rowanajmarshall (u/rowanajmarshall)

rowanajmarshall commented on European Investment Bank to inject €70B in European tech ioplus.nl/en/posts/europe... · Posted by u/saubeidl

ClumsyPilot · 4 months ago

That's what I am saying - look at the size of deals in UK fintech - Revolut, $577 million, Monzo $374 million, checkout.com $333 million

Uber's Series C was $361M, that's the kind of money you need to put a company on the global map.

rowanajmarshall · 4 months ago

Then you should also look at Wayve (self-driving cars, $1 billion Series C), Lighthouse (travel and rental data, $370 million Series C), Highview Power (novel energy storage, £300 million). Lots more too. I won't deny that the UK specialises in fintech, but there's a lot more going on than that.

rowanajmarshall commented on European Investment Bank to inject €70B in European tech ioplus.nl/en/posts/europe... · Posted by u/saubeidl

ClumsyPilot · 4 months ago

> The money should be returned to private hands where it belongs and those individuals should be the ones to decide how to invest their own capital

This is not a meaningful statement

‘Returning money in private hands’ does not result in more startup investment, it’s not in the culture to do this.

The money will be put into real estate, bonds, or whatever.

Look at London - it has as much wealth as NewYork or LA but all the money just piles up in real estate or Fintech.

But outside those niches? Good luck getting a farm-tech startup funded, no-one will take a punt.

So it falls to the government to try and kickstart something. As flawed as it may be.

Then they put together a competition for funding that basically feels like a school exam

rowanajmarshall · 4 months ago

> Good luck getting a farm-tech startup funded, no-one will take a punt.

There are so, so many examples of British agtech companies getting funded:

https://www.lettusgrow.com/blog/2020/1/9/press-release-uk-ag...

https://edinburgh-innovations.ed.ac.uk/news/roslin-technolog...

https://fischerfarms.co.uk/fischer-farms-secures-26m-funding...

https://tropic.bio/tropic-biosciences-raises-28-5-million-se...

rowanajmarshall commented on The Barbican arslan.io/2025/05/12/barb... · Posted by u/farslan

freyfogle · 4 months ago

I lived there for three years, rented a flat. Living in the Barbican was fantastic, livign in my flat was not fantastic. I used to joke it was a time machine to 1965. There was not only no dishwasher, there was literally no space for a dishwasher. Day one that seems funny, a few days later less so. I was spending a fortune in rent to spend 30 minutes every day handwashing my dishes. I did know people who had bought and renovated, they had amazing places. Oddly on my hall of 10 there were 10 flats of which 4 were empty. I don't mean someone just came occasionally I mean 100% empty with no furniture, with rich people just using it as an investment. Overall though was a greart experience, it's a fantasic place.

rowanajmarshall · 4 months ago

> There was not only no dishwasher, there was literally no space for a dishwasher.

This is just London, out of the 8 years I've spent here, 3 of them were spent with a dishwasher. Tbh I've got a dishwasher now and barely use it.

rowanajmarshall commented on Mistral ships Le Chat – enterprise AI assistant that can run on prem mistral.ai/news/le-chat-e... · Posted by u/_lateralus_

tootie · 4 months ago

I'm guessing it's flexible. Mistral makes small models capable of running on consumer hardware so they can probably scale up and down based on needs. And what is available from hosts.

rowanajmarshall · 4 months ago

I run a Mistral model on my phone!

rowanajmarshall commented on The coming knowledge-work supply-chain crisis worksonmymachine.substack... · Posted by u/Stwerner

thechao · 5 months ago

I see these sorts of statements from coders who, you know, aren't good programmers in the first place. Here's the secret that I that I think LLM's are uncovering: I think there's a lot of really shoddy coders out there; coders who could could/would never become good programmers and they are absolutely going to be replaced with LLMs.

I don't know how I feel about that. I suspect it's not going to be great for society. Replacing blue collar workers for robots hasn't been super duper great.

rowanajmarshall · 5 months ago

> Replacing blue collar workers for robots hasn't been super duper great.

That's just not true. Tractors, combine harvesters, dishwashers washing machines, excavators, we've repeatedly revolutionised blue-collar work, made it vastly, extraordinary more efficient.