muse900

Well tbh, hype does tell you something about future demand. It doesn't guarantee sales, but how excited people are about a product gives you an idea of how likely they are to buy it.

I think Nike lost some of its cool while the competition got better. For me, the turning point was walking into a Nike store and thinking their prices were way too high for what I was actually getting.

I reckon they'd be in a much worse position without Jordan. It's still a massive part of their appeal, even if its sales have slowed too.

And the stock market doesn't just look at today's revenue and performance. It also prices in what people expect to happen next. If people think a brand is losing its appeal, they won't necessarily wait for that to fully show up in the numbers.

Yes for sure there are people that writing code is the whole deal.

How many of them are driving goals and businesses though?

Like if we take for example an ex coder like Gabe, someone from his team comes up and says to him "we can launch this game in 1 year by using LLMs, codebase will be meh/okish" or "we can launch this game in 4 years we'll hire the top engineers and write the best software piece ever, a technical novelty".

I already know his answer... even if his answer was the 4 years which won't be, his board would disagree.

So yes there are people that love and enjoy writing software, but the truth is that business is leading software, not the other way around.

For me personally nowadays I don't need languages, I am so deep into coding using LLM's, not vibing, that I don't really mind on what is written. Also we are just at the start of this thing.

I get what you are saying, but how can we be talking about skill atrophy when our main skill is changing from being able to produce code ourselves to being able to leverage LLMs to write that code.

At the end of the day there are goals achieved with coding. Coding is a tool to reach either your business needs or some personal aspiration.

When it comes to businesses I don't think a business cares if you used the best stack possible, or you've written it in assembly, as long as it works. Judging from the biggest coding drivers out there, most of the code produced globally and the biggest apps out there have had skilled engineers writing code but its not always perfect. As long as it works. Lets not forget that the web is build in php and js.

So again my argument is that, are you atrophying a skill that is going to exist in the next 1 to 2 years, or is everything going to shift towards LLM code writting.

Personally I think that LLM code writing is the winner, whether we like it or not, it accelerates business objectives, which at the end of the day its what is the deciding factor.

And yes I do miss the days I was writing code and I was solving complex problems myself.

Yes but not always applicable unfortunately… e.g. the other day I was in Italy, I needed to park on the publicly available parking which was paid to the municipality.

No other parking available anywhere near in 30 mins walking distance. (paid or free)

I had to download a 3rd party app that asked me to register. This app isn’t by the Italian government, it’s affiliated though.

So in that situation, I want nothing to do with your website or app, because I wouldn’t able to park.

Because nowadays the stockmarket is build upon hype, this is why we are having the market caps and valuations we are having that are in any way shape or form reflecting anything that is real.

For the Gov to come out and block a model for national security, its gonna swing the market into thinking "oh anthropic really has the next generation of LLMs out there, its that good Gov banned it, this company is going to the moon".

The part of banning non US nationals, I believe is a legality, as in they have to trust US citizens to do right by their country. I don't think in court a whole ban on a product for security reasons would stand. (The judge would ask for the gov to explain why all US nationals are a security threat to their country)

Nevertheless, again I am standing behind number 2 personally as the main reason for such a thing, market manipulation is not new and its currently at its all time high. Also anthropic is part of this manipulation so far, with every other AI company out there.

Again I am just presenting my POV, it could as well just be number 1... A gov became competent enough to find security threads before they happen :)

Yes! I mean everyone is speaking about this in a boxed manner.

For all we know there are might be several reasons for that ban e.g.

1) There is an actual security threat and its just simple as that.

2) Someone wants Anthropic to be valued way higher and the companies that have invested in Anthropic already... This ban only validates this product and will move the market in higher valuation of Anthropic due to their model being "so good gov had to ban"

3) Someone doesn't like Anthropic and just wants to shut down its current edge (highly unlikely, if there was no IPO filing in place it could be possible but now the valuation just goes up, same as the 2 As that have invested in them)

4) Someone freaked out that we'll be left out of jobs soon so wants to slow down progress, tbh using fable so far I can tell that a lot of jobs can be made redundant cause of that...

For me the most likely for now is 2, then 1 and then maybe 4.

On June 22 Chatgpt will most likely come out with their new model too, which as I understand will be an answer to mythos. Lets see if the US gov goes the same route.

Personally I believe that our communities and mental health deteriorate through social media especially in a young age.

Although I am a firm believer of the above, I do not believe that Governments are doing it because they do care about our health. Quite the opposite. I believe they want to manipulate us as much as they can so they can keep in power.

Although they want that, they have seen that social media has the power on gathering people and creating protests, so I believe they want to cut it off on younger people that usually have way more anger and got much less to lose (nowadays that the light at the end of the tunnel is fading) than a middle-aged man being mind-controlled his whole life being a good abiding citizen.

Its a power tool, they are just swinging it where they want. Soonish in EU we'll have the same ban, but it won't be because EU politicians cares about children, it is so they can keep their power and not have a generation that has access to other sources than traditional media and structured schools grooming them on just obeing their masters.

Really?

I mean are we forgetting about kids gambling lootboxes in CS and Valve doing nothing to regulate it?

I mean yes compared to the rest of the gaming companies that are long way gone like Blizzard etc, Valve seems to be the better, but its not like they are saints...

It always amazes me how us as people forget the past (which is not even far away).

I agree with plenty of what you are saying, at the same time I believe that joining problematic start-ups or failing start-ups can teach you plenty on how not do things.

Remember that before succeeding you have to fail and improve in a cycle of n times until you succeed. If you succeed without failing then there is a high probability of luck being involved.

agree, for me mostly for some reason its the fear of not finding another job...

But well if you are depressed at your job... how bad can it get?

And can really the money you make from a job make back for the depression? My personal opinion is NO!

Usually its the extremes that are having the same effects.

Atm I am in a super demanding job, requiring me to overwork, make decisions on the spot, work on problems etc.

On my free time while I want to sit down and watch some TV, go for running, enjoy a nice dinner or whatever... I FEEL EMPTY!

I am fixated with my work... its not healthy and its creating low motivation for me. It feels like work has taken away all pleasures in life for me. It is not HEALTHY at all (I am currently seeing professionals about it)

Generally anything in moderation is key...

P.S. I do overwork myself for someone else to enjoy the fruits of my labour... sad story.

"So stripe here would charge an EU card from its EU entity, US from the US, GB from GB etc etc, regardless of where the merchant is actually located. Maybe there is something fundamentally different with the workings of Visa / MC payments and clearing though that means this is not possible?"

Not really. The transaction happens on the country the merchant Operates.

If you are a merchant within the EU and stripe accepts a txn on your behalf, if that txn is from a card issued by a UK institution you will be charged the extra fee.

Personal experience has taught me that there is a MAXIMUM amount of COMP that you will receive as an employee, no matter how much hard work you put into your company.

So basically what is happening, is that you are working hard for some achievements, that someone else is going to benefit off.

Although I use incognito mode as a workaround (if you open the article on incognito it shows it without the paywall, at least it does for me), I find Medium tutorials badly written or written by people with limited technical knowledge.

I'd say 95% of my process with medium goes like this:

1) Finds a blog with a tutorial or something relevant. 2) Opens it and sees a paywall 3) Opens it in incognito mode 4) Browses through the article 5) Leaves the page and learned nothing

“Time is money friend” - greedy goblin in world of Warcraft

No but seriously that’s a precious advice. Don’t waste your time, our time in this earth is limited, better make the most of it!

While Erdogan is behind the wheel, Turkey will keep suffering his power-plays. Its very unfortunate that he doesn't want any conflict resolution, just power games (don't forget blocking social media sites in Turkey etc). I have a feeling that Turks do want to progress and be part of the westernized world but he is keeping them behind. A week ago he converted a highly valuable world heritage monument into a mosque knowing it will damage his relationships with Europe. Reopening Famagusta is only gonna make things worse.

Generally speaking the area has been conflicted from all sides, e.g Israel-Palestine etc, and it feels like noone really wants to fix things up and let the area heal for generations to come? I mean come on people we are in 2020 and we act like we are 70 years ago... we should be thinking out of the box.

Although I am biased on this subject as I legally own land that I can't use or visit in Famagusta, I thought I'd share my opinion.

Small-medium hotel owner here, that used to write code for a living.

What just happened in my industry, is forcing me to go look for a job. I don't think we are going to open for summer season or even if we do its not gonna make enough to live by.

Hundreds or thousands of years ago, a few had all the wealth and then most people were poor. We even had slaves.

I can't believe that in 2020 and with all the knowledge we've acquired as humanity we've allowed a few people to acquire all the wealth.

I am gonna struggle with paying any tax coming my way this year, or even supporting my employees who they very much need the job. And on the other hand, there are corporation that don't need to pay much tax through their umbrellas and then again they pay their employees peanuts so they can have a CEO that is worth in the hundred of billions of $. Sad to see that humanity hasn't improved at all.

must be fake, from the whois I cannot see amazon being registered, its just hidden which is not normal by such a huge organization. I might be wrong but just from the whois I wouldn't believe its amazon.

To add to that, I was listening to an expert from Standford saying that the data set we currently have is not correct and we don't have the full picture.

We might be seeing X deaths in china but that might not be true, due to less testing etc currently, so the mortality rate is a bit skewed.

Want to wish you well, and its quite nice after all this sorrow to see that there are still nice ideas out there that are capable to not only survive but prosper.

That's the principle, but it doesn't reflect to the reality around us, or at least my reality.

I am in the tourism industry, owning a small-medium hotel.

If I stop paying any loans and generally I am left out of cash-flow I am pretty much screwed for the next few years, if not closing down.

I know though a few people around my area with massive resorts and a debt over 100mil that have already stopped paying quite a few loans themselvs and they are getting away with a slap on their wrist. The gov gets involved cause the debt is enough to damage a bank, and the people that are going to be left without a job are enough to cause a mini crisis. Then the bank itself... well for them its not just about ceasing the asset as its gonna be a hard thing to sell or manage.

Meanwhile the owners are taking out massive salaries + bonuses for their personal accounts and don't care about their balance sheet being a mess and their debts growing.

I would like to see if Gov officials apply the same 'herd immunity' tactic to themselves and their relatives as well.

Would be great to see if Boris Johnson and his cabinet and their close ones are staying home or not.

I wouldn't say that directly applies to what Google is trying to do.

I think what Google is doing is just re-investing back into x amount of companies/ideas where even if 1-2 of those companies bounces back and becomes profitable they make up their investments + they make profit.

I think they do realise how much money there is to be made in the gaming world and such. Its just time and money against profit for them.

Throw eggs in the wall and see what sticks or not.

Personally I don't like that model and thats why I use google services less and less. Even gmail is a huge no-go for me due to their nonexistent support.

I'll agree with you on that.

Take PHP as an example. I'd say from a technical perspective not many people would go with it from a technical standpoint but we can't ignore that massive companies like FB for example were build on that (no matter if they grew out of it at a later date).

> Lots of Money + Lots of People =/= Guaranteed Success

I'll agree on that.

I won't agree with the rest though, I don't think DO can compete in an enterprise level.

Actually in the longrun I don't see DO ever being viable. AWS and google are going to become simpler as the time passes and they are going to take over that margin that is left on services like DO, ovh etc. I think the only viable business plan for them right now would be to focus on their simplicity and continue building on it hoping they will get bought out by the big players. Obviously thats not good for us -> amazon and google owning everything on the web but unless there is some crazy law that limits them from doing so, they are going to do it.

ye I agree, it feels impossible to penetrate that market unless you have many billions and the actual engineering knowledge behind it.

I think DO is good for the small/average player that doesn't wanna invest time into having his team learning the AWS quirks because his business isn't in heavy need of it.

If AWS or even google ever goes after the small/average user by creating an easier to understand/navigate service for the user that doesn't need all that overhead and time investment of that bizarre learning curve just to setup a simple application, then its just gonna kill DO and other services like that out there.

Auth0 is nice tbh but I find it quite pricey once you scale a bit.

I think it’s important to make good decisions at the very start.

I am definitely not against auth0 and I think it’s great, just think well enough before using it because it might come free at the start but after you acquire more users it comes at a hefty price

>And as my healing journey has progressed, any ambitions I held to achieve business success on par with the Airbnb founders has faded, and been eclipsed by the realisation in order to do _anything_ well – from running businesses and leading social/political movements, to simply having successful friendships/relationships, a healthy family life and a physiologically healthy body – a healthy emotional foundation is of prime importance.

I feel also one has to realize that he can't have it all in life. I think its almost impossible and out of our nature to be able to achieve greatness in all fields. You might be the most successful CEO in the world and having the most money in the world but that doesn't mean that you are going to have and lead a successful family life as well.

Same way you can be successful at having a nice family and a loving partner etc but that requires time, time which you'll not be able to invest the time that being a CEO requires.

Thats my personal take from life so far - you have to decide what you want to be.

I don't feel like a top engineer. I think am no way near that tbh. I rank myself as an ok-ish engineer. I feel more like a hybrid though and I feel like I am valuable to a startup as I can bring on the table several things which include some photoshoping skills, being able to build a comprehensive front-end, can contribute to ideas as well as manage a db, build an api etc (to a level).

The past 2 years I was working part-time for a startup as I am running a business of my own which is almost on autopilot and allows me time to work on other things as well.

After 2 years I realized the positive and negative sides of working for a startup that is hard to find out before working for one.

First of all there were 3 main guys running the show. Only one of them was a tech guy, the other two came from a business background with no tech knowledge wanting to build up a tech startup. Joining that startup as an early employee didn't mean much apart from getting close to 1% in options (which is nothing considering my contribution to the cause was worth way more but obviously 1% is an industry standard).

The work became increasingly more demanding, although they knew I had other things to do and I was part-time, I was asked to work more than what was normal and almost reached working full-time helping them out (which was stupid of me, I was sacrificing time that I could be doing other things). The paycut I took also from my previous part-time gig was about 40% which is almost half. The cause of the startup also started changing increasingly and although at the start I was keen to have the paycut etc it felt like I didn't belong anymore (thats important for others wanting to work at a startup to know. The idea is not gonna remain the same as it is especially with business people driving research all the time).

The only positive was that I got some more experience on as a fullstack than before as I had to work a bit more on aws and backend systems and also was using "newish" tech.

My honest opinion and advice to anyone that is willing to try out working for a startup is:

Don't compromise your salary and well-being.

Startups will offer you options which is usually crap unless you are a co-creator. If you are taking a paycut but you support and like the cause of that startup then ask for a bigger %. Realise that most likely the startup is not gonna vest or sell and generally think of your options as a gamble.

Its most likely that the chances of you making real money out of your options is the same as you winning the lottery. If you are asked to work hard and stupid hours, then reconsider your well-being and ask yourself if its worth it.

Also look at the composition of that startup. For me personally it was stupid thinking that 2 business guys having the biggest % in the company would ever work for a tech startup. They contributed in writing long essays and doing research all the time, but at the end they couldn't attract more engineers by paying shit salaries and giving out 0.2-1% in options. The product failed because it couldn't be delivered on time due to having less people working on it than it initially required, and because those business people in order to justify their own % to the company were going on heavy research and constantly deciding shift changes on the product completely out of the blue just because they had nothing else to work on. (we were supposed to release within the 1st year which would be a year ahead of our competition. We released after 2 years which gave competition the lead of releasing before us and a much better product)

All in all - don't sacrifice your salary, thats how you feed yourself and your family and someone elses weird-ass dream is not gonna make you silly money out of the blue. And also remember that working should be taking some part of your day, but you also have one life and working your ass off for someone elses shitty dream aint worth it.

>Now, I make some consulting work for a small, independent, hotel, and - luckily enough - even if it is "cheaper" to overbook, the management holds the care and respect for the customer well above that.

Overbooking and caring about the customer is a completely different thing.

Overbooking is about running a business. We are almost on 2020 and currently its a stats game for any business out there. In order to min/max my own business I have to overbook, that's how i'll turn profit.

Caring and respecting the customer - anyone that is not doing that shouldn't be running a hotel imho. (Ryanair as an example should never ever run a hotel)

Also on hotels you do have ratings nowadays, service is not something you can compromise on. If you are having unhappy customers then that will show on your tripadvisor, booking.com, hotels.com and whatever have you. Then you'll have to drop your prices, meaning making less and devaluing your product. Customer service/happiness should be the number one priority for any hotel out there.

My kind of hotel allows me to make a profit by capitalizing on overbookings. I've kept the hotel on 4 stars whilst is an actual 5 star hotel with all the amenities a 5 stars hotel has. I kept it that way because the expectations of the customer are lower when they visit a 4 star hotel vs a 5 star hotel.

The pricing nowadays doesn't go by stars anyways it goes by rating. The higher your ratings and publicity the higher your price. There is less than a handful of 5 stars around me that can be more expensive than I am. The rest of them are cheaper due to their ratings/size etc.

When a customer arrives and learns that his room has been overbooked, he also learns that he'll be staying at a close-by hotel that usually is of 5 stars. The quality of the hotel that I'll put my customer because he remains my customer is either similar or higher than my hotel. If the customer check the prices also for that hotel, he'll find that they are the same as the room he booked. (I get them cheaper through the hotels I do business with and that's where profit comes from).

But I'll never have the customer feel that he is getting less than he paid for, or have his holidays ruined or altered.

8/10 times he'll stay at a slightly cheaper hotel than mine but of similar or higher quality/star rating. 2/10 i'll go in the bank and i'll be putting the customer on a more expensive hotel than mine.

Again its a stats game but I won't compromise on customer service and that's running a hotel.

Also personally let me tell you that I am not very keen towards returning customers in my area. My experience has shown me that returning customers expect the hotel prices and offers to remain the same and the hotel is currently on a developing area which has its prices going up yearly. I had returning customers asking why I was X more expensive this year than their last visit in 2016. For me its straight forward: inflation and the market prices around me will set the prices to where they need to be. For the customer is a bit more complicated and the customer will usually believe that my hotel is just becoming more expensive without a reason. Again this thing on the returning customer is totally personal and it affects my area as its highly touristic and not a business area and my hotel being of a certain boutique size. I am aware that most hotels out there have loyalty programs and they do make their money of returning customers.

Again as a hotelier I'll never ever compromise on quality and try to capitalize on someones holidays by ruining them or making them feel awful. If there is no room available at my price point around the area, the customer is going to stay at a more expensive room than mine and me going out of pocket on that.