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indymike

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Software developer and entrepreneur. Building software at daxtra.com to help companies hire in minutes instead of weeks. I have been coding since the mid-80s... enterprise, embedded, games, web, desktop... have done a little of everything, and still... there’s so much to learn and do.

meet.hn/city/us-Indianapolis

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Interests: AI, Cycling, Hardware, Startups, Science, Social Impact, UI/UX Design, Web Development, Programming, Open Source, Mobile Development, Mentorship, Marketing, Investment

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A few small things (from the perspective of the suburbs in a large flyover city), as in most things design the real drivers are usually material driven, and often a byproduct of a trend.

I'll sum up by saying modern interiors feel temporary, where old decor seems permanent in comparison. This leads to you feeling like a hotel guest instead of being home. You have to really work at it to make a modern interior feel like home:

- Modern homes have lots of closet space and storage, so there's little need for "storage furniture like bookshelves, curios, hutches, sideboards and cabinets (you can get $5000+ china cabinets on marketplace for $200 here). When we moved in, I got rid of probably 14 pieces of (mostly beautiful) storage furniture because we just didn't need them. So it's hard to pile up the artifacts of life where they are easy to see and even grab.

- Living areas are large and open, and fantastic for having guests over or a family movie night, but not cozy for a lazy night of reading a book by the fireplace. You have to make a space for this and fight the floorplan to do so.

- Electronics have shrunk, a modern TV is the size of a painting on the wall, and needs only no horizontal space. Likewise, outside of my son's gaming rig, all the computers are laptops, so, out with the beautiful wood desks and in with the modern ergonomic stand-up desk.

As far as the new home went, almost a year later, the areas where we've made effort to put "life on display" feel great - A huge photo wall with shelves for chotskys and nicnaks, a loft decorated with posters and props from my kid's theater productions, an office with a wall covered with photos and guitars. Life is kind of messy. I guess making home a little more like life really helps.

When the legal reality does not align with actual reality, there is injustice of the worst kind.

The button says "buy" not "rent" or "license".

That should be enough to defeat all the fine print, click wrap hidden clause clever maneuvering bs. The merchant is lying to the buyer. The merchant should bear liability for deceiving the buyer. The merchant (Sony) knew what they were selling. They lied to make it seem like you'd have that video in your library forever. Sony needs to give a refund with interest. Simple as that.

The snake oil is much more how LLMs are being weaponized and utilized

Calling something "snake oil" implies that the product only, at best, has a placebo effect (amplified, no doubt, by the sales presentation). LLMs seem to be much more useful than a placebo.

Another reason is their competitors didn't get it the value prop because everyone had been competing on rates, and little thought given to developer experience... early on a lot of Stripe's competition's apis used fixed field text as the format for transactions.

New York Times that criticizes the New York Times,

This has happened.

the government to decide what is allowed to be banned and what isn't,

This is a civil lawsuit where people are trying to a) prove they were harmed and b) be compensated for that harm. The government is just the referee.

Meta is removing these ads, because pretty much any advertising platform would do the same about ads that criticized it.

Which was not very smart because the next step will be a court order requiring them to put a banner on ever page with a link to sign up to join the lawsuit - for free.

I hate seeing this down-voted. It is such an important warning to people here. Severance agreements are pretty strong. Also, be very careful of snap settlement offers.

So many of the greatest tragedies I've seen inflicted on people come from accepting an expedient way to get what is really a small amount of money quickly. So often the drive is paying the rent/mortgage or fear of losing health benefits. If you are in a bad situation and offered a settlement and you really feel like something isn't right please talk to an employment lawyer. Most US States have expedited processes for quickly resolving these cases, and the lawyer can help you a lot when you feel like your only choice is to take the severance.

Sunsetting Jazzband 4 months ago

Yes, it is precisely misguided, and will be in five years, too. Software lasts way longer than people think it does.

Sunsetting Jazzband 4 months ago

It seems the open-source experiment has failed

People have been saying this since the 80s. Reality is that without open source, this industry would be tiny compared to what it is. So many times open source has enabled an entire sub industry (i.e. ISPs in the 90s, Database, SaaS in the 2010s, now AI). And most of it is someone solving a problem that was worth solving for their own use, and for whatever reason made no sense to commercialize by selling licenses.

on the backs of ten thousands of now-burnt-out maintainers.

Money isn't the motivation for most "free" open source. If it was, the authors would release as commercial software and maybe as "source available". That someone can use open source to build businesses has been the engine for the entire industry. In other words, the thought that maintainers quitting maintaining is some problem that can be fixed if we only paid them is non-sequitur. A lot of it is that people age out, get bored with their project, or simply want to do something else. Not accepting money for maintaining open source is a good way to ensure it stays something you can walk away from and something where the people attached to the money have zero leverage.

I do think that a lot of maintainers struggle with pushy and sometimes nasty people that take the fun out of what is a "labor of love."

exploiting entities have never shared substantial or equitable profits back.

If I want to make money, I sell commercial software, SaaS or PaaS.

they must compensate the creators proportional to the library's footprint in their codebase and/or its execution during daily operations

One of the more interesting uses of open source is to level the playing field. For example, there was a time when database was silly expensive. Several open source products emerged that never would have been viable commercially without the long term promise of "free" and the assurance of having source code. To have a license with a cost bomb on it would just ensure that people would use another choice.

I worked on a couple of projects with state workforce development agencies and federal agencies. I was always impressed with how much focus there was on the integrity of unemployment numbers, and especially with the emphasis on making sure methodologies ensure that data from the late 1800s can be compared against modern data.

Sunsetting Jazzband 4 months ago

Now companies selling LLM coding agents enter the scene, promising to eliminate their customers' dependence on the commons, and whatever minimal obligations they had to support it.

This is misguided. Maintenance of LLM code has a far greater cost than generating it.

They prefer a future where computer programs are purchased by the token from model providers to one where they might have to unintentionally help out a competitor.

I don't think that's even a thought. The thought is that "no one can tell me no".

data on the equivalent of “ad impressions”.

1. They can skip impressions and go right to collect affiliate fees. 2. Yes, the ad has to be labeled or disclosed... but if some agent does it and no one sees it, is it really an ad.

So much to work out.