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Thoughts about Twitter

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Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#101

Post by tptacek »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #82
theCrowing wrote: post #8

I believe Elon will learn the hard way that yes you can solve tech problems by throwing humans at them but you can't solve human problems by throwing tech at them.

Creating the giga factories and making space x a success were as much a technical success as a human success. At this scale in the game, everything is. We can be critical of his actions, but at this point, assuming incompetence is foolish.

No, it's not. Essentializing incompetence, implying that he's incompetent at everything, that's foolish. But the supposition that he's incapable of being incompetent at Twitter because of his successes elsewhere has already been disproven.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#102

Post by BryantD »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #64

The claims in this article assume a lot. To pick just one, regarding stability/uptime: without knowing the distribution of layoffs by department, this may not just be incorrect, but the opposite might be true: if most SREs were retained, and engineers who know the systems well are still around, stability will likely improve as there will be fewer changes to the systems (usually the number one source of outages). If P…

True, but given that he's looking for $3 million a day in savings from servers and cloud services[1], I'm not wildly optimistic about how busy the remaining SREs are going to be. No matter how many of them there are.

There's always money in the AWS bill but that's a lot of money to expect to be able to find. And, um, this kind of thinking is one of the things Mudge was talking about.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-orders-twitter-cut-i...

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#103

Post by WorldMaker »

arein3 wrote: post #57
vineyardmike wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s too early to claim it’s dead but he’s right that it’s a coin toss to see if the service can stay running (without downtime). With 50% layoffs (and the rumors of how lax their security was) it’s only a matter of time before the on-call needed to save some issue won’t exist. A breach or bug or something is inevitable. Remember when meta -a far bigger and richer company- messed up basic networking and took the comp…

You need a few people to maintain the servers, not a few thousand people.

Even if you don't think you need that much operations labor at scale (and I'm assuming you are drastically under-estimating Twitter's current scale), when you do a 50% layoff before you even know your exact bus factor and are assuming a 100x/1000x redundancy (somehow), what are the odds you lay off one of those "few" people that are critical to operations? How do you know you haven't thrown out the needles in that big of a haystack?

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#104

Post by pb7 »

wnevets wrote: post #70
throwaway82388 wrote: post #37

As a relatively disinterested observer (don’t tweet, don’t own a Tesla, don’t feel particularly strongly about Mr Musk), I’ve found the media/commentariat reversals of position on this funny. Musk’s initial Twitter takeover talk was met with general opprobrium, to put it mildly. I must have read more than one take that it was a threat to democracy itself. Then, after a stock market downturn, and when the Twitter acqu…

That is because most Twitter users knew Musk would ruin what made Twitter Twitter. Twitter users just assumed the process of "muskifying" Twitter would be subtle and over the course of years. Watching him speed run the destruction of a $44 Billion company in a matter weeks has been absolutely shocking.

Twitter is a cesspool so ruining what it is is a positive thing. It cannot get worse from here. At worst, it dies; at best, it returns to its former glory circa 2012. Both sound like wins to me.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#105

Post by [deleted] »

fooey wrote: post #51
mjr00 wrote: post #20

> But, what is gone? Twitter was a unique spot where journalists, celebrities, titans of industries, your family, friends and co-workers, would join a daily mosh pit filled with a mix of truly important cultural moments and the most inane things you’ve ever seen. [...] Twitter will likely go from Elon’s new toy that is too difficult for him to play with, to being passed on to his legal and finance advisers to sort ou…

The NAACP is officially calling for an advertiser boycott of Twitter > It is immoral, dangerous, and highly destructive to our democracy for any advertiser to fund a platform that fuels hate speech, election denialism and conspiracy theories. Until actions are taken to make this a safe space, we call on companies to pause all advertising on Twitter. https://twitter.com/DerrickNAACP/status/1588600470259789824

[deleted]

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#106

Post by yonaguska »

saryant wrote: post #67
RobertRoberts wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanting peace is now a bad thing? Does it matter that his method wasn't ideal, at least he wasn't pushing for nuclear war like many politicians.

Wanting peace is a good thing. Wanted Ukraine to capitulate to genocide is not.

ISIS went on a genocidal rampage, and they were clear about this. Western forces supported their expansion.

The American invasion of Iraq, that was kicked off with a night of bombing destroying nearly everything, that was much more than anything Putin opened with I don't agree at all with Putin's actions, but could you please explain how they are genocidal?

The Ukrainian treatment of ethnic Russians, the incessant shelling of civilians in the separatist regions, the widespread embrace of actually Nazi ideology, and the cutting off of freshwater supply to those areas seems a bit closer to genocidal to me. Just a bit.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#107

Post by wnevets »

pb7 wrote: post #104
wnevets wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because most Twitter users knew Musk would ruin what made Twitter Twitter. Twitter users just assumed the process of "muskifying" Twitter would be subtle and over the course of years. Watching him speed run the destruction of a $44 Billion company in a matter weeks has been absolutely shocking.

Twitter is a cesspool so ruining what it is is a positive thing. It cannot get worse from here. At worst, it dies; at best, it returns to its former glory circa 2012. Both sound like wins to me.

If what you say is true then paying $44 Billion sounds like a huge mistake.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#108

Post by jeffbee »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #82
theCrowing wrote: post #8

I believe Elon will learn the hard way that yes you can solve tech problems by throwing humans at them but you can't solve human problems by throwing tech at them.

Creating the giga factories and making space x a success were as much a technical success as a human success. At this scale in the game, everything is. We can be critical of his actions, but at this point, assuming incompetence is foolish.

The "gigafactory" in Nevada—built, owned, and operated by Panasonic—is similar in size to other Panasonic battery factories in Japan and around the world.

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#109

Post by sillysaurusx »

WorldMaker wrote: post #103
arein3 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a few people to maintain the servers, not a few thousand people.

Even if you don't think you need that much operations labor at scale (and I'm assuming you are drastically under-estimating Twitter's current scale), when you do a 50% layoff before you even know your exact bus factor and are assuming a 100x/1000x redundancy (somehow), what are the odds you lay off one of those "few" people that are critical to operations? How do you know you haven't thrown out the needles in that bi…

Software engineers: we’re engineers

Also software engineers: be sure not to fire Ned or else the whole bridge might collapse

Re: Thoughts about Twitter

#110

Post by Invictus0 »

ricardo81 wrote: post #94

What I get from this whole experience is big tech employees, likely on a wage x^2 their national average, are able to communicate more widely to the world about their disenfranchisement about being unemployed than others made unemployed who are not. Slightly ironic that they're employed by social networks. Said tongue in cheek because these are people with livelihoods and looking after families. There are others that…

Are you aware of how exponents work?
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