I live in Alaska where billboards are banned, and it’s lovely. The ugliness of outdoor advertising is one of the first things I notice when traveling in most of the continental United States. Even without billboards, people still shop at local businesses.
Seems like my experience may not have been typical. I used Bench from 19-23 for a startup and always felt like I was getting great service. I agree that they were a bit expensive, but the financials passed external reviews and always made my investors happy.
It is a shame to see them closing down this way, awful timing and awful treatment of their customers. As a founder, you need to fully understand your financials, but you should have a pro managing the day-to-day and even month-to-month.
I used them from around '18-'22. There were a couple of minor glitches sometimes, but it was generally fine and they were always quick to respond to questions. My accountant liked working with them.
Agreed, the world would be a simpler place if we all followed the same play book...for online communication and everything else.
But we don't, and we probably can't. Cultural, language, religious, gender, and educational differences mean that part of any non-trivial discussion is going to involve some sort of "handshake" where you establish the rules of the discussion. And it is going to be a slightly set of rules for any discussion. I've seen sites (and before the web, messages) like this for years. You paste the link and are on your way. Or, more commonly, you paste the link and then proceed to provide the information someone is looking for. This is a variation of the "use the search, this has been covered" fight that every forum has.
Why go through that? If you want to engage with somebody, do it. If not, don't.
There weren't tax increases, we don't have taxes to increase. We use oil tax and PF revenue to fund our government almost exclusively. Some municipalities and cities have sales/property taxes, but most don't.
I agree that we need a balanced package, but we also need to stop paying billions a year in tax credits and incentive to oil companies.
Congrats! Facebook could not have gotten anybody better to make live video awesome. I'm excited to see what the future holds for the fb/vidpresso combo.
That is a little too reductionist. It can hold a lot of things. Millions of people get all of their facts and information from live video. A lot of it is delivered by cable tv right now, but in the same way that TV news overtook newspapers, Facebook will overtake cable. People have watched moon landings, walls falling, and the birth and death of democracies, all live--and there were always advertisers paying the bills.
I know that we're in the middle of an awakening of sorts about personal data, but that doesn't negate the value that services like Facebook can offer. I may be naive, but I think this is a step in the right direction.
Advertisers are just a bunch of people paying money to blast our ears and eyes with spam about their products. They're not philantropists. They're not financiers.
Facebook is a vehicle for said spam, disguised as a social network. Yes, it has to offer some value, otherwise no one would stare at the ads.
Putting Facebook and advertising in charge of providing facts and information is a stupefyingly bad idea. It's already shown that it can't provide either.
And if they really want to do it, then they should be regulated.
I agree that regulation is a good idea. Throughout history, news and facts have always been provided to most people by groups with vested interests in controlling the prevailing narrative. It started in churches, moved to papers and has taken a lot of forms over the years. Moneyed parties have always used their resources to sell products, ideas, and agendas via these channels. Companies like Facebook are different because they allow near-universal access.
Facebook doesn't provide the information, they provide a platform and tools for anybody to be a publisher. Anything they can do to improve the platform is a good idea.
All this is to say: Facebook has done a great thing by bringing Randall and co. on board and should continue to bring new ideas and talent in, through whatever means they can.
To me, it is about what they are able to create independently, and the value of the end product.
Senior people have made the right mistakes, wasted weeks of time, and know what to avoid, what to embrace, and what to ignore. A senior dev can understand the requirements and figure out what is important and deliver something without a lot of external input.
I'm picky. For me that's an intermediate developer. What I want to see in a senior developer is that they make everybody else on the team more effective.
As I've gotten older, I've started to appreciate how much farther a good developer can go rather than just these things. I think the kinds of things you talk about are things that most people can accomplish in 5-10 years. But how do you differentiate between that and someone with 20-30 years of experience?
Because the industry has been expanding so fast, we have perpetually been in the situation where most programmers are younger. But I don't think it will be too long before you will see half your team having 20 years of experience. If you ask yourself, "How am I going to improve after I've worked 5-10 years" and "How much better can you get" I think it is instructive.
My experience has been that you can get a lot better, but that it's very hard to see the difference from the perspective of being a junior or intermediate developer.
Addiction. It affects so many of us-maybe all of us-greatly. Our legal system, education system, healthcare system are all heavily burdened by it, and they all treat it differently. Good solid science (and a health dose of PR) in the name of ending addiction could go a long way towards making the world a lot cooler place.
