throwaway7281

The most strong signal I get is that substack is putting in a lot of money seemingly to bootstrap content.

Naive question: I package small and midsize Go projects as deb packages all the time and find it relatively easy. All you need is the binaries and some config. Cross-compilation is easy with Go, so what exactly is a problem with k8s? Isn't it just a bunch of executables for kubectl, kubelet and api-server?

That's the money line. Easy to understand, if you understand it.

My grandma went to university lectures until she approached the age of 90, and the only thing holding her back now is her bad ear and bad leg. The mind is a wonderful organ.

Yes, imagine SAP and Telekom would have said: see, we are so profitable and rich beyond our means by extracting value from our economy each and every day, we want to give something back and build this app for free. What kind of ad this would have been.

So they just come across as greedy, corrupt bastard - which probably has the positive side of being very much closer to the truth.

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app.

In Italy a startup took over the job for 1/50 of the price and with at least as good or better job.

Is the above play a problem for Germany? No. Do you they even understand an problem? I don't think so.

If I would have went deep on a weekend hack I did once, I would probably looking at $25K MRR or something like that.

But article is good, nonetheless, everything needs a balance.

Microsoft is just another company trying to make money anyway it can. Linux as a project would probably even exist, if nobody would pay for it - just because people can imagine another world, where not everything is about money.

The difference in attitude is staggering and will not go away.

I was once in the position to test 3M possible inputs - that took only a few minutes. It's a good strategy to keep in mind.

Can someone enlighten me on the psychological wiring of people like these? Do you even think a moment about anything else than you very own well-being, no matter the (societal) costs? Is your relation to the world a purely instrumental one? Where does this destructive energy comes from?

EAV [...] my thoughts exactly. My last encounter with EAV was briefly said disastrous.

On the other hand, HW gets better and better, and if you are able to do on the fly, what used to be a "cached" entity, then there you go.

Except text-only forums like HN I do not frequent any social media. I get very specific information out, if I want it but that's it. It amuses and scares me that literally billions of people spend hours every day with nothing but scrolling.

Even worse, so many high-end jobs today only exist, because the data of the people needs to be processed.

If anyone has a good idea, how to stay out of that business and still prosper, please let me know.

I took over half a year off of work, but I did smaller jobs in that time, while my partner was taking off and getting money from state.

Less javascript?

The tools you use will shape the things you build. That's why I use vim because I long for simplicity, clarity, reduction.

The amount of javascript used for the simplest of websites is getting out of hand. In 2025 we'll be back at "server-side rendering", aka mostly static sites, I promise.

My impression too. I earn my money turning your mess into a data "landscape" - I saw people wanting to jump on the ML wagon, who did not even heard of version control for code before. Not a winter, no, but a long bumpy road ahead.

That's not how the game is played. If you cannot the release the code because the code is too ugly or untested or has bugs, how do you expect anyone with the right expertise to assess your findings?

It reminds me of Kerckhoffs's principle in cryptography, which states: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge.

Nice to see Linux in automotive. Recently, Daimler CEO mentioned that they understand now, that they need an operating system.

Guess what, he said: "think of Windows for cars"

That made me laugh hard. If they do what he says, it will be just another nail in the coffin of good ol' Daimler.

When Zuckerberg mentioned sometime last year, that he wants to make facebook better, and especially wants to make people happy [...] - just think about that. With kind of admits that it is facebook's mission to control your feelings - and no better feeling to convey this idea than happiness.

Which is what everybody wants, right? Large demand - big business.

Brilliant ruthlessness brought us one of the most destructive tools on earth, disguised as a site for peace, love, cat content and happiness. There were a million different ways to design a communications tool for people that would have respected its users. I hope we will leave this decade with a sad, distant memory of facebook and its outlets.

BTW: I am sure we will see the end of facebook (and it's subsidies) in this decade. The power concentration is just too insane. If it does not implode itself, then even a weak government like the US will take action.

The more corrupt your environment, the more corrupt you will want to be. From the outside, the US looks like a state, where big money is running the show, will benefit from every crisis, etc. What do you expect, when all the elite cares about is their turf?

I'm not advocating paternalism, but what you have in the US is capitalism without much "control" and does it lead to prosperity for all? Does not look like it.

It's not necessary, just as it is not necessary that a much more "individualistic" approach would lead to better country (take US as an example).

Oh my, more state money would mean probably a more equal society - more money for roads, schools, teachers, research labs, health care, infrastructure and much more.

All things by the way any entrepreneur is happy to "take" or accept as given.

Forgive me, but watching extremely privileged people's viewpoint, that they are so genius is so much missing the point (of luck, and of course a society that nourishes and carries these individuals).

I distinguish at least two kinds of work: one where you earn money because you have no other sources of income. And work that relates to whatever you are doing on you own behalf - which can be very productive as well.

The first kind of work is a productive factor, like capital or land. It's just the brains and hands of a piece of flesh that does what it is told. A worker is always subordinated to capital, you are working for the capital of others. You never get the full reward, whereas people you never met will earn a share of every piece of value you provide.

It's funny, almost every second product I buy these days comes from firms which went to one or even multiple private equity hands in the past two decades. It is one of the reasons why I reduce my consumption to a minimum.

Neoliberalism hates equality, it hates social progress and it has absolutely no idea of how to do something different that would benefit society at large. There is no society for capital, there is revenue, returns and all human activity you are observing is partially there, because there is someone who just wants their profit.

Poles are melting, climate changes, species die out, capitalism (as it is implemented; the theory is much more progressive) could not care less about killing its own foundations.

It reminds me of avant-garde capitalists operation like facebook. It could only start on an open web, and its endgame is own all you presence online. Walled gardens, armes guards, cash flow.

And that is not per se bad. What is bad is that there no safety net whatsoever and losing a job in the 21st century can feel a bit like having put out out in the desert in the neolithic.

Case in point: many European countries with safety nets are just not a cruel place to be at this time.

One good thing about this is: An actually free and open ecosystem will emerge - it will take time and countless people-hours but it will happen and it will prevail.

As soon as I learned that Sam Altman is involved, I could infer the direction. I cannot recall Sam being activist for anything open - but I do remember him as a the "head of the startup world", aka creating exclusive opportunities for venture capitalist by using and tearing bright eyed talent. I think he was pretty successful at the latter.

The sad thing is: OpenAI might be just the foreshadow of the power step function segment of the future, disenfranchising those who are on the wrong side of the API much more that we see today (e.g. somewhat limited to the gig economy).

Model compression is an active research field and will probably be quite lucrative, as you will literally able to save millions.

This reminds me of the Banko and Brill paper "Scaling to very very large corpora for natural language disambiguation" - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.3115/1073012.1073017.

It is exactly the point and it is something not a lot of researchers really grok. As a researcher you are so smart, why can't you discover whatever you are seeking? I think in this decade, we see a couple more scientific discoveries by brute force which will hopefully will make the scientific type a bit more humble an honest.