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All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

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Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#111

Post by greymeister »

jumpman500 wrote: post #77
ekianjo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is we have billionaires at all. This line of thinking always makes me laugh. You don't complain when a doctors makes money by serving hundreds of patients every month right? Then, when someone builds a product/service that is used by hundreds of millions, or billions of people, the natural conclusion is that they will become millionaires and billionaires. It's very natural, and very logical. > we are talking abo…

> It's very natural, and very logical. Being natural and logical doesn't make it moral or ethical. I think you're only kidding yourself if you believe that people deserve that much money and power. > How about folks who centralize powers like politicians in high level functions, who have not even been elected but appointed? How do you feel about that? They also can have massive influence on the world's affairs, even…

I guess they should feel lucky you don't get to decide how much money they are allowed to have.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#112

Post by chimeracoder »

derefr wrote: post #72
andr3w321 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Investor accreditation makes sense (for now.)" No it doesn't. It's pure nanny statism. The government has no business telling people what they can and can't invest in or spend their money on. Yes startups are risky. So are lots of things. Why should the wealthy have no restrictions on them, but the poor do? This is literally "class warfare".

The government isn't telling people what they can invest in; it's telling companies whether they can take people's money. It's not illegal to hand money to a private company (you will not be charged with a crime); it's illegal to, as the company, accept that money. Private companies are a very specific kind of company—they're supposed to be a temporary condition, a way for companies to not have to go through the effo…

> It's not illegal to hand money to a private company (you will not be charged with a crime); it's illegal to, as the company, accept that money

IANAL, but I'm fairly certain it's actually the solicitation part that's illegal. In theory, the company could accept it without an issue if they could prove that they didn't solicit at any point. In practice, there's no way to do that reliably, though.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#113

Post by chimeracoder »

Sevii wrote: post #100
derefr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investor accreditation makes sense (for now.) Giving poor people free access to untested-investment-vehicle-X is basically the same as giving them over-the-counter access to scheduled drugs. Mistakes will be made, and the people making them—lacking resources as they do—won't be able to recover from them. Right now, we're spending a lot of money trying to figure out how to get people out of these ruts. (Free housing s…

Poor people are allowed to legally gamble away their money in situations where its 100% known that they will lose it all.

> Poor people are allowed to legally gamble away their money in situations where its 100% known that they will lose it all.

Gambling is viewed as entertainment, both by the government and the people participating in it.

As entertaining as startup life can be, there's a very big difference between a risky investment and gambling for entertainment value.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#114

Post by foxylad »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #106
zanny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its so much a shame that Linus isn't a billionaire than it is we have billionaires at all. There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth. There is being rewarded for hard work / skill / innovation and there is exploiting people to become rich, and the line between those is very hard to distinguish when talking about individuals making more than…

> There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth First: yes, there are ethical reasons to accumulate so many resources : because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve. Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who belie…

> yes, there are ethical reasons to accumulate so many resources: because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve.

Allowing people to become billionaires is a hideously inefficient way to solve hard problems. Most billionaires hoard their wealth, or spend it on the hard problem of ostentatious display of wealth. Billionaires who solve hard problems: Bill Gates and Elon Musk. The rest of that wealth goes on things like solid gold soap dishes for superyachts - my neighbour worked at a shipyard, and a customer had them rip out merely gold-plated soap dishes in all the showers.

If even a fraction of that money funded university research departments, say, we'd get far more problems solved.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#115

Post by sliverstorm »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #106
zanny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its so much a shame that Linus isn't a billionaire than it is we have billionaires at all. There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth. There is being rewarded for hard work / skill / innovation and there is exploiting people to become rich, and the line between those is very hard to distinguish when talking about individuals making more than…

> There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth First: yes, there are ethical reasons to accumulate so many resources : because some problems are incredibly hard to solve and need a lot of resources to even start to solve. Second, it is not on the people who have earned something to prove why they should be "permitted" to keep it; it's on the people who belie…

I think people are still coming to grips with the incredible scalability of software. You might hate a business tycoon, but somebody worked their ass off to build that business. But today, you write a nifty little game about a bird worth a few nickles or something, and thanks to stupid-scalar you're an overnight billionaire. People don't know how to feel about that. I don't know how to feel about that.

The closest analogue from before would have been inventing something clever, making a proof of concept, filing a patent, and chaching you never have to work again and have your own Senator. And of course that never happened.

Linus obviously puts in a hell of a lot more work than that, but the simplified version is a thought experiment.

Anyway, nobody begrudges someone who had a good idea and did the world good, having it made and living a good life. But I think there's two elements that turn things sour- one is the influence of money in politics, and the other is as you mentioned that some people have nothing. If nobody was starving and we got money out of politics, it would be easier to applaud overnight billionaires with no reservations.

As for the "Hard Problems", it's businesses or government that tend to tackle those. The billionaire investor-philanthropist funding a derring-do venture out of his own pockets ala Musk is not the norm.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#116

Post by greymeister »

yequalsx wrote: post #87
ekianjo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is we have billionaires at all. This line of thinking always makes me laugh. You don't complain when a doctors makes money by serving hundreds of patients every month right? Then, when someone builds a product/service that is used by hundreds of millions, or billions of people, the natural conclusion is that they will become millionaires and billionaires. It's very natural, and very logical. > we are talking abo…

Would you be OK if one person controlled 99% of the world's wealth? If so then what percent of the world's wealth concentrated in one person would make you uncomfortable? Why this percentage and not a lower one? As it stands now there is a huge disparity in the distribution of wealth. Shouldn't there be a cap on how much one person can have and floor on how little a person can have? I think so. My wife is a doctor in…

So let's accept as a hypothetical we do cap wealth. We all get to vote how much people are allowed to have. Yay. The people who have more have to do what exactly?

They have to leave the country with the fear of extradition at some point? They have to give away their excess, but who gets/takes the money? They go to jail? Who enforces/regulates that people are only earning/saving what they are allowed?

It's sounds virtuous to say "Things would be better with less wealth inequality" and I agree that it would be a better situation, but any means to actually move towards that situation gets ugly fast.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#117

Post by foxylad »

sien wrote: post #53
zanny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think its so much a shame that Linus isn't a billionaire than it is we have billionaires at all. There is limited rational or ethical reason for one human being to accumulate so much centralized wealth. There is being rewarded for hard work / skill / innovation and there is exploiting people to become rich, and the line between those is very hard to distinguish when talking about individuals making more than…

The problem is that the realistic alternative is that there is effectively even more centralized wealth, or wealth control with governments. It would be neat if money was spread even more evenly. But the costs of the intervention to try and wangle it would probably outweigh the benefits. That isn't to say that taxes shouldn't be higher or benefits higher. But even Sweden and France have billionaires. They just have t…

> It would be neat if money was spread even more evenly.

Change "neat" to "critical", and I'll agree with you.

My gut feel is that the US is close to another revolution. All those less-educated white males with several automatic rifles each are not going to like it when they find out their beloved Donald (oh look, another billionaire solving hard problems!) makes their lot worse instead of better.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#118

Post by godelski »

dingo_bat wrote: post #98
godelski wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a shame that Linus is not a billionaire I mean $150m is a LOT of money. $10m/yr is a lot too. Just to put that into perspective, you could put that in a very safe ETF and make over $1m/yr. You could easily make $10m/yr just off interest. That's A LOT of money. And a lot of people would be perfectly content with that, let alone know what to do with it. I mean if you can rent the entire country of Lichtenstein f…

Your whole comment is insightful and makes sense, but what about the last sentence? It is an unrelated statement tacked on without any support or connection to the rest of the paragraph.

The parent comment was implying that Linus SHOULD be a billionaire because he was so successful. I'm saying that measuring success with net worth is not a good metric. How are we defining success? I think it is a pretty personal thing. Success is really a question of "did you meet your goals?" and "how far did you exceed them?" or "how close did you get?" Money can help you meet a lot of goals, but I don't see how it determines success.

We can even refine more. What is success to you? Total wealth? Leaving an impact on the world? Finding yourself? Being happy? Money definitely helps with all of these, but when you have the income we're talking about, how does it help you then? There are diminishing returns. The only version of success it substantially helps you with is if you measure success by wealth. And most people don't actually internalize that definition. So I personally do not feel like you can say Bezos is more successful than Gates. Or that Putin is more successful than either of them. Is Linus less any successful? You can't judge that without knowing what their goals are/were.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#119

Post by dgut »

lucozade wrote: post #54
dgut wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely believe ICOs are the future of funding. We are at a premature stage, but as the ecosystem matures we'll see a lot of great things come out of it unless the SEC and whatnot decide to nuke it. For instance, until now ICOs have been able to raise money without a prototype in hand, this I believe will change.

That’s an interesting position. What you’re effectively saying is, if you’re stupid enough to invest in a scam then you should be allowed to. The establishment shouldn’t put barriers in your way if you want to give your money to a hoax. There’s something to be said for that. If you’re not capable of managing your own money then maybe the con artist will do better? Personally, I’d prefer to give to a charity with a de…

That's some of the most short-sighted comment I've read on HN. As somebody else here points out, there are a ton of unhealthy activities (I can think of a thousand) that are not only legal but well advertised. In fact, the current US president owns one of those great places where people can flush their money down the toilet.

You are fundamentally saying all ICOs are a scam, otherwise your comment doesn't make much sense. Because that's false but it's true there are a number of scam ICOs, it's also true we can lower that number. If you read my comment, you probably noticed the part about the need for the ecosystem to mature also.

Re: All 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux

#120

Post by foxylad »

greymeister wrote: post #116
yequalsx wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be OK if one person controlled 99% of the world's wealth? If so then what percent of the world's wealth concentrated in one person would make you uncomfortable? Why this percentage and not a lower one? As it stands now there is a huge disparity in the distribution of wealth. Shouldn't there be a cap on how much one person can have and floor on how little a person can have? I think so. My wife is a doctor in…

So let's accept as a hypothetical we do cap wealth. We all get to vote how much people are allowed to have. Yay. The people who have more have to do what exactly? They have to leave the country with the fear of extradition at some point? They have to give away their excess, but who gets/takes the money? They go to jail? Who enforces/regulates that people are only earning/saving what they are allowed? It's sounds virt…

You're right, it's just too hard. We'll leave it to the billionaires to solve - I know one who says he's the only one who can fix it.

Sorry, my cynicism is showing. But we already have the organisation (IRS) in place to regulate people's income, and they already do exactly this job. Yes, we do need to find an impartial way to redistribute the wealth, but we have working models of an array of options around the world. With functioning government, this is really not that difficult.

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