Call me grumpy and sleep deprived, but every year I look at this talk again, and every year I wonder... "now, what" ? What am I supposed to do, as a programmer, to change this sad state of things ?
Start the n-th "visual" or "image based" programming language (hoping to at least, make _different_ mistakes than the ones that doomed smalltalk and all other 'assemble boxes to make a program' things ?)
Start an OS, hoping to be able to get an "hello world" in qemu in a year or two of programming in my sparse free time ?
Ask an LLM to write all that would be so cool ?
Become a millionaire selling supplements, and fund a group of smart programmers to do it for me ?
Honest question. Once you've seen this "classic" talk ("classic", in the sense that it is now old enough to work in some countries), what did you start doing ? What did you stop doing ? What did you change ?
> Start the n-th "visual" or "image based" programming language (hoping to at least, make _different_ mistakes than the ones that doomed smalltalk and all other 'assemble boxes to make a program' things ?)
Unironically yes, this. Progress happens in this field one dead language at a time; people try a thing and make mistakes continually, so that other people can try again and make other different mistakes. Eventually, something good is found and they integrate it into C++.
But no one is going to find these ideas unless people keep trying and failing. This is a community effort, you can only do your part. And like the rest of us you will likely fail and never be thanked for your efforts -- except by the next poor sap who takes up the good fight, sees your failures, and deftly avoids all your mistakes. But the plus side is if you succeed... you also won't be thanked or rewarded so scratch all that you probably shouldn't bother if you respect yourself.
> Call me grumpy and sleep deprived, but every year I look at this talk again, and every year I wonder... "now, what" ? What am I supposed to do, as a programmer, to change this sad state of things ?
That depends on your goals. If you are into building systems for selling them (or production), then you are bound by the business model (platform vs library) and use cases (to make money).
Otherwise, you are more limited in time.
To think more realistically about reality you have to work with, take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cum5uN2634o about types of (software) systems (decay), then decide what you would like to simplify and what you are willing to invest.
If you want to properly fix stuff, unfortunately often you have to first properly (formally) specify the current system(s) (design space) to use it as (test,etc) reference for (partial) replacement/improvement/extension system(s).
What these type of lectures usually skip over (as the essentials) are the involved complexity, solution trade-offs and interoperability for meaningful use cases with current hw/sw/tools.
You could start a new project or contribute to an existing one. You could try out other people's projects and write about what you learned. You could write about what you learned from your own projects. You could give a talk that starts with a killer demo. You could try to find work that improves the situation, however slightly, instead of worsening it. You could sharpen your skills so that when you have more spare time you can make faster progress.
Clearly, all the right-wing papers that have traditionnaly supported him (Le Figaro, Match) and all the hard-right-wing papers (owned by Bolloré, Arnault, etc..) that have _personnal_ ties to him are playing their "opinion" part.
I don't think public media is defending him at all. Left or Center-left papers are not (obviously.)
The tie breaker would be: "what is TF1 20h saying" (this is, no matter what new media says, still the one thing that most people watch and treat as "the news") - and I don't think they have been "blatantly" defending him.
> Thiel’s comments about Trump were more complex, according to the recordings. “If you, in a sincere, rational, well-reasoned way are willing to make the argument that Trump is the Antichrist, I will give you a hearing,” he said. “If you’re not willing to make that argument maybe you have to be open to possibility that he’s at least relatively good.”
This is either a level of mental derangement or a level of trolling that is world class.
Arguing "rationnaly" about whether someone is or is not the Antichrist ? Seriously ?
"Next on a18z podcast, how many angels can LLMs put on the head of a nano-needle".
Are Palantir shareholders happy with having their money on his hands ?
What happens when he suddenly decides that "reporting EBIDTA" is the 8th cardinal sin ?
(I mean, the American voters don't really have a choice anymore, he was kinda bundled with the Trump package.)
> “ It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,” Thiel said, according to the recordings. “An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture has been constructed.” Wealth gives the “illusion of power and autonomy,” Thiel added, according to the recordings, “but you have this sense it could be taken away at any moment.”
Almost as if lawmakers had a monopoly on many laws. Again, it's insane if he's serious, and not remotely funny if he's trolling.
> Arguing "rationnaly" about whether someone is or is not the Antichrist ? Seriously ?
Sure, though I'm tempted anyway.
10-15 years ago I made a similar mistake and tried arguing with a young earth Baptist creationist preacher in Cambridge city center, so I know I shouldn't, but it's so very tempting. I mean, MAGA is just begging to be the mark of the beast…
> The growing wedge between productivity and typical workers’ pay is income going everywhere but the paychecks of the bottom 80% of workers. If it didn’t end up in paychecks of typical workers, where did all the income growth implied by the rising productivity line go? Two places, basically. It went into the salaries of highly paid corporate and professional employees. And it went into higher profits (returns to shareholders and other wealth owners). This concentration of wage income at the top (growing wage inequality) and the shift of income from labor overall and toward capital owners (the loss in labor’s share of income) are two of the key drivers of economic inequality overall since the late 1970s.
This part:
> returns to shareholders and other wealth owners
My understanding is that "other wealth owners" include... pensioners (through pension funds), is that correct ?
Beside the sheer greed of shareholders, how much does the curve boil down to "companies have to use revenues to pay current workers and previous workers, and we make new 'previous workers' every year" ?
I don't know how much the battle matters, compared to pure money.
For example, according to this source, people bought less BEVs in May because... they want to benefit from the government subsidy later this year. So maybe the headline will read "incredible success" six months after having read "terrible failure". [1]
Surprisingly, BEVs are _more_ visible in the country side (where many smaller models make complete sense as a "second car" for a household that needs to drop kids at school, get the groceries, etc...) than in cities. Never mind.
Even more surprisingly, people do buy some French EVs, even though, well... our glorious national brands have spent the last few years working hard on removing the knobs from the autoradio, and that justified all the "R&D tax rebate" they could get, but sadly none was left for chemists and physicists to increase range, lower prices, etc... Again, go figure.
> Surprisingly, BEVs are _more_ visible in the country side (where many smaller models make complete sense as a "second car" for a household that needs to drop kids at school, get the groceries, etc...) than in cities. Never mind.
Not that surprising; countryside folks own houses and can charge at home for cheap, while city dwellers generally can't and have to use overpriced, inconvenient public charging.
> This new company would also have an American-dominated board with one member designated by the U.S. government.
This is the part I'm really curious about : what is the legal framework for mandating a privately-owned company to have a board member designated by the government ?
The closest thing I could imagine is "national" companies (totally or partially owned by the government.) We have plenty of that in France (once in a while the State would nationalize energy utilities, banks, car makers, etc... then make them private again, then buy x% of them, etc, etc...)
In this case I completely understand that the "State" wants their say in the board - they have money in the game.
But here, it does not seem like the US are part of the new ownership (or did I miss that ?)
So, what happens when the next government nominates a board member that Elison dislikes ? On which law would a judge rule ?
EU is not enough. I'm sometimes not happy with the decision taken by governments in France, so what really has to happen is HauteGaronnExit, where my departement is freed from the influence of borders decided in a Revolution two centuries ago, of which I was never explicitly asked to approve.
And, come to think of it, I don't like all the decisions taken by the departement either. Surely things will work great when my street is responsible for the electrical grid, immigration or international commerce.
And when I say "my street", I obviously mean "my half of the street". I'm not against odd-numbered houses "per se", but, you know...
Start the n-th "visual" or "image based" programming language (hoping to at least, make _different_ mistakes than the ones that doomed smalltalk and all other 'assemble boxes to make a program' things ?)
Start an OS, hoping to be able to get an "hello world" in qemu in a year or two of programming in my sparse free time ?
Ask an LLM to write all that would be so cool ?
Become a millionaire selling supplements, and fund a group of smart programmers to do it for me ?
Honest question. Once you've seen this "classic" talk ("classic", in the sense that it is now old enough to work in some countries), what did you start doing ? What did you stop doing ? What did you change ?
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