darth_avocado

Is there hypocrisy in this? Sure. Does it matter? No. According to the CEOs, if you were to believe them, a lot of people won’t work in the near future. If white collar jobs don’t exist anymore, what happens to the blue collar ones? And that is the uncertainty people are grappling with that is fueling the resentment.

You’re missing the trees for the forest. Pointing to a single example and trying to pull it apart while ignoring the fact that it’s not a single issue, nor is it a single instance that is causing people to push back.

Because they’re loud?

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuq/comments/1t7293k/t...

Or could pollute the entire town’s water supply?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/08/us-datacente...

Or air?

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pollution-musks-unper...

We’re going to pretend that these are the same concerns as an HOA squabble about wrong roofs? I like AI as a useful tool worth investing in but let’s not be dismissive about what people are actually mad about, because this dismissive attitude is exactly why SV finds itself where it is.

> for what seem to them to be good moral reasons

Like the desire to have a livelihood?

India’s approach has been to allow the competition but at a tariffed rate that makes the imports slightly more expensive than the domestic products. This ensures local industry doesn’t get decimated but also doesn’t get complacent without competition. The consumers get the option to buy BYD, but it won’t be cheap.

You forgot India.

The thing all these countries have in common is their own Automobile sector which is a huge part of the economy that they need to protect.

No one is spinning anything except you. Claiming undergrads are only non Americans these days, which was easily disproven with sources. Now you’re claiming no one is hiring American undergraduates which again can be disproven by looking at actual data. Recent grad unemployment remains pretty low.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:...

The less than 3% of undergraduate enrollment of international students is genocide?

https://livehandbook.org/higher-education/miscellaneous/inte...

Because international students are less than 3% of undergraduate enrollment. [1]

So people are trying to understand what do you intend to really say when you say you don’t see American undergraduates anymore and that it’s all internationals.

[1] https://livehandbook.org/higher-education/miscellaneous/inte...

No reason why both can’t exist

> PC Gamers literally just don't want to use a second launcher

Is that true? And if it is true, why is that?

Pointing to free games on Epic and non usage tells you that people don’t want Epic. Doesn’t tell you why. Nor does it tell you whether people continue to stick with Valve. And that is the point in my original comment.

If Valve isn’t good, you can’t just say people won’t go for another better option “just because”.

First para:

> A former Epic Games developer is calling out Steam users, saying that they wouldn't move on from Valve's store even if a better alternative emerged.

Second para:

> Kiaran Ritchie, former principal animation engineer at Epic Games kicked off discussions surrounding Steam's 30% sales cut last week (with the assertion that "you could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week"). Which in-turn led noted Steam hater Epic CEO Tim Sweeney to assert that "Valve has held gaming back for years" – because the person whose company proudly asserted it had "vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher" knows what's holding gaming back!

Third para:

> Ritchie elaborated on their opinions on the 30% cut in a separate post, with the post saying that while developers are paying 30% in order to access Steam infrastructure, "in reality it is purely to get access to the massive Steam userbase." He adds "PC developers have no option but to distribute through Steam or lose the vast majority of sales."

Curious, where does it answer my question in the first paragraph? Could you elaborate?

Okay, if steam is holding gaming back, why hasn’t an alternative emerged? Apparently Valve maintains healthy margins after taking a 30% cut. What’s stopping other companies from taking a smaller cut and passing the benefits to consumers. Gamers are notoriously complaining about high costs of games, I’m sure that’s a viable strategy?

Valve also allows non exclusive distribution on PC. Games don’t have to launch on steam exclusively. Why do others not capitalize on that?

Seems like it’s mostly a “grapes are sour” argument pointing to valve and saying they’re not greedy enough to allow us to profit.

> but I won't be surprised if you could retire in India after working on $180k/yr for 2-3 years.

I don’t know what you picture when you think of India but a median 3 bedroom apartment in Mumbai costs about $400k and in Bangalore it’s $200K. And these won’t be the desirable neighborhoods nor newer apartments. After taxes on $180K after 2-3 years, you’d mostly be able to afford a tiny rented apartment for a few years but that’s it.

Same feeling here for OpenAI. Though in my case I knew I wasn't getting it even before the interviews. The first interview was a guy who was a serial founder and the other one was previously a senior staff engineer at FAANG. And if I would’ve been hired, I’d be at the same level as them. I did okay in the interview but clearly didn’t have the experience on paper that they were looking for.

I believe you’re also talking about stuff you want to. Double overtime vs single overtime, but I’m talking about the fact that there is a need for overtime in the first place instead of having to reconsider double overtime.

Ohh that makes sense. I believe talking about the recent numbers is more appropriate because a lot of money pours in towards the end.

How is Elon Musk only being reported as $90M when other sources say it’s more than $400M+? Seems like this is a big discrepancy.

Example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/...

> Like I said, to be clear, I don’t begrudge anyone’s salaries - this is just an under discussed point when we talk about healthcare costs

You are begrudging someone’s salary. Nurses make 500k by working overtime. You know why they work overtime? Because it’s cheaper for the hospital than to hire 2 nurses. The problem isn’t the nursing salaries. It is the administrative costs that make your healthcare too expensive. Why do you think single payer reduces healthcare costs?

PS: median nursing salaries are still under a $100k. The numbers you pointed to are not the norm.

> Years of ZIRP have conditioned people into believing that rates at 5% are "high", when the historical reality is that 5% is approximately the mean rate over the past 70 years

I don’t like this framing because since 1990, 5% is on the higher end of the interest rates. [1] That is the entire lifetime for an entire generation of people, Millennials and everyone after. We can’t point to the “golden old days” and pretend that once upon a time interest rates were high so, it’s okay and people need to “remember” things were different. The entire economy has restructured since 1990.

Also, the Volkner move in itself was a deviation from the norm, not the norm itself. Some parts of 70s and 80s was the only time we saw unusually high spikes, but before that 5% again was on the higher end. Are we saying the boomers in the 60s were also spoiled by low interest rates for decades?

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/2015/fed-funds-rate-historical-c...

I swapped my hvac for an electric heat pump. My energy usage went down. Because electricity is way too expensive and I’m okay sweating a bit in the summers and wearing jackets indoors in the winters.

Any good product leader will tell you, sometimes not building something is actually good for the customer. Slower dev cycles have you the ability to take time with decisions and make adjustments. The obsession with shipping more code is making things worse for users and I would argue, damages the company in the long run.

Eveyone has a backlog. What happens when you clear it in a month? Do you suddenly have better ideas about what you want to build? Do you suddenly have better intuitive designs? Do you have more users or the same users using the product twice as much? In most cases, the answer is no.

AI gives you the speed to execute when you need to, but knowing what to build and how will still remain a bottleneck.

> That’s because I didn’t make any claims about X’s financial performance. I was explaining to you why you were wrong on some important facts.

Again, you added nothing and are suggesting I was wrong on some facts? Can you point to my comment that you responded to provide the fact that I was wrong about?

> First, you’re conflating revenue and profit, which is kind of unforgivable in this context

Err I am not? Seems like you’re intentionally misrepresenting what I’ve said.

> this is just where you like to emotionally vent may I instead recommend Reddit

Seems like you’re the one intentionally or unintentionally engaging in a Reddit like discourse. In sister comment you say Elon Musk was the only investor in Twitter which quick Google search will tell you is incorrect. I feel you need to hold yourself to the standard that you accuse me of not having.

You’re ignoring the context of the comment here. The parent uses an example of Twitter doing better after laying off 81% of the staff to suggest that other companies could do the same.

While you’re right in that the platform has its uses, other companies cannot do the same. Which is why it’s important to talk about objective success metrics. Sure if you want to fire 80% staff at Microsoft and have a transformation where they only cater to half the user base then they can do it. But they will also not be taking in the same profits as before.

I don’t see anything in what you wrote really support that Twitter did well after firing 80% of its staff.

As for this:

> Twitter as a company was doing quite poorly leading up to the acquisition

This is objectively false. 2020 revenue for Twitter was $3.71B while 2021 came in at $5.07B. The company was on a growth trajectory and path to profitability.

In fact, after the acquisition, the ad revenue dropped by a lot. https://www.businessinsider.com/x-revenues-plunged-months-af...

All of this is public information.

> Something like 80% of the company left or was let go, and despite all the smug laughing about how the platform would go under within weeks, it just kept on going

I’ve heard this claim many times and is not backed by any more evidence than “it works on my machine”.

If the company really did continue to operate in the same manner, it wouldn’t have been worth 80% less in 2024 (https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/02/business/elon-musk-twitter-x-...), nor would it need to be rolled up and financially engineered into being part of an AI company that then gets rolled into a rocket company.

It has been losing users, safety standards have dropped and overall the platform is worse off than before. There’s a reason why no other company has done something similar with their employee counts.

I think you’re conflating too many things here. Never claimed that the universe is fair nor do I claim that failing upwards isn’t a thing.

If you think bullshiting and networking are the only things that matter, then I believe it’s your pessimism that’s talking.

In a class of 100, if 50 decide to learn things and 50 decide to complete assignments using AI without learning, I’m willing to put money behind the idea that more people in the first group will do better in life. Of course there will be exceptions because there’s a lot more in life beyond competence, including luck that influences outcomes.

Cheating always has been available as an option. AI just makes it faster. At Cal, you always had students who would still pursue doing things on their own even when not cheating led to lower grades. The reality of it all is that cheating catches up to you eventually and the later it does, the worse are the outcomes. If you cruised through high school by cheating, you’ll not survive college. If you cruised through college by cheating you’ll not survive your first job. If you cruised through your first job by cheating you’re not getting a promotion or a second one.

Half the class was cheating in Ion Stoica’s OS class even when the whole thing was supposed to be a group effort. Like how are you cheating when you’re already working in groups of 4?

1. PCE tracks spending by and on behalf of households, including employer-paid health insurance and government-funded medical programs like Medicare. Arguably this does not reflect out-of-pocket costs or the immediate cash-flow reality experienced by a regular household.

2. Shelter accounts for roughly 34% of the CPI, whereas it makes up only about 16% to 17% of the PCE which underplays the pressures of housing people face. Housing arguably is one of the most basic necessity and people will spend on it. For majority of the people in the country housing as a % of income is the biggest expense, so weighing it at 16% sounds almost ridiculous.

3. PCE also famously isn’t based on household surveys like CPI which means it doesn’t accurately represent the actual inflation either.

4. PCE also doesn’t accurately represent lifestyle downgrades even though it tracks them. PCE will capture if you swap chicken for beef (like people are doing right now) but the conclusion you’ll come to is that people have the same amount of spending power as before.

Meanwhile household basics increased faster than wages. In other words people don’t have more money.

https://www.unitedforalice.org/essentials-index