techostritch

I've been reading a lot about Reagan recently, watched a few of his debates. Politics has always been dirty, and I wouldn't say going backwards you get like gradually more serious, but I really miss the time when our Presidents got on stage and seemed to take ideas and policy discussions seriously. In some ways I suspect the post-world war 2 era in American politics was unique, I mean just after our founding up through the Civil War, congresspeople went as far as having duel's to the death.

I feel like I need to read a lot more to really understand Reagan and his legacy, but there are in general lots of things about the vision he painted for America that were inspirational. I'm very curious why it is in that two seemingly comparable times, division following the civil rights movement and the economic troubles of the 70's compared with today, Reagan was able to run on such a positive hopeful message (It's morning in America) and today Republican's seem to be running on just the opposite.

The thing I'm getting out of this Zuckerberg letter is that we've basically learned nothing. It's a nakedly partisan letter designed to signal to Republicans that he's not taking sides. Which I guess is fine, but I'm thinking about Paul Graham's recent tweet about the next round of social networks being designed to be built in to combat trolling, and it makes me think.

This time there was valid concern about issues like the lab leak theory being censored on social media, I predict in the next crisis, social media will be useless adjacent for almost everything.

it sure shouldn't cost less to do it yourself.

This is an interesting point and something I often wonder about. I think there's a number of different reasons for it, obviously markup and the need to make a profit, but one thing I realized is that when you buy something like AWS, you're often paying for the platinum version, with redundant power, networking, etc, and not the bronze version, which a lot of people would settle for. If I setup my one single instance Grafana VM or physical server, it's going to be a lot less expensive than a solution that's both multiple layers of "platinum" and multiple layers of "markup"

Datadog probably runs on the cloud, which means you get the cloud markup and datadog's mark up both built in.

I went to Costco yesterday and bought three cases of milk and four cases of soda, and it all fit into the back of my Honda civic hatchback! Doesn’t this prove that 18 wheelers are useless once and for all.

But really, I’ve never met an engineer who said that you shouldn’t try to keep things as simple as possible as long as possible.

Hard to see how this doesn’t throw the election to Trump. Most of Kamala’s supporters left RFK when she announced and with them basically tied in the polls, it’s looking like a Trump landslide. I suspect we’ll look back and apply the old Clinton campaign adage “It’s the economy stupid”

I wonder if this election will determine if Elon keeps X. If Trump wins then the political influence is worth it, if Trump loses than it was for not, though Mark Cuban just said that Musk’s Twitter influence is greater outside the country than inside. So who knows

Shocking the industry most likely to be disrupted by AI is bearish on AI

Glad to see new people entering the space, Hopefully with Donald Trump background in business and politics he can bring some badly needed weight to legitimize crypto.

My number one requirement in calling yourself a “company for grown-ups” is that you let your employees decide what work arrangement works best for them.

I mean, I think the answers are unbiased, but I am admittedly biased.

Should gay marriage be legal? Answer Yes, gay marriage should be legal.

yes or no? In the United States, abortion should be legal. Answer Yes.

I don’t understand your question, like start a company with a scope that would normally take 500 people? Or have a company with 500 people, and try to grow only through LLM’s and not hire anyone else.

Also I don’t understand what this thought experiment is trying to get at.

There are still people alive today making good money writing COBOL. There are still professional blacksmiths alive today. I don’t always think the free market solves everything, but in this case specifically I think it will. When there’s a dearth of programmers, and a clear need for those programmers, wages will go up. And there will be people to fill those roles? particularly because I think it will continue to be a hobby for a long time.

I don’t think so. If an LLM is sufficient to write your code, then your code probably wasn’t unique enough to contribute to the shared knowledge anyways. You could make the same argument about coding frameworks,

“If everyone uses react rather than vanilla JS; won’t we lose the critical mass of minds necessary to keep momentum with innovation?”

As a hiring manager as a remote first company, it really helps fill the talent pipeline.

This article seems to be heavy on speculation and light on facts.

After cutting 75% of the workforce, X doesn’t _need_ to make as much money.

Do we really want the mainstream media determining what’s “false” what a track record they have so far. We should trust people to judge for themselves.

Whether it’s Twitter censoring the Hunter Biden Laptop story, or Politico censoring this story, the media should not be determining what to censor and what not to censor. Release the documents and let the voters decide.

If Trump’s rule in the 2010’s is an example of extreme left politics, we’re in trouble.

Wait, Bezos like Jeff Bezos?former owner of Amazon Jeff Bezos? Since when has Jeff Bezos been left wing? His political contribution history is mostly to Republicans.

X is a platform without censorship or any boosting of particular political views unlike traditional MSM and left leaning platforms like Google, Meta, YC even.

Hmmm, I haven’t seen this supported by the data, in fact Elon Musk has said that X is censoring more voices.

Well actually, the data shows that Twitter has always amplified right wing views, they’re just more honest about it now.

https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-reveals-algorithm-amplified...

Are these quotes taken out of context or total lies? The first seems a bit sketch, the second seems like it should be illegal.

I mean, I’m not personally in the market for a free speech social network, the more moderation the better, but for those who want an anything goes social network not subject to the ideological whims of the owner, with strict first amendment protections, would this work?

(I am personally sus that there are a lot of people who would actually use such a thing, but people seem to talk about it a lot)

Some people want a platform that is resistant to the ideological whims of its owner.

One of the things that I think that underlies a lot of these analysis is that the difference between liberals and conservatives is not skin deep. I think the graph he includes that show that most non-conservative media are slightly liberal leaning but conservative media is mostly strongly conservative leaning underscores this.

There are probably differences between conservatives and liberals that keep conservatives from equally opting into Twitter in the first place, and then you see the ideological differences after that.

But like, if you want to have nuanced arguments about climate change you’re probably not going to get that from a person who doesn’t believe climate change exists. In contrast, I don’t have nuanced takes on theology.

Would one solution to the free speech problem in social media is if we had state sponsored social media? The Government wouldn’t have a financial incentive to go after advertisers, and 1st amendment would actually apply.

One of the things I saw her alluding to in her interview is that a lot of those people are gravitating to Trump in sort of protest against losing the old school democrats. There’s really no representation now for socially conservative fiscally “liberal” anymore. Not that Trump seems to be either but I think the Trump mythology is.

I think fundamentally what your seeing is what happens when people feel like they have no representation.

So I watched that video and I found it really weirdly argued so I went to try and figure out who that guy is and what his past beliefs are and his latest video is him being drunk and “dickriding” (his words) the whole daily wire crew and he’s apparently obsessing over their videos and movies.

So it’s unfortunate but it’s doesn’t seem to be the moderate take he sets it out to be, which I think really gets at something about this election, which is like it’s not about the issues, it’s really about vibes, and for some people a very real desperation

But more than that I think it’s interesting that in 2016 there was this real come to Jesus moment for liberals in acknowledging that Trump really spoke to portion of the country that liberals really wanted to take credit in speaking for.

But now? I think Trump has become the establishment he disrupted so many years ago. And it’s crazy how he went from the independent guy to someone really who seems controlled by billionaires. And the sad thing is, be it age or whatever he doesn’t seem to have the messaging and enthusiasm he did back then.

Which is in a way a disservice to the people who are counting on him.

But I think people are clinging to Trump in a sense just the only icon pf conservatism you can right now. Even if in so many ways he’s not really conservative. And of course his MAGA supporters in many ways actually hate Republicans more than liberals do. This is the fundamental problem with the two party system. What are you supposed to do if you have deeply held conservative beliefs? Give them up and vote democrat? I almost feel sorry for the people voting Trump now as he seems to have given up the fight.

I’ve also been watching a bunch of Reagan debates and speeches recently and it’s sad what a turn conservative leadership has made in 40 years.

I think their ultimate goal is to essentially either eliminate or turn the type of organizations that do this type of organizing.

I think an overall perception and strategy of the right now is that many institutions in America support liberal outcomes and that in order to change that you have to attack these institutions.

So either get rid of GARM or take over GARM and change the standards of what safe media is.