Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

derwiki.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 216 posts

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#181

Post by baq »

mikewarot wrote: post #163
uludag wrote: post #161

I 100% agree with everything in this article, though I'm confused what AI has to do with any of this. People have been doing this sort of thing long before LLMs arrived. Weekend projects doing cool things where definitely a thing long before LLMs. I'd say that cloud services (e.g. Twilio) were the real enablers to these sorts of projects so it seems wrong to be crediting LLMs with this type of work. Cloud services ge…

The LLMs come in as an enabler to get over "white page" paralysis, and/or overwhelming amounts of libraries to learn to use. Earlier today, I was chatting with the folks in my computer club, discussing how I wrote a little program just to explore the nature of small neural networks. Then I decided to show them how I use Visual Studio Code with ChatGPT5 (from my GitHub subscription) The next thing you know, I had a ba…

> Sure, it's effectively instant legacy code

I call this ‘mass produced software’. I walk into a software shop, ask for software and get more or less what I need at barely acceptable quality just like at Walmart.

Vibe coding? Perhaps it’s just shopping.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#182

Post by coldtea »

RangerScience wrote: post #146
coldtea wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes both ways (old to young and reverse), but family goes before politics. You don't cut out, or disown, or stop visiting, or badmouth family because you disagree with their politics... If you do so, you were a shitty relative to begin with.

AFAIK, you cut off shitty relatives… …and you usually find out they’re shitty because of how they handle (or don’t) “political” conversations. Pro tip: You don’t get to decide for someone else what’s “just” politics. If someone else says it’s important, while you’re interacting with them, it’s important.

>Pro tip: You don’t get to decide for someone else what’s “just” politics. If someone else says it’s important, while you’re interacting with them, it’s important.

It's rarely, if ever, important to any concerned party's day to day life. It's bullshit partisanship instilled into idiotic brains by the media and social media.

Just because they say it's important, doesn't make it so.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#183

Post by coldtea »

stouset wrote: post #145
coldtea wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes both ways (old to young and reverse), but family goes before politics. You don't cut out, or disown, or stop visiting, or badmouth family because you disagree with their politics... If you do so, you were a shitty relative to begin with.

No, sorry. Nazi family members come last. Family members with no respect for the rights and freedoms of others and who encourage and support inhumane treatment of others don’t get a free pass.

Unless your family members are card carrying members of the Nazi party, "Nazi" is just a codeword for "disagree with them" just as "no respect for the rights and freedoms of others" is the same.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#184

Post by coldtea »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #142
coldtea wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This goes both ways (old to young and reverse), but family goes before politics. You don't cut out, or disown, or stop visiting, or badmouth family because you disagree with their politics... If you do so, you were a shitty relative to begin with.

Where does it stop? What if your relatives support, eg, racist policies? What if they support genocide? How personal does it have to be? What if you’re dating a person of another race, and your relatives support keeps making racist comments to you, even after you try to explain why that’s not okay?

>Where does it stop? What if your relatives support, eg, racist policies? What if they support genocide? How personal does it have to be?

Unless they act on them, they can support anything they like, it means less than them supporting some team or MCU fandom

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#185

Post by hdgvhicv »

visarga wrote: post #165
mikewarot wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The LLMs come in as an enabler to get over "white page" paralysis, and/or overwhelming amounts of libraries to learn to use. Earlier today, I was chatting with the folks in my computer club, discussing how I wrote a little program just to explore the nature of small neural networks. Then I decided to show them how I use Visual Studio Code with ChatGPT5 (from my GitHub subscription) The next thing you know, I had a ba…

> Things that were previously overwhelming are now almost trivial. Not if you have to stake your career on them. AI takes no liability, it is all yours

There’s no accountability in software, and in the tech industry people move jobs so fast they can simply blame the previous person and say they need to refactor the code to remove tech debt for a few years. Basically the three envelope situation.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#186

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

mkoubaa wrote: post #144
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a relative threaten his daughter, because her daughter-in-law posted some political stuff he disagreed with. Basically, he had been helping her out financially, and pulled it, because she refused to sanction her daughter-in-law on his behalf.

What a stupid reason to cut off your child - so late in life too.

That’s how bad things have gotten, and a lot of it is because it’s profitable to fan the flames of rancor.

I don’t see it improving. I think there was a post, a couple of days ago, where some folks concluded that social media is unfixable.

“Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

https://youtu.be/aCbfMkh940Q

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#187

Post by Ekaros »

timr wrote: post #150
dghlsakjg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the vet clinic thing a lasting phenomenon? Are independent vet clinics not economically viable or is there just a VC/PE market imbalance where capital is overbidding for a business that doesn't really have a great moat. I would be perfectly willing to believe that if you knock on the door of a perfectly viable business and offer them more than it's worth as well as a salaried position at the new business, (almost)…

Vet clinics have a moat (exactly as you're implying): the customer relationship. That relationship, plus optimization on the fixed costs, gives an incentive to acquire the practice, maintain the staff as employees, and collect the operating margin. It's not like you really care if your favored pet doctor works for Brand A or Brand B, and -- let's be honest -- you're price sensitive. No matter what you say, there's a…

Also increasingly discoverability. New customers must be able to find you. And how online advertising and SEO is going established player which has resources to waste will beat you.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#188

Post by vram22 »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #185
visarga wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things that were previously overwhelming are now almost trivial. Not if you have to stake your career on them. AI takes no liability, it is all yours

There’s no accountability in software, and in the tech industry people move jobs so fast they can simply blame the previous person and say they need to refactor the code to remove tech debt for a few years. Basically the three envelope situation.

>Basically the three envelope situation.

https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#189

Post by ncruces »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #143
ipaddr wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chat programs are not social networking.

They absolutely are. Maybe less so in the USA, but they have replaced Facebook for many (most?) people in the subcontinent, Africa, and south america

Exactly. Europe too.

It's how people talk to groups of dozens of people at a time: friends, neighbors, acquaintances, the parents of your kid's school mates to discuss school stuff or to setup a birthday party… coworkers if you include more work oriented chat apps.

I have dozens of such groups, some with photos of kids around a birthday cake that I'd never have put up of Facebook (if I still used it).

If that's not social networking, I'm not sure what is.

Re: Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale

#190

Post by CRConrad »

Velorivox wrote: post #79
derefr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of this as the Dark Forest problem of social networks. The original "Dark Forest hypothesis" is the idea that alien civilizations are silent not because they're not out there; and not because they wouldn't love to meet us and form positive-sum interactions; but rather because they've all concluded — from evidence or pure logic — that there are likely to be scary things "out there" listening; and that, by tryi…

You’ve misrepresented the core of your argument. Wikipedia on dark forest hypothesis: “The "dark forest" hypothesis presumes that any space-faring civilization would view any other intelligent life as an inevitable threat…” > not because they wouldn't love to meet us and form positive-sum interactions Not sure where you got this adaptation from.

No, the argument was exactly the standard form of "Dark Forest."

> > not because they wouldn't love to meet us and form positive-sum interactions

> Not sure where you got this adaptation from.

It's not an "adaptation", just an elaboration / amplification / clarification.

N.B, it's written in the negative. And, AIUI, the "Dark Forest" hypothesis does indeed not say that the reason we're not hearing from any alien civilisations is that they're all absolutely uninterested in establishing contact with other alien races (like us), but just fear that some of them would be hostile. So yes, the silence is not "because they wouldn't love to meet us and form positive-sum interactions"; only because they're afraid some of those interactions would be distinctly negative-sum.

Post reply on HN