The last time I used it in anger to release commercial software was round about the year 2020, at which point the dev environment for that particular piece of software that customers were still paying annual license fees on was a VM machine. The source code repo it linked to had been unknowingly destroyed years earlier, so the VM image was copied around as needed. One had to find the very latest version of that image, because otherwise any changes one made would of course exclude some other recent changes and customers would receive a Frankenversion.
Starting the VM would reveal a desktop with VC++6 already open, and enough supporting evidence to show how to build the software. Make your changes, build, carefully extract the binary to send to the users, freeze the VM again.
I expect it's still there, still being brought back every year for "one last update."
To what degree do they really invest it? A lot of rich people just buy shares (other than at an IPO) and just move money around each other's pockets rather than investing in something wealth creating, or just swap already-existing overpriced properties around each other.
> move money around each other's pockets rather than investing in something wealth creating
So your claim is that wealthy people aren't interested in generating more wealth for themselves? What exactly is it you are claiming? Sounds like something a populist youtuber would say.
That requires explanation of a mechanism that would generate wealth for yourself (and your selected friends) and no one else. Capturing 100% of the value is all but impossible.
Also you didn't address what he said, possibly because it's complete nonsense?
> A lot of rich people just buy shares (other than at an IPO) and just move money around each other's pockets rather than investing in something wealth creating, or just swap already-existing overpriced properties around each other.
That requires explanation of a mechanism that would generate wealth for yourself
Acquire it from other people. That's how I do it; my day job pays me less money than me just swapping stocks around. The companies whose stock I buy and sell have never seen a penny from me; never received from me a single penny of investment in their business. I harvest wealth without having ever invested in any company and my actions create no new wealth; I harvest wealth I did not create.
> That requires explanation of a mechanism that would generate wealth for yourself (and your selected friends) and no one else
I mean, there are a bunch of direct mechanisms for that, from the legal (preferred stock classes), through the grey (letting your buddies invest pre-IPO), to the less-legal (insider trading)
Sitting on a bunch of real estate in a desirable location like NYC isn't a bad mechanism either.
Yeah, I see language like this a lot, but we don't live in an idealized microeconomic market with perfect information flow and competition levels.
Some companies are in highly competitive spaces while others have found a quiet, profitable niche.
And companies do have to compete for talent. If you want A-level players on your team, you're going to have to pay them more and/or provide benefits that surpass the competition.
There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of talented engineers that just got laid off from BigTech. Meanwhile it’s never been easier to found your own company, and if you label it as “AI for X” it’s easy to raise too.
From what I see in the market, it looks obviously true.
I’m sure there are lots of zombies too, they will die quickly IMO. Bad time to be a zombie, possibly the worst time ever.
I have a fairly broad portfolio of stocks, ranging from blue chips to outright bets inspired by the wallstreetbets crowd.
I have divested entirely of anything that relies on the spending power of the British consumer; retail, house builders, all of it. British people just don't have discretionary money to spend, and it's getting worse rather than better. Thus far, this particular stock market bet has gone well for me (although obviously it's a sign of bad times for the UK consumer). This is not the same as British companies; those with large overseas markets are still going. My Games Workshop shares have been absolute champs, for example.
I cannot speak for other countries, but the UK is one I can see with my own eyes. The people are just ending up with ever less discretionary spending power, where discretionary now appears to be gradually edging towards including "something to live inside" and "food."
You already have the answer, contained in your own question; because I'm not so sure. Puts are a dangerous game. I'm sure enough that the UK consumer is getting poorer to divest of shares; not sure enough (especially on timescales) to outright gamble on it. A lot of people have been 100% right that a company is doomed and then gone on to lose a whole lot of money on puts.
So far it's worked out very well. I moved the money into space and green energy.
Books might have once been seen as luxuries, and the idea of a lending library allowed those in poverty to get a taste of wealth, so to speak... but they get dumped into landfills by the truckload today and can be had for pennies (or fractions of pennies, actually).
Well those ones might be, but the ones I want sure aren't. I have to moderate my book-purchasing to avoid over-spending. The library is pretty helpful (reservation fees are more than I'd like, but a lot less than buying); some years I draw a couple of hundred books. But a lot of them I end up buying. Got one in my hand that was just delivered minutes ago (the new partial biography of Jobs about his years outside Apple).
I guess where this train of thought is going is to point out that people like me do exist. I do spent a lot on books. I borrow a lot from the library. Your assertions come across very strongly suggesting that people like me are a rounding error. But I assure you, when I'm in the bookstore I'm definitely not the only person there. Between us we appear to be propping up entire publishing industries. Almost 80% of the sales are physical rather than digital (1); if we weren't here there would be nothing for you to pirate!
> I have to moderate my book-purchasing to avoid over-spending.
I sympathize, but do it smarter. I downloaded 500 or so last week, and it was a slow week. Mostly I mine Hacker News and /pol/ (it's actually only half as bad as reddit once you ignore Mein Kampf) for recommendations... but ran a little short on those. Coming up with new titles to procure is tough.
>I guess where this train of thought is going is to point out that people like me do exist.
I know! There are half-dozens of you out there! And I know I struck a nerve, because HN hates "my anecdote counters your intended generalization" except when you have to examine hard truths about yourselves.
>very strongly suggesting that people like me are a rounding error.
A rounding error on a rounding error.
>Almost 80% of the sales are physical rather than digital
Physical sales are dead. If you listen to anyone who writes and has written for the last 20 years or more, you'll hear all sorts of heartache stories about what sales are like now compared to back before it all fell apart. It's dead. And it's never coming back. Your grandchildren, if you have any, won't even know how to open a book.
The majority of my activity today as a professional software engineer with two decades' of experience; trying to get Team Sales to express what they want. It's so hard. I see no way an LLM can do this. I could possibly be replaced with someone who spent their time begging Team Sales to type what they want into an LLM.
Electricity prices in the UK are painful, and galling when set by the price of gas
It's painful indeed. Today, I watched the price go negative as wind and solar reduced the gas contribution to about 3% of the mix. As that gas mix rose to 5%, the price turned around and became painfully expensive again.
Would the company not conduct interviews and pick out whoever seems like the best candidates?
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