IMO you don’t need to build a full app or company. You could just build a series of niche sites or properties. If your code solves a specific pain point really well, wrap it in a simple front end or paid API and let people use it.
Some possible ideas:
Micro SaaS: Turn it into a one-page tool (log parser, file cleaner, PDF transformer) with Stripe and add rate limits. People pay for simplicity.
Paid API: Use RapidAPI or Plain.com to expose it. Charge per hit or via metered billing. Maybe even a slackbot for some of these would make sense.
Productized utility: Sell it as a $49/month “done-for-you” service to whatever niche audience would benefit (dev teams, SEO people, lawyers, etc).
Digital bundle: If it’s CLI or script-based, package it up with a guide or demo on YouTube and sell on Gumroad.
You’re not necessarily building a startup, and that’s fine! just something useful enough for strangers to pay for which is more than enough
It's not got much to do with America, it's a human problem where we don't accurately assess risks, especially when there is a level of abstraction, or when emotions are involved. For instance, if there were three, highly-publicized cases of teenagers dying—somehow—from eating too much toothpaste, there would be a hundred news articles about it ("what you need to know about the toothpaste eating epidemic", "7 safe alternatives to toothpaste for your child"), and cities would pass laws limiting the size of toothpaste tubes you can legally sell, and the toothpaste would be moved behind locked ballistic glass in stores, and you'd have to show ID to buy it. Meanwhile, air pollution kills 7 million people a year, and has for decades, and it's like "meh, price of doin' business". Humans are dumb about this stuff, and there is very little rhyme or reason to the proportionality of their responses to different risks.
You inhabit a global economy that was imagined by students in dorm rooms and couch surfing launch failures.
Working people today have the wealth and leisure of every single lady and gentleman scientist who has ever made a significant contribution - and we have the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. You have running water, flushing toilets, and food delivery. The only thing standing in the way is a commitment to curiosity and competence. The beauty of science is it is in the evidence of reproducable experiments. All models are wrong, most theories are bullshit, and the people charged with progressing science for our species learned it in a couple lectures a week over three years or less. You can do valuable and edifying work in less time than it took to fully apprehend the disappointment of the Game of Thrones finale if you'd only watched 3blue1brown videos instead.
Prestige is what they offer you when they don't want to pay you what you are worth, and their esteem isn't worth the envy and sabotage it costs. If you are curious about something, find out. The one thing that I can guarantee that is true about this world is that it forgives you when you prevail, and when you fail, nobody cares. I say this to myself as much as anyone.
During YC, we relentlessly practice our “two-sentence description.” It’s roughly of the form “ACME makes soup taste better. We do it with a seasoning that chefs add to their broth.” That is, what you do, and how you do it (or an example.)
Yours might be “Perfai makes APIs faster. We do this by ?” The “how” is unclear.
Are the case studies from actual users? Why all of the disclaimers?
Your site mostly makes the claim that “slow APIs lead to churn.” If that is true, it is not obvious to me. I almost wonder if the copy was written by AI, as it uses plausible-sounding verbiage but is unconvincing.
I believe the real problem is that you haven’t talked to enough potential users about their API problems. If you were able to quote their pain points in their own words, I think the copy would more convincingly demonstrate there is a problem and how your solution fixes it.
To be That Buddhist Guy - as the old saying goes: "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional".
To me this is the critical distinction. Pain (loss of loved ones, physical pain, health issues, losing a job etc) is a part of life. If you love, you ultimately lose. This is what life is, this is what love is. It's gunna hurt at times. This cannot be changed and cannot be controlled. This is the Buddhist "first arrow".
But. What you ~do~ with that pain - how you respond to a crisis, how you think of yourself as victim or otherwise, how much you ruminate on the self: "damn, this shit always happens to me / why am I always ill / I'm poorer than that guy over there and it's eating me up" - all of this ~can~ be changed. This is suffering. We're all so bound up in the self that the ego very often controls our response to pain. Suffering blooms. This is the "second arrow".
Like anything else, it takes practice to get better at this. But you can get better at it. I know I have. I'm still - like most humans - often bound by instinctual reactions. I'm still triggered by anger and fear and uncertainty at regular periods. But with mindfulness and attention training it becomes easier to be content, easier to "put a gap between stimulus and response", easier to just notice the ego flaring up, see those moments of regret or jealousy or greed.
Attention truly is at the centre of this. Noticing from as dispassionate a position as possible that you are reacting in a particular way will only come when you pay attention to your inner dialogue. That's another reason why attention being eaten by gadgets / notifications / etc is so nasty.
Let's take an extreme example. If banks offered everyone 0% interest mortgages with 100 year terms and no credit checks, how many more people would want to buy a house? A lot! It would take decades for builders to build enough houses to meet that demand. In the meantime, house prices would go up by a factor of 10, along with wood and other building materials. Meanwhile everyone who already owns a house is cash out refinancing their now multi-million dollar home, and suddenly everyone you know who was a homeowner at the beginning of 2023 is now a million dollars richer and spending it quickly.
The same with businesses. Let's say you're a growing business. Things are good and you've been investing your 10% profits each year into hiring. Now banks decide that all decently profitable businesses can have that same 0% interest mortgage with 100 year term. Why not double, triple, quadruple your team? You could achieve your goals so much faster! But then the banks are offering all of your competitors the same deal. But there's not enough talent to go around.
Suddenly you're in a bidding war for decent sales guys and the starting price is a million dollar salary. And those million dollar sales guys are spending their salary, competing with other million dollar sales guys for shit they don't need - the price of everything goes up.
This is an extreme example to illustrate WHAT JUST HAPPENED with record low interest rates. The economy was being heated up by very very cheap money. Inflation started getting out of control.
Now, if you were in the above hypothetical scenario, you might say "Hey maybe we shouldn't give out all those crazy loans, people are going crazy with all of this money, and it's kind of fucking everything up." And you would be right.
While logically money is fungible, it is the illusion of not seeing the transaction happens that makes people feel welcome to enjoy hospitality in case of a friends beach house, dinner guest, catered party guest, etc. As soon as there is an explicit, incrementally attributable transaction triggered by their attendance, people often feel compelled to offer cash.
If you invite people over for dinner & cook, or its a catered party, they all feel comfortable.
As soon as you order takeout or ask what they want, they feel compelled to split the check. Even more so when dining out.
Even the difference between ordering an array of dishes in advance vs asking what they want / ordering once they've arrived totally changes how people respond.
It gets very awkward when you are trying to host & treat people, but they insist on compensating with cash.
For me, I don't get the point of having wealth/resources if I can't share them freely. Especially if you come from a more modest background and now make 5x what some of your friends/family do.
Think about what you are saying when you say "my property". Owning something is not a natural law of the universe. If I go into your house and take your laptop how are you going to take it back? If I'm stronger than you, then tough shit. Or we have a war and if I win the war I take your stuff. Most people would call the police (the government) to sort it out, and the government will look at the law and decide who has rightful ownership.
Your right to property is given to you by the state and you pay your taxes for that right. Without the state, you don't have property; you are a warlord with a gun up until a stronger warlord decides to run you over.
>I still tend to think that government could fund all the welfare it needs if it simply stopped wasting so much money on cronyism and frivolous projects.
This is entirely different from the "taxation is theft" angle, but somehow "taxation is theft" only ever seems to apply when it's used for welfare and not for highway subsidies. It's strange that you are not "robbing peter to pay paul" when taxes are used to bomb russians.
The government collects revenue and must decide on the most efficient way to spend that revenue. Many economists have hypothesized that giving money directly to people is better than social programs such as food stamps.
My system is 100% automated. Sonarr + Radarr + Prowlarr + Deluge + SABnzdb FTW.
I stuck to using torrents for years but about 6 months ago I switched to Usenet and the $10 p/m for the Usenet provider and $30/year for an indexer is definitely worth the money. Now instead of having hundreds of seedless torrents in my queue, my system downloads even the most obscure media at a speed that completely saturates my connection.
Reminds me of Joscha Bach’s definition of a nerd, from his Lex Friedman podcast episode:
<paraphrase>
“The definition of a nerd is someone who thinks conversation is for peer reviewing ideas.”
“What do non-nerds think conversation is for?”
“Negotiating alignment.”
</paraphrase>
A good difference to keep in mind when we want to bend parallel conversations with the alignment negotiators to intersection.
The problem is that the US wants an agreement (saying data can be stored in the US as long as the US can't access it and EU privacy laws are applied to it), but the US also doesn't actually want to lose the right to warrant the data from US companies without respecting EU laws.
The history of the situation is like this:
- Privacy shield exists
- EU users data are stored and owned by Microsoft Ireland
- US goes against Microsoft with a warrant to acquire data stored by Microsoft Ireland
- Microsoft US refuses, stating it's not Microsoft US data nor US citizens data but data from an entirely different company that's in Ireland, even though Microsoft US owns it, so US needs to go against Microsoft Ireland
- Case goes all the way to the supreme court ( United States v. Microsoft Corp., 584 U.S. ___, 138 S. Ct. 1186 (2018) [1] )
- The US government really wants the access, but a lot of noise is being made from EU customers and government about it being in violation of the privacy shield, and that Microsoft losing this case would mean no more privacy shield since it would mean said shield isn't working, so US business are making noises too
- After the hearing, but before the Supreme Court gives its answer, the CLOUD Act is passed almost hidden as part of budget bill, which says US can go against a US company to request data from foreign companies they own and they have to comply as if it was their data
- The Supreme Court dismiss the case, the US government dismiss the original warrant, press releases are made saying they're not asking the data anymore and the SC dismissed the case so the privacy shield is working, and then the US government issue the exact same warrant but now under the CLOUD Act, which this time Microsoft US doesn't contest since the CLOUD Act says they have to provide the data from Microsoft Ireland
- Microsoft Ireland data is provided to Microsoft US, which provide it to the US government, bypassing EU courts
- EU is not fooled at all and ends the privacy shield -- EDIT see comments: after a court case forced them to admit it
- The CLOUD Act allows provisions to negotiate on a country to country basis, probably so they can negotiate with each country behind doors until they each get their own "ok I cave" moment to avoid being excluded from US tech service.
- GDPR enters the scene, making those privacy provision front and center and pushing them all the way to the EU. The whole negotiate with each country on its own goes away, you need a deal with the entire EU where each country doesn't risk being isolated if they say no, a EU country cannot say yes on its own as that would violate EU law.
- Side note: the UK after leaving the EU has now already made such an agreement, meaning UK data handled by US companies are no longer protected by UK courts no matter where they're stored (sovereignty much ?)
- US wants a privacy shield 2 with the EU, which I don't see how it can happen as long as the CLOUD Act exists unless EU companies are excluded from it, but the whole reason for the CLOUD Act to exists are EU companies, they could literally have named it "Bypass EU Law Act", because other jurisdiction don't care that much about their users data for some reason
The issue the US has is that all the US tech companies providing tech services could become persona non grata from the EU market court case after court case like this one, since the US has decided neither storing the data in the EU nor setting up as a completely separate sub company puts the data out of its reach.
Please note that the US never even tried to request Microsoft Ireland the data under the EU courts, like eg France did when asking Swiss court for swiss data from Proton Mail, their issue is really about them having all access on their own without having to ask anyone else, which is precisely what the EU refuses. The EU is fine with the US asking EU court for EU companies / users data and the court deciding on a case by case.
I think you're right that it's widespread beyond consciously selfish people. Most people naturally reproduce whatever behavior seems to be socially rewarded, and some people don't think very hard into it.
For example, in my social group, who as you can imagine are a bunch of well-off privileged people, there is a small but persistent minority of people who complain about ills that plague less privileged people as if they affected them, too. They aren't a minority of the most selfish people; they might be a pious bunch but they're mostly just not thinking.
So I hear complaints about anxiety over employment, from people with Ivy League degrees who could have ten interviews for higher pay lined up within 48 hours if they wanted. And not just acknowledgment of the emotions that everybody feels regardless of privilege, but explicitly linking their anxiety to real economic precarity and political and policy injustices.
Complaints about how difficult it is to pay for health care, from people who have 1% incomes and walk out of a complex surgery owing a few hundred bucks. That's not the health care crisis that people are talking about!
Complaints about exploitative employment, from salaried people who can and do take a few days off whenever they want, for whatever reason they want, and can disappear from work anytime, no matter how awkward the timing, with no questions asked by saying the words "mental health."
These people aren't consciously lying, but they aren't thinking concretely enough to realize that people aren't going to validate and applaud their words like they would if they came out of the mouth of someone less privileged.
I tell them that if privileged people exploit the sensitivity to mental health in the workplace to such a ridiculous degree, there might be a backlash against it before some people even begin to see the benefits. And if people learn to associate "health care crisis" and "food islands" with wealthy people complaining about nearly imperceptible lifestyle compromises, it's going to make it much harder to make progress politically.
But they don't get it. They aren't thinking below the surface. They're just thinking "people sympathize with and applaud these kinds of complaints so I should voice them as well."
When we wake up every morning, this is a wide range of options available to us, and we only see a tiny sliver of them.
When we do the same thing we did yesterday, we will see that option more clearly tomorrow, and other options less clearly. Our agency narrows.
When our options have narrowed too much, it can be hard to get unstuck. Hard to get out of the rut. Wake up, go to work, consume content, go to bed. Every day. Sometimes we might dream of other options, but they don't seem attainable, they're just too distant.
I think the only way to expand your options is to actually do new things. The new thing becomes more salient, and the next day you might see more than one option. Build up more ways to be.
Some activities are worse than others about further narrowing your options, and some can help expand your options beyond just becoming more salient themselves.
Scrolling endless content never lets me get bored, never lets me think of something else to do, and doing something else is always a bit harder than continuing to scroll. There's a clear similarity to drug addiction, where options narrow until to just doing that drug all the time, and being wasted on the drug doesn't do anything to expand your options.
Going for a run expands my options. I get a bit bored on the run, and my mind can wander. I can reflect, and may choose to do something new tomorrow. Journaling expands my options. Practicing gratitude can expand my options. Meditating can expand my options. Talking to a therapist can expand my options. All that mental health stuff shares something in common here, it lets me break the cycle of narrowing options and narrowing agency, and instead widen my options a little.
It's not just that "smartphones are like tobacco". It's like we're in
a world where doctors tell you that smoking is good, businesses and
government require you to smoke, and we give free cigarettes out to
children to get them hooked.
Like all addictive habits and substances there's a cast-iron
correlation between availability and use, so, sure, creating barriers
like boxes and locks can help.
But I do think articles like this have a "feelgood" disingenuous
message - that you can "just say no" when you want to exercise
individual choice. You still, can, but at some cost.
It misses the complex psychological webs that addictive agents weave
within families and societies. Drugs (digital ones too) are a social
problem as much as an individual issue - as I explored in Digital
Vegan [1].
We've discussed here before something as simple as my reasonable
request for students to voluntarily surrender their phones during an
exam. Many comments were indignant and furious.
Many obsessive things can hijack the mind, even falling in love, or
the rush of exercise. Historically, few except alcohol, had widespread
daily availability. Tobacco was an issue as much about the advertising
industry as the harms of cigarettes. Smartphones fall into a hitherto
uncharted category - damaging agents that society is organising itself
around so as to almost mandate their harms (EDIT: Ok automobiles are a
precedent, and look where that's getting us).
The effects of reduced attention, poor concentration and productivity,
disorganised spending, surveillance fatigue, performance anxiety,
obsessive and compulsive behaviours, accidents due to reduced
situational awareness, e-waste, negative impact on relations with
children, family and friends... are all externalities to a
multi-billion dollar industry that is insinuating itself
structurally into our way of life.
My belief is that it's unnecessary, creates more harms than benefits,
and is dangerous from a social resilience perspective.
That's a different conversation from "put it in a pouch if you don't
want to be distracted", and let's not pretend otherwise.
There are so many issues conflated around 'caste' and Indians. Let me unravel a bit using my experiences in the corporate world and anecdotes from friends.
1. Whoever first came to USA on H1-B (just before Y2K) are in high positions at many companies. They are VPs, not because they have good managerial skills, not because they have great competence in solving technical problems. Just they came early, these folks got green cards so fast, and they got Exec MBA from weekend/night schools. You can see a lot them at many FANG companies with MBA from Wharton or berkely-columbia mba, etc.
2. Just like a white VP from X co, hires his subordinates and friends from his old company, these Indians follow the footsteps of these white leaders. Mind this, before harping about 'caste'. When white managers engage in whatever Indians do, you won't call it 'casteism', but you call it cronyism and collusion. You can see this in every mega company, where new SVP brings in his cronies from his old company, and tries to get rid of the old structure.
3. In India, going to USA to work for a software company is seen as a bragging right (unlike those Indians who come to USA to work for cruise liners--C-1/D visa). So, when fellow country men come to work with an Indian in the states, these Indians get jealous, not because of caste, but because of the fact "oh, I am not unique anymore, as more Indians are coming to America". My friend, who is not a brahmin, but belongs to non-reservation category in India, was given hard time by a person belonging to the same caste as he does. In another place, his contract was not renewed even though his Indian manager wanted him, but this full time employee who speaks the same language as my friend, has grudges against my friend. These cases are dime a dozen: no brahmins involved here.
4. The trash from the point 1 (esp senior management who got lucky because they came early to usa, and moved up the ladder faster) is replicating the corporate illness that non-Indians do. Instead of socializing at golf clubs, these people socialize by inviting each other to their homes.
5. H1-B is the large culprit of exploitation of Indians. Karlheinz Deschner, in his 10 volume work on Christianity, said this: "the oppressed become the future oppressors". Same thing is happening here: now, Indian managers at FAANG and other companies, exploit their country men. Here, the white senior management is culprit: they just put Indians as managers for Indians, and ask them to deliver results. When green card process takes decade, what can one do? Here is one example I experienced at CISCO: all team members are Indians, almost all on H1B; I saw my colleagues replying to emails from 6 am to 11 pm. Everyone tries to oneupmanship in these teams.
6. Imagine India sent only 10 Indians every year to USA. In such a case, every Indian would have helped their new countrymen. USA has 3 million Indians. Here, every Indian colleague is jealous of another Indian. I am not saying that white people are selfless. With respect to Indians, one more dimension of jealousy should be added.
7. One of things Indian learned in India is chamchagiri (brown-nosing). Look at all those Brahmin (and non-brahmin as well) authors of Sanskrit to English translations during British Raj. In the second page of their books, you see "dedicated to Lord Viceroy blah blah". This is something almost every Indian has mastered. So, this makes these Indians probe each other about their backgrounds, their interests, their sh1tty after-work cricket/basketball camaraderie, their weekly visits to lunches, etc. Here, everyone is assessing everyone else: if Mr X is super smart in coding/solving problems, other colleagues brown-nose this Indian guy; if Mr Y is a chamcha (ears) for a Sr Director of Engg, people try to be nice to him; this is the shit these people do; etc. Next time, when your Indian colleagues go for beer party, or to play a game or to watch a movie with their Indian managers, wear these lens to see what these Indian subordinates do. Even if you are a brahmin, and if your boss is a brahmin, still you have to do a bit of brown nosing to move up--by talking about some Carnatic music or by discussing about some ritual you gonna do next month, etc.
8. There is something Indian about Indian managers. In old days, say, Zamindars (a person, who has a lot of land/zamin), had a lot of servants. These servants dedicate their lives to them. Whenever a son of a servant goes to college, the servant asks Zamindar for financial help; whenever someone in his family is sick, the servant asks a favor from the big boss(zamindar). In these situations, the big boss gives money, sometimes jewelry for servants' daughters' marriage. In other words, servants expect more than salary, and a good boss delivers on these 'un-assumed', 'un-enforceable' obligations.
When Indians become managers, they act like these Zamindars, but these Indian managers don't deliver on 'un-assumed', 'un-enforceable' obligations. These managers just use their Indian subordinates, by calling them at 8 pm to deliver on some feature because some VP wanted it for Tuesday's demo.
9. There are Indian bodyshops. Owners of these bodyshops came before Y2K, after Y2k. They just sponsor H1b en-masse; then these guys tell their employees, "oh your billing rate is $65, and shows a fake contract from primary vendor that shows $65 per hr, while he actually bills $100 per hr". Whenever an Indian employee transfers out his H1-b to another company, this bodyshop owner doesn't pay him 3 months of salary. This is how many Indian bodyshop owners became multi-millionaires.
I can go on. Don't blame Brahmins in any of these. Just look at a broader picture of how Indians operate.
Rogers practiced effective communication for children, which I believe is worthwhile studying as an adult. Helps with clarity.
Starts with:
1. State the idea you wish to express as clearly as possible, and in terms preschoolers can understand. Example: "It is dangerous to play in the street."
2. Rephrase in a positive manner, as in "It is good to play where it is safe."
3. Rephrase the idea, bearing in mind that preschoolers cannot yet make subtle distinctions and need to be redirected to authorities they trust. As in, “Ask your parents where it is safe to play.”
Ends with:
... 9. => "Your favorite grown-ups can tell you where it is safe to play. It is important to try to listen to them, and listening is an important part of growing."
1. Deduction - given premises and inferential rules, produces conclusions; as certain as possible.
2. Induction - given premises and conclusions, produces inferential rules; statistically probable, but a single counterfactual observation means throwing out the whole thing (e.g. black swans).
3. Abduction - given conclusions and inferential rules, produces premises; no guarantee of certainty.
Any time we retrospectively tell a story of how something came to be, that we did not immediately observe, we're applying abductive reasoning. It relies on the same inferential rules as deduction and induction, but applied in reverse.
If someone needs shelter, what's to stop them from locating a suitable bit of land, scrounging up materials, and constructing a dwelling, through their own energy and ingenuity? Many people try this, but it is the government which stops them, sending police officers and sanitation workers out to "clean up" the "illegal encampment" and remove it from the "public park" or "highway right-of-way" where it was located.
We can see that housing is a right in the same way that freedom from unreasonable search is a right: it is a limit on what the government can do to you. If shelter is a basic right, that means the government cannot force you to be homeless.
A government assumes an obligation to provide housing for its citizens by interfering with their natural ability to provide it for themselves. It is the government which defines the idea of private land ownership, the government which hires police to enforce property boundaries, the government which imposes property taxes, the government which regulates use of public land, the government which enacts zoning codes, the government which requires building permits.
If someone cannot make it through this gauntlet, we cannot demand that they simply lay down and die: government created the problem, so government must solve it. Accepting the existence of shantytowns is one solution; subsidized public housing is another.
Nobody cares... most people are completely ignorant to what is going to happen, so nobody fucking cares. I was in college in '99 taking earth science, thinking people were reasonable. I took up cycling as transit at the time and cut down sharply on meat consumption. I assumed i was getting a head start on the changing infrastructure.
I fought hard for transit-alternatives in Austin... left the city when they ditched the bicycle master-plan to build an express lane on the freeway. I fought for transit alts in NYC, and they've seen a bunch of progress, and I'm fighting for the same in SF now, also seeing slow progress.
To this day, the vast majority of people are so deeply dependent on fossil fuels, the asks put forward are considered unacceptable. How do we run AC in Texas? How do we convince people to, not just build up, but to build anything. How do we turn suburbs into commuter towns? How do we convert interstate highways into high-speed rail. How do we convince people that meat should be a special occasion food, not the basis for every meal. The concept of a carbon tax is so, so obvious, but people have built their lives around carbon every second of every day. We can't even solve the fucking duck curve for electric generation even though getting batteries in every home is an easy solution.
I'm so jaded at this point, but I'll never give up fighting for mitigation, even if it seems so fucking impossible. I have my plans in place to move to places that will likely benefit from the changes... but that's just the world we live in.
First off, no you are not hurting yourself. If anything, you're helping because you're making it harder for your domain to be flagged by spam filters for things you haven't done.
Here's a quick explanation of SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
SPF
- It's a simple record in your DNS that let's you list IP addresses authorized to send email from your domain. 3rd party senders will often ask you to include them in your spf record. With nothing in the record and the "-all" meaning strictly enforced, you've not authorized any senders at all with SPF.
DKIM
- DKIM has to be setup for every sending mail server with a configuration mapped to a key located in your DNS config. If a receiving mail server gets a message without a DKIM signature, it has no way of knowing it should be there.
DMARC
- When you enforce a dmarc policy, you tell a server that receives email saying it is from your domain to only accept it if the message passes either an SPF or DKIM check that "aligns" with the domain. It's possible to send a message saying it's from slimmeryetimbers.com with a DKIM check that passes for "myphishdomain.com" and DMARC will not accept it.
So has to be from one of your allowed IP addresses in the SPF record or must include a DKIM signature from your specific domain. With SPF essentially empty of options, this will mean that an aligned DKIM signature must present the for it to pass.
The dmarc policy is the "p=". A "p=none" is just for show. Doesn't enforce anything. "p=quarantine" asks the receiving mail server to put messages that fail into spam while "p=reject" tells it to not deliver them at all.
-------
So summarizing all of that...the SPF record above says that no IP addresses are allowed to send mail on your behalf and the DMARC record tells the receiving mail server not to allow any messages saying they are from your domain unless they pass the SPF check (which they can't, because nothing is allowed) or they pass the DKIM check (which they can't, because you haven't set any up).
Hope that helps and I'm happy to clarify anything that needs it.
A good real-life parable is to read what happened on Easter Island [1]. In short, humans found a completely isolated island that could support a population of around 5000. Over a few centuries they damaged the environment (cut down all the trees, overfished the local waters, over-farmed the land, etc) to the point where it could only support a population of about 600; at which point their civilization descended into anarchy and cannibalism until "the market adjusted" the population to be equal to the available food.
Ten years before the collapse of Easter Island, someone could have made the same argument: When we cut down all the trees so we couldn't hunt dolphins any more, we replaced that with clams. When the clams were gone, we began hunting birds. When the soil became so poor that we couldn't grow one crop, we replaced it with another one. Our track record is 100%; there's no reason to believe we can't go on replacing one resource with another forever.
And then one day they couldn't.
Or listen to Nassim Nicholas Taleb:
"Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race 'looking out for its best interests,' as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief." [2]
So far we've been able to replace wood with coal, coal with oil, and so on; so far there hasn't been anything critical to civilization that we've run out of. But it would be foolish to ignore the possibility that something like that could happen.
Both social media (in some form) and porn has been around for far longer than this has been a problem. I'm a card carrying "Starcraft and DeusEx defined my teenage years"-millennial, and these things have been around most of my formative years as well. I think I was like ten when a friend showed me you could type "boobs" into altavista and get whitehouse.com, which back then was a porn site alluding to Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky.
I think the big difference now is smartphones, and being always online. It's much easier to have your entire world view informed by the Internet now than it was twenty years ago. It's a stark contrast. If you look on twitter and reddit, everything is always burning, the sky is falling every day for a hundred different reasons, the bees are dying, the Russians are about to trigger a nuclear apocalypse, there's indignant outrage and injustice everywhere.
If you look out the window, there's literally none of that going on. Like it's almost all speculation, or happening somewhere else. Twenty years ago, a lot of bad things were happening as well, but they weren't up in your face in nearly the same way. For some things, you had the dotcom bubble, 9/11, the invasion of Iraq. While they made a prominent impact on the news, the news was only on while you watched them. They didn't follow you around everywhere you went like they do today.
One of my pet theories for why social media is such a cesspool is that it exposes us to the whole of someone else.
If I play boardgames with Sue, that's enough. We meet, enjoy a beer and play some Catan and go our separate ways. That's a fine relationship.
If I follow Sue on social media, now I know her politics, religion, sex life, drug usage, opinions on every little thing.. and frankly, I don't care or want to. I'm happy just playing some Catan once in a while.
Historically you didn't need to know everything about everyone. Your friends will always have opinions or lifestyles you will find disagreeable - that is the nature of human existence.
Humanity either needs to "agree to disagree" on wide swaths of things we care a whole bunch about (abortion, firearms, lgbtq, etc) or we need to go back to not discussing those things in public or polite company.
My $0.02 is that it's easier to fall back to rules of polite conversation than fix our compulsive need for agreement.
The article doesn’t say much about what would help.
One thing that helps the poor a lot (everyone, but especially the poor) is functioning, competent institutions.
Things like effective policing and crime prevention, a functional healthcare system, competent teaching in schools, sufficient childcare options, little to no corruption, wide availability of credit, a good transportation network, zoning laws that permit cheap and sufficient housing, employment laws that don’t make low-value labour too expensive to employ, etc.
When these institutions are not working well, they represent a “drag coefficient” that well-off people can just pay their way out of (complicated tax forms? Pay an accountant $2k, solved) - but for poorer people these can represent existential hurdles.
Making institutions perform better (or offering entrepreneurial alternatives) is measurable, empirical, and does not rely on any psychosocial assumptions to produce an effect.
Example:
“How hard is it for someone who is barely literate and is working 50 hours per week to get and keep a driving license?” If the answer is “hard” that’s a big drag on poor people. If they could do minimal paperwork, do the test for free on nights or weekends in cheap rental cars close to where they live or work, etc. that is a massive boon to someone whose next step up the ladder is to get a driving job.
I say this as somebody who lived in one of those Middle Eastern countries for a good period of my life. I'm not a white person and at that time I didn't have a US/European passport, so I didn't lead an extra privalaged life there.
Here's what you can hear about the USA.
1)Endless suburban sprawl, resulting in massive environmental destruction. Illegal immigrants heavily involved in the construction industry, leading to mass exploitation
2)Structural racism
3)Human rights on a sliding scale, with rich white rapists getting no jail sentences, and poor black people and immigrants going to jail for minor offenses.
4)Rich consumers pushing environmental and human rights issues to poor countries where people are exploited to build your $1000 phone and $250 shoe.
5)Lots of places where if you go and say "I'm an Atheist, Jesus is not God" will likely result in violence against you
6)Corrupt legal system, heavily favoring corporations and rich people
7)Absurdly hot in parts of it, Absurdly cold in other parts of it.
>I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.
Lots of people probably feel that way about the USA based on the news.
UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), and other countries in that region, have a lot of issues. I'll be the first to admit it having had second class status there. But I can't help but feel that a lot of Western news outlets love to bash that part of the world because it plays into how a lot of people like to feel like the rest of the world is a shithole.
This is classic "optimization of x destroys the rest of the alphabet." I wish more businesses employed some sort of systems thinking and realized that rules are coordination mechanisms that carry the capacity to destroy value. They're absolutely great when they create predictability and coordination at minimal cost, but they can destroy your company if all they do is impede activities that generate the value your business actually earns profit from.
Some possible ideas:
Micro SaaS: Turn it into a one-page tool (log parser, file cleaner, PDF transformer) with Stripe and add rate limits. People pay for simplicity.
Paid API: Use RapidAPI or Plain.com to expose it. Charge per hit or via metered billing. Maybe even a slackbot for some of these would make sense.
Productized utility: Sell it as a $49/month “done-for-you” service to whatever niche audience would benefit (dev teams, SEO people, lawyers, etc).
Digital bundle: If it’s CLI or script-based, package it up with a guide or demo on YouTube and sell on Gumroad.
You’re not necessarily building a startup, and that’s fine! just something useful enough for strangers to pay for which is more than enough