gregw2 (u/gregw2) - Readit News

gregw2 commented on Nvidia isn't Enron So What is it? wheresyoured.at/nvidia-is... · Posted by u/PaulDavisThe1st

gregw2 · 11 days ago

It's not Enron.

It's Sun Microsystems in 1999.

The growth is a one time surge due to AI hype, like Y2K fears which required double hardware purchases for pre-y2k testing and the internet boom. When Y2K passed, while the internet boom continued, all those test servers (and routers and other hardware) bought pre-y2k were freed up and reused, cutting growth #s and driving up P/E ratios for Sun instantly, and with Sun serving as a proxy for the internet boom, the boom was declared a bust in Q1 of 2000. Oh and low end x86+Linux competition didn't help.

gregw2 commented on Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled? reason.com/2025/12/04/why... · Posted by u/delichon

jonfromsf · 17 days ago

I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of Stanford students are anxious or depressed. Isn't everybody, especially young kids who have spent the last decade going through the meat grinder of prepping for elite college admissions?

gregw2 · 17 days ago

This.

Many emotional problems that are highly dysfunctional can be missed or masked by raw intelligence until a certain higher level of intellectual competition or pressure is present.

Having participated in frequent academic competitions in high school in a top-5-biggest metropolitan area in the US, there was one guy in my era who pretty much won city-wide awards in any subject he touched all the time. So bright. He got into an elite college and spiraled out and dropped out for what, in hindsight I'd armchair-diagnose, were a mix of ADHD/Autistic/anxiety-oriented tendencies that collided with online gaming that hadn't caused failures in earlier environments for him.

gregw2 commented on High-income job losses are cooling housing demand jbrec.com/insights/job-gr... · Posted by u/gmays

reactordev · 21 days ago

This. It’s NIMBY politics at the local level. Go to your county/city board meetings and ask for plans.

gregw2 · 20 days ago

Agreed. And local NIMBY can get surprisingly personal and politically vicious fast.

I have a friend who argued in public forums (local newspapers+blogs) for denser housing being more walkable and sustainable (in a wealthy small neighborhood we both lived in.) "Small towns" was/is the nationwide name for the trend.

Unknown opponents dug up and published dirt on him that even his wife, friends and employer didn't know. It was quite sobering.

gregw2 commented on Is it disruption, or is it theft? chrbutler.com/disruption-... · Posted by u/delaugust

gregw2 · 25 days ago

Uber's abusive terms are interesting to me. 10+ years ago I refused to use it because it wanted access to all my contacts on my phone and wouldn't run in my browser (android).

I revisited years later and it worked well in a browser an the downloadable app didn't need so many crazy permissions

gregw2 commented on A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure sacbear.com/xfinity-wont-... · Posted by u/vedmed

LoganDark · a month ago

AI did write the article; you wrote the prompt to the AI.

gregw2 · a month ago

If his admissions are true. your statement is more misleading than his. He wrote it. AI edited it. Right?

gregw2 commented on Gemini 3 blog.google/products/gemi... · Posted by u/preek

NaomiLehman · a month ago

it absolutely does. and human employees don't call me "the architect." that's the point.

gregw2 · a month ago

I wonder if under the covers it uses your word choices to infer your Myers-Briggs personality type and you are INTJ so it calls you "The Architect"?? Crazy thought but conceivable...

gregw2 commented on Collaboration sucks newsletter.posthog.com/p/... · Posted by u/Kinrany

kristianc · a month ago

“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”

I've often noticed that this is a favourite phrase of those whose preferred motion is narrating other people's work rather than doing it themselves. Teams do go further together. But only when everyone is rowing.

gregw2 · a month ago

“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”

This apparently is an old African proverb coopted by the modern managerial class.

For those thinking about this issue, there are tech-specific related arguments similar to and contrary to the above. I heard the phrase from a Microsoft leader in early 2010s:

* "Heroism doesn't scale" (similar)

While I'm not sure it is completely true, there are respects in which it is deeply true (e.g. ops). It's a double-edged sword I think though; if you take the "Heroism doesn't scale" too seriously, you can suffocate out other key success drivers -- vision, innovation, motivation, design clarity/consistency, etc.

There's also (Fred) Brooks's Law (from Mythical Man Month):

* "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." (contrary)

I.e. there are limits to how many people "going far, going together" works for fundamental communication/coordination reasons.

P.S. There are also similar debates about optimal authority/responsibility/coordination across various military cultures, e.g. search for "military command".

gregw2 commented on Collaboration sucks newsletter.posthog.com/p/... · Posted by u/Kinrany

brendanfalk · a month ago

I think the real problem here is "decision making" as opposed to "collaboration"

I can't think of a single time where having someone else review my work or give me feedback is a meaningfully bad thing. It's an opportunity to learn. But getting feedback is different to making the final decision.

Instead, the real problem is the either 1) lack of knowing who makes the final decision or 2) requiring everyone must agree to a final decision. You will move a lot faster if you know who the final decision maker is, ideally have fewer (or only one person) making that final decision, and encourage people to make decisions quickly (most decisions are reversible anyway)

gregw2 · a month ago

I agree with your comment that getting feedback is different to making the final decision.

But I'm not sure the real problem fits solely in your two buckets.

I've been in recent situations where there is a less-technical person charged with making the "final decision" and a lot of other senior people in the room who don't all /have/ to agree. But the degree of "why not do it this way?" questioning+discussion will grow with the number of meeting participants (and/or worse, the # of meetings before a decision is made if it is not settled in one meeting and then new stakeholders arrive and have their own thrashing out to do.) And even with one final decider, you can end up a bit still with "Design By Committee" decisions when the final decider goes along with the group consensus or doesn't have a strong point of view on an issue.

gregw2 commented on Collaboration sucks newsletter.posthog.com/p/... · Posted by u/Kinrany

ssalmon74 · a month ago

Gravitational Pull" is the solution!

Instead of the "Collaboration Sucks" approach, we need to apply Gravitational Pull. For every key project, the Driver defines three essential stakeholders (e.g., Tech Lead, Business Owner, Target User) who form the "Quantum Sync Circle."

Everyone else is noise. This prevents endless discussions and focuses accountability right where it belongs.

gregw2 · a month ago

Sounds much cooler than what my management likes to call it. RACI or RASCI for every key project.

gregw2 commented on Unix v4 Tape Found discuss.systems/@ricci/11... · Posted by u/greatquux

avar · a month ago

    > This is rare enough that I'm pushing the recovery
    > of it up near the top of my project queue.

The reader is left to wonder what the software librarian at the Computer History Museum could have possibly found recently that warrants a placement ahead of Unix v4 in their project queue. A copy of Atlantian Unix from the ancient Library of Alexandria?

gregw2 · a month ago

Perhaps a prior promise to someone else?