For those interested in this, I highly recommend the book "Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style" by David Marx. It talks about how Japan appropriated American prep fashion, then exported it back to the USA.
Find AI is a search engine for people and companies.
We're actively hiring for fractional:
- Go-focused backend engineer
- Svelte / SvelteKit-focused frontend developer
For both of these roles, we're seeking more senior candidates with experience in these frameworks. The work fill focus on rapid product building at an early-stage startup.
I am already imagining another HeavyDSparks episode they they attempt to recover it after it gets stuck in several feet of subsurface mud out there. Half of their content is extreme Burning Man vehicle recoveries.
Probably related. Their current fundraising efforts are enormous.
Rumor is the minimum check they'll accept is $250 million. Valuation in the $150 billion range.
It would be surprising if these exits weren't in some way connected to the fundraising. (And not sure if these exits will be seen as a positive or a negative to would-be investors)
Possible the people writing those checks want more experienced people in those positions, or their own people.
Or the execs figure a ~150x growth ride in 6 years is about the best that they can hope for and are ready to bounce. If I were in their shoes I'd look to take out 50-100 MM and decide what I want in life.
Philip here from Find AI. We store our Velvet logs in a dedicated DB. It's postgres now, but we will probably move it to Clickhouse at some point. Our main app DB is in postgres, so everybody just knows how it works and all of our existing BI tools support it.
We should really just raise the age of COPPA from 13. It’s a robust legal framework and we can amend one line in it to regulate this industry without excessive bloat or bickering.
It’s crazy that Americans can be on Instagram 8 years before having a sip of alcohol.
We should raise the COPPA consent age at least 16, but probably 18.
I see it now: "Please submit a photo ID or driving license in order to access this service. All IDs will be logged and tied permanently to your account."
Because the social media companies are? I wonder if there would be a noticeable increase in VPN adoption if there were strictly enforced age restrictions targeting the US only. There certainly has been an uptick in VPN literacy among people I know after PornHub blocked my state...
We have some fairly strict rules on devices - it’s not a lack of will.
Same for the school; they don’t want kids YouTubing in class, but “a laptop for everyone” is the standard now, the teachers do a lot on Teams, etc. Kids are smart and motivated, and they share techniques. They find ways.
The key stakeholders here are the services themselves. If they placed “keep children off the network” anywhere near “keep growing DAU” on their list of priorities, all those highly paid engineers (likewise smart and motivated) would find ways too.
I’m a deeply technical well-motivated person who works with stuff like DNS and VPNs for a job and I find it quite challenging, despite physical access to the devices and the users.
Having to download a VPN and do some evasion would probably be a substantial enough deterrent for… [checks notes]… 14 year olds… that it’d be worth doing.
And realistically, if Meta et al wanted to stop harming entire generations of developing minds, they could obviously use their immense data infrastructure to separate actual Russian from allegedly-Russian children.
So all you really need is corporate buy-in (and toothsome regulations is a perfectly fine way to produce buy-in where markets fail to do so)
Edit: realized you’re talking about the case of Russian services being marketed to American children. That too seems straightforward to produce meaningful obstacles, with sufficient appetite from regulators.
My 10 year old kid is smart enough to bypass the various blocking mechanisms in place at school. A VPN is nothing. All they’d need to do is buy a pre paid credit card at the local Walgreens.
My 10 year old kid is smart enough to bypass the ignition key on a car therefore licensure requirements and car keys are stupid.
In reality, your smart 10 year old isn’t powering the toxic social dynamics of social media. It’s the armies of average intelligence kids seeking engineered dopamine hits.
Network effects work for network dissolution just the same as they work for network growth, which is of course why Meta would never voluntarily do anything that could kick off the popular kids, even if your prodigy could bypass it with no problem.
Note: “All those kids are already addicted and so they’ll be highly motivated too!” is a call to action, not to inaction.
Yeah with a "default yes" approach it'll be easily bypassed. With a "default no" it would work, ie you simply don't get an account at all until you prove your age.
I disagree. Defaults matter. “It’s illegal” is a firm line parents can hold. And, you don’t need to deter 100% - just taking a chunk out will reverse network effects and cause population collapse.
Plus, expect more services to verify IDs in an effort to combat AI spam.
That's a lingering question right now as the software was approved, but not specifically the hardware. I suspect it would be able to be covered, but as with any of those rules, it's kinda murky.
I suspect if it is, we'll see some interesting advertising / marketing from 3rd party resellers.
It's a very good question and Apple may already have an answer.
One of the interesting things I learned in my time building medical devices is the role of insurance reimbursement in the product development process. Before introducing a new device, or a new (blood) test, one of the questions Marketing has to answer is how difficult it will be to get reimbursement from insurance in the US.
It sounds kind of icky, but it's a real concern.
If insurance companies won't reimburse for a particular test or use of a device, then the users are far less likely to buy it, or in the case of a test, the physician may have to warn the patient that their insurance isn't likely to pay for it. This will probably lead the manufacturer to decide that it's too risky to proceed with development.
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