August 11th. my dad's birthday. his 65th birthday in fact. 4ff wasn't exclusively built for my dad, but it's the day I came up with 4ff. the idea of 4ff was sparked from thinking about family and family restaurants. why are family restaurants so widely loved, and why is their food often so much better than any chain or large restaurant? why does my perspective of a restaurant change when i can tell it's family owned? why do i feel more comfortable and more confident the food will be better when i see that it's family members in the kitchen and restaurant? i believe it's because of i can get an inkling of why they were started. and their philosophy of why they make food or chose the restaurant business. because it started within the family, maybe grandma or the dad was a great cook. and would make food for their loved ones that everyone loved. and maybe they moved to the US or decided that they wanted to make their livelihood that business. so those values of food for loved ones spread beyond to their customers and clients. not because they tried so hard to instill those values, but because they already existed so it just waterfalled instead of being forced.

it's not that today's consumer tech products are broken. in fact–there are tons who are performing extremely well. but, beneath that surface level, the way today's personal devices & software are built for humans is messed up. more than 'immoral', it's fundamentally disastrous for our species in the long term. one that is starting to show it's face as more of us become hyper aware of it and fed up. the way today's products are built is this: identify a problem or market opportunity where there is more demand than supply. build a solution for the consumer niche you are targeting. get validation through purchases & growth. start to scale. as you scale, make your margins better. and better. and better. is the product getting worse, maybe. will you sacrifice that for the sake of margins and growth growth scale scale scale? yes. of course you will, and VCs will love you for it as long as there's performance. where does that lead to? enshittification.