randmeerkat

> But why single out Russia and North Korea for exemption?

They’re not, they’ve been sanctioned to such an extent that tariffs would be meaningless…

> Semiconductor fabs are actually decently large (>20k employee) cities.

Ok… Then build more pylons…

> Breaking the system does not make anything work better except human suffering.

Maybe ask yourself why human suffering was so great that people voted to break the system..? Big tech should have paid more respect for things like housing.

> Hence he didn't put tariffs on Russia.

He’s maintaining crippling sanctions on Russia…

> The Deck is so transformative that if Microsoft were serious about XBOX at all, the next XBOX would be a handheld.

Or they’d realize that the Deck is successful because it’s open and bring Steam to the Xbox.

> It's sad to think that the computing devices our newer generations are growing up with are trying their best to shoot down this exact use case; making the device do things no one made it do before.

Buy a Steam Deck.

> What mechanism is capable of driving such a societal paradigm shift?

I don’t know, if we had experienced it, we wouldn’t be in this conundrum…

> In fact, I think the current LLM rampage of sorts acted as a flood to fill the drought of incremental innovation that would have otherwise occurred.

We’ve been running on the remnants of research from the 50s - 70s for awhile now. Businesses have slow rolled the tech as long as they could, but the truth is, we’re at the end of the research that’s been accomplished. Given that and the exodus of researchers to go do things like optimize ads, I think the tech landscape will be fairly flat for the foreseeable future. Humans sailed for thousands of years before the steamship was realized. Our level of advancement over the past 100 years has been impressive, and there’s a lot we can do with it, if we don’t wipe ourselves out, but I expect this to be humanity’s current limit for the foreseeable future. I believe the next big breakthrough that is needed to realize a technical breakthrough is a societal one. We need to value education, research, and stop fighting with one another over every single thing that exists. Whatever form of society that looks like, will be when humanity finally breaks free of its limits.

> Their robber baron behavior reveals their true values and the reality of capitalism.

This is rather reductionist… By your same logic I could say that Stalin and Mao revealed the true values and reality of communism.

Let’s not elaborate on it further though and just leave this as a simple argument. Free market capitalism has led us to the most prosperous, peaceful, and advanced society humanity has ever ventured to create. Communism threatened that prosperity and peace with atrocities on a scale that exists beyond human comprehension. Capitalism, even with all of its faults, is the obvious choice.

> Why? What is the goal of a scraper, and how does disabling the source of the data benefit them?

The next scraper doesn’t get the data. People don’t realize we’re not compute limited for ai, we’re data limited. What we’re watching is the “data war”.

> Usually access and funds is _harder_ to find than alpha. So what’s more important is finding alpha (or whatever metric you are benchmarking against) that you can operationalize even if it’s worse on a risk adjusted basis than some other trade you can’t do.

Precisely, it’s about playing the hand that you have. My curiosity is why VCs are so indiscriminate with their funding. That said, if I had access to billions in capital to invest, maybe my perspective would be different.

> Especially as corporate sees devs like they see salesmen…

You’re onto something here. People perceive the world through the lens of their education and environment. Sales, legal, finance, are all easy constructs for a business leader to view the rest of the world through. The secret of the game isn’t to have the best tech or to code the most, it’s to “outsell” your competing business unit.

> You could know precisely what to invest in but not have access to the funds or deal flow and not be successful.

Thank you.

> I'm not sure if you are taking into account that VCs are remunerated largely on the amount of money they invest rather than the results?

Sure, but is it really worth just spraying a firehose of money across a variety of entities without trying to investigate them at all? It just seems that they could still realize outsize returns and save hundreds of millions as well…

> Now is the time to look at Open Home Foundation and their Voice Assistant device which does Speech Processing offline.. Donate! Buy their stuff!

What about just not using voice assistants period? Do we really need third party cameras and microphones in every part of our homes?

> Growth. Exit. IPO. Those are the 3 words they want to hear.

IPOs aren’t happening in this market… Are IPOs still the only thing investors are looking for?

> Although I hear VCs are working on an algorithm where they burn money directly and the smoke patterns represent the solution to the multiplication. That might keep the margins high.

This has been bothering me for some time now. It’s rather obvious to me, as an engineer, which startups are well positioned and which aren’t… Do VCs really have no standard for due diligence, do they really just not care, or is there something else at play that I’m missing…?

> Thank you so much for the kind words. There isn't a lot of that going around on today's internet with its ephemeral interactions, dopamine-driven engagement, and deep polarization. I too often allow this disposition to infect my own arguments and occasionally lean too heavily into emotion.

You’re welcome, I too find my disposition infected from time to time.

> VC firms are certainly thinking this over. Google, Apple, and the rest put a ceiling over what portcos can ultimately grow up into, and they can even force M&A when in a different world that would be a subpar outcome. These firms and mid-cap tech companies can be a powerful voice to help shape regulation.

I’m skeptical that this will happen in an environment of deregulation. However, it is possible that we’ll see change on a longer timeline.

> Google, as a sum of its parts, is frankly undervalued. They aren't properly monetizing all of their properties.

I couldn’t agree more. Every time I see Google kill a product line, it bothers me that it wasn’t spun off into its own company.

> Freeing the markets up again will make everyone collectively so much more innovative and profitable.

I’m not sure if I subscribe to the belief that markets were ever free. I do agree that we should do as much as we can to open them up though.

> I hope we see change soon.

Indeed, I simply hope we can see a return to reasoned discourse.

Thank you again echelon. May the winds ever be to your back, the sun to your face, and free markets on your horizon.

Over the years, I come across thought provoking comments from time to time on this platform. I usually take a moment to ponder what I just read. Then I ask myself who wrote this..? Then return to look at the username. More than once I find the name echelon. Echelon, you have a great mind and do a lot to further the HN commentary. Thank you.

> Ideally it's the responsibility of management, starting at the top, to think critically about what kind of software most benefits the company and reward those that do it. Unfortunately, it's much harder to sell "amazing documentation and test coverage" to a CEO than "Gen AI wrapper that doesn't really do much", so here we are.

What do you think these technical ladder climbers become..? Technical leadership. The truth is, there’s no one technical in big tech leadership. They pay lip service to “tech” to keep up appearances and to satisfy the pleebs that work under them. The only things leadership cares about is the stock price and profitability, literally nothing else matters. If anything the tech itself is a nuisance that pulls their attention from where they’d rather have it, which is anywhere else.

> he's not, just another delusional venture capitalist that hasn't bothered to look up the counter arguments to his point of view, done by mathematicians

Don’t hate on it, just spin up some startup with “ai” and LLM hype. Juice that lemon.

> It's the same and worse over there, the drama just isn't public.

At least you’re getting paid. What’s the point of spending one’s free time arguing with strangers on the internet over some code that will be refactored anyway ten years from now..? Life is short, have fun, enjoy it. If you’re spending time or money on something that sucks, walk away.

> Turns out FOSS devs are humas just like everybody else and suffer from the same flaws.

It is rather anticlimactic. I had always imagined FOSS to be this free exchange of ideas, thoughtful consideration, and intentional action. Seeing what it has become though… Maybe closed source is better.

> Someone can post a tortured looking piece of awk code here and people applaud.

A tortured piece of awk code is like a beautiful rose, sharp, but wax poetic. Perl is like a corpse flower.

People still use Perl?

> This seems like a pretty bold and employee-friendly move. Google recently merged two large divisions, so there's going to be some redundancy. Most companies would resolve this with a layoff, but it sounds like they're trying a buyout at the request of their employees.

Or they’re afraid the union at Google will gain more traction. The employees should unionize now before the layoffs happen.

> You can connect an iPhone to a USB-C monitor and a bluetooth keyboard already. It just kind of sucks.

Because Apple refuses to allow it to be a computer. They don’t want the iPhone consuming their MacBook sales. If Apple really cared about the environment, they’d replace the iPad mini, the iPhone, and the MacBook Air with a foldable, dockable iPhone that gave access to the underlying system just like a laptop.

I gave up on the game when the person next to me exploded into confetti… Is it really too much to ask for an Unreal Tournament reboot?

> It started in 2010. How much longer should we wait for your prediction to come true?

Google has already actively started soliciting outside investors to spin off Google Fiber. Don't hold your breath. Nothing escapes the Google Graveyard, its gravitational mass is simply too large.

"GFiber has already hired an investment bank to start the process of selling equity in the company, according to a source close to Alphabet's efforts. The future goal is for GFiber to be independent from Alphabet, the source said on condition of anonymity."

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/alphabet-is-s...

It’s Google, it’ll be shut down a week after the fiber goes live.