Ah! Perfect occasion to quote from the paragon of pacifism and morality.
“The ideal bhangi of my conception would be a Brahmin par-excellence, possibly even excel him. It is possible to envisage-the existence of a Bhangi without a Brahmin. But without the former the latter could not be, It is the Bhangi who enables society to live. A Bhangi does for society what a mother does for her baby. A mother washes her baby of the dirt and insures his health. Even so the Bhangi protects and safeguards the health of that entire community by maintaining sanitation for it. The Brahmin’s duty is to look after the sanitation of the soul, the Bhangi’s that of the body of society. But there is a difference in practice ; the Brahmin generally does not live up to his duty, the bhangi does willy-nilly no doubt.
But that is not all. My ideal bhangi would know the quality of night-soil and urine. He would keep a close watch on these and give a timely warning to the individual concerned. Thus, he will give a timely notice of the results of his examination of the excreta. That presupposes a scientific knowledge of the requirements of his profession. He would likewise be an authority on the subject of disposal of night-soil in small villages as well as big cities and his advice and guidance in the matter would be sought for and freely given to society.
It goes without saying that he would have the usual learning necessary for reaching the standard here laid down for his profession. Such an ideal bhangi while deriving his livelihood from his occupation, would approach it only as a sacred duty. In other words he would not dream of amassing wealth out of it. He would consider himself responsible for the proper removal and disposal of all the dirt and night-soil within the area which he serves and regard the maintenance of healthy and sanitary condition within the same as the summum bonum of his existence.” – Mahatma Gandhi
The petro-dollar is a bit of a catch 22. Either we produce our own domestically and purchase with Canada (ideally using the keystone pipeline - but we know how that played out) or we throw out all of our internal production for "environmental" reasons and continue to pillage the middle east to make sure we have enough oil.
IMO, taking a bit of an environmental hit or trading with Canada is far superior to spending trillions blowing up the middle east and causing more problems than were there to begin with in an already historically unstable region.
> I do not see why kids cannot be taught how the system works, including marginal tax rates which is a one day lesson in 5th grade math.
No government, more so democratic states, wants their citizenry to know and understand the system that subjugates them.
Think of all the things you learned after high school, then reflect on the things you were taught. Refer especially to the history of one's country. Now do you see?
I grew up in the US and was taught very well about my country's history in public school, as far as I'm aware. Are you implying that non-democratic governments are somehow more transparent?
Yes, I wanted to avoid being cynical, but I did have that thought. Although, the US does do a decent job of making all this information available via the internet.
My initial thinking behind any business idea was more often than not preceded by "what if Google clones my idea???!?!? :((((". Two things wrong with this line of thinking.
First it assumes Google can execute on said idea better than me and that I can't innovate. Here's the thing though; the bigger a company is the slower it gets. Sure, they can implement processes but big always gets more complex. Being small gives you an edge. What you do with that edge will determine whether FAANG apes your idea or not.
Secondly, big tech isn't immune to market forces. The more features they add, trying to please every last potential user leads to bloat. At some point their search experience is bound to get degraded from adding way too many features in pursuit of every last user. This adds more bureaucracy. More tech debt. More uncontrollable variables.
Search in 2021, especially on mobile, is vastly different from even 5 years ago. There are more ads, more tracking, more fraud, more shady back dealing, more user hostile anti-patterns. Yes, users currently enjoy their product but at some point surveillance capitalism will get its reckoning (see Apple, Europe, regulation in general) and for all the various products they have, search is the only relevant one. Without Search, how 'threatening' is Google really?
Same goes for Facebook and that hot mess of an app. News feed, groups, pages, dating, marketplace, messaging, watch, etc. All this reeks of a co. that's lost focus in pursuit of not ceding users to competitors. This just means when they fail (which they will!), they will fail spectacularly.
My advice to you and myself is focus on a niche. Try to do things that will be hard for FAANG to reproduce by making your users love your product more.
Competing head on with these behemoths is foolish, but a moat is possible nonetheless given proper execution.
Business standpoint? How are people that contribute the majority of your bottom line a necessary evil? If anything, employers are the necessary evil simply because citizens fail to sustain/govern themselves.
Less employees means less consumers which means less income for your lifestyle business. Economics 101 bud. But yeah, keep dreaming!
Can't really vouch for Netflix's UX. I'd believe other platforms are better based on my experience with Netflix.
Major personal gripes:
1. No watch history. Have to visit the web, dig into account settings to view it, having to click through 5 items at a time!
2. Content added to your list is displayed randomly, not by date added. No option to sort with various standard parameters such as aforementioned date added, popularity, year released, genre, etc.
3. Licensed content disappearing with not so much as a "we know you saved this to watch at some point but it's no longer available". Instead you're left second guessing yourself as to whether you suffer from dementia or not. (I get the business aspect of this, but still!)
4. Suggests content you've already watched and/or rated multiple times. At times recommends said show or movie immediately after watching/rating it.
5. Originals have trailers. Other content sometimes has trailers but most licensed content does not despite said trailers being available elsewhere for free. Most (all?) content used to show trailers but that's recently changed. (My guess is trailers convert better so you're more likely to watch original content)
6. No ratings history. Tangential to #1 I guess.
7. Can't click through to 'Coming Soon' titles to explore synopsis, trailers, cast, etc. Even for shows with prior seasons available; have to first search to access. To exasperate frustration, releasing soon titles are shown in searches where you can't do anything besides stare at a thumbnail.
Pretty sure I have other issues with their UX but these are the most irritating.
Launching features on iOS/macOS first is a business decision that makes the most money (probably) but it's this very reason I slowly started replacing Adobe software.
Adobe XD, especially in the beginning, would leave Android and Windows users in a lurch focusing their efforts primarily on Mac/iPhone users.
For instance, real time mobile preview via USB (MISSION CRITICAL!!!!!), a feature requested December 16, 2016 ¹ was implemented on iOS on February 04, 2019. Worse still, this feature works on iDevices but only with a Mac. As of last December when I last checked, this was still not possible on Windows for either mobile platforms.
Sure, as late as 2009, users were evenly split between Mac and Windows. Prior, it was more Mac users. It has since changed with majority of Adobe users on Windows. ² So this steadfast commitment to Apple users makes no sense when the majority of your users are on Windows!
Switched to Figma once I started using Linux as my daily driver.
What if I told you you can use ANY Adobe software, procured legitimately, in perpetuity without using cracked/pirated copies; without paying a dime?
No shenanigans like modifying or deleting files, changing your PC's clock, etc. Just using the OS's system tools[]. It's so obvious, I'm certain a sizable number of Adobe users do this.
Obviously outlining how would alert Adobe and I'm not sure I want to risk that.
“The ideal bhangi of my conception would be a Brahmin par-excellence, possibly even excel him. It is possible to envisage-the existence of a Bhangi without a Brahmin. But without the former the latter could not be, It is the Bhangi who enables society to live. A Bhangi does for society what a mother does for her baby. A mother washes her baby of the dirt and insures his health. Even so the Bhangi protects and safeguards the health of that entire community by maintaining sanitation for it. The Brahmin’s duty is to look after the sanitation of the soul, the Bhangi’s that of the body of society. But there is a difference in practice ; the Brahmin generally does not live up to his duty, the bhangi does willy-nilly no doubt.
But that is not all. My ideal bhangi would know the quality of night-soil and urine. He would keep a close watch on these and give a timely warning to the individual concerned. Thus, he will give a timely notice of the results of his examination of the excreta. That presupposes a scientific knowledge of the requirements of his profession. He would likewise be an authority on the subject of disposal of night-soil in small villages as well as big cities and his advice and guidance in the matter would be sought for and freely given to society.
It goes without saying that he would have the usual learning necessary for reaching the standard here laid down for his profession. Such an ideal bhangi while deriving his livelihood from his occupation, would approach it only as a sacred duty. In other words he would not dream of amassing wealth out of it. He would consider himself responsible for the proper removal and disposal of all the dirt and night-soil within the area which he serves and regard the maintenance of healthy and sanitary condition within the same as the summum bonum of his existence.” – Mahatma Gandhi
More: https://scribe.rip/@dalitdiva/why-it-is-time-to-dump-gandhi-...