michaelscott (u/michaelscott)

michaelscott commented on 'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley' tilburguniversity.edu/mag... · Posted by u/taubek

aleph_minus_one · 2 months ago

> Europe is incredibly risk averse and is more interested in capital preservation than growth

There exist quite a lot of people in European countries who are risk-affine, but these are not necessarily good at handling the insane amount of red tape.

Believe me: in Germany, there exist quite a lot of people who would (assuming they could, and this criminal act will never be solved) immediately love to kill the politicians who made these red tape laws, and the bureacrats that enforce them.

michaelscott · 2 months ago

I can believe this. I've spoken to many European entrepreneurial types that are really struggling with the red tape handcuffs in their countries, and those are people who actually have EU citizenship and for whom the red tape is as lightweight as possible. Being a non-EU in EU is a whole other ball game.

It's sad, because Europe really has a lot going for it. It also doesn't HAVE to go the US/China route of course, but if it does it will need to make some very serious changes that go beyond just preaching about doing it from the political pulpit

michaelscott commented on 'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley' tilburguniversity.edu/mag... · Posted by u/taubek

alibarber · 2 months ago

With all due respect, there's not a huge shortage of programmers in Europe.

What is needed is capital, world leading expertise (yes, top of the field - the people who can command the famous $100M sign on bonuses we hear about), and more risk appetite. If you were, say, an investor ready to fund and grow companies with ready captial, I think your options would be more open.

michaelscott · 2 months ago

There is plenty of capital (eye watering amounts in most family offices in fact) and world leading expertise in many fields across Europe. The only factor here is more risk appetite and a culture for that risk in an effort to push industry forward. Europe is incredibly risk averse and is more interested in capital preservation than growth

michaelscott commented on 'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley' tilburguniversity.edu/mag... · Posted by u/taubek

spacebeer · 2 months ago

So not just EU, but any other region in the world, like Africa, South America, Central Asia should just give up and not try to make a business that could disrupt existing giants?

michaelscott · 2 months ago

They can, but OP's point is that a ban on US tech on its own will do nothing to produce a local Silicon Valley. It needs to go hand in hand with a massive push toward local entrepreneurial support, especially in places like Europe where the government exercises more control through legislation

michaelscott commented on 'Europe must ban American Big Tech and create a European Silicon Valley' tilburguniversity.edu/mag... · Posted by u/taubek

john01dav · 2 months ago

As part of making visas easier for educated people, make them less restrictive. I have looked into moving to various European countries with my programming skills, but unless I'm already at the top of my field I'm tied to a job for years and prohibited from starting my own business. To me, this isn't worth it. Also, I don't see a strong reason for that restriction -- startups are exactly what they need.

michaelscott · 2 months ago

I've been in exactly this position and it's honestly insane, assuming Europe is actually interested in promoting startup growth. It's simply not set up from a legislative position to be able to compete with the US or China

michaelscott commented on Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash techcrunch.com/2025/06/18... · Posted by u/myth_drannon

pavlov · 2 months ago

Also, Wix bought this guy with an impressive track record. There might be an earn-out that's not being discussed.

The article mentions that $25M is a retention bonus for those eight employees. (About $3M each — a nice bonus by any standard, but not insane for SV + AI. Presumably that's Wix stock, not cash.)

So the purchase price might be made up of components something like this:

- $30M for the client list

- $25M retention bonus to employees, with standard RSU vesting

- $25M for the founder, with earn-out goals over four years

michaelscott · 2 months ago

Article claims all cash but sounds like probably with vesting for retention

michaelscott commented on Lock-Free Rust: How to Build a Rollercoaster While It's on Fire yeet.cx/blog/lock-free-ru... · Posted by u/r3tr0

gpderetta · 3 months ago

The claim that the lock free array is faster then the locked variant is suspicious. The lock free array is performing a CAS for every operation, this is going to dominate[1]. A plain mutex would do two CAS (or just one if it is a spin lock), so the order of magnitude difference is not explainable by the lock free property.

Of course if the mutex array is doing a linear scan to find the insertion point that would explain the difference but: a) I can't see the code for the alternative and b) there is no reason why the mutex variant can't use a free list.

Remember:

- Lock free doesn't automatically means faster (still it has other properties that might be desirable even if slower)

- Never trust a benchmark you didn't falsify yourself.

[1] when uncontended; when contended cache coherence cost will dominate over everything else, lock-free or not.

michaelscott · 3 months ago

For applications doing extremely high rates of inserts and reads, lock free is definitely superior. In extreme latency sensitive applications like trading platforms (events processing sub 100ms) it's a requirement; locked structures cause bottlenecks at high throughput

michaelscott commented on Widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal bbc.com/news/live/c9wpq8x... · Posted by u/lleims

lpapez · 4 months ago

Cash is not really relevant to this particular discussion.

When the power is out one cannot pay with cash either - because the cash register is offline.

michaelscott · 4 months ago

Store owners just make out paper receipts in this case, like businesses used to do back in the day

michaelscott commented on New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable archaeologymag.com/2025/0... · Posted by u/nickcotter

codr7 · 4 months ago

Greed is very much a product of the system we live in, just look at the numb-wits who run this world.

Among native peoples, sharing seems to be the default.

michaelscott · 4 months ago

In some isolated and probably anomalous societies sure, but greed-fueled expansion and growth is a hallmark of humanity across every single continent and at every stratum of civilizational development stretching back 10,000s of years

michaelscott commented on Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow independent.co.uk/busines... · Posted by u/hjjkjhkj

nabaraz · 6 months ago

S&P 500 is barely down (~9% as of this post) after returning 23% and 24% respectively in 2023 and 2024. I wouldn't call it ugly, as someone who lived through recession.

michaelscott · 6 months ago

Agreed, this seemed inevitable. And as a bull, I don't even think we're close to the bottom for the year

michaelscott commented on Wall Street sell-off turns 'ugly' as US recession fears grow independent.co.uk/busines... · Posted by u/hjjkjhkj

fn-mote · 6 months ago

> [...] buying low now would be nice.

Just to be clear, the point of the linked article is that you cannot know that now is the LOW and not the new high.

michaelscott · 6 months ago

That's the premise yeah, but it makes sense to buy more on red days