> because it is not innovative itself.

And what are you basing that claim on? What are your sources? Your arguments?

"1) it is highly scalable and you can easily send out thousands of emails per day, 2) it’s a fairly “democratic” form of outreach where you can achieve great outcomes with good offers sent to the right people, and 3) there’s no platform risk."

From a European citizen point of view, this framing ignores a very real constraint: GDPR.

In the EU, sending marketing emails is not just a growth tactic, it is regulated personal data processing. In most cases, you need prior, explicit consent before sending promotional emails. “We found your email online” or “legitimate interest” is usually not enough for cold outreach aimed at sales.

The risks are not theoretical:

Administrative fines that can reach up to 20M EUR or 4 percent of global annual turnover.

Orders to stop processing, which can immediately kill an outbound pipeline.

Domain and IP blacklisting by European ISPs and email providers.

Blocking or delisting of websites and services in the EU market after regulator or court decisions.

Complaints to Data Protection Authorities by a single recipient are enough to trigger investigations.

So there is very much platform and regulatory risk, at least if you want access to the European market. Email is scalable, yes, but in Europe it scales legal exposure just as fast if consent, proof of consent, opt-out mechanisms, and transparency obligations are not handled correctly.

This is why many EU companies invest heavily in permission based lists, double opt-in, and strict compliance processes. Growth without compliance is not “no risk”, it is deferred risk.

Scaling outreach is tricky when privacy rules change the ground under you. You could look at mailsai to help manage opt outs, consent tracking, and basic compliance steps so nothing slips. It makes outreach steadier, especially when dealing with EU contacts.

Sales can be a legitimate interest.

That sounds like hell for new businesses. No wonder Europe is stagnating in innovation.

For the love of all that is holy and all that isn't, do not get your legal advice from ChatGPT. Reposting that advice as though it was your own writing, such that unattentive readers might not recognise that the legal advice was coming from ChatGPT and might mistake it as coming from someone who has any idea what they're talking about, is even worse.

IDK he might just be French, the French speak like that because they hate English.

The comparison with calculators overlooks several key developments.

LLMs are becoming increasingly efficient. Through techniques such as distillation, quantization, and optimized architectures, it is already possible to run capable models offline, including on personal computers and even smartphones. This trend reduces reliance on constant access to centralized providers and enables local, self-contained usage.

Rather than avoiding LLMs, the rational response is to build local, portable, and open alternatives in parallel. The natural trajectory of LLMs points toward smaller, more efficient, and locally executable models, mirroring the path that calculators themselves once followed.

Awesome product!

Thank you!

Can't wait they also get rid of these "destination fees" billed by nearly all hotels in NYC.

>Can't wait they also get rid of these "destination fees" billed by nearly all hotels in NYC.

That's not going to happen. Such fees (at least in the US, AFAICT) are in most cities.

Besides, hotels are for tourists. And a tourist's job is to spend as much money as the city can get them to cough up. And that's true of every city/destination.

I think hotel prices will go down once they stop housing migrants in them

No, chat is not asynchronous. It's a dialoge, it is synchronous. If you want people to write "Hello, my problem is xxx" just close your chat box and ask for emails.

Moreover there are studies showing that if people socialize and get to know each other a bit before working together, there are more chances to collaborate and to reduce conflicts.

Why are you developping?

Is it a hobby for passing time? For pleasure? For the beauty of the code?

Could be. But most of the time, you develop in order for the software to perfom a task someone needs.

And that should be your first focus: to develop something that brings value for its user, and develop it as efficiently as possible. After all, what's the point of a software if nobody uses it? So no, your job is not to create great software, your job is to bring value to users.

In my career, I've mostly seen the developers pleasuring themselves with overengineering, bloating code with features nobody needs, and writing lines to anticipate future developments that never came. Rather than the opposite.

So I think the challenge is to remain minimalistic, that's hard, and that's what the original post is about.

Unfortunately there is no correct approach since both sloppy and overengineered codebases backfire. What helps me find balance is following the philosophy of 1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make it fast

You can confirm that "probably" with 5 minutes of research and find out that the largest contributors to carbon emissions in eating are the production of the raw materials (which ingredients you use). Once that is controlled for, cooking method is the largest second factor (wood / coal / gas / electric). Once that's controlled for, going out to eat in a restaurant is worse than at home. The only communal eating that is more efficient is school / soviet canteen style eating, which is not what you were thinking about when you said restaurants.

Sadly, agreed. I love the idea of being self-sufficient and permaculture, but even myself as someone who grows vegetables on an allotment and batch-cooks nearly all my meals at home, I can't ignore the idea that, just as with agriculture, it's way more efficient to prepare food at scale than it is at the individual level -- unless we all shifted to just eating the food as raw as possible.

If we look at the full chains of:

- Equipment distribution (production and delivery of large domestic kitchen appliances)

- Energy distribution (residential delivery of electricity/gas needed to power kitchen appliances, and water)

- Space required in each home for a reasonably kitted out kitchen (more space to heat in winter, more materials used in building)

- Ingredients and materials distribution (including the production and packaging of intermediate food products made from raw products, since everyone's cooking with canned things, packaged things, cured meats, pastes, pasteurized things, grains, ...)

The restaurants, fast-food chains and ready-meal prep companies are able to operate on economies of scale that are vastly more efficient than the individualistic, nuclear-family domestic "you must cook home-made meals for your family, friends and guests" culture.

We've made eating out seem either:

- Decadent (cost)

- Unhealthy (take-out and fast-food)

But neither of those things need to be true.

The problem with scale is the storage aspect - preservatives we use to reduce spoilage etc., which arguably affect the healthiness of the food. "Just-in-time" distribution works well until it doesn't (see: COVID).

But I'd argue that the individual household probably spoils more ingredients than industrial production does - that just isn't evident; everyone has their little compost heaps or things go to landfill. Old ingredients go mouldy at the backs of cupboards, just as things run out their shelf life in supermarkets.

Maybe the raw-food vegans and paleo bros are on to something...