Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49678950

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49540934

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49202434

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

I visit a building sometimes with destination dispatch elevators, and with low exposure across multiple years I'm confused every time the elevator I need to take is open behind me.

I once used the paternoster lift in Germany, beats any elevator algorithm efficiency because it's a non-stop "conveyor" with no doors. I still get nightmares about that elevator.

I think this is all demand/supply problem. There were way more rental listings May/June 2024 than this year.

All those C*Os and founders are good and successful politicians, not nerds. There was a colossal PR campaign to picture them as nerds for multiple reasons, but most of them never created like nerds would do (with a passion, going deep, enjoying the process & the result).

Politicians become successful due to skills incompatible with nerd mindset. Look at Linus, he could built an empire but he's a git.

First one already mentioned in the comments is you can be kicked out at any time within your rental agreement. I was "lucky" enough to get our rental sold two years ago and then again this year. Packing and looking for another rental with 2 months notice is not fun (and boxes smell).

Another difference is location and place itself. You'll have much fewer rentals in a very nice neighborhood, and even those that are rented out, are the worst - corner lots (3x gardening cost/effort), facing major roads or other things that make life less comfortable.

Rental condition is not under your control. At least in Seattle area owners I rented from didn't keep the house well maintained, which resulted in:

* roof leak (no moss treatment performed, grew and lifted shingles).

* 25 yo furnace "worked" until one midnight my family had to evacuate and call fire fighters due to CO alarms getting off. Four days without heating after that (owner offered to reimburse for the cheapest hotel nearby).

* Appliances are not replaced until they break. I looked at one property few weeks ago that had original once white appliances. I asked if owner is willing to upgrade them, the agent laughed at told us they will fix it if something doesn't work after we move in.

Engineers always fought about technology - MS technology stack iterations that promised new era in development, Borland RAD tools that made everyone "GUI developer", all those had evangelists and companies who pushed it. It's a healthy competition and we see where Java EE ended up, although in 2010s it was still promised as one and only future for servers.

Will this time be different? I don't know and I'm afraid there's a critical mass accumulated to push it forward forcefully. But when I talk to my friends and students I give one advice that I follow - invest in your intelligence, not tooling and ecosystem of large corporations. Build something yourself, not for the sake of chasing venture investors with your million LOC slope, but to learn and master real skills. When one student implemented Paxos for his thesis and followed my advice, the feedback was that not only he learned and built a mental model of the algorithm and all corner cases, but also led to novel algorithm development, just because his brain was into it, not on top of AI.

In this context, I argue that if a significant sector of economy goes fully AI, it is similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union where within few months most people lost their jobs. The wikipedia link above shows how similar scenarios unfolded in many eastern block countries, specifically mass unemployment, poverty and crime.

Not from so distant past - Soviet Union collapse caused mass unemployment and similar socioeconomic scenarios - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_wild_nineties

Mass poverty and skyrocketing crime levels (mugged for sneakers was common), while ultra rich grabbed money and power.

Quote from the post article: "To quote Michael Polanyi: we know more than we can tell. Some load-bearing context exists precisely because it was never put into words, and writing it down would change what it is."

Imagine how much knowledge exists only in the heads of software engineers, with code being just a functioning footprint of that "Theory". I know SRE in FAANG who told me that multi-billion system is supported by tribal knowledge within their group, and for years, even pre-AI it was a protection against automation.