You stated that you are blind without analytics, which heavily implies other forms of user research are useless and don’t provide meaningful signal. I don’t think an assumption that you’re not using other methods is that outrageous.
Farming is a way of life for a lot of people, not just a business. That’s what is missing from your picture. And by population, small time farmers significantly outnumber industrial outfits, regardless of how much they spend. Sure you can make more money selling the most advanced tech to the biggest spenders. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for affordable, reliable equipment that gets the job done. Add on the risky nature of farming and its untenable to trap yourself in high 6 figures of debt and pray that you can optimize your way to enough profit to pay the interest.
So the use case is just IP theft so you can get more Paw Patrol?
AI aside, if you’ve truly exhausted all the simple readers, maybe she should move on to more advanced books instead of repeating more of the same and gamifying it, which seems a great way to destroy a child’s natural curiosity.
Sure, I don't view "IP" as valid, don't entertain the idea that it is possible to "steal" it, and absolutely don't care that someone out there might be sad imagining me making a coloring book for my kids. In fact I'd go so far as to say that holding the position that there's something wrong with tailoring teaching to a child's interests and avoiding that for fear of copyright concerns of all things actually makes you morally bad.
You overestimate how many there are. There's like 10 stories at that level. I do also read ones with paragraphs to her, but she can't do those herself because she's 4.
Yes, generating tailored practice material for a continuous difficulty curve and to keep their focus with something they enjoy is dumbing down. Exactly.
Do you get this upset at illegal drug users for their flouting the law (e.g. recreational marijuana is still illegal everywhere in the US) as you do with me making reading material for my own children? Do you get this upset at artists themselves who no doubt "stole" others' art (e.g. copied a drawing or drew a character they did not "own") at some point in their learning process?
I also sing Raffi songs to my children without asking for permission! I hope he doesn't mind!
That is not IP theft, that's private use. If (s)he tries to sell those coloring books, that's then theft. You're free to do anything you want with IP in privacy, it's only when selling or exhibiting to the public IP law is triggered. Knock yourself out with protected IP in private.
But it's true. You can do anything you want with private IP in private. It is the dissemination and distribution of IP that not yours that is the issue.
It is not piracy to acquire private IP legally (someone has to get it in the first place) and then you can to anything you want with it in your own privacy. It becomes an issue when your activities with that private IP is no longer private. think it through, I really don't think you have. BTW, I'm CTO of a law firm.
> Giving a golden statue of Trump has no effect on you and me, and a very large effect on Trump.
No effect on you, really. You aren’t affected by gas prices or tariffs? They are bowing down and participating in Trump’s patronage schemes. Every powerful person who does this is complicit with all the horrible things done by the Trump administration. They are endorsing Trump and his ilk with their behavior if not their words, which allows and encourages him to continue his fraud and abuse.
Trump is the president. People voted him into the Office. Tim Cook didn't give him the golden statue before he is in the Office.
Everyone in the United States is complicit to the horrible things done by the Trump administration by your logic. I partially agree, but I also think burning Apple to the ground will not be Tim Cook's legacy and he is in no place to go against the executive branch.
It is not about Trump, it is about the corrupted executive branch. Tim didn't do any crime against humanity in his act.
No, before Trump 2 nobody would’ve taken bribes and gifts so openly like this. It’s not even in the same league and it’s some really self-serving argumentation to pretend otherwise.
Every complicity is another nail in the coffin of our democracy.
If a cop says your problems go away for $100, you pay it, because the downside is huge by comparison. The problem is the cop getting away with it, not that you paid the bribe.
I hope you’re not comparing a gold trophy to a straight up bribe. It’s like giving Trump your Noble peace prize.
Having the prize doesn’t make you the winner. But it feeds Trumps ego sooooooo muuuuuch, it’s probably the “best” thing you can do to get on his good side without actually giving him anything.
That's a lawful FBI. This is a lawless executive branch. As we all know by now, executive branch has a lot a power that cannot be limited by Congress nor the Courts and erasing a few zeros from 4T market valuation is a piece of cake (as we witnessed daily how they moved billions around the market to their favorite inside traders).
> Everyone in the United States is complicit to the horrible things done by the Trump administration by your logic.
This is a ridiculous strawman. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume ignorance instead of malice.
I wrote that going above and beyond to curry favor with an autocrat in order to protect your profits is collaboration.
And you read, what? Existing under a government means you necessarily support it because there was an election? You do understand an election means some people voted the other way, right?
He's not an autocrat precisely because there was an election. He won the election because he got the most votes. He has since failed to do most things he campaigned on because his power is very limited by virtue of our government's structure.
Sorry for dropping the implied “wannabe” in autocrat, I figured HN commenters would be smart enough to infer that based on context. He is pushing and breaking boundaries on every front. No, he never accomplished any of the outlandish promises he made about the economy because he was lying and his team is incompetent, same reason the Iran war is a disaster. Project 2025 has been going pretty damn well though.
It's used to threaten opponents that we can efficiently kill them while minizming our casualties. That's the point. And has always been the primary driver for most tech development.
You may hate it but you don't matter. We all do it no matter what.
A large portion of the commenters here only heard of Thiel because of Trump, and think the industry begins and ends with him. It does not.
> You may hate it but you don't matter. We all do it no matter what.
I've seen you say "you don't matter" in many of your comments. Why do you think like this? Sure, we don't matter much most of the time, but this kind of elitist thinking and decision-making is clearly leading to growing discontent, which can then be used against "people who matter". Perhaps the tools for controlling the masses are now powerful enough to make what you say true, but there's a chance your "let them eat cake" attitude will lead to the downfall of the people who currently matter.
For one, acquiring an instrument is expensive - even secondhand, most instruments cost a significant amount of money. Learning it properly is even more important and expensive - fixing something in a DAW is easy, unlearning muscle memory is much harder.
Keeping up said muscle memory also isn't easy. Sure, if you got a free-standing house, no one will care much about a drum set, trumpet or whatever. But most people don't have that luxury in urban sets any more, and typical residential building quality makes even some electronic instruments (e.g. kicks still cause some amount of noise passing through floors) a challenge. Building noise ordnances / HOA rules are a bitch on top of that - most allow only a limited time window in the afternoon, useless for working-class people.
Local community groups... if your community has one, and they have some studio space where noise doesn't matter, great! Most, unfortunately, don't - space in urban environments is already rare and at a hefty premium, space that accepts noise and has adequate resources (in practice: a usable toilet is the most important) is even rarer.
> For one, acquiring an instrument is expensive - even secondhand
Depends on the instrument. You can get a completely new Harley Benton electric guitar for sub-$200.
> Sure, if you got a free-standing house
Sure, trumpets and classical instruments are a challenge, but all the guitars and all the keys can be practiced on headphones with near-zero noise. It's not an excuse.
Lmao compared to the past things are easier than ever. Can you imagine telling a farmer from 100 years ago that life is too hard? Society has made people accustomed to free stuff and cushy living. Life IS hard for the majority of us without significant wealth.
You can find really affordable used guitars or keyboards which are completely suitable for beginners. Beginner's electric drum kits are cheaper than real ones and hook up to headphones - there goes your sound problems.
I definitely agree it is much harder to learn a instrument than it is to learn a DAW. Believe me, I've done both.
There are lots of reasons to forego picking up an instrument, but living in an apartment or a modest budget are certainly not good reasons.
>> For one, acquiring an instrument is expensive - even secondhand, most instruments cost a significant amount of money.
This isn't true at all. You can get a brand new Squier Strat for < $200 and a second hand one for less than half that. You can pick up used acoustic guitars for next to nothing if you look hard enough. You can get a used digital piano for < $200 too.
Go check out a drum circle, all you need is a bucket. Learn to sing, join a choir. It’s not that hard if you quit making excuses. I’ve lived in small towns in rural areas for most of my life and there have been multiple community music groups in all of them.
instruments have never been cheaper, and for as dense as US cities can be now, they're still not that dense and people have learned to play instruments in denser settings
What? I never said that. A DAW is not a musical instrument, it does not produce sound. You output an audio file, then it’s played through a speaker. It kills the joy of performing in my opinion. That doesn’t make it not music.
> by the time batteries wear out, most people are going to want a new a phone.
Extreme consumer brain coupled with privilege. Billions of people can’t afford a new phone every couple years, they buy things and use them until they are past the point of repair, only buying a replacement when they have no other choice.
Can you honestly even say this year’s new flagships, or any from the last decade, represent meaningful improvement for most people outside the tech bubble and influencer sphere? Smartphones have been “good enough” for a long time.
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