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pm90

14,384 karma · joined June 4, 2011

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pm90··on Microsoft offers mass buyouts for roughly a quarter of its workforce
When you start hiring former management consultants into leadership positions
pm90··on EA is shutting down BioWare
Anyone have any ideas on how to better structure game development? It seems like the studio-corporation model doesn’t really pan out long term in most cases. A few niches like ConcernedApe and Wube seem to be doing fine… maybe the era of “ big” studios is over?
pm90··on CPI-U rises 7.2% annualized in September (3.7% YoY)
POTUS has been reported as saying that hes waiting for midterms to end before taking action. I see at least two more years with no rate cuts; the possibility of fuel rationing also appears to be possible in light of all the refining/logistics facilities being wantonly destroyed. Its going to be a very rough time.
pm90··on A Dynamic and Distributed Virtual GPU Cloud Built on Idle Apple Silicon Devices
My warm take is that Apple is leaving a lot of money on the table by not investing in creating an independent supply chain for their chips and building their own cloud. They arguably had the first mover advantage when it came to general purpose arm compute; all they had to do was flood the market and make it easy for anyone to rent it. Not only would they corner a part of the market but perhaps ease demand pressure on other chip manufacturers too.
pm90··on CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades
Fair. Although he seems to mostly target Trump, rather than the conditions that gave rise to Trumpism. Unless someone addresses that we’re stuck in a vicious cycle…
pm90··on CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades
Depends on who actually gets elected. A centrist candidate like Buttigeg/Ossoff/Harris/Newsom would almost certainly lead to no prosecutions. Someone with actual convictions like AOC or Ro Khanna might.
pm90··on Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program
None of this is how this happens though. The reason why companies spend thousands of dollars to pay lawyers is that local talent to do this work simply does not exist. They would much rather prefer hiring Citizens.
pm90··on Mathematics of Geothermal Energy
okay but as part of a data center ? accessible commercially?
pm90··on Mike Tomlin spent 12 years building a Minecraft city
UBI doesn’t mean a money-less society; it just means you won’t just die or go into debt if you lose your job. I imagine most jobs would still exist and continue providing the same incentives for those who want to pursue them.
pm90··on Venice’s failed war against Constantinople led to the first bond market
[flagged]
pm90··on Mike Tomlin spent 12 years building a Minecraft city
I think if we had some sort of UBI/provision for necessities this is the sort of thing people would be doing, and it would be great.
pm90··on How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent
Personally a Ghalib fan myself but love that despite their rivalry they both loved dilli to the end.
pm90··on California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
Possibly to do with research showing that no amount of alcohol is healthy/beneficial and even small quantities are bad. I think overall this is a good thing for society: its one of the leading causes of death and destruction backed by a powerful Government lobby.
pm90··on What California is learning from solar panels built over irrigation canals
Texas also has open carry.
pm90··on AX – Google’s Open Agentic Orchestrator
Like Kubernetes?
pm90··on Neki – Sharded Postgres
No it isn’t normal, its just this one person. I don’t personally find this language particularly appealing, especially for a serious discussion on technology. But hey, its a free country, they’re a startup and its one way of grabbing the scarcest of resources: attention.
pm90··on Keep Our Servers Running
It was super easy to donate; Im so glad they have a landing page that supports several payment methods and makes it easy to donate. I love the wayback machine, hope everyone pitches in : ).
pm90··on Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
Solid article. Its worth calling out one thing thats maybe not emphasized enough though: while your contributions may start small make sure to publicize them appropriately. No need to cross post to every channel, but do post about it somewhere or socialize it somehow. Take a lot of time to craft a thoughtful and easy to read message.

Reputations are hard to earn and easy to destroy. Trust building at any new institution takes a lot of time and effort and can seem annoying. But just doing solid work and communicating about it consistently will make sure that like minded people notice you, vouch for you and then give you more opportunities.

pm90··on Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B
Why? Aren’t private markets willing to invest in AI companies? Was something wrong with their arr? What?
pm90··on U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications
Did you read the article? They postponed all appointments.
pm90··on Stwipe Acquires OpenWouter
We need more QuinnyPigs in Tech.
pm90··on São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest
I … feel like this isn’t a feel good story? This man put 22 years of his life into something that could be done is less than a week with explosives/modern machinery?
pm90··on What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
Tech has always had an unhealthy streak; it was ok while workers were being compensated well and treated amazingly. The end of zirp has cut comp and benefits massively so there’s a lot less upside to this lifestyle.
pm90··on U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, a sudden reversal
This is how bls data has always worked. And the reason is that they don’t always have the full picture every month and need to account for new data in the stats.
pm90··on Discovery Loop
I think people are missing what this really is: Google giving some of its most senior engineers the best retirement home to keep them away from competitors. This isn’t in jest; I wish i could make enough money to not care for more from my job and then do research after i get old. Its honestly a brilliant move.
pm90··on Scaling NumPy on Free-Threaded Python
All of software is a hack in some way or another. You think of tradeoffs and make a decision. Theoretical purity is mostly an academic thing and Im sure you would love TCS.
pm90··on Waymo in Dallas
DFW is amongst the top 5 metroplexes in the US and is extremely low density, high sprawl with few public transit options and a car heavy culture. This is a a welcome change.
pm90··on Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall
The US Federal Government has been meaningfully degraded by the brazen corruption of the people in power. Already there was a crisis of faith in authority; this is just going to make it much much worse.

I wonder if its time to rethink some of these institutions. It seems like Food Safety is especially important to the welp being of society; it might make sense to have food testing labs in every major population center/distribution hub. Funded by a tax on the food companies or perhaps even locally. Its just unbelievable that the entire US population is so vulnerable… what if a bad actor did something nasty deliberately?

pm90··on Thanks HN for 15 years of support and helping me find my life's work
Some of the best engineers I worked at got their start in programming at the recurse center... thank you for the good you've done in this world!
pm90··on An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
The Mughal empire cannot possibly be characterized as theocratic in any meaningful way for most of its history (of course there are exceptions). They weren’t even devout muslims themselves. They married hindu Rajputs and adopted Indian customs, translated the classical hindu texts into Persian etc.
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