Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732054

Points: 9

# Comments: 1

counterpoint: which service or product is immune to this statement?

Even if that $1000 used to be worth $10000, that $0 is still worth $0.

I know this may sound like a shock because you are privileged but 7% yoy return on capital is NOT the norm for the rest of the world. Just look at any other index not called the S&P or the Dow. Look up US exceptionalism.

The US policy for retirement savings shackles the younger generation with a ticking time bomb. Forcing your own citizens to save money for themselves is a lot better than forcing your own citizens to pay for others. Which one is more morally cruel?

HK has a similar forced savings, but that ROI is like 1 or 2% and the options to invest are paltry.

Some perspective is necessary. Yes it’s not great but compared to the rest of the world it’s stellar.

Game theory wise there is no solution except to declare (and enforce) spaces where leeching / degrading the environment is punished, and sharing, building, and giving back to the environment is rewarded.

Not financially, because it doesn't work that way, usually through social cred or mutual values.

But yeah the internet can no longer be that space where people mutually agree to be nice to each other. Rather utility extraction dominates—influencers, hype traders, social thought manipulators-and the rest of the world quietly leaves if they know what's good for them.

Lovely times, eh?

They nuked the internet by themselves. Basically they are the willing and happy instigators of the dead internet as long as they profit from it.

They are by no means ethical, they are a for-profit company.

My finance people care about the cents, a ROI of 7% is average but at 8.5% and now you are a world class asset of that inventory type. That’s sometimes the difference of a few hundred k out of 20m but they would not take the deal if it is slightly over due to their risk appetite.

The 3b external either matters a ton to fit their risk models OR they are doing a favor to an outside party. Probably a bit of both.

Given the pace of current ai, in 2 months dark factories will peak hype and then in another 6 months it will be fully identified in its cost/benefit drawbacks, and the wisdom of the crowds will have a relatively accurate understanding of its general usefulness, and the internet will move on to other things.

The next generation of ai coding will make dark factories legit due to their ability to architect decently. Then generation after will make dark factories obsolete due to their ability to make it right the first time. That's about 8 months out for SOTA, and 14 months out for Sonnet/Flash/Pro users.

No need for them to come out of stealth, just imagine 1000s of junior/mid engineers crammed into an office given vague instructions to build an app and spit out code. Imagine a cctv in the room overlooking the hundreds of desks, and then press fast forward 100x speed.

That's literally what they built, because that's what's possible with Opus.

Sure the majority of people cannot tell flavor notes apart but there exists a certain % of the population that can very reliably distinguish different tastes. Wine sommeliers, fine dining, food science are all professions which require a sensitive palate and smell and it is an over simplification to talk about sodas tasting the same for the majority of people as if it implies there is no difference or speciality in crafting taste.

All bubbles (dot com, housing, tech, crypto, etc) have a lot of losers and a few big winners.

That is less a reflection on the market of the bubble and more a reflection of the number, skill and risk taking of the prospectors.

So what if other people downvote you for being too critical.

At the end of the day businesses build money machines that you put money in and you take money out from various markets. You need legibility if you want to tie all development work to how it affects how much of the market you own. And it's not quite legibility that is needed, it's accurate future market share prediction, which requires a particularly strategic form of legibility. The only way to increase market share without luck is to accurately forecast what your actions will do to your market share. But how can you do that if you have no idea what your devs are building and shipping?

We tend to make fun of incompetent business people but this is what the competent ones are doing - being super accurate in their forecast of future revenue, and forcing devs to build things that will help gain market share.

Devs often don't think about business strategy enough (as evidenced by the original article, no offense). So they aren't usually good at tying everything they do back to gaining market share. Devs who are the market audience for their app can be naturally good at PMF and going from 0 to 1, but as you scale its very hard to find devs that are also the market audience of the product they are building, so they tend to be bad at predicting how their dev roadmap will affect market share gain.

Without legibility, a team of devs can be a slot machine where you pull the lever and hope the features hit the jackpot or at least a modest return and not duds. With small bets, that's a great way to become large, but its no way to run a competitive large business.