I think a lot of people pirate for a lot of different reasons. I don't pirate games anymore because I just play PS5. But I definitely did so as a teenager because I was broke, not because the experience of buying games was bad.

Now I'll pirate if providers make it hard to do things right. I know I never "have" to pirate, but my wife once "bought" a movie on Amazon. A few years later, she was no longer able to access it. And she didn't get refunded for her purchase. So guess what? Screw you Amazon, I downloaded that movie and saved it on my home media server.

Another example, I was playing a mobile game that allowed me to watch ads to get a bonus. I'd always say no because they use one of the shittiest ad provider in existence. Then they started showing me ads even if I elected not to get the bonus, with a fun "pay $20 for ad free forever!"

Well screw you game dev, I'm pirating the ad-free version of your game.

> Consumers are pissed at the lack of value.

I think this is true, but I don't think this is necessarily causing piracy. Why would people want to pirate a shitty game?

Or, just don’t play the game. I don’t mean to be flippant, but why waste time on software employing shoddy practices? Wordle and Apple’s mini crossword-minis are sufficiently stimulating and quick.

My tolerance for software like that is very limited. It’s almost an immediate long-press and uninstall.

It's a good question. My only response is that it's genuinely fun.

Why do you people even look at mobile games?

They're all free to play and their design is fundamentally affected by this. You end up either paying with time or with money.

It's kinda interesting to see how advertising is evolving. I'll mindlessly scroll Instagram reels once in a while and every other reel is an ad with the sponsored tag, with an obvious thing being sold and advertised. A fair amount of non-"ads" are influencers or celebrities promoting a product on their personal IGs with the #ad.

It's like advertising and social media are slowly merging together.

I couldn't say how effective it is. Who knows how much they paid that influencer and how much revenue it drives. But it sure is common.

I think there's a difference between trying to stay informed and seeking information. I swipe to my newsfeed and see seven stories ranging from local to national, from local news station to fox to New York times. Fact checking each of these stories will take time that I do not care to spend, and I imagine most folks will not.

That begs the question: If you don't care about these stories enough to do anything to verify, then why do you care to hear/see/read these stories?

The only rational answer is that they are just entertainment to you. And to most other people.

“If you don’t care about false alarms, why do you listen to the fire alarm sounding and then evacuate the building? The only rational answer is that the fire alarm is just entertainment to you”

The rational answer is that they look at the news to see if there are any stories important and relevant enough that they would care to verify them.

Yes, agreed. News has become entertainment, because the standard for news has fallen so much. Which makes actual news harder for most people to attain.

"pretty close" is pretty generous! I'd say it's already there.

> The Internet (including TikTok) will have nearly unlimited stories, told in unlimited ways.

Mainstream TV channels have their biases but "unlimited" doesn't actually mean anything if the content you're getting served is whatever the algorithm thinks will engage you, which is usually something that already aligns with your world view, or something that doesn't but is designed to outrage. Most average folks who browse the internet aren't looking past the sensational headlines they see in their Apple or Google curated news feeds.

I'd argue that adding complexity from the get-go to ensure that all users have a pleasant experience from the get-go is better than simplicity at the expense of some percentage of users.

I think it's important for web devs to spend more than two seconds to think if the complexity is necessary from the get-go though.

When building out a new app or site, which means a percentage of zero users is zero.

I miss marquee... I burned more tokens than I'd like to admit to build a marquee-like feature in react and it was really just the same text twice with an animation that hopefully no one notices isn't a clean loop on some viewport sizes (since it restarts after reaching the end).

In every React team I've been part of we've wanted to use as little react as possible and use native DOM apis when possible. React would be used purely for state management or interactivity.

I feel like teams that have used react enough learn that the less React you can use the better :) it's a great tool, but most teams use it because it's all they know and they don't know what they don't know about html.

Not OP but I used to be totally into productivity hacks and being on top of things, goal setting, habit tracking, everything.

I stopped when I realized I could just... Not, and still thrive in my life. Simplify my systems.

I set myself a goal to workout every morning. Sometimes I miss it because my infant daughter decides to wake up at 4am instead of 5am. I give myself grace.

We eat largely the same meals every day. Some cooked protein, some cooked veggies, and a grain (rice or pasta).

And I just have a regular routine at work where I work on work and also do explorative education for myself during breaks. Look into different frameworks, patterns, etc.

I didn't need to meticulously plan out every second of my day, month, year. I just needed systems that made things predictable. Sometimes I drop the ball and it's fine. I get back on the horse when I can.

Startup options are usually worthless, yes, because very few startups end up getting to a position where the options are worth something.

> No, it is not "wage theft" to not get rich when the company exits

I don't think anyone in this thread thinks they're gonna get rich by working for a startup. There's a hope that they will, that's why they are working, but there's no expectation. Maybe there's an expectation of getting a nice tidy sum after an exit (in the 5 or 6 figures) but not in the 7 or 8 figures, at least not if they're just employees and not founders.

What's being discussed is a startup exiting for billions of dollars and the employees with equity seeing zero of it.

Working for a startup usually means lower wages and longer hours, for the chance at striking it rich if the company succeeds. If employees don't see anything when the company succeeds, there's literally no upside to working for a startup.