Fun rant to read, but this is an entitled view. Not everyone has to have a website, or has to care about democratising the internet. If you don't want to do business with them just because you shun platforms, that's up to you. They may be doing just fine without your patronage.
> If you don't want to do business with them just because you shun platforms
I don't do business with them because I can't access their hours, menu, services, etc... I've had this happen a few times. I'm not avoiding these businesses because I'm a snob. It's because I literally can't access the information. So, I go back to google and find a business that provides the information I need to decide if the business meets my needs before traveling to their location.
There used to be a particular restaurant I ordered from. It was a real restaurant, not a ghost kitchen. It was listed on Uber Eats and similar, but you could also order from them, which was significantly cheaper. We used to have an image of the menu and the phone number but eventually lost it. Because the restaurant was only listed on Facebook, none of us have a Facebook account, and Facebook aggressively tries to keep you out without an account, it was a royal pain to get the number back. But even after getting the phone number, it was WhatsApp only. Which I don’t use. Some of my friends do, so that was taken care of like that.
There was another place which was on the brink of closing and kept shifting its opening hours and days. I went there on occasion but because there was no official web presence I couldn’t trust the hours online (photographs of the schedule). So I called. Sometimes they picked up, sometimes they didn’t. When they didn’t, sometimes they were closed but other times were just busy and couldn’t come to the phone.
So no, you can’t always find a phone number, and you can’t always call and ask. Having a roughly up-to-date web presence is very useful. It doesn’t need to be a bespoke website, you can use a platform, just don’t exclusively use closed garbage like Facebook and Instagram which walls you off from customers.
From my experience, you can't count on businesses to update their website to correctly reflect their working hours at all times either (especially if it's a one-off change, for example being closed for a day)
> It doesn’t need to be a bespoke website, you can use a platform, just don’t exclusively use closed garbage like Facebook and Instagram which walls you off from customers.
> How do you know this place even exists without any information?
You want to find an antique book store in another state. How do you find it? You search the web. And what information bubbles to the top of the search results? Answer: businesses with websites.
If you are a business owner, you will lose customers without a website, because that is how most people will find you.
If I'm looking for a physical place I usually just look at Google maps. "Minneapolis antique bookstores." I'll look at pics, see if the vibe is cool, etc. Relying on Google SEO is a recipe for disaster in my experience because there's no guarantee that the bookstore is even in or near Minneapolis. Other people probably browse the web differently though.
I honestly would not expect an antique bookstore to have a website, unless they let you buy their books online.
> If I'm looking for a physical place I usually just look at Google maps.
Ah yes... I'm sure that is what 99% of people do. /s
You don't like reality... and that's fine. You do you. But, most businesses do need a web presence if they want be be discovered by the majority of potential customers.
I'd literally bet my house that most people do a simple google search. No one goes to google maps as the first option when trying to find things unless they are in their car. (Well, except for you, of course)
In 2026, companies who want their customers to easily find them will have some type of web presence. I'm sorry that it is such a hardship for you.
I do a simple Google search, or whatever search happens to be default on the browser I happen to be using. Then I click on Google maps, or the platforms equivalent. I'm not gonna waste time on the sponsored results that may not even be nearby what I'm looking for.
The phone. Wow. Great solution..... Literally the whole point of putting information online is so your employees don't have to waste time answering the same question 999999x per day.
> You can't even find a phone #? How about calling and asking?
Wait what? How does he contact the website if he can't find contact info?
I don't disagree with your point BTW — not everyone needs a website. But at the same time, a business often needs to meet customers where they are. If they're OK with losing a small subset of customers because their business info is only on <insert platform here> and some people don't use said platform, then I don't see what's wrong with that. But if they're not OK with that, then they'll have a presence on more platforms which could include their own websites.
At the end of the day I don't really understand why anyone's arguing about any of this. If a business finds value in a website and it serves their business interests, they'll probably have one. If not, then they won't have one. No amount of philosophizing over democratizing the web will make my local café make a website.
>Wait what? How does he contact the website if he can't find contact info?
The same way you find the website, you google it. I have never had a problem getting a phone number of a business that doesn't have a website. Am I living in bizarro world? Why does a small business need a website just to provide a phone #?
You are right that a small business does not need a website just to provide a phone number. But I think you are underestimating how many people truly do not want to make a phone call. Personally, if I see two businesses, one has no info but a phone number, and the other one has basic info even in their Google map profile, then I'm going with the one that doesn't make me pick up the phone.
AI writing sucks. The punchy words, the hyperbole, the monotony and pervasiveness are all exhausting. But I can’t deny there’s one upside. People who grew up speaking and living in other languages, people whose english is poor, finally have a level playground. It’s a great equaliser of our english writing privilege.
The thing that worries me most is that it's going to redefine the way we write. We absorb language. To compensate for all this AiSpeak I consume, I need to read more literature.
What’s human writing going to look like in a few years if this trend doesn’t stop? I believe that the LLMs will catch up soon and introduce more variance and fewer words designed for impact in their language, delivering us from this AiVerse into one where AI writing is almost indistinguishable from human writing. But until then, we must read more.
The problem with AI writing isn't its style, it's the content.
It's full of fluff. Analogies that sound like something a 12 year old would make, but make no sense when you stop to think about them.
It's full of baloney that the author didn't even intend to communicate.
That's where the "soulless" part comes from. There's no consistent mind behind the writing with opinions of its own, formulated into one understandable framework it's trying to convey. It's just a mishmash of BS that only superficially resembles it, made to trick us.
In the world there have always been people who prefer to fit in and those who prefer to explore boundaries. All the people who love fitting in will continue to adopt whatever mainstream thing is happening and will continue to look and sound generic and boring.
Those who prefer exploring boundaries immediately go in the other direction and find clever and creative ways to stand out and have a unique voice. The more generic everyone else is, the more these people are driven to go the other way.
As a result, as before, the easy, generic things will be cheap and disposable and the thoughtful and creative will be valuable. If you want to be valuable you have to be thoughtful and creative, not cheap and generic.
You can easily deny this upside. Your playing field isn't level because instead of grammatical mistakes, you have the online equivalent of talking like a used car salesman.
There is already studies that confirm your fear, I think. They found that mainstream language is changing due to AI. Certain words get used proportionally more than before, etc.
Also, if you check out some reddits, it's crazy how generic many things are. Because of AI.
I do agree wholeheartedly that we need to read more. And also, that AI can also be a very cool tool for giving some people more power in a way.
> AI writing is almost indistinguishable from human writing
This depends on what you consider AI writing. If I dictate what the AI must write word by word verbatim, is it considered AI writing? Is it something to do about the percentage of the text generated? Does it have to do with the vocabulary the AI knows? What if I don't know any other words than the AI does? Does it have to do with the efficiency of communication?
Nevertheless, I don't think AI writing can ever be human writing. No matter if it uses the same words as a human and it's indistinguishable. This is because humans participate in a society as independent conscious actors and thus communication has meaning. The only way text can become communication is when the writer has intents, they're willing to participate in society.
> The only way text can become communication is when the writer has intents
I'm curious as to what you mean by this. I assume you don't mean it literally, as that would be trivially falsifiable (for example, the text readout on a digital caliper doesn't have "intents", yet it absolutely communicates meaning), but I can't think of another way that you might have meant it. Could you elaborate?
The digital caliper isn't communicating with you. You're only reading text from a tool. I'm not expert in the field, but there are different "models of communication". For example one model has components: sender, receiver, message, channel, noise. The sender and the receiver are always people. There are other models focused on machines, but that's a very specific use of communication models.
It would have been worthwhile if this article had briefly touched upon how the constraint solvers are implemented, rather than avoiding this altogether
I have this problem when I'm sleeping alone or when my mind is unsettled. Neither is that common, as I don't hit the bed till I'm very tired. When it happens, I usually listen to my audiobooks (fiction) to fall asleep. If that is too stimulating, I turn to this google podcast called "Boring books for bedtime". It's quite effective.
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