dealforager

I don't think this is true, I run an affiliate site that directs people to Smile, and my commissions have been the same whether I direct to Smile or not. I have heard that your conversions typically go down when you use Smile. However I think that might be because many customers have never signed up for Smile and are scared away. I decided to stick with Smile links because I thought that in the long term it would motivate people to continue using my site and I figured at worst I'd help charities a lot more than the income I'd lose so I'm a bit sad to learn about this.

Smile and affiliate commissions are separate. So in your example both the charity and the stale affiliate link would receive a cut that is independent of the other. Source: I run an affiliate site and my links always direct to Smile, and I keep getting commissions.

If you're discussing performance of SQL queries, showing the output of EXPLAIN ANALYZE is the bare minimum. There's too many variables that can affect performance and if you can't see what's happening under the hood it's not very useful.

This is true of every forum on the internet, including HN. The problem is 100x worse if there is money or power on the line, such as in Product Hunt.

The solution is real free markets. Constant government intervention in the housing market, the stock market, education, healthcare, and everything else under the sun has led us to where we are today. It always feels nice for a bit when the government bails you out, but the long term consequences are always much more severe. Prices are information and when all the information is polluted, it becomes very difficult to have a functioning economy. It's the same thing that happens in social media, trolls and bots pollute the information so it's impossible for most people to tell the truth apart from fiction. Unfortunately the regulatory capture is so deep and the problems have gotten so bad that I don't know how this can be solved without an extreme event.

I've worked at tech companies that despise helping the US military. Please understand that the world is complex and although all superpowers have done terrible things, helping the US is the only way our children will live in a peaceful world. This isn't about democrats or republicans, the future of humanity will be decided in the next decade.

I highly recommend the book "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order" for helping see the big picture. I am also saddened by the state of the world, particularly in regards to inequality which I think is the source of many problems. After reading the book, I realized that social media (or the internet in general) is a technology like any other and the countries that can harness its power for good will likely lead the next century. For instance, a country that sets aside short term profits from anxiety inducing ads and instead focuses on inspiring its people will win in the long run. Same for crypto, it is just technology and it depends on people to put it to good or bad uses. We've been fortunate to live through extremely easy times, but that is the exception not the rule. Think about how people must have felt during WWII or the Great Depression or any of the other countless tragedies we've faced. They also probably though the world was ending, but at the end of the day most people figured out a way to work together to get through it. Finally, be careful when reading news because almost everything you read has an agenda behind it.

I just look at the new price and used price, so the data problem is on Amazon's end. I have no way to tell whether an item that is sold for $5000 is truly worth $5000 or not. I have tried implementing a check for this in the past using some statistics, but I decided it's better to leave some potential bad deals on than to remove them but also remove other really good deals. I've contacted Amazon's customer service about that particular item and they told me they would forward it to the right team, but I don't know if they have policies against ridiculous prices.

Sorry, for some reason I have to put the "www." before the URL and forgot to do that. I edited the comment and I'll look into fixing that.

Edit: saw replies, I'll just say it's Monday morning and leave it at that.

One thing that stood out in that story is how some people just thought he was depressed. I know someone who had sciatica and I think one of the hard parts is that it's not easy to see. On the outside you may look fine but you may be feeling the most excruciating pain of your life. This makes it hard for people to empathize with which further fuels the mental health decline. If you have back problems, I recommend the book "Back Mechanic". This book really helped the person I know.

$900M/year is <1% of Alphabet's yearly revenue. I know you mentioned profits, but the OP mentioned revenue so I want to keep the same units because they're very different things. It could very well be that if it was $20M/year in profits, then those projects would not be considered failures.

If something happened to their core business, it's unlikely that those tiny projects (<1% of revenues combined) would save them. The more likely thing is that many of those small projects fail over time and it becomes death by a thousand cuts.

What you said is mostly correct and is exactly what they are doing. The only problem is that at the scale of a trillion dollar company, they need 10, 20, even 30 business lines generating $XB - $XXB of revenue each.

I understand the sentiment, but $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business. I have a hard time thinking of a way it wouldn't be a loss given the added organizational complexity having those kinds of projects would bring.

I thought the entire purpose of "other bets" was to pursue ideas that have the potential to become $XXB/year revenue streams. So of course they want 'moonshot' companies.

Wow, just looked at their earnings reports and it doesn't look like they've ever turned a profit either. In fact, they are losing over a hundred million a year. No wonder this dude couldn't compete.