I would make the argument that people would have to weigh the cost of being accessible to the last 2% vs the cost of losing the last 2%.
Anyone who delivers mail to rural farmers 100 years ago would lose money. There are 3 options. 1. If farmers want mail, they can pay the extra costs. 2. Force, by law, mail carriers to deliver at a loss to farmers. 3. Rural Free Delivery, the government taxes everyone and pays for the free delivery to farmers.
Although almost all farmers in the United States and a majority of users on Hacker News would disagree with me, the answer is the government should continue to deliver free mail to rural farmers. The collective benefit outweighs the cost.
Former chef here (2 Michelin starred restaurants).
5% is beyond plenty; it is awesome!
> works for 98% of the population, that means that it won’t work for ~150 million people
If I can only cook for 70 people a night, I most likely can't serve the ~150 million people who do not have access to modern browsers. And, those who do have access to those browsers and choose not use those browsers likely will not enjoy my food either. I don't need to make 8 billion people happy for my restaurant to survive. I only need to make ~1000 people happy who keep returning for anniversaries, birthdays, and the pure enjoyment of creativity with food.
I was a yacht chef for years and only needed to make 10 people happy. The technique I used was everyone eats the same thing, crew and guests. Saving money doing my own shopping instead of relying on provisioning companies that would send me food not handled correctly, my monthly expense went from ~$30k to ~$10k when guests are on board a month -- food in St. Barts was flown in from France everyday and expensive, circa 2005, so I could afford to serve the chateaubriand, osso bucco, and everything else to the crew. Therefore, what I wanted to eat everyday which likely was balanced, had lots of fiber, and healthier choices was the thing that everyone ate everyday.
People ask if the guests and owners would tell me what they want to eat everyday. The Mister was CEO of a fortune 500 company and when retired still chairman of the board. This guy was making billion dollar decisions everyday and the Mrs. was very busy also. The last thing they want to do is answer what is for dinner every night. They delegated the decision making to me. I always cooked what I wanted to eat and was always correct.
It is impossible to make everyone happy. Don't try -- it will break you.
For one year I reverse-engineered the major education platforms — Google Docs, Microsoft Office, Nearpod, Kahoot, ect. — so that AI agents can drive them on a teacher's behalf and automate classroom workflows. The work runs in over 10,000 classrooms today.
Building agents against production code you don't control is harder than it sounds. The code is mangled, so first you have to understand how the app was built and then take it apart from the outside. It's reverse engineering, but it depends on knowing how to build the thing in the first place.
The role came with monthly compliance and security training centered on FERPA, so I'm fluent in handling student data responsibly. That's not new ground for me. I spent five years building on Drupal, which the most prestigious learning institutions still run today, and version control and access control were the hard part of every project. Student data is the same problem.
I've been building browser agents and browser automation since 2018, well before it was a category. That's paired with 13 years of building dynamic, data-heavy UIs for web and mobile.
I've also built admin dashboards for a custom legal document management system. And a CRM for email marketing, with a drag-and-drop interface for designing and branding email templates for social campaigns. I've taken several companies from 0 to 1, as a consultant and as a full-time employee, across fintech, streaming, real estate, education, marketing, and media. I've worked at a 130-person AI company and on a 7-person team where I wore every hat. I do my best work on small, fast-moving teams.
So was Rural Free Delivery. Farmers being able to communicate was a massive boon. There is a channel for farmers called RFD tv. They completely scrubbed the free provided by the government part after private equity bought the tv channel targeting farmers. Then they got Imus in the Morning so farmers listed to Imus, Rush, Hannity, and orielly forgetting the government helps them.
There is a lot of copying that isn't protected by copyright. It is possible to include what can't be copied that might not fall under copyright in the terms of service contract. Many people not being able to use copyright to prevent copying instead successfully sued based on breach of contract.
Companies should understand that they can protect their IP this way.
Did you agree to terms of use? Did you have to click a check box that you agree to terms of use before seeing or having access to the items you copied? Click wrap. If in the contract that you agreed to there is language that you agreed to not copy the work, then you likely are in breach of contract. If it is publicly available knowledge probably not breach of contract. I’m not a lawyer of course.
The largest provider of residential ISP, BrightData, has installed them on smart TVs made by Samsung and LG, millions of them, unknown to the people who purchase and use the TVs.
我们正在讨论 1985 年的史蒂夫·乔布斯吗？