https://notado.app/feeds/jado/capitalismThoughts on how capitalism intersects with work, art, technology, urban planning, life and love from around the internethttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949755advertisingcapitalismsource:hnMon, 9 Feb 2026 20:32:02 +0000mbb70https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858684
The fact that sudo is a critical security pillar for trillions of dollars of global infrastructure but this guy gets bupkis for it screams volumes about the current state of technology.

We must do better, or it’ll be closed systems (OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle) all the way down as maintainers age out, go bankrupt, or die without succession plans in place.]]>capitalismopen-sourcesource:hnMon, 2 Feb 2026 21:45:44 +0000stego-techhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46860734
It's disgusting that maintainers of critical projects have to go through the humiliation of begging for money, and absurd to suggest they all hang out Kofi or PAtreon banners. Realistically nobody is going to go through their bash history working out what utilities they use in order of frequency and allocating funds to the maintainers proportionally. I'm baffled that some entity like the Linux Software Foundation isn't administering this already.]]>capitalismopen-sourcesource:hnMon, 2 Feb 2026 21:45:19 +0000anigbrowlhttps://www.reddit.com/r/TankieTheDeprogram/comments/1qoj0x2/comment/o21o5fx/


But for me, it's impossible not to be an accelerationist; I'm simply tired.

In Spanish, there's a very popular meme where one guy tells his friend that World War III has already started, and the other replies, "So I won't have to go to work tomorrow?"



For many people, the end of the world is an opportunity to rest.

I feel that these things demonstrate how there's a cultural nihilism in society that's a product of capitalism.]]>capitalismTue, 27 Jan 2026 18:00:41 +0000Reio123calibre://search/_?q=title:Jumpnauts: A Novel author:Hao JingfangcapitalismMon, 1 Dec 2025 06:15:50 +0000Hao Jingfanghttps://bsky.app/profile/themountaingoats.bsky.social/post/3m65we7pods2lcapitalismgamesrobloxFri, 21 Nov 2025 20:46:34 +0000themountaingoats.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/davidgerard.co.uk/post/3m2tn7wose22p
There are no ethical use cases for LLMs at this point in time. Maybe when the bubble has popped thoroughly. Not before.]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismdevelopmentsoftwareworkFri, 21 Nov 2025 13:33:08 +0000davidgerard.co.ukhttps://www.reddit.com/r/TankieTheDeprogram/comments/1p28lj9/comment/npvi4pp/capitalismliberalismusaThu, 20 Nov 2025 18:51:17 +0000EveryProfession5441https://mas.to/@gabrielesvelto/115575628315926615
We've known how to build completely reliable computer systems for decades. When things fall apart, it's not because we don't know how to do it, it's because cutting corners has become the norm.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwareworkWed, 19 Nov 2025 14:30:57 +0000gabrielesveltohttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htmcapitalismtheoryMon, 17 Nov 2025 21:31:39 +0000https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htmcapitalismtheoryMon, 17 Nov 2025 21:31:33 +0000https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/capitalismibmww2Mon, 17 Nov 2025 21:29:50 +0000https://blog.ctms.me/posts/2025-11-14-being-poor-or-being-broke/capitalismpovertyFri, 14 Nov 2025 18:23:33 +0000https://blog.ctms.me/posts/2025-11-14-being-poor-or-being-broke/capitalismpovertyFri, 14 Nov 2025 18:22:16 +0000https://www.reddit.com/r/TankieTheDeprogram/comments/1owvkq2/comment/nosvxm0/
Regardless of the industry, workers are workers; they are a part of the proletariat and as such the nature of their work is irrelevant. We support all workers.

Under capitalism the majority of the working population are not employed in the jobs they desire but the ones that they are able to obtain based on material conditions, education, and most importantly class. Many are forced by these conditions to engage in work they do not seek to engage in, and the case you have provided is no exception to this.

In essence, support the workers, not the industry.

However, in a socialist society, we are categorically against such work. A fundamental element of socialist society is the equality of the sexes and genders. The case of this industry is based upon the objectification of the human, most often women, and the reduction of them into commodities. Unlike in other industries, where the worker sells their labor power, here it is not only labor power that is sold but the human themself. In a socialist society this is intolerable.

Furthermore, in a socialist society there will be no demand for the services provided in the industry among good, upstanding, honest citizens. The socialist family is built on mutual respect, equality, and love, and there is no place in such a society for this to be replaced by the exchange of one’s body for money.]]>capitalismpornographyprostitutionsocialismFri, 14 Nov 2025 13:39:27 +0000Thin_Airline7678https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45891580 Many in the FFmpeg community argue, with reason, that it is unreasonable for a trillion-dollar corporation like Google, which heavily relies on FFmpeg in its products, to shift the workload of fixing vulnerabilities to unpaid volunteers.

That's capitalism, they need to quit their whining or move to North Korea. /s The whole point is to maximize value to the shareholders, and the more work they can shove onto unpaid volunteers, the move money they can shove into stock buybacks or dividends.

The system is broken. IMHO, there outta be a law mandating reasonable payments from multi-billion dollar companies to open source software maintainers.]]>capitalismlicensingopen-sourcesource:hnWed, 12 Nov 2025 06:29:46 +0000palmoteahttps://midwest.social/comment/21131181
As a convenient side effect: If you use AI to spam people with bug reports, you’re basically DDoSing them… unless they then decide to use AI to help triage the avalanche. And wouldn’t you know it, Google just happens to sell AI to help you solve this problem they made for you!

“Nice FOSS project you got there. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”

And also also: If FOSS in general turns into a ghost town… where are you gonna turn to get that boilerplate code you need to do a common task? That’s right, AI baby! All roads lead to boiling the Great Lakes so Nvidia can pay itself back.]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismdevelopmentsoftwareWed, 12 Nov 2025 06:21:38 +0000kibiz0rhttps://bsky.app/profile/r.v.cx/post/3m5fn6yc65s2fcapitalismtechWed, 12 Nov 2025 02:52:20 +0000r.v.cxhttps://infosec.exchange/@masek/115507451151625748
orphean task: when you almost succeed, but lose everything the moment you turn around to check your progress.

daedalean task: when you’re forced to design something brilliant and functional… that you yourself will inevitably become trapped inside.

medusan task: when your project becomes so horrifying that everyone involved freezes in place rather than deal with it.

tantaline task: when success is right there, but bureaucracy or budget cuts keep snatching it away at the last moment, forever.

pandoran task: when fixing one small issue unleashes a thousand new ones, but hey — at least there’s still hope somewhere in the ticket backlog.

odyssean task: when the assignment technically has an end, but it’s buried under so many side quests that you forget what the original goal was.

narcissian task: when the entire effort is about maintaining appearances rather than achieving anything of substance.

promethean task: when you give people a powerful new tool that could transform their work — and are punished eternally for doing so.

orestian task: when the mess you’re cleaning up is the direct result of the last cleanup you performed.

thesean task: when the only way to finish is to disassemble everything piece by piece — until you’re no longer sure if what’s left is the same project you started.

achillean task: when your work is flawless except for that one fatal oversight that will, inevitably, destroy you.

penelopean task: when you diligently undo by night what you accomplish by day, just to keep the stakeholders pacified.

midasean task: when everything you touch turns into paperwork, compliance documents, or gold-plated nonsense nobody actually needs.

gordian task: not intended to be actually done, but violence is the answer.]]>developmentsoftwareworkSat, 8 Nov 2025 04:32:02 +0000masekcalibre://search/_?q=title:Before Your Memory Fades author:Toshikazu KawaguchiHowever, the term is frequently used in Japan when talking about negative psychological states of elite athletes as an aftermath of major events. Such athletes experience a void-like emptiness in the face of achieving their lifetime’s greatest goal, unable to identify the next great challenge.]]>depressionmental-healthworkSat, 8 Nov 2025 04:28:27 +0000Toshikazu Kawaguchicalibre://search/_?q=title:Before Your Memory Fades author:Toshikazu Kawaguchiburnoutdepressionmental-healthworkSat, 8 Nov 2025 04:28:27 +0000Toshikazu Kawaguchihttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45835507 how few things would have to get flipped on to have roughly the same thing in the united states?

I'd argue it's already been flipped on. Our system just works a little bit differently. Nothing is strictly prohibited via some grand theatrical firewall. Things that are "undesirable" simply meet an information theoretical death sooner than they otherwise should. We've got mountains of tools like DMCA that can precision strike anything naughty while still preserving an illusion of freedom.

Data hoarders are the American version of climbing over the GFW. The strategy of relying on entropy to kill off bad narratives seems to be quite effective. Social media platforms, cloud storage, et. al., are dramatically accelerating this pressure.]]>capitalismsource:hnusaThu, 6 Nov 2025 15:44:13 +0000bob1029https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45831033artificial-intelligencecapitalismsource:hnworkThu, 6 Nov 2025 03:32:08 +0000kaveh_hhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827614
It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries.

Only legal when billionaires do it.]]>capitalismlibrariesliteraturesource:hnThu, 6 Nov 2025 02:15:30 +0000nekusarhttps://bsky.app/profile/tante.cc/post/3m4bzlpxpk224capitalismdevelopmentsoftwaretechWed, 29 Oct 2025 01:48:28 +0000tante.cchttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45731884
I wish workers voted for their managers and did so periodically, managers at the end of their term would return to their previous position if any. In fact, an expectation of every position being temporary could lead to exactly what you are describing.

But only if pay cuts hit everyone at the company equally or based on their merit, not the top layer deciding the bottom layer gets paid less, while giving themselves bonuses for saving the company money.]]>capitalismsource:hnworkTue, 28 Oct 2025 12:40:16 +0000martin-thttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45731811
All the while people who own it don't have to perform any kind of work and keep getting paid in perpetuity as long as the company exists, even if the amount of time they spent is less than one millionth of the total man-days spent building it.

And they can use that money to buy more properties which generate them more passive income, getting ahead further and further.]]>capitalismsource:hnworkTue, 28 Oct 2025 12:29:13 +0000martin-thttps://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/115446932507769745capitalismMon, 27 Oct 2025 18:21:42 +0000tantehttps://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/1982556821861904451childrenlifeworkMon, 27 Oct 2025 03:09:52 +0000mitchellhhttps://mastodon.social/@tofugolem/115425441217001294capitalismThu, 23 Oct 2025 20:51:17 +0000tofugolemcalibre://search/_?q=title:Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: The Heart-Warming Korean Sensation author:Hwang Bo-ReumcapitalismliteracyreadingWed, 22 Oct 2025 15:03:16 +0000Hwang Bo-Reumcalibre://search/_?q=title:Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: The Heart-Warming Korean Sensation author:Hwang Bo-ReumcapitalismworkWed, 22 Oct 2025 14:54:31 +0000Hwang Bo-Reumcalibre://search/_?q=title:Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: The Heart-Warming Korean Sensation author:Hwang Bo-Reummental-healthworkWed, 22 Oct 2025 14:52:19 +0000Hwang Bo-Reumcalibre://search/_?q=title:Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: The Heart-Warming Korean Sensation author:Hwang Bo-ReumcapitalismmarketingworkWed, 22 Oct 2025 14:20:51 +0000Hwang Bo-Reumcalibre://search/_?q=title:Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: The Heart-Warming Korean Sensation author:Hwang Bo-ReumhappinessworkWed, 22 Oct 2025 01:36:11 +0000Hwang Bo-Reumcalibre://search/_?q=title:Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop: The Heart-Warming Korean Sensation author:Hwang Bo-ReumcapitalismdevelopmentsoftwareworkWed, 22 Oct 2025 01:35:04 +0000Hwang Bo-Reumhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45619225
Alternative take: "EVs now easy to afford for the 80% of Americans who don't have $50-90k to spend on an EV!"

This year I bought a 2022 EV with 16k miles. A luxury brand. The sticker price when new was $79,000. I paid $35k. It was an off-lease vehicle so if anyone took a bath, it was the bank. I would never in a million years spend 80 grand on a car but now I have a great EV.

Battery life is not a huge concern. Any more than timing belts/chains, transmissions, etc. can be dauntingly costly repairs for cars with 150k miles or more.

I also have a gas car which I love (spouse drives the electric for a much greater commute) so I'm no EV absolutist. But this whole premise is stupid. EV adoption has had 2 main blockers: 1. only rich people had justification to buy them until recently, and 2. Charging space for people who don't have their own private garage.

Now #1 is no longer a factor. This is a GOOD thing.]]>capitalismcarssource:hnSat, 18 Oct 2025 11:57:18 +0000xp84https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2025/10/08/the-illegible-nature-of-software-development-talent/
For both hiring and promotion, decision-makers have a legibility problem. This problem will inevitability lead to a focus on details that are easier to observe directly precisely because they are easier to observe directly. This is how fields like graphology and phrenology come about. But just because we can directly observe someone’s handwriting or the shapes of the bumps on their head doesn’t mean that those are effective techniques for learning something about that person’s personality.]]>developmentsoftwareworkSat, 11 Oct 2025 15:57:11 +0000https://toot.cat/@zkat/115129958258018665
We’re doing this to ourselves too, you know.]]>capitalismdevelopmentlicensingsoftwareSun, 28 Sep 2025 15:29:13 +0000zkathttps://infosec.exchange/@munin/115255243923655500
Hollow Knight gave the members of Team Cherry generational-wealth levels of resources. They had no need to release another game in order to keep food on the table - they did so because they chose to, and they took their time around doing it, and by and large people are extraordinarily happy with the results.

The whole concept that people "need" to be threatened with starvation and homelessness to "keep them motivated" - something I've seen seriously argued many times in the past - is a traumatic narrative that the actual evidence (look at every single study on unconditional basic income!) counters.]]>capitalismdevelopmentgamessoftwareWed, 24 Sep 2025 16:21:20 +0000muninhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45148648 commonly are subject to rug pulls

This open source purism is toxic. Projects have to be sustainable.

Hyperscalers have hoovered up the entire Internet and own the entire mobile device category. We're over here bickering about small developers writing source available / OSS-with-CLA.

If the community cares so damned much, they can take the last open version and maintain it themselves.

Please take all of this negative energy and fight for a breakup of big tech instead.]]>capitalismopen-sourcesource:hnSat, 6 Sep 2025 13:08:11 +0000echelonhttps://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/114619213009829634artificial-intelligencecapitalismTue, 3 Jun 2025 21:06:40 +0000Daojoanhttps://bsky.app/profile/r.v.cx/post/3lprbfz6cu22b
The four-day school week is driven ENTIRELY by teachers wanting shorter weeks. It’s a (arguably short-sighted) labor demand.]]>educationworkThu, 22 May 2025 14:15:44 +0000r.v.cxhttps://lobste.rs/s/my2zbb/stack_overflow_is_almost_dead#c_pkjaz1
It’s just another enshittification story, isn’t it? StackExchange.com was a product in search of a business model, driven by volunteer labor incentivized by egoboo and cynical manipulation of the very human desire to help others. Like so many others, the business got hooked on cheap VC money. At that point, the decision to prioritize optics for potential investors over everything else (and in particular, the needs of the user base) was actually *rational*, and their fate was sealed.

If we ever collectively rebuild a thing like that, we should take care not to repeat the same mistakes. I think the best thing we could do with such a gamified question-answering paradigm is break it into a thousand little unmonetizable pieces and scatter it to the wind.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:lobstersstack-overflowFri, 16 May 2025 18:57:23 +0000minimaxhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44006650
But also, the culture of Stack Overflow has changed significantly over the years. It used to be a place where anyone could ask a question and get help with a problem ... and it was amazing.

Today, you're far more likely to have your question downvoted, flagged as a duplicate (of an unrelated question), or attacked in the comments by overzealous responders (and once that happens, good luck on actually getting help). Your odds of actually getting help on the site are only a fraction of what they once were.

And I'm not just saying this as some SO newbie: I've been using the site since beta! As someone who has used it that long, the change in quality is undeniable.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsocial-mediasoftwaresource:hnstack-overflowFri, 16 May 2025 18:57:04 +0000hungryhobbithttps://old.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1km9jml/ways_to_get_a_second_income_as_dev/msa9b3e/capitalismdevelopmentsoftwareworkWed, 14 May 2025 21:13:57 +0000oupablohttps://twitter.com/abby4thepeople/status/1920254176065392650?s=12capitalismeducationThu, 8 May 2025 16:27:34 +0000abby4thepeoplehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43890764
The AI conversation tends to split folks along similar “passionate engineer craftsman” vs. “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” lines.

[1]: https://www.history.com/articles/industrial-revolution-luddites-workers]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnMon, 5 May 2025 18:22:52 +0000pixelreadyhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857864
I have never been to a politician's dinner. I have never changed a law. If I were fired, which can be done at any time for no reason, I would have no source of income. Money is the weakest form of power, and a well-paid job is the weakest form of money.]]>capitalismsocialismsource:hnusaworkThu, 1 May 2025 14:25:33 +0000freeone3000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857771
Plus, at the risk of too much head-shrinking, I've never gotten the impression that tech workers liked each other very much. There's a lot of disdain in the industry, for the guy who uses that language or framework or operating system that I think sucks. You don't see that so much with, say, truckers. There may be some good-natured rivalry based on truck brands or long-haul versus short-haul, but not the real disdain you see in tech.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsocialismsoftwaresource:hnThu, 1 May 2025 14:24:15 +0000aaronbaugherhttps://www.anildash.com//2025/04/19/ai-first-is-the-new-return-to-office/capitalismdevelopmentsoftwareworkWed, 30 Apr 2025 15:48:58 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/#are-more-equal-than-others
In other words, the workers in re-shored factories and tech workers need the same thing. They are class allies – and tech bosses are their class enemies. This is class war.]]>socialismunionizationworkMon, 28 Apr 2025 19:24:54 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/#are-more-equal-than-otherssocialismunionizationworkMon, 28 Apr 2025 19:24:37 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/#are-more-equal-than-othersartificial-intelligencecapitalismworkMon, 28 Apr 2025 19:23:34 +0000https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1k80cdx/comment/mp2givr/
Most programming jobs don't give us a chance to really practice our craft, and at heart that's what we really want to do.]]>developmentsoftwareworkSat, 26 Apr 2025 05:01:42 +0000delenochttps://bsky.app/profile/rynnstar.bsky.social/post/3lmuxkzwed22qcapitalismTue, 15 Apr 2025 20:59:56 +0000rynnstar.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/hmsnofun.bsky.social/post/3lmr6sm5k4k2bartartificial-intelligencecapitalismworkMon, 14 Apr 2025 23:30:35 +0000hmsnofun.bsky.socialhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43678606
I think there's some stigma with confronting the fact that relationships are just ephemeral. We are social creatures in the sense that we can cooperate with each other on a task laid in front of us, but once that task is done, we mostly tend to drift apart onto the next task with another group of people. And that's okay. We're only weakly social with everyone except our direct family and significant others. The quality of a relationship is in no way measured by how long it endured.]]>friendshipsmental-healthrelationshipssource:hnworkMon, 14 Apr 2025 16:37:23 +0000roncesvalleshttps://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/114330971630947008
The ability to make useful things, in material reality, on a mass scale, is the only determining factor in economic power.

There is no such thing as a “service and info based economy.”]]>capitalismchinausaSun, 13 Apr 2025 13:51:01 +0000siderealhttps://mastodon.social/@bagder/114279646616583486
This is not my first rodeo. This is my full-time gig since many years back. I know for a fact that countless (I would even say most) companies can arrange payments pretty quick when it is in their interest.

Apart for the rare unicorn bureaucratic nightmares, the rest is just lame excuses. They're just leaches.]]>capitalismlicensingopen-sourceFri, 4 Apr 2025 14:33:31 +0000bagderhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43568326
It's a pretty hopeful, optimistic view of the future in a time of high uncertainty, but also represents a positive argument: it's worth doing these things because they are interesting, weird, and fun, and because they represent a continuity with past and future people we will never meet.

Plus, you can already buy a ticket to the finale, so your distant descendants can go see it :)]]>artcapitalismsource:hnThu, 3 Apr 2025 16:30:32 +0000_petroniushttps://lobste.rs/s/l7any5/ai_ambivalence#c_e8twc3
Take heart: as many of the *loudest* developers (but far from all developers) choose to let their programming skills atrophy and submerge in mediocrity by using LLMs to automatically generate an endless stream of technical debt, knowing what the hell you’re actually doing is more valuable than ever.]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismsource:lobstersThu, 3 Apr 2025 02:11:36 +0000Internet_Janitorhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43563216
My grandpa once said something that seemed ridiculous but makes a lot of sense: that every workplace should have a “heavy” who steals a new worker’s lunch on the first day, just to see if he asserts himself. Why? Not to haze or bully but to filter out the non-fighters so that when management wants to impose quotas or tracking, they remember that they’d be enforcing this on a whole team of fighters… and suddenly they realize that squeezing the workers isn’t worth it.

The reason 1950s workplaces were more humane is that any boss who tried to impose this shit on workers would have first been laughed at, and then if he tried to actually enforce it by firing people, it would’ve been a 6:00 in the parking lot kinda thing.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnworkThu, 3 Apr 2025 01:31:03 +0000zusammenhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43562875 In the last years you often have some manager where you basically have to justify every thing you do and always a huge pile of work that never gets smaller. So you just hurry through your tasks.

This has been my exact experience. Absolutely everything is tracked as a work item with estimates. Anything you think should be done needs to be justified and tracked the same way. If anything ever takes longer than the estimate that was invariably just pulled out of someones ass (because it's impossible to accurately estimate development unless you're already ~75% of the way through doing it, and even then it's a crapshoot) you need to justify that in a morning standup too.

The end result of all of this is every project getting bogged down by being stuck on the first version of whatever architecture was thought up right at the beginning and there being piles of tech debt that never gets fixed because nobody who actually understands what needs to be done has the political capital to get past the aforementioned justification filter.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnworkThu, 3 Apr 2025 01:28:44 +0000p1neconehttps://old.reddit.com/r/socialistprogrammers/comments/tamc7n/mit_license/i04e1f2/
Frankly the Free Software Foundation biased their coding model towards big organizations with lots of money, encouraging individual peons to provide "services" and become part of the big corporate problem. It's not a model that's friendly to the small developer, i.e. an indie game developer. On what basis do people pay me for anything? I just provide "services" and no actual game? I'm 1 guy, not a corporate service company making buckets of service contracts.

I don't know if the FSF *intended* this to be how it works, that big outfits with money have all the control, but that's how it worked out.]]>capitalismlicensingThu, 3 Apr 2025 00:50:18 +0000bvaneveryhttps://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/114236439522828744capitalismliberalismFri, 28 Mar 2025 03:46:17 +0000Daojoanhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htmcapitalismtheoryThu, 27 Mar 2025 02:58:43 +0000https://reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1jjcvem/chinas_electric_carmaker_byd_sales_beat_elon/mjp9oop/
This year it is obvious that Tesla will never regain the EV crown and now we are wondering if Tesla can even survive.

This goes beyond Musk's bizarre behavior. China's DeepSeek released as free to download and use software rather obviously reduces the potential profitability of AI by several orders of magnitude. Instead of OpenAI's vision of unicorn like $20K/month PhD software agents I expect to see $0.99 agents on the app store 'shelves'. Maybe Microsoft will be able to charge $25-30/month for Microsoft 365 Business Premium+ AI but that should be the limit.

FSD is Tesla's big AI product. Its China launch is suspended for reasons currently unknown but China's EV industry is releasing better products for much cheaper if not free. Clearly the trend is for ADAS to become standard equipment on all vehicles not some high profit margin option.

As to Tesla's humanoid robots many companies are working on them. And made in China robots will cost a lot less than Tesla is counting on.

Things aren't looking good for Tesla on any front.]]>capitalismchinaTue, 25 Mar 2025 18:55:50 +0000farticustheelderhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39519291
The biggest beneficiaries of open source software are massive corporations such as Google, Facebook, etc.

By being worth more than what they pay for it, open source is the largest transfer of value from the working class (software programmers) to the capital class (the owners of these corporations).]]>capitalismdevelopmentlicensingopen-sourcesoftwaresource:hnTue, 25 Mar 2025 17:40:09 +0000RcouF1uZ4gsChttps://www.marxists.org/archive/fraser/1973/which-road-liberation.htmlcapitalismfeminismsocialismMon, 24 Mar 2025 19:11:47 +0000https://www.marxists.org/archive/fraser/1955/howmarxiststhink.htmlcapitalismMon, 24 Mar 2025 18:47:19 +0000https://c.im/@matdevdug/111828583287417134
Watching people you respect pack their stuff and crying on the phone with their spouses is something that never goes away. When I survived a layoff in my 20s I became a “do exactly what the ticket says” person. I stopped suggesting ideas, providing feedback, believing anything a manager told me.

If you are a company considering layoffs, especially a profitable company, you should approach it as “this department will have 100% turnover”. The second I got another job offer I left that company and six months later nobody who had been there at the time of layoffs remained.

I’ve seen that pattern play out multiple times.]]>capitalismworkSat, 22 Mar 2025 17:49:23 +0000matdevdughttps://toot.cafe/@art_codesmith/114189540363775758capitalismdevelopmentopen-sourcesoftwareWed, 19 Mar 2025 15:54:24 +0000art_codesmithhttps://toot.cafe/@art_codesmith/114189529691827513capitalismdevelopmentopen-sourcesoftwareWed, 19 Mar 2025 14:32:01 +0000art_codesmithhttps://twitter.com/jasonbosco/status/1901766688565043273?s=12
I gave them my usual spiel about how/why we've chosen not to raise VC despite inbound interest, we're fully revenue-funded and happily profitable, etc.

Then they tell me that the actual reason they asked me this question was because another vendor they had relied on had raised VC in the past, and then shutdown recently because they couldn't pull together their next VC round.

This was quite something because, in the past, when I used to get the "Are you VC funded" question, it would come from a position of customers trying to size us up and validate our financial viability. Now the same question seems to be coming from a position of customers trying to determine how much of a risk they're willing tolerate when doing business with VC-funded companies.

As much as VCs like to glorify VC-backed companies, rug-pull after rug-pull in VC-backed SaaS I think has made customers pretty wary of VC-backed companies.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwareTue, 18 Mar 2025 23:48:30 +0000jasonboscohttps://mastodon.social/@Daojoan/114179751576301199capitalismdevelopmentsoftwareusaMon, 17 Mar 2025 21:08:02 +0000Daojoanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43382423
Savvy investors piled in to the stock, reasoning that, while internet startups might come and go, the internet itself was surely here to stay. It was popular to observe that, in the California gold rush of the mid-1800s, the purveyors of mining equipment made it rich more reliably than the prospectors for gold.

Anyway the Cisco stock price peaked in March 2000, and to this day it still has not reached that level again. The savvy investors were of course correct in their belief that the internet would continue to be important, and that Cisco would continue to be an important manufacturer of internet networking equipment. But they lost money anyway, because once the euphoria had worn off the market consensus was that the stock just wasn’t worth as much as the price it had been selling for at the height of the mania.

Any parallels to hot contemporary stocks are left as an exercise for the reader — and I do not mean to suggest that history must always repeat exactly.]]>capitalismciscoeconomyinternetsource:hnusaMon, 17 Mar 2025 03:11:57 +0000robinhoustonhttps://merveilles.town/@nasser/114143741460834273capitalismdevelopmentsoftwareTue, 11 Mar 2025 15:16:50 +0000nasserhttps://hachyderm.io/@skinnylatte/114135887149577711
There is truly nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to imperialism.]]>capitalismusaMon, 10 Mar 2025 17:27:59 +0000skinnylattehttps://old.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/1j2w5c1/five_more_gun_control_bills_are_progressing/mfvq9hh/capitalismusaTue, 4 Mar 2025 23:41:42 +0000BahnMehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43254978advertisingcapitalismsource:hnTue, 4 Mar 2025 14:51:04 +0000ustadhttps://bsky.app/profile/shengokai.bsky.social/post/3liualpb3zs2oartificial-intelligencecapitalismSun, 23 Feb 2025 16:45:29 +0000shengokai.bsky.socialhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43091215
There is a reason why rich prefer tariffs over a progressive income tax.]]>capitalismsource:hntaxTue, 18 Feb 2025 16:55:56 +0000cheema33https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43067672
I wonder how much behavior like this stems from weak regulation in the US to begin with. It seems like it would reinforce the rise of agents that assume they can ask for forgiveness after acting wantonly.]]>capitalismsource:hnusaSun, 16 Feb 2025 15:40:08 +0000someothherguyyhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42971657
Companies aggressively protect their own intellectual property but have no qualms about violating the IP rights of others. Companies. Individuals have no such privilege. If you plug a laptop into a closet at MIT to download some scientific papers you forfeit your life.]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismsource:hnFri, 7 Feb 2025 12:50:17 +0000gizmohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42932957
That’s why some suggest that the recent regulatory assaults, cozying up to would be dictators and forced changing of ownership to American corporations is just manufactured corporate raiding by competitors that can’t keep up.]]>capitalisminstagramsocial-mediasource:hntiktokTue, 4 Feb 2025 17:10:20 +0000moshunhttps://lobste.rs/s/wb8pzw/deepseek_faq#c_ljswka **So was this a violation of the chip ban?**
>
> Nope. H100s were prohibited by the chip ban, but not H800s. Everyone assumed that training leading edge models required more interchip memory bandwidth, but that is exactly what DeepSeek optimized both their model structure and infrastructure around.
>
> Again, just to emphasize this point, all of the decisions DeepSeek made in the design of this model only make sense if you are constrained to the H800; if DeepSeek had access to H100s, they probably would have used a larger training cluster with much fewer optimizations specifically focused on overcoming the lack of bandwidth.

This was amusing to read and feels almost like the premise for a novel. Country bans export of important resource. Opposition discovers a way to use a cheaper resource to reach parity.]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismchinasource:lobstersWed, 29 Jan 2025 06:16:42 +0000cole-khttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42855315
In the past, tech got away with the above because capital meant if you hired enough people, you ended up with something valuable. But AI levels the playing field, reducing the value of capital and increasing the value of the individual contributor.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnTue, 28 Jan 2025 17:44:54 +0000codingwagiehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42840356
I was laid off over 5 years ago, and, as these things usually go, it was a complete shock to me. The company had been acquired, and my services were no longer needed. It ended up being a very positive change for my career, but to this day, if I ever get a moment of déjà vu, my immediate thought is to check my phone and see if I've been fired.]]>mental-healthsource:hnworkMon, 27 Jan 2025 15:34:25 +0000DDicksonhttps://twitter.com/broseph_stalin/status/1883090961380843583?s=12
China released multiple AI models that are 50x more efficient than the best American AI models and made them open source, ruining the AI market]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismSun, 26 Jan 2025 22:10:46 +0000broseph_stalinhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42829086
Investors' worst nightmare is if you just make enough money to keep going, but you don't grow ("lifestyle business" as they use it is a derogatory term).

That's because they prefer a sudden death where they can write down the investment and deduct their loss from taxes than an investment where they never see any money again.

And then there are "acquisitions" that are really "acui-hires" dressed up as acquisitions to get the people (more common) or to buy an asset in a limited shell package (less common) after things did/may have (but people were to tempted to take the offer) or did not pan/panned out. Some people consider anything <$50m as a "failure", because that's roughly the sum that many corporations can spend without calling the bigshots for a board meeting to decide.]]>capitalismsource:hnvcSun, 26 Jan 2025 21:16:54 +0000jll29https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42831328
When the basic food items become ferraris, people have no choice on that.]]>capitalisminflationsource:hnSun, 26 Jan 2025 16:42:28 +0000cluckindanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42830850
There are other damning facts too:

> private equity companies have rolled up all the fire truck companies, hiking the price of trucks, creating backlogs and bottlenecks for parts and service, and starving the nation's municipalities (including Los Angeles)

Capitalism is dead. Long live capitalism.]]>capitalismsource:hnSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:58:47 +0000fnyhttps://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loadingcapitalismSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:44:10 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loadingcapitalismfoodhousingSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:43:19 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loadingcapitalismSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:42:53 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loadingcapitalismtechSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:42:10 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loadingcapitalismSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:41:23 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loadingcapitalismfoodSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:39:01 +0000https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/#carbo-loadingcapitalismtechSun, 26 Jan 2025 15:38:35 +0000