Better revenue model? Pushing some data to the server, serving ads to the app, reselling demographic data, etc all allow for more revenue than just the price of installation.
There are almost certainly other apps in the space that don’t need a server, don’t phone home to Meta, and are lower priced, but they probably aren’t as good at marketing.
From my experience in the startup world, I would wager that this developer probably wanted to track marketing campaign installs (Meta library is required to close the loop on Facebook/Instagram ad conversions after app install) or wanted a feature from some Meta library they integrated but didn’t realize or care about the consequences.
It goes a little further than “money for basic necessities”.
It’s about being able to provide the necessities AND having income security. I remember reading about a study that said poor people who have to scramble to deal with all of the extra steps that accompany being poor (no credit cards, maybe no bank account, dealing with getting utilities turned back on, etc) is the equivalent of losing about 15 IQ points from your optimal.
It’s the difference between being able to work “in the zone” / flow state frequently and being always stuck in “fight or flight” mode. One makes you successful while the other actively sabotages you.
2020 / Covid did A LOT of things, not just scramble our social lives.
There was a pretty large check from the government to workers (which supercharged some people risk-taking in stocks, crypto, events betting, sports betting). It became the year of WallStreetBets and meme stocks.
White collar people were working from home, which eliminated tedious commutes but also blended together work and home life. I’m pretty sure one of my sisters snapped dealing with several kids doing Zoom schooling and teaching her own classes over Zoom.
Many Americans reconsidered what is important in life. Another one of my sisters was “an essential worker” but wasn’t (and still isn’t) paid well and the health benefits didn’t increase even when the likelihood of getting a debilitating disease did.
It was also contentious politically, with a major election. I cut off half of my family after they went down the QAnon / Election Theft rabbit hole and they began to inhabit a completely different reality than I did. We all reacted to extreme stress in different ways and one of those ways was to distrust American institutions.
There are some post-2020 things that happened. Interest rates rose in 2022 for the first time since 2009ish. Lots of tech companies hired like drunken sailors during 2020 and began to layoff once the interest rates rose environment started to curb spending and investment. Twitter was bought and most of the staff was cut, giving other executives in Silicon Valley cover for attempting the same.
To stay with your theme of social lives changing, I think my personality has changed a bit where I am less likely to socialize with strangers (like in a 3rd space), to go out in the evenings, to hang out with coworkers.
Those checks had the smallest impact out of all the things the government did.
0% interest rates was insane when most cash cow workers simply shifted to working from home (sorry, I know it's harsh, but hourly workers are not the backbone of the American economy). The gov also froze student loan payments, and froze rent payments. It also payed full unemployment and for longer. Oh and PPP loans....
It was an absolute money bonanza, and way way far beyond what was actually needed.
The US doesn’t have air supremacy in Iran. We have air dominance, but shoulder mounted infrared guided (bypasses stealth paint to go after engine exhaust) AA is still taking out the occasional F35 and A10.
RU/UA is special because RU completely screwed up the first 3 weeks of the war (likely because of the culture of sycophancy Putin has, similar to Trump) and was driven out of central UA. Russia is too proud to admit they lost and UA wasn’t allowed to attack into RU territory until their suppliers (US, EU) were confident RU wouldn’t nuke us in retaliation. Now UA is busy dismantling RU’s economy and war making industry. Ultimately it’s not comparable to any other war of our lifetimes for several reasons.
UA drone factories aren’t in large industrial buildings. They have hundreds of office / home locations where the parts are printed / assembled. RU largely has a very few mega military vendors who make drones / missiles and they have consolidated their efforts in a few (now vulnerable) locations.
F35 capability is excellent for preparing the battlefield, such as the first few hours when softening up air defenses.
But don’t underestimate how much all countries are learning from watching RU/UA or US/Iran. Drones will continue to evolve to meet the gaps in affordable interception, affordable anti-5thGen aircraft, etc. UA now has armed land, sea, and air drones and each has variants like scout, bomber, interceptor, etc. we will continue to see specialization and comparative advantage evolve in the space.
The US absolutely has air supremacy in Iran. You don't roll out B-52s in a contested airspace. MANPADS have an abysmal ceiling height, they are largely irrelevant short of some very narrow circumstances.
Just for your benefit, stealth coatings and materials (not "paint") are a tertiary defence after shaping and electronic warfare.
Group 3 UAS can't be assembled in homes and office buildings in any meaningful numbers. They are too big. Even Group 2 is marginal. I think you're confusing Group 1 quadcopters with long range OWA drones like Shaheds.
>They have hundreds of office / home locations where the parts are printed / assembled
This shouldn't be a big surprise to Russia or anyone else, as it has precedent. German aircraft production peaked in 1944 at the height of allied strategic bombing.
Realistically a Cessna single prop is roughly $100k (average between good condition used and some new ones). A Ukrainian interceptor drone is about $2k + cost of munition. And the Cessna requires an airfield, so it is geo-fenced, while an interceptor drone can take off from flat land or the back of a truck.
People need to wake up and realize the economics of war just changed by several orders of magnitude.
The most qualified candidates for what? 100% of people in the military have passed the ASVAB. And the most capable people in the military are EXTREMELY intelligent.
The problem is unlocking that brilliance in an organization which has LOTS of office politics, cross currents, uncoordinated long term goals, too many interests who get to requirements to every project, etc.
And the biggest problem is that everything the US military decides long term needs sign off by Congress, so there is always a political dimension to every project approval. Congress laughs at the F35 as the “world’s largest jobs program” with components built in just about every member’s district. The A10 is unlikable because Congress wants to keep it around, even though the AirForce thinks it’s cheaper (logistically) and safer to use other aircraft for the role. Not everybody is thinking about the same factors.
> allies of the United States are learning that the United States will not effectively protect them
Worse yet, the Americans are led by a guy who thinks with his ego first, then his wallet, then all other considerations later. He seems to be withholding resupply shipments of interceptor munitions to “get a better deal” from the same allies who wouldn’t have been attacked if they had not participated with the US in this optional war.
This assumes AI model improvements will be predictable, which they won’t.
There are several simultaneous moving targets: the different models available at any point in time, the model complexity/ capability, the model price per token, the number of tokens used by the model for that query, the context size capabilities and prices, and even the evolution of the codebase. You can’t calculate comparative ROIs of model A today or model B next year unless these are far more predictable than they currently are.
Sam Altman has stated that the AI revolution will “be like an infinite number of immigrants”. That’s a dangerous thing to say when the country’s political environment has convinced half of the voters that all immigrants are rapey, murderey, immoral subhumans.
Also, Sam Altman helped create OpenAI with the original goals of being an ethical non-profit, only to pivot and kick out all of the people who still wanted that original vision. Now several of the LLM CEOs are screaming “we have to stay fully on the accelerator pedal or the Chinese will get there first”, all while abandoning the ethics that supposedly made us better than the Chinese. (And yes, I understand the issues with the Chinese government and that people are different than their government).
There are almost certainly other apps in the space that don’t need a server, don’t phone home to Meta, and are lower priced, but they probably aren’t as good at marketing.
From my experience in the startup world, I would wager that this developer probably wanted to track marketing campaign installs (Meta library is required to close the loop on Facebook/Instagram ad conversions after app install) or wanted a feature from some Meta library they integrated but didn’t realize or care about the consequences.
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