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markus_zhang commented on Building a computer in the 90s (2019)   dfarq.homeip.net/building... · Posted by u/networked
raudette · 8 hours ago
In high school, I worked at a local PC store in Ottawa - Dantek Computers, 1994-1996. Prior to leaving for University in August 1996, I built myself a Pentium 120, with the Asus P55T2P4 motherboard mentioned in the article.

The way our store worked, every PC was built to order - we had inexpensive cases with sharp edges, we had higher end ones as well. I assembled a TON of PCs over those two years. We had a PC configuration app the owner had built in QBasic - it was very much like pcpartpicker.com , with all the parts we had available.

We played with a bunch of hardware and were familiar with it, we'd walk customers through the decisions - the impact of increasing cache, the differences in video cards. I believed it at the time, and in retrospect, still believe that it was an awesome shop - I can remember, by policy, we would sell customers printers if they really wanted one, but always recommended they buy one at the big box shop down the street, as we couldn't match their pricing. I loved that job.

markus_zhang · 7 hours ago
Since they were so honest I guess they didn’t last long /s
markus_zhang commented on Tell HN: Somebody please make a faster task management system    · Posted by u/pinkmuffinere
markus_zhang · 3 days ago
How about something in CLI? You can just “jira create”, “jira ls”, etc.
markus_zhang commented on Sequoia backs Zed   zed.dev/blog/sequoia-back... · Posted by u/vquemener
ksherlock · 3 days ago
I hate to break it to you, but emacs was a product of the MIT AI lab.(prep.ai.mit.edu anyone?).
markus_zhang · 3 days ago
That’s fine as long as they don’t force AI prompts to me.

To clarify, I use AI agents, but I absolutely hate them submitting code in my editor. Chatting is fair enough and useful, but I need to turn off the auto-generating code part.

markus_zhang commented on Sequoia backs Zed   zed.dev/blog/sequoia-back... · Posted by u/vquemener
spudlyo · 3 days ago
The problem with accepting VC money is they will eventually demand a return on their investment, which means that the forces that drive enshitification will eventually come for Zed in some form. I suspect that we'll see more and more features locked behind a paid subscription and the open core of the editor will become neglected over time.

Here I am on my free-as-in-freedom operating system, making commits with my free DVCS tool in my free programmable text editor, building it with my free language toolchain, using my free terminal emulator/multiplexer with my free UNIX shell. VC backed tools like Warp and Zed that seek to innovate in this space are of zero interest to me as a developer.

markus_zhang · 3 days ago
I might HAVE to learn EMacs (prefer over Vim) because I think eventually everything else will be tainted by mandatory AI features and/or subscriptions.
markus_zhang commented on Sequoia backs Zed   zed.dev/blog/sequoia-back... · Posted by u/vquemener
markus_zhang · 3 days ago
OK they touched Unity and now Zed. I’m sure it’s going to be good.
markus_zhang commented on CEO pay at top US companies accelerates at fastest pace in 4 years   ft.com/content/d8da9877-a... · Posted by u/petethomas
creddit · 4 days ago
> Whether what he did was right or not, it needed a lot of careful planning — not something everyone could do.

I think just about literally anyone can go up to someone on the street, shoot them while they're defenseless and then get caught within 5 days.

Also, I can help you on your moral waffling: what he did was fundamentally wrong.

markus_zhang · 4 days ago
That was a specific target though. I guess someone can figure that out given enough time, but that needs some planning.
markus_zhang commented on CEO pay at top US companies accelerates at fastest pace in 4 years   ft.com/content/d8da9877-a... · Posted by u/petethomas
jchw · 4 days ago
I foresee a future with many more Luigi's.
markus_zhang · 4 days ago
I doubt. Whether what he did was right or not, it needed a lot of careful planning — not something everyone could do. The CEOs are safe.
markus_zhang commented on The decline of high-tech manufacturing in the United States   blog.waldrn.com/p/the-dec... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico
nostrademons · 6 days ago
So here's what I don't get about the public discourse on manufacturing in the U.S:

When I talk to people who actually run factories here, they say that manufacturing in the U.S. is fine. It's just highly, highly automated. You'll have a production line that takes in plastic and chips and solder, and spits out consumer electronics at the end, and there are maybe a couple dozen employees in the whole plant whose job is to babysit the line and fix any machine that goes awry. Their description is backed up by data: manufacturing output has been flat since roughly 2000 [1], but manufacturing employment has dropped by more than 50% [2].

The public discourse about why we want to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. has been split into two main points (and you'll see it in comments here):

1) We should bring back manufacturing jobs so that we can have good, middle-class wages for the large segment of the population that's currently in low-wage service jobs and about to be displaced by AI.

2) We should bring back manufactured goods so that if we go to war with China, we can still make all the things we need to wage that war.

If it's #2, that's fair enough, and every indicator is that we can do that, it'll just take time and capital and perhaps some entrepreneurship. But it won't fix #1. Just like all other manufacturing in America today, the lines will be highly automated and largely run by themself. And that's a good thing - if we go to war, we want highly productive, distributed factories because we'll need the people to actually fight the war itself. The jobs are not coming back. If you expect someone with a high-school degree to be able to own a home today, the solution is not to put them to work in a factory ("manufacturing engineer" is a skilled job today anyway, not unlike a computer programmer), but to automate building houses and get rid of zoning/permitting constraints so that there are actually enough houses for everybody.

Is this just a case where politicians tell voters what they want to hear so they can go do what they want to do anyway? "We're going to bring back good high-paying manufacturing jobs for everyone" is a lot more palatable message than "We're going to go to war so you can die."

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP

markus_zhang · 6 days ago
That’s still fine. You gotta hire people to maintain the robots, the people to build the robots, and the people for all service companies to service all those people. Then there is infrastructure, entertainment, etc.

And on top of it you retain the knowledge to build, assemble and maintain these robots. This is alone worth the effort.

markus_zhang commented on Ask HN: Does Microsoft gain anything from the constant annoying rebranding?    · Posted by u/lr0
markus_zhang · 6 days ago
I guess at least some senior managers get some brownie points.
markus_zhang commented on Has dystopian sci-fi been wrong all along?    · Posted by u/mobileturdfctry
markus_zhang · 6 days ago
If the elites don’t care about the other people, sooner or later the other people are going to push back.

u/markus_zhang

KarmaCake day6738May 12, 2019View Original