You know, it's time to stop this trope.

People who are 60 today were born in 1966, they probably entered the workforce in the mid 80's. They probably are not even retired yet. They know how to use computers, they own a smartphone (or if they don't, it's probably for economic reasons unrelated to their age).

As a founder and product manager, this kind of thinking is unhelpful as we design the future. In many ways it's actually ageist to imply that old people are unable to utilize everyday technology.

I was building public service websites (BBC News website) back in the early 2000's where accessibility was a real and important consideration. Technology progresses, and the bar for accessibility has moved up.

My father is about to turn 80 - he checks his heart with his Apple watch, video calls his grandson from his iPad, and asks ChatGPT questions from his iPhone and MacBook Pro. Maybe he's more unusual for 80yo's but it's time to stop this lazy trope that old people are technically illiterate.

(also, shit, I'm only 15 years away from being 60 myself :/ )

In other words when it comes to FOSS contribution, developer time can be donated but tokens can't - so as we move into agentic code era all FOSS development carries a cost unless it is purely done by hand (which more often it isn't).

Not saying this is what is going on here but it's presumably a factor if the author was looking for an employer to sponsor development with his labor (and tokens).

For those of you who have started companies recently, or are radically pivoting toward agentic workflows:

Are you sticking to the classics (CTO, VP Eng, PM)? Or are you finding yourselves drawn toward titles that reflect a more "orchestration-heavy" reality?

How are you redefining "Manager"? If a lead’s primary "reports" are a fleet of autonomous agents or specialized LLM pipelines rather than a dozen humans, does the title "Engineering Manager" still make sense?

The "Full-Stack" Evolution: Are we seeing a shift toward titles like "System Architect" or "Inference Engineer" even at the seed stage?

I've noticed that as the ratio of "output per human" shifts, the traditional hierarchy feels a bit clunky. I’d love to hear from anyone who has intentionally renamed roles to better reflect this new reality - or if you think sticking to standard titles is still better for recruiting and clarity.

I've returned to operating mode, recently founding a company for thr first time in 15 years, and facing this challenge right now.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47865757

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

From my recollection the issues were that it is against the terms and conditions of many carriers to bring packages for other people.

What was being shipped was also dubious - sure it wasn't drugs but it was often ASIC chips, strange hardware from China etc.

I don't think I would want to take any packages in this way, but I certainly would be worried about export control stuff.

This is not a viable startup to be honest.

I don't get the draw - we already optimize for keyboard commands to avoid living our fingers over to a touchpad. Why would I want to start clicking on my screen?

If you're using your computer for tasks (rather than entertainment) and you're not a visual designer, I don't get why Apple are apparently going to be putting them into the new MBP line later this year.

I know that the car reports practically all user events to Tesla in real time over the cell network (eg, open door), and I know it has root access. I don't know if that root is available remotely and I don't know if foundational commands like steering, acceleration and brake are accessible via the CLI (they are computer controlled actions locally)

THUS I would not want to drive a Tesla if there was the possibility of all cars being rooted and remotely controlled by an unauthorized actor.

1) The act of archive.today archiving stories (and thus circumventing paywalls) is arguably v low level illegal (computer miss-use/unauthorized access/etc) but it is up for interpretation whether a) the operator or the person requesting the page carries the most responsibility b) whether it's enforceable in third party countries neither archive.today or the page requester reside in

2) DDoSing a site that writes something bad about you is fundamentally wrong (and probably illegal too)

Yeah he's right - my Pixel 10 is not as sexy as an iPhone but not only is the keyboard great but the AI integration is first class citizen.

iOS will never have first class citizen AI even if Apple finally develop their own model because Apple doesn't control the user's data.

I buy Whole Foods French fries shipped to the store via Amazon logistics and purchase those at Amazon owned Whole Foods, at a discount via my Prime membership on my Amazon credit card which is processed on AWS infrastructure and I ride home on an Amazon owned Zoox that also runs on AWS infrastructure.

Amazon owns so much of the profit margin across that stack that they can afford to give rides away for example.

Obviously you're entitled to your view, but I don't think it's that kind of finance model right now - it's far too speculative and the upside too unknown to be adjusting for small amounts on risk models.

You could opt in to have blood or plasma taken on every ride if you so wanted I guess.

Also, keep in mind the Alphabet doesn't fully own Waymo. I don't know the percentage ownership of hand, but that also feels like it's probably a prorated investment based on ownership so Alphabet doesn't reduce its voting control.

That's what I'm talking about.

The last I heard was that the Google rev-share agreement was on the skids and they stopped developing projects like Thunderbird and Fake Spotter because they were capital constrained.

If you know otherwise then you're better informed than I am I guess

Ads in cars, partnerships with alternative destinations, etc. definitely would feel like enshitification for a demographic comparable to the hacker news one here. But these are all per session/user settings just like most of us have a paid Spotify account and never see advertising and those who don't get a very different monetized experience.

What is exciting about monetization like this is the possibility for rides to become very cheap or even free. If my dentist offers free rides to the office in return for my loyalty, I'm quite happy to take that.

There are many reasons why a conglomerate like Alphabet doesn't want to hold all of that directly on the balance sheet, which is why Waymo is run as a subsidiary with its own sources of capital.

When I was at Uber 10 plus years ago and we were ideating autonomous vehicles. The general consensus was that we would run the technology platform and private equity would own fleets of cars built and operated to our specification.

Waymo has concluded either we are too early in the journey to decouple the tight vertical integration or they want to go very big and own all of the capital expenditure for what will presumably be a global rollout ultimately.

For anyone like me with a finance and technology crossover interest I actually think this is as interesting, maybe more interesting, than the private equity play around data centers at the moment because all of that is constrained against chip delivery and power constraints.

If your comment is referring to the software company's exiting to provide a return to shareholders, that happens all the time whether it's venture-backed or privately owned. The owners of privately held bootstrapped companies still want an exit one day too.

As an open source software engineer who is now a venture capital investor, respectfully, I think your beef is with capitalism, not with the institutional investors.