billy99k

Who says I only have one client? It's also one of the reasons that it's so difficult to actually start a company in many of these countries, and the economic landscape consists of large multi-national corporations and the government.

It's also not illegal (at least in the US), if you have your own LLC/company.

This kind of thinking is why I've had steady work while working remotely for many years and we see articles like this crying about companies taking away remote work.

Tech companies already shape elections by intentionally targeting campain ads and political information returned in heavily biased search results.

Why are we worried about this now? Because it could sway people in the direction you don't like?

I find that the tech community and most people in general deny or don't care about these sorts of things when it's out of self interest, but are suddenly rights advocates when someone they don't like might is using the same tactics.

I think it's mostly tariffs and the uncertain economy of 2026.

"Forcing people into working conditions in which they are uncomfortable is only going to harbour resentment towards the company and if you are in a country where workers actually have real rights you will have a hard time firing them."

They are forcing them back into the office, which was pretty much the norm pre-covid. Having hard to fire employees isn't a good thing for the company or the well-being of other employees, when dealing with a bad employee.

If you want to work from home forever, contract with a company, and put it in your contract. This is what I've done for over a decade now.

If services are more than $0, piracy will thrive. It is now and has always been justified with these sorts of articles.

It's really just an excuse to get free stuff.

in 99% of the cases I've seen (and experienced), employee equity is diluted with each new round of funding (you have no control over this).

It really is a lotto ticket, with the numbers changing every few months, and the chances of winning virtually 0.

I've made way more money taking the cash as a consultant to startups.

Wikipedia is biased in so many ways. Epstein may be laying out his strategy here, but it's no different than politically motivated moderators removing/updating content based on opinions, and not allowing anyone to change it.

"especially as we won’t work on product marketing for AI stuff, from a moral standpoint, but the vast majority of enquiries have been for exactly that."

You will continue to lose business, if you ignore all the 'AI stuff'. AI is here to stay, and putting your head in the sand will only leave you further behind.

I've known people over the years that took stands on various things like JavaScript frameworks becoming popular (and they refused to use them) and the end result was less work and eventually being pushed out of the industry.

"It’s just the banal idea of if you have “grit” and work really hard, you are somehow guaranteed success"

When has anyone ever said this? I can study for a test and still fail, but not studying ever will guarantee failure.

"Grit" and hard work may not always equal success, but it will improve your odds to the point where success is very possible.

The problem is that because lots of people have a degree now, employers have no problem finding candidates by requiring one.

So now, almost all white collar jobs require a degree. You may not ever be able to move into management without one either.

Desktop Linux is still clunky and apps break so often with updates, it's not ready for non-tech savvy users.

I just don't have the time anymore to waste hours of my day to get apps working, when it just works on windows or mac.

It's most likely when you have kids/get married.

I've never understood open sourcing something, but only if I like you. The answer is to have proprietary license that you only give out to select users/companies.

Sure, but if Bill Gates was a drug addict with no software, there would have been no deal and he certainly wouldn't have been successful.

Whenever I see the topic of success, people LOVE to talk about 'survivorship bias' as a way to somehow discredit the person that is successful and also give an excuse as to why they might not be successful.

It's pretty destructive in a community that's supposed to be about startups and building businesses. This is why I originally came here years ago, but it seems like the mindset has shifted to anti-capitalist group think.

This is a result of over regulation in the auto industry. I always shake my head at the group of people that wants cheaper prices on goods and services, but propose regulating large companies to death.

China is winning because they don't have to work around pesky labor or IP laws. Then we have people pointing to how much better they are at business and also want all these protections.

HN was supposed to be startup, founder, and business content. Now it's mostly big tech engineers that aren't interested in any of this.

Social media is really the only place you can get actual news, without the heavy bias of the mainstream media.

They are growing, because institutions get more funding for it and they keep changing the goal posts. It's very similar to what happened to Autism.

The UN seems to have no opinion of the freedom of speech being taken away in the UK or the fact that they are now getting rid if the Jury system.

"subsidized by government contracts"

Subsidized implies they are getting free money for doing nothing. It's a business transaction. I wouldn't call being a federal worker being subsidized by the government either.

So army, police, legal don't benefit you?

It's already starting to replace Google searching for many people. This is why Google (and other big tech firms) started investing in it immediately.

All they need to do is start adding in sponsored results (and the ability to purchase keywords), and AI becomes insanely profitable.

Having 10 million and 30 million aren't all that different to the minimum wage workers barely making ends meet.

The point is that you don't allow vibe coded slop to get into production by having seniors review it first.

I've been on both sides of it (in a union and working with union members when there was no other choice).

They all work the same way. I'm fundamentally against the idea of unions after seeing how they stifle innovation in nearly all industries they control.

"In this whole process, people loose a lot of time, some people don’t act their entire lives and are haunted by their inability to act when they were young in their deathbed."

This has many spelling and grammar issues. I stopped reading after this.

Being anti-ai means you want to conserve the old ways in favor of new technology. Hardly what I would call 'progressive'.

How are unions any better than mega corps? My brother is part of a union and the leaders make millions.

He's pigenholed at the same low pay rate and can't ever get a raise, until everyone in the same role also gets a raise (which will never happen). It traps people, because many union jobs can't or won't innovate, and when they look elsewhere, are underskilled (and stuck).

You mention 'deepseek'. Are you joking? It's owned by the Chinese government..and you claim to hate fascism? Lol?

Big companies only have the power now, because the processing power to run LLMs is expensive. Once there are break throughs, anyone can have the same power in their house.

We have been in a tech slump for awhile now. Large companies will drive innovations for AI that will help everyone.

If you mean technical debt, this can be prevented with a good senior reviewing all of the code.

Where I work, we hired a developer that was supposed to be familiar with SQL. It turns out, he can't even write simple queries (and spends 0 time outside of work getting up to speed).

The director purchased a subscription to Claude and will most likely get rid of him at the beginning of the new year, because the job can pretty much be automated at this point.

Many Marketing/copyrighting people have also been laid off over the last year due to the same reasons.

"I don’t love the code it writes, but the speed is unbeatable. We still need devs"

I think this will be the problem going forward: Less positions to fill and the same amount of potential candidates. You will need to have more experience and credentials to compete.