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I'd be mindful that having a NATO partner be able to spy is maybe better than having Huawei spy if you have to choose, but yes, I think it's a risk that EU countries should be aware of and probably are more aware of than with social networks.

No. Unlike a newspaper, they host videos and photos of a third of (?) the US population, have detailed reader data on who reads what when, who is friends with whom, location history, etc.

This data treasure trove may be stored in US, but it isn't protected from Chinese govt access. It is the same for data by American companies, which US Patriot act lets the US govt access.

Not necessarily. China pursues many objectives when it comes to its national security, such as intimidation and coercion of dissidents or opponents of its regime living abroad. Assuming China's equivalent of the Patriot act lets it treat TikTok user data as an open book, there is a lot for them to learn from it.

EU countries are asleep at the wheel on matters of national security and sovereignty. Spotify is not a matter of national security. TikTok, and social networking in general, has been one for some time now. Misinformation, conspiracy theories, actual conspiracies to overthrow govt, etc have all found renewed vigor thanks to social networks.

US on the other hand now has its social media controlled by oligarchs, not much better maybe.

Parent talks about Meta, you mention Microsoft. They are not in the same business. Meta is in the social networking domain, which the communist party in China has treated for years as a matter of national security. The "color revolutions" and the "Arab Spring" gave them good reason to believe that online social networks were a driver of societal change too powerful not to control. And they control it very very tightly.

As an EU resident your govt likely exerts far more control over media (both domestic and foreign owned) than the US

TikTok's problem isn't with what they say openly, it's with the amount of invisible control exerted by a foreign government.

Compare with China though. There is absolutely no way that a company like Bytedance would be allowed to operate inside China while under American control.

The fact that this emerged instead of IPv6 is a true testament to the power of "good enough hackery"

I feel that the future for Python people who want type safety will eventually be TypeScript on nodejs. Go was intended as an alternative to C++. It seems that in reaction to the ungodly complexity of C++, the creators wanted to avoid adding language features as hard as possible. If the user could work around it with a little extra verbosity, it'd be ok. I feel they removed too much and maybe not the right things.

Couldn't it just be algorithmic? Go uphill in the summer, then downhill until you hit water, you'll probably end in the same pond?

Musk in 2022: "Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic"

In 2024:

If the continental US can do it (and it looks like it might soon, with California voting for it) I'm not sure I buy that argument. Heck if China can survive on one timezone...

Reminds me of "how did this ever work in the first place" bugs. Something that used to work stops working, you look into it, and it seems that the thing looked broken to begin with, but by some lucky miracle something was making it work.

Boggles my mind that after more than 60 years of computer science, we still design tools (programming languages) where the simplest tasks are full of gotchas and footguns. This is a great example.

What if having the resources to develop hardware are not the point? This is a physical business, and supply chain is the bottleneck at some point. Right now it seems that all the money in the world can't build fabs fast enough to manufacture alternatives to Nvidia's chips. As long as they maintain dominance over the supply chain, having developed equivalent technology might not matter. Someone correct me if this is wrong, I'm mostly speculating.

Let me put it this way. I don't think you and I are fundamentally disagreeing: money matters, to the extent that it allows to buy statistically better health outcomes and quality time with family. I don't personally think it matters more than that.

Also for background playback on mobile

It's not about them opposing each other, it's about priorities.

I'm pretty sure it would've stayed a defcon thing

Streisand effect strikes again

Option A: let the dude have his talk. Nobody hears about it beyond the walls of defcon. Move along.

Option B: uninvite and call security. Guy becomes instant personality on reddit and hn. I didn't know that defcon had become a shitty, small minded operation that abuses volunteer time and can't take an Easter egg, well now I do!

Well played...

Two things can be true.

Money does buy comfort and care. Also, it does not make one immortal.

We can choose what we take away from events. I could choose to feel unlucky that I haven't made as much money as someone else, and I would be justified in it, because being rich absolutely makes a difference. I just choose to feel lucky to be alive instead, and I'm just as justified. You are free to choose your own perspective.

Feeling cool for not going to burning man before it was the trend

Next time you're thinking "I wish I was the one who had made a billion dollars with my startup idea", remember that only health and family matter, and to have fun while you're alive. RIP.

Edit: some people misinterpreted my comment. I'm just one anonymous voice on the Internet, but am deeply saddened by the passing of Susan Wojcicki, who meant a lot to me as one of the many people who crossed paths with her professionally. I wish her family strength in a very trying moment. She did not deserve this. I've not met another business leader demonstrate everyday kindness to the degree that she did.

Her untimely passing is also a reminder to those of us who sometimes look up to such successful businesspeople that we should all appreciate our luck to be alive and enjoy it to the fullest, as I hope that she did as well, and as I'm sure that she'd prefer we did. RIP

It's fine to convey the importance of these things. It's another thing to do it with an implied assumption that OP doesn't know better themselves, which context doesn't really give a lot of clues about. Obviously in the end it's a personal thing anyways.

Maybe chatgpt can assess!

> Apologies if it came off as arrogance, that was not what I was going for.

No need to apologize, just wanted to make you aware of how it came off to me.

> my point was not necessarily “I know better”, but that it is incredibly difficult to get a broad view of the market from a single perspective. This market is by definition a chain of steps with parties that may be antagonistic. It is atypical in that way

Maybe? That description sounds like it could probably be applied to any highly fragmented vertical though...

> imo the business is intrinsically relatively ill suited for in-house dev considering the high degree of collab with other parties.

I think this hits a reasonable point — if most of the development is related to internal operations, it could be a different calculus than if it is mostly related to interchange with other parties, which implies knowing enough about their business to make sense to them.

Then again, if all you have to interchange with other parties is a choice of third-rate bottom-of-the-barrel software providers anyways, I think it can still be reasonable to switch to in-house dev.

> The developers might be great, you might find you need to get rid of management dead wood.

In my experience great developers do not stick with mediocre managers, because they quickly find better options. My experience with poor managers is that they are only able to retain middling engineers.

> Or it might be that you get a very nimble team who in all likelihood have been itching to fix bugs for years and yet who haven't been able to due to competing interests in the business.

That would be closer to a win scenario, but I think OP would have had a strong feel about it - from the way they describe there interactions, it doesn't seem to be the case?

What's the use of buying a team that doesn't do management right? The only possible reason for wanting to buy a software provider and turn them into an in-house team would be if they were a stellar team, with stellar management.

I think there's a big risk there of hiring a "CTO" who hasn't coded in 10 years and it's just a paper pusher. Ask to see the GitHub.