SavageBeast

"... all of Harvard’s $676 million in annual federal funding."

"How soon at this rate of moral turpitude do we have the leather suits in public…"

According to my "internet research" on such things, the suits are typically latex but your point is well made

I think Google, with regard to Search here, is in the Skin The Sheep phase of its story arc. Innovation is done, market dominance is here, no point in innovating because they're making so much money. The total shit state that is Google Search these days is a tacit admission that search as we know it is over. No more innovating, instead lets suck as much money out of this thing as we can today because its going away. Good news is things become pure profit for Google while they wait for the inevitable changing of the guard and their replacement becomes the new normal.

I was having some kind of issue the other day - browser cache corruption issue or ChatGPT hiccuped for a few minutes - but I needed to know an answer for a thing RIGHT NOW. I reluctantly went back to Google and searched for it the old way.

Just ... OMFG ... I used to do this all the time? This used to be how you learned things? You mean I get to read 10 sites and 25 dumb answers to get to a possibly correct one? And all the while I got ads coming at me for this and that. A friend was trying to decode some chat convo we had about GLP-1 drugs and get factual information.

Google search was nothing but direct ads selling "IF YOU LIKE OZEMPIC YOU WILL LOOOOOVE NOZEMPIC - ITS ALL NATURAL!!" and the content-mill blogs and such that tout the benefits of some "NOZEMPIC" variant.

AI has changed the way I learn and research. I have a very capable tutor on demand for any subject there is, any time I want to use it. Its mostly right or "good enough for government work" as the old guys say.

I was once an AI hater - now Im an AI evangelist and Im turning people in my sphere of influence into AI users too. Once you show them the value prop they totally get it. Learning and such no longer requires manual work for the 90% case.

When theres money on the table you don't have any friends.

Am I the only one who scrolled down and read the full memo? Thats the biggest load of shit Ive ever read - like maybe seriously it is. Thats epic bullshit. I don't even think Zuckerberg could top that with his brand of AW SHUCKS WE CAN DO BETTER GUYS!

"I continue to believe that we are all here because we want to make a difference in customers’ lives, invent on their behalf, and move quickly to solve their problems."

"We are also going to bring back assigned desk arrangements in locations that were previously organized that way"

"To address the second issue of being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business, we’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID." - The stock price is UP $100/share since March '19

If you didn't read the whole thing take a minute and revisit the article. NO MATTER WHAT DO NOT THROW YOUR LAPTOP OR PHONE!

Now, we get to see if 5/15/40/40 is the handcuffs its intended to be.

In my experience, no they do not. They're waaaay too busy. CEOs are a different story entirely depending on what the sales/awareness model of the business is. CEOs go out and Tell The Story to any industry stakeholder that will listen. CTOs post up with their team and get shit done. Thats my experience and what I saw from my peers in other startups.

Provided it's not going to cost you a fortune in time or money, provided its not going to "wreck your reputation" etc, I'd say go for it as you're "close to being done" (hahaha - famous last words).

You will get some valuable experience and learn a lot about the process of going to market and about yourself personally too.

Go on the journey, or in your case finish the journey. The next time you get a good idea, it will no longer be your first time and you will have lessons from the is experience to draw from. You will make mistakes and by the end of this you will look back and know what you would and wouldn't do again. If you derive no other value, that by itself is a worthy prize.

Go get your hands dirty and get your first time behind you I say. Nobody builds Facebook on their First Rodeo and you won't either. Consider it an exercise to prepare you for the future.

Its only a "prediction" if you call it out before it happens. With that in mind I'll predict that regardless of the election outcome, this will be the year that the not-personally-spoken animosity takes a real form in daily life.

This is the year that Left and Right, Blue and Red, Democrats and Republicans will stop associating with each other socially in daily life. MORE polarization is coming and its going to be on a personal level at the corner bar, at the job, etc and its going to become socially acceptable and maybe even "patriotic". Batshit crazy as it sounds now I can see people sporting some kind of affiliation insignia to represent their "gang".

The Years of Lead occurred in Italy all the way up until the late 80's apparently. This can happen in modern times.

"Well it was MY IDEA so I deserve 80% equity + above market salary and in exchange you can GET RICH by paying to build the product and operating it!"

~The co-founder who in addition to delivering ZERO value of any kind in addition to demanding a large salary, CEO title and Chairman status.

We all run into this guy, I think everyone has a story like this.

We did pivot to add a more premium, high touch offering and it sold very well. Thats how we came to the second unhappy realization: Despite having what we considered a very nice TAM the industry didn't really want to be scaled. This meant that our clients who paid for our premium offering were very difficult to service and create value for.

Our business was in a sense connecting buyers with sellers for a fee, and there just weren't enough sellers to satisfy the industry of willing buyers eager to pay for value. A fine boutique business and a solid way to have a $12M/year company focusing on BIG DEALS. Not much of a play to scale with tech and profit by reducing costs and friction. Nobody cared about costs and friction was oddly desirable for our customers as it meant "we're in the game - things are happening!".

Had we not "raised money" and encumbered ourselves with investors we'd have continued operating. As it turned out, we more or less took on a bunch of debt to operate the same business we could have made with no tech at all.

We tried to compete on price in a market that really wasn't as price sensitive as it claimed to be. Yes some people wanted to "pay less" but in reality the big players were happy to pay the "industry standard" rate. Many of those big players we would later find were happy to pay far more even. For every player who wanted to "pay less" there were easily 10 that would pay more to get the opportunities their competition wasn't willing to pay for.

Looking back I feel totally stupid about it.

Time to buy some Deradicalizer stocks I guess.

Alternatively, the could simply treat abject TERRORISM as 'Terrorism'. Stabbing little girls was already against existing laws. Never let a good crisis go to waste as they say in American politics.

The single worst thing about engaging in degenerate endeavors is the people you will meet and the impact they will have on your life. Consider that you will likely be making degenerate friends and making connections with others in that space. I'm not saying it's a bad idea but choose your company wisely and with eyes wide open. With proper boundaries set going in it could be a fun experience.

Your comment made me go look at the P/E ratio of Alphabet itself - they're valued at 38x earnings. In this context turning down 65x ARR seems fucking insane at best.

"Americans are being gouged by the fashion eyewear MONOPOLY" said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland today...

With all the things going on in the country, overpricing frivolous designer eyewear seems pretty safe from attack. They're clearly doing just exactly this too as I sit here in my $250 worth of Ray Ban plastic as I type this.

Hah! I do this too. When I find myself back in the market after a long stint of not having interviewed I find it usually takes me 3 jobs I don't want to get warmed up. The next one after that I crush.

Start doing the same thing you will regularly as a programmer. Pick a tool chain, download whatever tooling is required, get the tutorial project up and running. Next, start making changes. Use the tutorial project as a template to fundamentally build some kind of site/tool/app. Encounter barriers, Google and GPT your way to solving those problems. Start adding features and functionality. Rinse and repeat until you know enough to be dangerous. At this point you are now a "programmer".

For an MVP I'd consider installing the database itself on the EC2 instance backed by EBS volume as opposed to going with RDS. Ive done it and I was surprised how well it performed for zero additional cost. Take care NOT to install anything on the SSD attached to the EC2 instance as it gets wiped on instance reboot (and thats not always up to you). Additionally, use IP whitelisting/security groups to restrict access to YOUR public IP for things like said database etc. Regarding public IP addresses, spring the fractional dollar and get yourself an elastic IP. I know the EC2 instance will have a public IP associated it but that can change where the elastic one is relatively permanent.

"AWS backend" can mean sooo many things - you will get better answers if you describe your architecture in a little more detail.

Maybe a Spacex launch? I think they were in Texas in '22.

Consulting 101 training kicks in here - YES is always the answer to any request, followed by "heres how long it will take, how much it will cost and what other priorities will need to be shifted. We can get started this afternoon if you're good with that?"

Stakeholders asking for crazy things back up real fast when you take their requests/demands/GOOD IDEAS and apply these realities to them.

"Don't build your own AI solution - buy one of our products instead!"

See: Lucidworks Solutions on the home page.

I know plenty of actual humans who speak with apparent authority and experience on all variety of things they know nothing about. Current AI has copied an existing human behavior if anything.

I always wondered (being a developer myself) how a team at a well financed FAANG could fuck this up so badly. It seemed to me as if they were intentionally trying to ruin the product. Changes for no benefit month to month and this month doesn't work like it did last month, etc. Every night all 6 devices get reset to the same broken configuration I just changed yet again that day. What you describe here would do it easily and I'd absolutely believe you. I envisioned there had to be some reason but I'd have never guessed this was it.

YUP - thats my experience as well - consistently too. The ONE thing we all use this kind of limited tech for and the Alexa team couldn't even do that well.

What they did in the last 5 years was deprecate to death the Alexa web interface as well as totally ruin the Alexa mobile app such that there was really no great way to administrate my condo full of Echos.

AMZN execs are watching AAPL stock go bonkers today on yesterdays AI announcement. APPLE IS DOING AI AND WE ALL NEED NEW PHONES TO USE IT!

I expect a similar thing to happen when AMZN announces some AI consumer product. Never mind they were in a Prime (ahahah - get it - "PRIME") position to be the first mover here.

An opportunity good and truly squandered.

My personal favorite is "Alexa! All Hue Lights ON" here - I only trust Siri with important cooking timers.