I disagree, maintaining a giant fleet of satellites is almost certainly more expensive in the long run than just running a lot of cable. Not that cable doesn’t need maintenance but Starlink needs to replace every satellite every five years. And they can’t recycle a thing, they just burn up.
You’re presenting a false choice. It isn’t “Starlink or no internet”, it’s “why not other internet options?”
I think that while Starlink is a technical innovation its primary benefit is as a political innovation: it lets you sidestep a lot of politics.
Rural communities in the US should have high speed internet, just like efforts were made to give them electricity back in the day. But the layers of politics and dysfunction in the way are deep.
> this just isn't the kind of professionalism needed for a serious project
I actually think this gets to, but steps over, the core objection: traditional "hacker" mindset vs VC "growth hacking" mindset.
> And I am sorry, but adoption and reaching critical mass is an important part of a serious programming language.
Why? Why can't he create a language with exactly the kind of purity and ideology he wants, broader adoption be damned? Why must everything optimize for user growth and mindshare?
> It's insane to me that Andrew thinks this post will somehow exonerate Zig
I'm not sure that's his aim here. I imagine he has been asked dozens of times what he thinks about the switch, what it means for Zig, etc. etc. and wanted to just address it one time, which is understandable.
The tone is... strong. I think repeating grapevine rumours about Jarred's management skills adds very little and probably could have been removed. But at its heart I see this post as example of a common clash: open source code hackers vs Silicon Valley "growth hackers".
Kelley is disappointed that a promising Zig project took VC money and went from his passion project's prime example to one that shit talked it on the way out. I get why he's emotional. I wouldn't have written it the way he did but I also don't think policing tone is beneficial for honest communication.
I don’t feel the verbosity with Rust. Haven’t written it in a while but now in the LLM era I’m looking forward to saying “sort out the lifetime errors for me”.
I’d be careful labelling any of that “love” though. There’s certainly not any proof of ants “loving” each other, they have a community, sure, but that’s just doing what best serves their colony. I’d need more evidence to consider that “love”.
I’m surprised they don’t just eject the injured worker from the colony. I wonder if there are specific tasks the amputated ant then goes on to do, or if they resume their former duties at a lower speed.
> I can't speak for those people, but decisions like quitting your job aren't one-dimensional. Quitting a job can create severe hardships for a family, stress relationships to the breaking point, etc.
I can't disagree with that. But my point is more... own it, then.
OP's comment said the leaders are fully responsible. I argue the engineers are responsible too. If they made the decision they made because they don't want their family to leave the Bay Area then that's the decision they made: they put their family ahead of broader societal damage they're helping create. I might do the same for my family. But I wouldn't try to claim that I'm completely blameless in the scenario.
> Also, making the pushing for the right decision to only get overruled by the people in power can feel like doing enough for many people.
I suppose I would counter with "but it isn't".
> What other morally compromising things have you not chosen to avoid?
Again, I agree with what you're saying, every day involves some level of moral compromise. But the task I choose to dedicate most of my waking hours to, day in day out, is a little different from whether I buy free range eggs or not.
> The rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people
Then why didn't they quit?
I believe I could have gotten a job at Meta (and hey, maybe I'm wrong!) but I've never been able to stomach the idea of working on their products. If I can choose to avoid working on morally compromising things, why can't they?
And look, I get it. If they didn't make it some other engineer would. There's no union or anything that would make resisting it a meaningful cause. But that doesn't mean everyone can absolve themselves of any culpability. They took the (big pile of) money, they did the work.
> Here's a reminder that a Montana-LLC registered car is a legitimate privacy-preserving use case and not the tax-evasion that Straw Manners and Ad Hominem attackers make appear to be.
I mean, it’s both, right? You’re definitely getting a tax advantage compared to a lot of areas of the country. And how is insurance going to work?
I think we're trying really hard to rationalize a fundamentally irrational behavior here. The vast majority of people betting on Kalshi are not thinking "well, worst case I'll just kill myself".
> A college degree is no longer a guaranteed path to a stable, well paying job. Building wealth through real estate is no longer viable.
...and winning a life's fortune via gambling is even less viable. I agree with what you're saying about the lack of guaranteed paths to prosperity but turning to gambling is not a logical outcome stemming from it. There is no logic in gambling at all. It is purely a vice that preys on people's weaknesses.
I often leave the house without my wallet these days. It’s great. Especially riding the subway, where Apple’s transit functionality means you don’t have to do anything other than tap your device without even unlocking, is a very nice convenience when you’re carrying groceries or something similar.
Not that it justifies what he did for a moment but you can absolutely work somewhere for a long time and end up resenting it by the time you leave.