StephenCanis

Thank you so much for this! Not having to dig through the settings to toggle B&W makes it much more workable.

The world is inherently unfair - people can’t control what family they are born into. It’s unfair that some of those families may have be subject to generations of marginalization.

So if redistribution is “unfair” it’s only to counteract the inherent unfairness of the current system.

PWAs are also useful where you want visitors to be able to access a portion of a website while offline. I run a site that hosts audio tours[1] for museums and walking tours. I use PWAs to allow visitors to quickly download the tour onto their phone in case they don't have a data plan or a portion of the tour will not have cell service.

Apple definitely makes it difficult to use them effectively. For example you need to use Safari on iOS in order to download the PWA - it won't work if you're on chrome or another third party browser.

[1]https://www.youraudiotour.com

This development shows that she was tested positive. The earlier article was just highlighting the risk.

This also opens up the opportunity for a lot of lifestyle businesses. It may, at first, seem like a major downside having a venture backed startup competing directly with you. However, they are likely following an all or nothing strategy and there is a chance they go bust.

If they end up closing down or pivoting they have helped to create the market and all their users will be looking for an alternative.

Is it just me or are those two paragraphs worded in a way that makes the difference between most and least satisfied larger?

If only 35% of computer science grads say they have no regrets does that not mean that 65% of them have regrets? That's pretty close to the 73%-75% for the "Most Regrets" group.

Thought that was interesting framing.

They did get advice from some of the most experience startup investors in the world. Who's biggest question was why they hadn't started charging users. Taking advice from highly experienced people is probably better then trying to do your own research.

How would you even research such a decision if not ask very experience startup founders and investors?

I think the general idea would be for the IRS to provide you with the completed tax return. This should be sufficient for a vast majority of people who only earn employment income.

You would then review the return and could update/file a return if you have additional deductions or business income that would not otherwise be reported to the IRS.

I believe the UK and some other European countries already have this system.

I just wanted to point out it's totally normal to go through waves of interest or motivation for various things in your life. Especially if these are things unrelated to your career or work you should consider becoming less outcome focused. You mention 25%-50% of the journey - how do you define the 100%?

For something like running I think it's common to get very interested and the interest to fade out over time. This might be before you can run a marathon or half marathon - does that mean it wasn't worth it to run while you did? You may also pick it up again down the line, maybe it takes you years to get to a goal rather than a few months. You can start and stop - don't feel bad about it.

I think our society has a high focus on the super achievers and the end result. However, if you're focusing on weight loss, running or meditation you're never going to be the best. The purposes of each of those activities is to enjoy them for what they are. If you're not enjoying them move onto the next thing and you can always come back later.

Your Audio Tour (https://www.youraudiotour.com) is making about $120 in recurring monthly revenue. I built it using Micheal Hartl's online ruby on rails tutorial which I would HIGHLY recommend.

Thanks! It's been going well and I've especially enjoyed seeing people build tours using it!

Peter Attia is a doctor who has a lot of really good and detailed information on his site.

The video on the page provides a detailed look at how the body breaks down glucose and fat for energy:

https://peterattiamd.com/introduction-to-superstarch-part-i/

I think the difference in these cases is that the business never owned or controlled the merchandise being sold. For example I would expect a real estate agent to report their commission as revenue rather than the price of the house sold. However, the price of the houses sold may make good marketing material.

You are right - what Alex did is called "free soloing" which means climbing with nothing attached to the wall. Freeclimbing means you climb while harnessed in so if you fall you (hopefully) don't die. Originally people "aid climbed" the wall where you drill bolts into the wall and hoist yourself up.

This also explains why Alex can climb it so much faster. No ropes to worry about on the way up.

Check out the movie valley uprising on Netflix if you want to learn more.

At the moment I haven't considered how I would implement that feature. First I want to see if I can get people to use the basic version.

Do you have a website? If so you should share it, would be interesting to see what you're doing.

I find that's the trouble with alot of good ideas I have. They work great if you can get to scale but that's easier said then done!

Is your site still up? I would be interested to see it.

Cool, thanks for the link! Looks like a great way to explore new cities.

I'm hoping my site will be more helpful for smaller, less tech savvy, organisations who want to create their own tours. Many of these sites create tours in house or charge a pretty penny to create your own app.

Really cool idea, I think people would love that! The biggest hurdle would be getting enough interesting content. You would almost need to create a Wikipedia for real world locations.

If you were able to get enough content I think that would be an incredible app/service.

Thanks! Ya there are a ton a features I think you could add to this - beacon and location support would be very cool.

Thanks! Appreciate the kind words. The target was definitely for smaller museums that lack the time and budget for a full tour. I noticed a lot of these museums don't have audio tours which I think is a shame.

I actually had the options to include custom audio and record audio in the browser. I took them out to simplify the product but I would definitely consider re-implementing them if there was demand.

Problem: My experience taking audio tours at various museums showed the use of antiquated and expensive hardware. Most alternate solutions used mobile apps which are inconvenient to download and take more time to release.

Project: I went about developing a web app that allows anyone to quickly create an audio tour for free:

https://www.youraudiotour.com/create

I also integrated Amazon Polly to automatically generate audio based on text inputs. This further increases ease of use by eliminating the need to record and edit audio.

It was a great learning experience since I learned rails from scratch and don't have a background in programming. Now to see if I can get more people to use it!

You can even learn how to get other people to create free content for your channel!

I don't disagree that Juatin knows how to market and create quality content. What I don't understand is why someone who wants to start a successful company would spend their time doing this. Why not spend time building the company?

The snaps also get posted online after the contest - doesn't that defeat the purpose of Snapchat?! It's not a good medium for this.

That's a bad example since raising minimum wage increases the cost of doing business. Artificially changing the cost of business inputs causes problems in the economy - not the fact that people are earning more money.

Giving people money allows them to buy livestock, supplies for their children or food and shelter. This will help to improve their quality of life and spur the local economy. I'm hard pressed to see how this could be considered unethical.

I think it's also interesting to think about the exploitation of low paid workers. There are lots of jobs that very few people want to do that are low paying because anyone can do them. With basic income people will no longer be forced to work these low wage jobs just to get buy.

I could foresee lots of people quitting to learn skills for more rewarding jobs. You might see that jobs like a janitor, garbage man, and service reps at abusive companies start commanding higher wages since people don't want to do them.

Now workers have the leverage to decide not to work doing something they hate unless they are paid enough for it.

Creating free education programs for careers in demand would really strengthen this effect and I think would improve society as a whole. People will be rewarded for doing menial or dirty jobs rather than looked down on by society.

Copyright and other protections allow a temporary (maybe not so temporary anymore) monopoly on your exact idea. That's a good way to spur innovation since you reward the people creating those innovations. You could still compete with any of those products and people still do.

I think temporary monopolies are good - permanent monopolies maybe not so much. It's an interesting way to think about capitalism that's for sure.

I just wanted to point out that Peter Thiel is discussing his ideas in the context of creating a very successful company. He is not talking about what system is best for society in general - rather what is best for an individual business owner.

Generally in economic theory companies in perfectly competitive industries have zero "economic profit" which means they earn enough profit to compensate the owners for capital invested. Effectively the owners are getting fairly compensated for the risk of investing their capital.

In a monopoly the owner is getting compensated not based on risk of investment but rather how much can be extracted from the customers. This is clearly good for the owner and not so good for everyone else.

Creating a monopoly based on a superior product is a good thing for everyone since you are innovating and creating something that was not there before. You should be able to hold this monopoly if no one can effectively reproduce it. However, any kind of regulation to maintain your monopoly is likely bad for everyone except yourself. In theory, without regulation you would expect most monopolies to fall or have reduced power as other players come into the market.

I think Peter Thiel has a very good way of thinking about the motivation for innovation in a capitalistic market. However, outside of brand new innovations, monopolies are likely bad for a society as a whole.

I think an open discussion of tax policy is important and thankfully organisations like the OECD are working to create frameworks for countries to use to make good policy choices. (especially in the international context) I recommend looking into their papers if you're interested.

That said I found the arguments in this document missing some important points.

They don't clearly separate the benefits of corporate taxes from a domestic vs international standpoint. These are two very different issues. On the international side they talk about the race to the bottom where counties are attracting companies through lower tax rates. They suggest this is a negative trend but don't offer solutions - because it's a complex issue with no easy fix. Sovereign countries can chose their tax regime and therefore there is an incentive for some to become tax havens. As an individual country it will hurt you to raise the corporate tax rate since there is a higher incentive for companies to move profits. So are they suggesting all counties agree to raise their corporate tax rates? It's not clear. Countries are obviously aware of this issue and are working with the OECD to draft solutions.

On the domestic side they gloss over the fact that most countries work to have an integrated tax system. That is, no matter how you structure you taxes when income flows to an individual the total tax paid on that income should be the same. So having a corporation (which usually has a lower tax rate than individuals) gives you a deferral of tax. This is to encourage businesses to reinvest.

They claim that if there is no corporate tax then companies will create shell companies and put income there. Tax authorities aren't stupid. Even now it would be beneficial to do that since corporate rates are lower than personal rates. Thats why if the company isn't earning business income (I.e. you just throw your personal wealth there invested in passive income) the tax rate of the corporation is bumped up to the highest personal rate on that income. So doing what the document suggests would be illegal.

The only real argument for changing the corporate tax rate should be (from a domestic standpoint) based on the deferral. That is, do you think companies should pay less tax to help grow their business faster and only pay tax when the owner stops reinvesting in the business?

Obviously this is a complex topic and I think that this document glosses over alot of that complexity. Just to note that I'm most familiar with the Canadian tax system so that's what I've based the domestic discussion on. However, all countries have similar tax policy objectives and should have similar rules in place.

Ok

I agree getting more content on twitter is an good option for montetization. It might even be the best one.

I brought up Google because time spent on a site doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot more ad revenue. What matters is serving up useful ads that provide value to the user and advertisers. Google is great at that - Twitter isn't because of many reasons you've stated.

So maybe twitter should be trying to improve their ad program to serve better ads. If they can't do that well (no way they could do it as well as Google) then perhaps increasing time users spend on Twitter is their best option.

I only wanted to point out that the solution is not self evident. Just because people are using a service to find content hosted elsewhere does not mean it can't make money. The problem might be that Twitter is bad at finding ads people want to see.