> It's not like McDonalds has a sign that says "Made with US Chicken!" on your nuggets.
I'm not sure whether this is still the case, but the cardboard boxes that McDonald's packages its burgers in in Australia used to have '100% Aussie beef' printed on them, but the beef was actually imported from South America by a wholly-McDonald's-owned subsidiary called '100% Aussie'.
Aside from the overarching thread of the current crop of CEOs struggling to come to terms with the fact that their empires are now all they'll ever be and it's up to others to continue innovating, I found these quotes interesting:
> The Internet is no longer the world's great frontier, and the pool of unsatisfied wants that suddenly welled up as the world first came online is not what it once was. There once was no graphical operating system, no decent web browser, no search engine that could find what you were looking for. The basic amenities are now there. Of course there is still much room for innovation, but merely being able to write a computer program and understand what computer networks are good for is no longer the superpower it once was. If you're young enough to pound Red Bulls all night, you're probably not old enough to have the breadth of knowledge required to launch a great software product.
> Maybe most of the critical things that can be created by one guy typing furiously are gone, and the opportunities that remain require expertise and wisdom from a bunch of different people.
The tech companies that became big after 2008 solved problems with the same spirit as Jeremy Clarkson asking, 'How hard can it be?' and proceeding to build an electric car with a moustache called Geoff[0]. Those companies - Uber, AirBnB, Meta, Twitter, and so on - waded into very complex problem spaces, waved the magic wand of software, and used vast amounts of venture capital to obliterate the traditional solutions to these problems before anyone could realise how unsatisfactory these new solutions were. So now governments are coming up with all sorts of regulations - some of which are completely inappropriate - in an attempt to get these companies to stop being so irresponsible with the fabric of society, so everyone is now even more upset.
The days when a person who can build stuff and a person who can sell stuff were all you needed to start a startup are gone. There's a third role that's crucial now: the person who has deep understanding of the problem before product design starts so that the company doesn't build another version of The Angrifier.
I mean yeah, but Uber promised us self-driving taxis, but only found profit by delivering takeaways. Meta and Twitter - adverts, and all on the foundation of a zirp economy.
The problem any realistic assessment will have to struggle with is that they did illegal shit, exploited existing loopholes and created a better experience.
Taxis before Uber were a shit show. The worst Uber drive you had would still be aboce median for the pre-Uber taxi experience.
Same goes for finding a place to stay before AirBnB if you wanted anything outside a chain hotel.
That doesn't justify all they did, but it also points out that the market was stuck in a local minimum. Breaking out of that is a successful achievement. (We can debate if it was worth the costs. We can debate if the costs needed to be as high as they are, or if that was an outflow of using VC money. There are many debates to be had).
But "all because illegal" is intellectually irresponsible reductionism.
sorry, you make a great point and I didn't mean to diminish their breakthrough's, but not all of us can allow to not even care about laws in the first place,was my main point.
I'm not impressed with the complexity of Uber as a business, at least not to first order. You could hire out contractors in India to make a ride hailing app for $20k with maybe a 20% chance of success. Before Uber came out I knew people solving much more complex problems like routing a fleet of trucks to refill vending machines. I'd also say making a web site like AirBNB is not difficult at all -- being at ground zero for startups might have gave them a year and a half lead technologically.
Uber, AirBNB and such were really remarkable because they could fight city hall and cartels like taxis and hotels (for better and for worse.) Also those businesses have a huge amount of "dealing with bullshit" in the sense of the Uber driver assaulting a passenger, a passenger assaulting the driver, the people who have a party and trash your apartment, etc. If I'd tried to pitch businesses like that anywhere outside the bay area any investors would be like "are you kidding?"
I think you misunderstand how two-side consumer marketplaces are bootstrapped from a startup perspective. It's not really about cost of development or legal compliance. Initially it's just about getting users on both sides of the marketplace. This can't be done with a complex product, in fact it needs to be dead simple.
Also, it's baffling to me that you consider fleets refilling vending machines to be a harder problem than what Uber did. Sure maybe it's harder in a leetcode sense, but the economics are much easier to reason about, and customer acquisition in B2B vs B2C is much more straightforward. The idea that you could build a random MVP and have 20% chance of success is laughably naive. I estimate thousands of attempts at this (I know of at least 3-4 personally), it's not easy to be Uber (or even Lyft).
I agree with you. My point was that Uber and AirBNB's success was not about technology but rather the attitude about business.
VC leads in the Bay Area because VCs there will get behind high risk/high reward ventures that others won't.
At certain times and places it has been relatively easy to reach consumers. Circa 2001 we got a list of 10,000 emails in a developing country that got a better >20% response rate to join a voice chat service. I saw amazing success stories with SEO. There was a time that companies like King could get games to spread virally on Facebook. Those kind of opportunities have dried up as the gatekeepers have been able to capture more value out of their ecosystems.
But yeah, you're right, marketing is often 100x the work that people think it will be.
> the fact that their empires are now all they'll ever be
Eh, Mark Zuckerberg is 40. Facebook is planting seeds in some pretty ambitious places (VR/AR + AI). To put that into perspective, Elon Musk is 53 now, but he was ~40 when the Falcon 9 first launched for SpaceX and the Model S was released at Tesla. In June 2012, when the S was released, Tesla was worth about 0.7% of what it is now. Elon Musk was certainly rich, but no where close to the wealthiest folks at the time. Similarly, at 40 years old (21 years ago) Jeff Bezos was worth about 100th of what he is now. Rich, but it wasn't clear that Amazon would ever come close to, say, Walmart, in terms of market cap.
Mark Zuckerberg's empire still has plenty of time to grow.
I put Facebook in the same category as Google. They have all of these flashy projects, but at the end of the day they never get beyond serving advertisements. It's their core competency and always will be.
- Amazon made AWS
- Microsoft went from Operating Systems to a cloud company
- Even Google has Waymo, which might develop into a large company by itself
- Apple was founded in 1976. They really weren't the powerhouse that they are until the iPhone came out.
- Netflix went from mailing DVDs to streaming
Of course most pivots don't work and there's selection bias here. BUT, it's not unheard of for business models to change. And it certainly helps that Zuck is the original founder and has controlling shares.
Most companies are like that. Look at their core competency and how much room that market has to grow. It's definitely the exception for company to go into a completely different vertical and excel there.
pot. kettle. unicode itself was the 95% change request, and this particular discussion is sparked by anguish about that change and people such as yourself who want to discuss their anguish about the change.
and you simply ignored the points that I went to the trouble to write down, and rather than considering them or thinking about them, you just started screaming "status quo status quo"
Me too. Explaining something conceptual is a data serialisation problem, and explaining something out loud (regardless of whether anyone is listening) forces you to organise all the relevant information into a form where each additional piece of information makes sense only with the information that preceded it, and doesn't rely on anything succeeding. This reorganisation process is what forms the understanding of how to solve the problem.
Not only that but also you often want to anticipate or avoid some common responses so you make special effort to make sure you've tried all common techniques and referenced all available resources. Doing this is often the answer.
E.g. It's just not working, I've tried everything I can think of, I looked up the official documentation on this method and... oh, there's a big highlighted paragraph explaining what to do in this situation.
I used to be a schoolteacher, so whenever I read about someone's shiny new EdTech idea, I can't help but think that it's a tarpit idea.
Every developed country has a set of professional standards for teachers, and teachers who don't live up to those standards are pushed out, sometimes by having their teaching accreditation revoked. In Australia, for instance, there's a set number of hours of 'professional development' that teachers have to do every few years, and if you don't complete them, you lose accreditation and have to find a new career. The professional development activities and courses that meet the requirements are audited by the Department of Education, and have to draw on the latest research in educational psychology: keeping up with the latest research is the entire point of that professional standard.
When I did my teacher training, the first thing we were told in the first lecture was to never cite any research older than ten years, because it would be out of date. Now, if you've trained in the sciences - I was a physicist - you should be troubled with this, because a discipline can't really accumulate knowledge about the world if it throws everything out after ten years. That's why, when I broke the rules and searched through the databases of academic literature going back more than ten years, I saw the same ideas being reinvented under different names in different decades.
So there seems to be a bit of a trend for people to build flashcard-type tools at the moment, probably because someone's seen a paper on spaced repetition. That's nice, but you can't build a business around this. It doesn't matter if all the thought leaders are all in on spaced repetition this year, because next year they'll have moved on to something else, because they need to have something new to talk about. In Australia and the UK at least (I don't know the figures for other countries), half of all teachers leave the profession within five years of joining it, so most of your user base is overenthusiastic twenty-somethings with no life experience (yes, I was one of these) who will do whatever The Research tells them, and the ones who stay long enough to gain leadership positions tend not to grow out of this, so the classroom side of EdTech is basically a bunch of fads, so it's impossible to build a stable business in this space.
If you want to sell software to schools, go and work in a bunch of them, find some obscure administrative problem, and solve that.
Interesting. I don't mean to detract from your main point but as someone who's deeply into spaced repetition for the past 5-7 years (Daily Anki user + built my own spaced repetition systems for learning various skills), I find myself disagreeing with you on some things that you mentioned:
1. Spaced Repetition is not a fad. It's the most consistent and reliable way we we know for rote memorization (conditions apply). And it's not a new thing either. It's been around since the late 1800s. It just wasnt practical until the advent of computers and mobile devices. So I'm skeptical that there is another "something else" to move on to that is as impactful as SRS.
2. Not sure what the state of education in Australia these days but speaking strictly from my school days in India (1980s-1990s), something like spaced repetition would have been a godsend for every single student. And I'm 100% sure a vast majority of schools and teachers still havent heard of it.
3. I've been learning German for the past few years from some of the top private institutes in Vienna, Austria and let me tell you that neither the teacher, nor the students have any idea about spaced repetition.
That said, you're probably right about the business-viability of such ventures because of the difficulty of selling to the decision-makers, I just strongly disagree about Spaced Repetition being a "flavor of the year"
Sure, but there are all sorts of pendulum shifts in the teaching zeitgeist. Spaced repetition was just an app-based example: it's been a few years since I was in the classroom so I'm not sure what the flavour of the year is, but if spaced repetition were currently popular amongst schoolteachers, the swing away from it that I would expect to see would be to argue that memorisation isn't really learning and that learning experiences should be about developing deeper understanding, and so on. There is no measure of 'best practice'; a lot of these shifts are driven by personal preference.
> argue that memorisation isn't really learning and that learning experiences should be about developing deeper understanding,
Agreed, but if you ask anyone who's SR for any amount of time will tell you: It's realllly hard to be effective with it if you don't understand the underlying concept. The order of operations is "first understand, then drill". Of course, this comes with nuance. There are things that just have to be drilled and others that don't even need any drilling if you understand the concept. And I'd expect those educators to know the difference.
> There is no measure of 'best practice'; a lot of these shifts are driven by personal preference.
Again, you're probably right but using the example of SR threw me off because it's the one thing where I think the data is so clear that it's easily justifiable.
I didn’t read GP as making a judgment that spaced repetition was new or a fad, but rather that in the environment of how education decision-makers shift focus to new things, it’s a current flavor-of-the-year.
We saw elements of this with “new math”, Singapore math, and common core math, each label of fairly similar concepts promising to improve kids’ facility with math. Test scores haven’t leapt though.
Yeah, you're probably right. I agree that the problem might be shifting focus every year but the one difference with your math examples is that Singapore Math/Common Core math etc. all seem like different systems that don't build on top of each other. You (I'm assuming here) can't focus on Singapore Math one year, then the next year to add Common Core math on top of that etc. Its one or the other.
Spaced repetition on the other hand is a cross-disciplinary technique that just needs to be introduced and kept there. There's nothing else out there to substitute it with. If the young staff hype it up one year and then it becomes part of the curriculum and then they move on to other fancy edtech things, then there's nothing wrong with it.
I partially agree with what you just posted, but — walking along your train of thought, I take a bit of issue with the following paragraph (sliced for emphasis):
> So there seems to be a bit of a trend for people to build flashcard-type tools at the moment, [...] so it's impossible to build a stable business in this space.
I am of the radical idea that lots of things should not be for-profit businesses (doesn't mean that it can't be profitable — just not exorbitantly so), and that economist's mistaken goal of exponential growth expectations is criminally separated from the sigmoid limits to reality.
So, therefore, while I agree that EdTech is a bunch of fads, I think the fact that EdTech is a thing is wrong.
And I agree with your main point that we should be chasing accumulation and refinement of knowledge, and not doing some sort of spring-cleaning every 10 years.
"EdTech" is ripe for disruption - by a non-profit, open-source entity that provides "school stuff as a service" but is basically a lifestyle business.
It would have to be funded by adventure capitalists (e.g., retired techies having fun building stuff) for awhile, but it could easily take over once it got traction.
> If you want to sell software to schools, go and work in a bunch of them, find some obscure administrative problem, and solve that.
I think this principle generalizes to:
If you want to sell software to X, go and work in a bunch of X, find some obscure administrative problem, and solve that.
Although some people seemingly have a talent for selling products into industries they have no idea about. I always assume that means a highly motivated buyer.
It's one thing to know that the US, Canada and the Philippines don't use the same paper sizes as the other 190 countries in the world; it's quite another to be given a physical example for the first time in your life.
Last time I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you at least thought your comment was worth posting, now I assume you're just a troll and am blocking so I won't see your comments again.
What’s more trollish than telling someone “I’m blocking you because you’re a troll”? If you’re going to block me just block me, don’t owe any explanations to me.
If the only thing keeping you on Facebook is sources of specific content, you're looking for a platform that also has sources of that specific content. So it depends on what that content is, doesn't it?
> The phrase “reflexive AI usage” is what triggered my strongest reaction. “Reflexive” suggests unthinking, automatic reliance. It implies delegating not just tasks but judgment itself.
Does it? When I trained as a schoolteacher, we were required to engage in 'reflexive practice', meaning at the end of the school day, we were expected to sit down and think about - reflect - on what had happened that day. I don't know how the Shopify CEO meant that phrase, but 'reflexive AI usage' has two conflicting meanings - it can be AI usage that is either actively or passively chosen - and we might need some better phrasing around this.
I left Shopify a couple weeks ago and Tobi is very, very all-in on AI being an integral part of all jobs at Shopify.
Tobi said that how you use AI is now an official part of your review, and that for any new recs, you need to show that the job can't be done by an ai. I left shortly after the memo so I do not know if things have changed.
Shopify also brought in a very AI CTO a few months ago that internally has been... interesting to say the least.
Also, anecdotally, the quality of code at Shopify was declining rapidly (leaderships words, not mine). All sorts of code-reds and yellows were happening to try and wrangle quality. This isn't Blind so no need for the gore and opinions, but we'll have to see how this shakes out for Shopify.
I thought ceos are more like coaches who motivate, and inspire. But not dictate employees on how they should execute. Since, engineers are expected to be far more capable than the ceo on their daily work (if not, the ceo needs to evaluate hiring practices). Tying ai-use to perf review and compensation is just more unnecessary process which incentivizes behaviors which may be counter-productive - "Oh, look, I am such a brilliant prompt-engineer"
So, the memo seemed to baby-sit adult engineers. It goes without saying that engineers will use AI as they see fit, and the least a company would do is to make copilot subscriptions available for the staff if needed.
> we were required to engage in 'reflexive practice', meaning at the end of the school day, we were expected to sit down and think about - reflect - on what had happened that day.
That is _reflective_ practice (which involves reflection). Reflexive otoh comes from 'reflex', which does suggest unthinking automaticity.
No, reflexive and reflective are synonyms; they are alternative forms of adjectives derived from the Latin verb flecto, flectere, flexi, flexum (note that both English spellings are present in the principal parts).
As bad as Merriam-Webster is, you might notice that 'characterised by habitual and unthinking behaviour' is the fourth, i.e., least common, definition offered, not the first.
Merriam-Webster uses historical order, not how common the meanings are [0], which makes more sense to me - I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard the "reflective" meaning for "reflexive". The "unthinking" meaning is definitely more common.
Words are fun, especially etymology! And students do respond well to enthusiasm for them, or at least appreciate it later. Thank you for that. My wife also teaches English and a foreign language so that’s a part of our life.
That said, how could you have read this and not understood the context for the definition used?! “The phrase “reflexive AI usage” is what triggered my strongest reaction. “Reflexive” suggests unthinking, automatic reliance.”
I thought it was fine to object that you liked the primary definition the most and had the strongest association with it.
Regardless of etymology, I believe the use of “reflexive” means something different in the article than “reflective.” The Shopify CEO isn’t describing insightful use of AI in coding. He is describing automatic, unthinking use of AI.
At least, that it was my understanding.
I think we're on the page of the history book just before the page where the maps suddenly have lots of arrows on them. Governments are pre-emptively building the capability to control communications within their borders, so they're not caught with their trousers down when the shooting starts.
I'm not sure whether this is still the case, but the cardboard boxes that McDonald's packages its burgers in in Australia used to have '100% Aussie beef' printed on them, but the beef was actually imported from South America by a wholly-McDonald's-owned subsidiary called '100% Aussie'.
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