The OP is snarky but he makes a valid point: if Claude is so intelligent, why can't it just "do something" to get whatever valuation its owners want? Because that's what we've been told, this is AGI, no it's ASI, it will kill us all.
But ... why? I have been running all my smartphones at close to minimum brightness and heard lots of people complaining that even at the lowest setting it's still too bright at night.
> or who tried out ChatGPT in 2024, saw it make howlingly obvious errors, and wrote off the entire category.
Or they were reading your comments and articles and couldn't reproduce any of the fantastic results that you were claiming, even back then. Things have indeed changed since the first Opus release about a year ago and LLMs are good at programming now. But still, experienced professionals are not so keen to sign off 1000s of lines of code that they never read, take responsibility for it etc. Also, it is a different job and it will take some time to adjust. Can you blame them?
Moreover, other trades have their own guilds or are otherwise protected through regulation. Can you blame programmers for fighting to keep doing things as they were doing it until recently?
I wish I could to this, but the project does not belong to me. I am the main maintainer and probably could push for this, but the higher ups are all in on AI and wouldn't like it at all.
I am an OSS maintainer and I can tell you the job is terrible. Not because of the thankless work (I am sponsored by a corp for the work) but because we're still allowing public PRs. Plenty of people that "want to help" just push walls of text and code and 2 days later ask why hasn't their contribution been accepted yet. And when will it be? Because they need it ASAP!
I had the fortune and grit to build and release something on my own. It took years and a lot of pain. Then came the pain of supporting it in production. I generally regret putting myself through this and I do look back. I do think it is worth trying something, but you need to be careful what exactly you are building. Too many times I got lost in details or spent way too much time on things that were not worth it. Also, giving up sooner when you see it doesn't work can be a good thing.
I'm surprised to read this on HN. Normally I stay away from this crap, but today I'll bite: the Romanian government did very well to sell Romtelecom, BCR and others. And I hope they'll sell more, like Tarom and other money sinks.
In a different life, I went through multiple interview stages at a FAANG company. In between the sessions, we got to talk to some of the (future) managers. One of them told me that this whole interview process is broken, we should all just be hired temporarily and see how that goes (akin to what Yegge is proposing). The batch had maybe 30 people. Probably not easy to place all of them, but certainly doable.
Looking forward to a European-wide payment system. Sure, there are apps probably in each individual country that you can use to pay (via a QR code) or easily transfer money (usually using a phone number). But there are cases like renting a car or paying abroad which are not covered. Seems a bit crazy considering this is a common market. Why don't these apps look to expand more aggresively in the EU? I know there's Wero, but why aren't they more bald in their approach? I also know there's the digital euro promoted by the European Commission, but I'm not holding my breath for that. It takes way too long and my feeling is that it is being used mostly to pressure the US. I don't think we'll be able to use it anytime soon.
That's what I am afraid of. The resistance from the incumbents plus the external pressure from the US (and China?) might be to strong. Better go with a federated approach, mandating all the different payment apps available all over the EU to allow connections from other participants.
In any case, the digital euro seems to take years (earlier expected date is 2029). I don't understand why it takes so long.
I know someone that works in the central government of an EU country and have persuaded her to talk to the IT department in the ministry where she works to try to move away from Microsoft products. The short answer: "It's not possible for us to move away from Microsoft". And it's not that they don't want to, but they have extremely low IT resources + the employees are very reluctant to make any change. Sometimes they introduce a new program, or update an older one and there's massive whining in the entire ministry. These public employees should really try to adapt more and understand that digital environments have become crucial for independence, privacy and self-reliance.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I am confident that those banking apps will (eventually) work without the likes of Google Play Services. Additionally, what i really want is an alternative to Visa/Mastercard, meaning I can use it for renting a car or paying online.
I wouldn't go this way, at least not now. But the European Commission should mandate the usage of EU based software for every public institution in the EU, at all levels. That means from the European Parliament all the way down to municipalities. So no more Windows, Office, Azure, AWS etc. in public institutions all across the EU.
> And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire.
I worked for/with several European startups. They really didn't need nor aim for planet scale operations.
There are also quite a lot of articles about how startups (in any country) focus needlesly on large scalability when they only really have a few customers. It's exactly the same false issue here.
Yes, there are local alternatives like Pix here as well, but they only work in the same country. I need something that works across EU countries, like wero. I also need something that works on every site when I buy online and I can also use it when renting a car. So a real Visa/Mastercard alternative.
> So you move the power from two American companies (Visa and Mastercard) to two American companies (Apple and Google)? What's that supposed to solve?
Unsure what you mean, but for context I use an app developed by a consortium of local banks and it works by scanning a QR code. Indeed, I use an Android phone but my next one will be a de-googled one like a Fairphone with /e/OS. Hopefully the same app will work there...
We went with Hetzner as we already had good experiences with their VPSes. For this particular db migration, a resonably sized VPS with volumes does the job for us. We don't have planet scale operations so the lowish IOPS is not an issue atm. Also, with this experience at hand, I am confident that we'll manage another migration if need be.
I would also add lack of technical competence at C level. In my previous job, I have dealt with quite a few European CEOs whos only background was an MBA. Unlike the US where a lot of CEOs have a deep technical background...
Last week I migrated our db away from AWS RDS to a European cloud provider. Everything runs fine and we also have it cheaper!
One of our domains is due for renewal in a couple of months. I'm setting up the transfer to a EU registrar for it next week.
This all takes time and it's not the most important thing for the bottom line, but on the long run I'm sure I'll look back and say it was a great investment.
As a European, I am glad that this is finally discussed in the open! I have made multiple comments in the last weeks that one of the most important things, for me, is an alternative to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly. And yes, I can use an app to pay, but whenever I rent a car or purchase something online, I still use one of these two American companies. Why isn't the European Commission mandating these app payments in different EU countries to connect with each other? Wouldn't that go faster than the digital euro, that is set to come no earlier than 2029?