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> with all the rules and regulations out there.

And who wrote those? Aren't they just another part of the moat?

> It's actually quite fascinating how it was started.

Visa was founded in 1958 by Bank of America (BofA) as the BankAmericard credit card program.[1] In response to competitor Master Charge (now Mastercard), BofA began to license the BankAmericard program to other financial institutions in 1966.[8] By 1970, BofA gave up direct control of the BankAmericard program, forming a cooperative with the other various BankAmericard issuer banks to take over its management. It was then renamed Visa in 1976.

The answer is: "Banks."


> Less dependency management, less glue, less accidental complexity from adapting your problem to someone else’s abstraction.

Less maintenance and flexibility. You're not really "designing software" until you have a 20+ year old product.

Vibe coders really embody the "temporarily embarrassed billionaire" mindset so perfectly.


We are maintaining and extending a bunch (15 around) large ERP/data type projects which are over 20 years old with vibe coding. We have a very strict system to keep the LLMs in bounds, keeping to standard etc and we are feeling we are close to not having to read the code; we have over 2 months of not having to touch anything after review. I designed most of those projects 20-30 years ago; all have the same design principles which are well documented (by me) so the LLM just knows what to find where and what to do with it. These are large 'living' projects (many updates over decades).

This seems like an uncharitable take. Personally I would refrain from putting a 20 year barrier around the qualification, that seems a little harsh.

TFA's take makes sense in a certain context. Getting a high-quality design which is flexible in desirable ways is now easier than ever. As the human asking an LLM for the design, maybe you shouldn't be claiming to have "designed" it, though.


I was specific to the age of the product not of the age of the developer on that project. The point is that "high quality design" is such a fleeting thing that perhaps "longevity of design" is more worth having. It's also probably the case that the latter is much harder to come by which makes it a perfect barrier of qualification.

This is ridiculous. There are numerous multi billion dollar software companies with customers less than half that age.

Is there some reason to think that poorly designed software cannot be profitable? Perhaps we shouldn't use revenue as a proxy for quality?

More to the point how much of that profit is generated from selling those customers data rather than earning those customers payments?


There's value to be had in ripping the copyright off your stuff so someone else can pass it off as their stuff. LLMs have no technical improvements so all they can do is throw more and more stolen data into it and hope it, somehow, crosses a nebulous "threshold" where it suddenly becomes actually profitable to use and sell.

It's a race to the bottom. What's different is we're much closer to the bottom now.


Why not deal with the cause of the terrorism?

Are we really worried what vendor they get their trucks from?


> Why not deal with the cause of the terrorism?

slaps forehead Why didn't I think of that!


What's the alternative. In a terrorist camp somewhere:

"Guys! We can't Toyota's anymore. I guess terrorism is over! Pack it up and go home!"

Sheesh.


> Why not deal with the cause of the terrorism?

I don't think that's a simple proposition.


Some terrorism is because we murdered the terrorist's family, and we could just stop murdering families. I don't think this one is, though.

No, these guys we seem to have funded and supported. We even helped a former AQ leader become the president of Syria.

> Are we really worried what vendor they get their trucks from?

There are for sure gun manufacturers that would love to sell terrorists guns, can car manufacturers that would sell terrorists cars. The harder they are to obtain, the less success the terrorists will have in their objectives.

Do you really think we shouldn’t care, understand or look to shut down supply chains?


Ctrl-F: "Customer" (2 results) [both describing customers as a fungible always present entity that must deal with you].

Yea.. maybe change your focus?


But I thought money comes from investors?!?

> I’ve had that experience. And losing it — even acknowledging that it was lost

What are you talking about? You don't know how 99% of the systems in your own body work yet they don't confront you similarly. As if this "knowledge" is a switch that can be on or off.

> I gave 42 years to this thing, and the thing changed into something I’m not sure I recognise anymore.

Stop doing it for a paycheck. You'll get your brain back.


> as their opportunity to travel faster

You're ascribing motive where you have no data to do so.

> travel slower and slower

Roads near capacity slow down. This capacity surge is typically highly predictable.

> tragedy of the commons style, by opportunists.

People can only drive one car. They cannot drive two at the same time to get there twice as fast. I don't think this logic applies.


> 40 years ago you'd have more ideals, riots, and young-minded ideas.

The government generated most of those too. As technology became more capable they utilized it more but that doesn't mean they were standing around with their hands in their pockets prior to that.

> Nowadays, our societies are old on average

Do they have an unfair access to technology? If not then does this actually have any impact?

> Older people on average are more inclined to pick whatever solution they feel promises a bit more security.

In your experience perhaps. I doubt the reliability of this logic.


> it could be that you end up compiling a function with, like 30 arguments, or 30 return values; I don’t trust a C compiler to reliably shuffle between different stack argument needs at tail calls to or from such a function.

Yet you trust it to generate the frame for this leviathan in the first place. Sometimes C is about writing quality code, apparently, sometimes it's about spending all day trying to outsmart the compiler rather than take advantage of it.


> the purported golden age of impartial truth-seeking.

It's constantly been with us since the beginning of the republic. Several of our founding fathers were actually publishers.

> this consensus

Consensus doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a product of an interest in profiting off the news. It seems obvious from this vantage what the fundamental problem is and why "journalists" are not a homogeneous group with identical outputs and why terms like "main stream" even exist.

> it helped with social cohesion and national identity

Which is why the FBI and CIA target it for manipulation so relentlessly.


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