as you say housing is cheap outside Helsinki...outs
923.
by pembrook 3y ago
Finland, like all developed countries over the last decade+ (Canada, Australia, Netherlands, UK, France, Sweden, etc) also has a big housing affordability problem. Yes, supply is an issue in all these places (due to mass internal migration
924.
by pembrook 3y ago
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but virtually all social media sites add “nofollow” to links posted on their platform. This means the link is worthless for your domain authority and tells Google to essentially ignore these links because
925.
by pembrook 3y ago
Whataboutism does not defeat OP's core point. You either have a set of values, or you do not. The EU claims outwardly to have the values of being pro-privacy and pro-competition for healthy consumer markets. However, these 2 supposed &
926.
by pembrook 3y ago
Twitter did that long before Elon. Most social platforms downrank external links and have for years. That’s why all media startups basically died over the past 6 years.
927.
by pembrook 3y ago
Wondering how this differs from something like Customer.io or Userlist? Have some friends also working in a somewhat adjacent space (Audienceful) so will be watching you guys closely. But in general it seems email is pretty crowded these da
928.
by pembrook 3y ago
I directly argued the core points of the article. There is no magical 50K revenue plateau, nor is there a math formula that dictates anything about agencies (they aren't Saas, humans cannot be replicated at zero marginal cost). And the
929.
by pembrook 3y ago
This is what happens when a Twitter Saas bro reads a few viral tweets from Design twitter and now thinks they understand an entire segment of the economy. First of all, virtually no agency counts revenue like a Saas company (as “MRR” and “c
930.
by pembrook 3y ago
Except, what also allowed Tesla to grow was lack of unions and Chinese manufacturing. Even in the US, Tesla workers make an average of $45/hr while Detroit automakers have to pay $67/hr due to the UAW. I agree, incumbents are typi

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