When the early adopters start pushing neural implants they'll be ad-free. Not long after your boss insists that everybody needs neural implants for the sake of productivity, they'll be ad-supported but moneyed developers will be able to opt out. The terms of the ad-free service will continue shifting, so nothing is ever really ad-free for long, and ads for better neural implants are promotions not ads right? But y'all are working on neural implants because if you don't, somebody else will, aren't you
I think this was the plot of a Black Mirror episode?
mgraczyk 20 minutes ago [-]
Except this hasn't happened with electricity, cars, washing machines, smartphones, smart watches, Bluetooth headphones, ...
Not all technology is bad
dgrin91 5 minutes ago [-]
Electricity I don't know how you could deliver ads through, but if someone could think of a way I bet they would. If everyone knew Morris code I bet they would make the lights flicker in Morris code for a discount.
Modern cars with connected infotainment systems are always trying to upsell you
Washing machines I dont know of anything at the moment, but I wouldnt count it out.
Smartphones/watches? Aren't those just ad delivery mechanisms? Not to mention tracking? Its a core foundation of modern ad technology
Headphones are not thank god, I hope it stays that way
mgraczyk 2 minutes ago [-]
I've never seen an ad delivered through any of these things. On smartphones I mean the phone/OS itself
It would be very easy to deliver ads via electricity. The utility could require you watch an ad before using more
For me it is not the right move, one thing is letting users know Laravel Cloud is an option and another one is removing any alternative from the text
ceejayoz 1 hours ago [-]
Ooof. Yeah, this is not a good sign. I enjoy Laravel (and even Laravel Cloud), but this clearly doesn't belong in Boost.
otikik 53 minutes ago [-]
> Do we let people feed ads to our agents?
"Our" agents?
mfrieswyk 39 minutes ago [-]
> I'm not a Laravel developer and don't generally use PHP apart from one small side project where Claude takes care of the coding for me anyway. I've never tried Laravel Cloud so I don't know whether it fits into either of the descriptions above.
sschueller 37 minutes ago [-]
Thankfully I went with Symfony. Non of this VC funding crap. Clear release timelines and how breaking changes are introduced.
unculture 21 minutes ago [-]
The tool is open source. If it bothers you, fork it and remove the line in the prompt.
pinter69 47 minutes ago [-]
Interesting, thanks for the reference. I wonder what other products do this
artursapek 1 hours ago [-]
Avoid VC funding at all costs
password4321 52 minutes ago [-]
I love this. Let the clankers pay the bills.
CivBase 32 minutes ago [-]
If you're using a company's product to get advice or do work, you should probably expect that product to be heavily biased towards that company and its affiliates. It's not your own employee, who would presumably act with the best interests of your organization in mind. It's not even your own agent. If that's what you want, the product simply isn't for you.
MarcelOlsz 39 minutes ago [-]
I only had to wait 8 years but I can finally text my old co-worker that Laravel is in fact, shit.
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
By the way, one quick comment:
> By contrast, Ruby on Rails is backed by a foundation that launched with about $1M from sponsors like Shopify and GitHub.
So, not disagreeing on this being an issue for Laravel abusing users, but in particular the role of Shopify in the ruby ecosystem is, in my opinion (and that of many others) a net-negative. Look at how many ruby developers got ultimately fired when rubygems.org (ok, not rubygems.org but RubyCentral, but they now control rubygems.org and the main moderator on ruby reddit is an employee of RubyCentral, thus a conflict of interest exists now on ruby reddit) decided it must become a shopify-corporation project only.
sixhobbits 58 minutes ago [-]
Author here, I was actually surprised to learn this too. I reached for Ruby and Django as examples of non commerical frameworks and before writing this I didn't know about the $1M backing either.
I guess I'd have a hard time turning down that kind of money for something I cared about so no judgement to the creators who make the choices but I do think it's something we need to understand the effects of as community members
bakugo 38 minutes ago [-]
On one hand, I hate how much of a hype-driven commercial product Laravel is, and how many novice developers learn bad practices from its awful architecture.
On the other hand, this "problem" only affects vibe coders who weren't writing any code themselves anyway, so I say let them suffer.
lexoj 11 minutes ago [-]
I don’t do laravel but which bad practices are you referring to?
ceejayoz 3 minutes ago [-]
50/50 chance it's a complaint about Facades, heh.
typia 35 minutes ago [-]
This is PHP
ptdorf 46 minutes ago [-]
Another one bits the dust.
shevy-java 1 hours ago [-]
We need ublock origin EVERYWHERE.
I actually wrote this before on reddit, before I eventually
left reddit due to the censorship. KDE changed a lot and Nate
asked for donations via a daemon. I pointed out that we now
need to undo pester-ads added by KDE developers. Lo and behold,
I was cancelled on #kde reddit. I still think we need something
like ublock origin but for EVERYTHING, not just the browser.
ublock origin is great for browsers, but there is a lot more
that should be filtered away; take bad UI choices made by
upstream, not even an ad. Some software allows fine-tuning,
where the user can customize the project a bit (firefox UI
for instance, you can modify it). We need this on the whole
operating system level, not just the browser. That way, as
a convenient side effect, Laravel could no longer abuse users
like that.
I live an ad-free life (well, digital life ... in reallife I
still get pointless ads shown). I think every human being
should have the option to not have to see ANY ads. The more
the industry complains about it, the more I censor away
such ad-monsters.
woutervdb 35 minutes ago [-]
I agree that there's a strong need for ad blockers nowadays. I also use uBlock Origin on all my browsers. But I'm not sure if a world that is completely devoid of advertising would... work. Advertising (in some form) is a necessary evil, I think.
Any business needs customers to make revenue and, well, exist. So any business needs to have some way to make themselves known to potential customers.
In the case of Laravel, they offer an open source framework completely for free, and pay for the development man hours through their commercial offerings, e.g. Laravel Cloud. That commercial offering is not bad: they offer a very smooth way to deploy your Laravel project. In order for the offering to make any revenue, potential customers need to know that it exists, at least. They're still free to choose whether they want to use that commercial offering, or if they want to deploy their project on their own.
Previously, making sure people knew Laravel Cloud existed was done through the Laravel home page. But nowadays more and more people "consume" a framework's documentation through their AI tooling, and they no longer visit the home page.
In a comment [0], which is conveniently being left out of both TFA and most comments on HN, the maintainer even explains that the addition was not meant as a literal advertisement, but as a way to make sure new users of the framework at least _know_ that they can deploy their application on Laravel Cloud. And they are even actively asking for suggestions on how to rephrase the addition so that the AI Tooling does not see it as "you MUST use Laravel Cloud" gospel.
I also block ads everywhere I can, but I have to admit that an open source project such as KDE showing once a year a simple text notification asking their users to consider making a donation has nothing to do with a commercial ads in my opinion.
mwalser 44 minutes ago [-]
I'm using KDE as my daily driver and haven't noticed any ads so far. Where can I find these pester-ads?
p4bl0 39 minutes ago [-]
The notification only exists since Plasma 6.2 (august 2024) [1]. Maybe some Linux distribution disable it?
Every time tech invents something amazing, the enshittification follows shortly thereafter.
gjsman-1000 1 hours ago [-]
“How dare a guy work on technology for 1.248 million minutes, take VC funding gambling that he can improve the ecosystem for everyone using it, and then have the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to ask me to consider his products with it only taking one minute for me to opt out!”
The headline wasn't "Taylor Otwell bought a Lambo in 2022 and now injects ads...".
VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment.
ceejayoz 55 minutes ago [-]
> VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment.
And people warned about this when they announced it.
This is a sign those warnings were valid.
hiccuphippo 37 minutes ago [-]
And that's the start of the enshittification.
embedding-shape 1 hours ago [-]
> that he can improve the ecosystem for everyone using it [...] to ask me to consider his products with it only taking one minute for me to opt out
Seems you misunderstand the issue. Anyone not deploying to Laravel Cloud but using that project seems to be impacted by this, even going so far that agents are confused about it and keeps insisting users should deploy to Laravel Cloud instead.
Maybe I'm a grumpy old developer, but that does not sound like "improve the ecosystem for everyone using it", sounds like good old spam taken to the next level.
gjsman-1000 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, you're a grumpy old developer.
Taylor Otwell has been full-time on Laravel since 2015. 260 work days per year, 8 hours per day, for a decade = 1.248 million minutes.
And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced you into adding a sentence to your agents file. This, right here, is why I will never write open-source software of any significant size.
embedding-shape 40 minutes ago [-]
> And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced you into adding a sentence to your agents file.
I don't care how something happened, I care about the results. If you do stuff to my tooling that makes it less efficient, I'm gonna not like that, regardless how many minutes you spent on something, or if it's FOSS or not.
If you can't handle feedback from developers about what you're doing to their environment then please, do not write and publish open-source software, you'll be doing us all a favor.
ceejayoz 59 minutes ago [-]
Laravel has been apparently profitable for quite some time; they've long had a paid ecosystem with things like Forge, Vapor, paid components, etc.
I don't think it's unfair to be wary of the shift to VC funding and stuff like this that really feels like it wouldn't have been a thing prior to that.
sixhobbits 55 minutes ago [-]
He has no obligations to us as we did not pay him, but we also have the right to call out stuff we think is wrong as he didn't pay us
gjsman-1000 48 minutes ago [-]
That's called a parasitic relationship. Think about it:
1. I have the right to take as I please
2. I have the right to criticize the giver as I please
3. The giver has zero right to take from me in any way
I think that's morally repugnant. If this is what open source means, I'm joining Microsoft and I will be the one writing the Halloween papers.
sixhobbits 28 minutes ago [-]
I think I'm saying the opposite on point 3. He has no _obligation_ to us and has full rights to 'take away' as he sees fit, but we still have the right to give our opinion about that process, and to make comparisons and contrasts with other similar products that are run differently
embedding-shape 33 minutes ago [-]
If you think somehow publishing FOSS means you get some right to decide how people use it, or anything besides the licensing of the code, you severely misunderstand what exactly FOSS is about.
cwillu 42 minutes ago [-]
If you don't like it, don't release software under that license.
gjsman-1000 32 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
diehunde 49 minutes ago [-]
You should use seconds to make it even more dramatic
mns 50 minutes ago [-]
It's the way he's doing it. The entire ecosystem is just one giant ad for various paid projects. It's one thing to offer paid services, there are users out there that want to use them or need to use them, that's not the issue. From my perspective Laravel became a huge ad with purposely bad documentation that ends up directing unknowing users into using features, libraries and products that will lead them into paying for things that they might not need. Everything in Laravel recently is set up so that users folow documentation and best practices to end up using whatever subscriptions and paid products they offer (and then in some case pull the plug on them and come up with something new, abandoning whatever UI library they made people buy 1 year ago).
FatherOfCurses 53 minutes ago [-]
"How dare people want to spend a portion of their lives not being advertised to."
There are plenty of ways to promote your product. Injecting ads into agents and PR's is not the way to do it.
jlarocco 1 hours ago [-]
He didn't have to give it away for free and turn to adware.
I understand that he wants to get paid for his work, but he can charge for it like everybody else. No need to be a asshole by building the product for "free" and then bundling ad-ware.
43 minutes ago [-]
40 minutes ago [-]
Rendered at 16:14:25 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Not all technology is bad
Modern cars with connected infotainment systems are always trying to upsell you
Washing machines I dont know of anything at the moment, but I wouldnt count it out.
Smartphones/watches? Aren't those just ad delivery mechanisms? Not to mention tracking? Its a core foundation of modern ad technology
Headphones are not thank god, I hope it stays that way
It would be very easy to deliver ads via electricity. The utility could require you watch an ad before using more
https://sense.com/consumer-blog/with-your-permission-utiliti...
Cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sceLsLkQf7A
Fridges: https://fortune.com/2025/09/19/samsung-family-hub-refrigerat...
I'm not aware of a smart watch doing first-party ads yet.
But the existence of a single crappy car establishes very definitively that a crappy car can and does exist.
Do you think Samsung's the only company that's gonna play with ads on their smart fridges?
I think the main thing preventing it on the device itself is they haven't thus far needed a large screen to show them on.
For me it is not the right move, one thing is letting users know Laravel Cloud is an option and another one is removing any alternative from the text
"Our" agents?
> By contrast, Ruby on Rails is backed by a foundation that launched with about $1M from sponsors like Shopify and GitHub.
So, not disagreeing on this being an issue for Laravel abusing users, but in particular the role of Shopify in the ruby ecosystem is, in my opinion (and that of many others) a net-negative. Look at how many ruby developers got ultimately fired when rubygems.org (ok, not rubygems.org but RubyCentral, but they now control rubygems.org and the main moderator on ruby reddit is an employee of RubyCentral, thus a conflict of interest exists now on ruby reddit) decided it must become a shopify-corporation project only.
I guess I'd have a hard time turning down that kind of money for something I cared about so no judgement to the creators who make the choices but I do think it's something we need to understand the effects of as community members
On the other hand, this "problem" only affects vibe coders who weren't writing any code themselves anyway, so I say let them suffer.
I actually wrote this before on reddit, before I eventually left reddit due to the censorship. KDE changed a lot and Nate asked for donations via a daemon. I pointed out that we now need to undo pester-ads added by KDE developers. Lo and behold, I was cancelled on #kde reddit. I still think we need something like ublock origin but for EVERYTHING, not just the browser. ublock origin is great for browsers, but there is a lot more that should be filtered away; take bad UI choices made by upstream, not even an ad. Some software allows fine-tuning, where the user can customize the project a bit (firefox UI for instance, you can modify it). We need this on the whole operating system level, not just the browser. That way, as a convenient side effect, Laravel could no longer abuse users like that.
I live an ad-free life (well, digital life ... in reallife I still get pointless ads shown). I think every human being should have the option to not have to see ANY ads. The more the industry complains about it, the more I censor away such ad-monsters.
Any business needs customers to make revenue and, well, exist. So any business needs to have some way to make themselves known to potential customers.
In the case of Laravel, they offer an open source framework completely for free, and pay for the development man hours through their commercial offerings, e.g. Laravel Cloud. That commercial offering is not bad: they offer a very smooth way to deploy your Laravel project. In order for the offering to make any revenue, potential customers need to know that it exists, at least. They're still free to choose whether they want to use that commercial offering, or if they want to deploy their project on their own.
Previously, making sure people knew Laravel Cloud existed was done through the Laravel home page. But nowadays more and more people "consume" a framework's documentation through their AI tooling, and they no longer visit the home page.
In a comment [0], which is conveniently being left out of both TFA and most comments on HN, the maintainer even explains that the addition was not meant as a literal advertisement, but as a way to make sure new users of the framework at least _know_ that they can deploy their application on Laravel Cloud. And they are even actively asking for suggestions on how to rephrase the addition so that the AI Tooling does not see it as "you MUST use Laravel Cloud" gospel.
[0]: https://github.com/laravel/boost/pull/758#issuecomment-42589...
[1] https://pointieststick.com/2024/08/28/asking-for-donations-i...
While I don't remember seeing the notification, I think a yearly (!) system notification doesn't exactly qualify as pestering.
I really don't think he's hurting for funds.
VCs typically want a return on their 57 million dollar investment.
And people warned about this when they announced it.
This is a sign those warnings were valid.
Seems you misunderstand the issue. Anyone not deploying to Laravel Cloud but using that project seems to be impacted by this, even going so far that agents are confused about it and keeps insisting users should deploy to Laravel Cloud instead.
Maybe I'm a grumpy old developer, but that does not sound like "improve the ecosystem for everyone using it", sounds like good old spam taken to the next level.
Taylor Otwell has been full-time on Laravel since 2015. 260 work days per year, 8 hours per day, for a decade = 1.248 million minutes.
And you're complaining it's spam that he's inconvenienced you into adding a sentence to your agents file. This, right here, is why I will never write open-source software of any significant size.
I don't care how something happened, I care about the results. If you do stuff to my tooling that makes it less efficient, I'm gonna not like that, regardless how many minutes you spent on something, or if it's FOSS or not.
If you can't handle feedback from developers about what you're doing to their environment then please, do not write and publish open-source software, you'll be doing us all a favor.
I don't think it's unfair to be wary of the shift to VC funding and stuff like this that really feels like it wouldn't have been a thing prior to that.
1. I have the right to take as I please
2. I have the right to criticize the giver as I please
3. The giver has zero right to take from me in any way
I think that's morally repugnant. If this is what open source means, I'm joining Microsoft and I will be the one writing the Halloween papers.
There are plenty of ways to promote your product. Injecting ads into agents and PR's is not the way to do it.
I understand that he wants to get paid for his work, but he can charge for it like everybody else. No need to be a asshole by building the product for "free" and then bundling ad-ware.