purplezooey

My fav. so far is the IMSAI 8080 in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" (2007).

No mention of Eggs Florentine?

Loved this game as a young kid. Great to see it. Somewhere I also found a web implementation of that black and white codewheel that came with it.

Really like this idea. The archive is automatic! Do you have to organize into folders etc. or just one big list.

Let's get Rockefeller up in here

Adjacent space, but can't help but wonder why Confluent did so much better than MapR

The author says, "The operational resistance alone would be too much." True. But we need to continue reforms that clearly will improve the system. That effort seems to be stuck as we instead pause to relitigate the advances of the second half of the twentieth century. These would go a long way: mandate price transparancy, decouple insurance from employment, let Medicare negotiate prices broadly, and ban PBMs.

Part of the reason PE succeeds is their choice of things that have a large or lengthy startup cost or other supply restrictions. Most towns will support only 1 hockey arena. Or lately, with veterinarians. New supply is complex and doesn't appear overnight. If PE is to be controlled (so they don't ruin everything), we need to lessen the barriers to create more supply, like in housing. Also, perhaps it would be good to make them actually pay some taxes, if only to mitigate a fraction of the problems they cause. PE is sort of like cigarettes. They exist, and do damage to everyone.

Awkward writing in this article. "McDonald’s executives say the higher costs of restaurant essentials, such as beef and salaries, have pushed food prices up..."

Beef and... salaries? I think I found the name of my new fast food place.

Netflix joins everyone else jumping on the "rules for thee, but not for me" train.

There are some interesting points, but a few cringe things.

1) (referring to the Antifraud Company) "...they call themselves “a private-sector DOGE” -- Not exactly putting your best foot forward.

2) OpenAI paid $6.5B for Jony Ive's year old startup. That's a 'B'. Sure, stock is funny money, but it's difficult to defend the overpaying here. A lot of money seems to have been lit on fire.

Mainly categorical wildfire-related funding. It's a shell of what it was, we've been cutting it for 40 years. Most ranger stations run skeleton crews.

I like how the author threw this in as (nearly) the last sentence:

Of course, the AI talent war may end up being an expensive and misguided strategy, stoked by hype and investor over-exuberance.

Perhaps best modeled as a waveform that starts before morning coffee. Each engineer has a vector of spectral magnitudes.

Appreciated the unexpected Hofstadter sighting!

That MIT report shall now be known as the Paper that Spawned a Thousand Churnalisms.

The strange thing is, if, in 1995, one were to write an article about building a computer in 1965, it would have involved a room full of gear for e.g. an IBM System/360. The rate of change has slowed.

It seems that a lot of businesses barely function. They're often stuffed with overpaid executives while the actual business wheezes along, barely managing to get its product out the door. More attention is usually paid to reducing competition, increasing one's moat, and restricting supply, so customers have little choice, as in the aerospace industry from this article.

This was table stakes not long ago. There seems to be an increase in apps/UIs blaming the network for what is clearly poor performance on the backend, as well.

As others mentioned, self-checkout has been widespread for 30 years. They had it at most stores in the 1990s. The answer is, simply, it's cheaper for companies to hire someone at a non-living wage than it is to install and maintain these systems. Perhaps if we had some policies with teeth -- if you're going to hire a person, they must be able to afford to plausibly live and work in the area. Else, your business isn't actually a functioning business and needs reconsideration.

Strangely addicting :)

More like pickleball

I had been working on something like it when I came across this. Excellent work. Love the demo.

I have been going to IETFs on and off for 20 years. As if the past few months were not nauseating enough in the US, I never thought I would see my own country on a page like this, and described in this way, and I feel even more deeply saddened, ashamed and horrified.

I appreciated calling out the well-known job role known as: "Fly from one exotic location to another and argue over which post-physics-experiment algorithm is the most cromulent."

Every tech company maintains a select cadre of hot-air specialists whose chief responsibility is to keep the catered lunch warm with an endless cycle of self-important discourse.

A vital role, truly indispensable.

"Over the past year or so, I've reluctantly come to the conclusion I need to leave Elm and migrate to some other MUA like PINE or mutt..."

This is like a misguided, unhinged sermon from the Victorian era with a few references to Chipotle added.

It seems that the brief period where demand vastly outstripped the supply of workers in many sectors (2021-2023) really terrified the leadership of many companies. Workers gaining a sliver of leverage is clearly something they are working to quickly remedy. And for unionized jobs, the current administration just paralyzed the NLRB so the tide is turning back to the status quo or worse.

"Demolition Crew"? That's a very kind euphemism for a collection of sycophant clowns that have no experience in government. Indeed I could not find a single one that had any experience.

Well, Vonnegut was right. It's just a dog's breakfast.