I think the pressure on SaaS margins won't be from customers vibing their way to Figma or DataDog but because gen AI will bring a lot more credible competition in many segments. DD and Figma are probably awful examples because those companies are constantly pushing the envelope, but there are a lot of rent seeking SaaS providers that are going to be in for a rude awaking.
Cultivating optimism is the first step. Optimism is irrational, you can just choose to have it (of course thinking about good things that have happened helps). Optimism is the precondition for doing good.
So what if there’s a low collective will at the moment. Do your part to be part to grow the collective will to good. Go volunteer for a good cause (food bank, community organizations, etc.), donate to good causes, just be friendly to other people you see.
I mostly agree with what you said, but disagree on one point:
> Optimism is the precondition for doing good.
It is still possible to do good when things are bleak and there is no possible way out - just because doing good is the right thing[1]. Optimism helps a lot for morale, but is not a precondition.
1. e.g. the 2 people who were pictured comforting each other while trapped at the top of a burning wind turbine.
> the 2 people who were pictured comforting each other while trapped at the top of a burning wind turbine
Optimism doesn't necessarily mean hope. It can mean belief in an afterlife. An end to a suffering. Or gratitude for having someone else in a terrible moment.
I think OP is correct. You can't have good without optimism. Your point, which is also correct, is you can do good without hope.
The philosophical definition just opens up bigger cans of worms that can't be adequately addressed in an HN thread, and have been debated for thousands of years: what is "good"? Perhaps we need a moral framework to answer that, but then, what are morals? "You can't have good without optimism" is a declaration that has to be contextualized, and is far from universal.
I suspect answers couched in terms of individualism will always sound inadequate to questions that are inherently collectivist, such as why people do things "for the greater good" detrimental to their own well-being.
I had a lot of optimism as a teenager in the 80s. And maybe even more during Obama's presidency. Then 2016, 2020, 2024-2026 hit, and I'm at like -89% for optimism.
That is an argument of the pessimists and enemies of the good.
Pessimism is clearly irrational: Look at the world we live in; look what humanity has achieved since the Enlightenment, and in the last century - freedom, peace, and prosperity have swept the world. Diseases are wiped out, we visit the moon and (robotically) other planets, the Internet, etc. etc. etc.
To be pessimistic about our ability to build a better world is bizarre.
Pessimism and optimism are philosophical perspectives (dispositions) and do not necessarily have anything do with doing good or doing bad. Why do you think optimism only precipitates good things? Surely you can imagine a situation (or many) where thinking more positively about a situation than the data warrants leads to bad outcomes?
None of your examples above tie directly to an optimistic disposition. How could you possibly know the disposition of the thousands of humans involved in those endeavors? You are letting your personal disposition color your view of the world (as we all do) and mistaking this for some sort of absolute truth.
> So what if there’s a low collective will at the moment. Do your part to be part to grow the collective will to good. Go volunteer for a good cause (food bank, community organizations, etc.), donate to good causes, just be friendly to other people you see.
The problem is, that way of thinking is just like the "co2 footprint" - individualise responsibility from where it belongs (=the government) to individual people, and let's be real, outside of the very last action item many people don't have the time and/or the money.
At some point, we (as in: virtually all Western nations) have to acknowledge that our governments are utter dogshit and demand better. Optimism requires trust in that what you work for doesn't get senselessly destroyed the next election cycle.
Okay but also we all still live in democracies, and people are fairly obviously getting what they vote for a lot of the time.
Extrrnalising that to "the government" is to pretend you had no say, or to collectively try and pretend everyone else is with you & which they observably are not.
Edit: and before anyone responds with to me with a quip about money and corporations - money in politics buys advertising and campaigning. It doesn't buy votes directly, and when it does that's corruption and what's done about that is still largely on you the voter to set your priorities at the ballot box.
> I am just increasingly pessimistic about our collective desire to do so.
It's not just a lack of desire (apathy). People who want to solve big, collective problems are increasingly up against groups who actively want to not solve the problems and/or make the problems worse. COVID, for example, was so much worse than it had to be, purely from people actively fighting efforts meant to contain it. Efforts to reverse or mitigate Climate Change are routinely and vigorously opposed.
For news about things that are going right, I suggest https://fixthenews.com/. You can get a free weekly email about progress in energy and the environment, national economies, health and medicine, crime etc (or pay for a longer weekly email).
When the the only thing CEOs talk about for every new technology is how many people they are going to put out of work because of it, the collective desire for new technology and progress is understandably lessened.
That you have the mental capacity/structures/language to form the thought should indicate the trajectory you're caught up within. It's disappointing that everything not's resolved during the blip you're you but even a moderately long view provides evidence for optimism.
It will rewire the hard sacrifice of limiting individual wealth to less than a billion dollars per person. Trajectory of present indicates we won't be doing that soon.
It is interesting, I wonder is it possible to get so rich and be kind, probably examples. I'm the kind poor person myself even what money I have I have given too much of it away. In which case I'm a dumbass for doing so but yeah.
His relationship with Epstein and the alleged secret dosing of his wife with antibiotics to clear an STD he gave Melinda from the escorts.
I hadn’t seen Bill’s denial of the STD claim when I made my comment and what went on there is murky according to the below. Bill denies and Melinda expresses sadness. What actually happened?
"Oh he cheated on his wife so he's gonna cheat on the country"
If anything the Halloween files are more of a preoccupation as it pertains to the foundation and the ability to keep its mission intact or the fact that of course it's very autocratic when one guy has all the money and everybody else is an employee
> Maybe I need to to separate the art from the artist?
Yes. We die but the consequences of our actions resonate indefinitely. Ideas make good idols and people do not. Better Родина-мать зовёт! (a statue in Stalingrad approximately "Motherland [ie Russia] calls") and Liberty, which are both definitely statues about ideas than the Lincoln Memorial for example, or even arguably the "Statue of Unity" which is named for Unity but in practice is explicitly a statue of a specific man - Sardar Patel.
In the US one can retire comfortably on $3 million without relying on Social Security. From the downvotes, it's crazy to me that people think a limit of 300 "ordinary people's" retirements is unreasonable.
I really don't think people understand how little difference there is between having $1 billion and $10 billion or even $100 billion. It makes no difference whatsoever to have that much money; they can't enjoy it.
There is a lot of room between unfettered immigration and having a roving band of apparently unaccountable agents violating 1st, 4th, and 6th amendment rights while also gunning down unarmed citizens in the streets.
We could try mandating e-verify with increasing penalties before we start asking people for papers and kicking down doors.
This feels like an argument that the feds have no choice but to trample on our rights because we’re not agreeing to it up front.
There was a memo that they didn’t need a warrant to enter peoples houses. That is morally wrong and also a recipe for violence.
Why should local leaders trust the feds at all when they claim that Alex Pretti was an “assassin” and “domestic terrorist”?
There is a reason ICE wasn't shooting unarmed civilians prior to operation metro surge, which only started in December, 2025. Standard ICE operations are targeted and generally quite. Operation Metro Storm is neither.
These are intentionally provocative and involve agents performing traffic stops and harassing people on the street for no other reason than (it increasingly appears) the color of their skin.
Lets see them deploy 3000 agents to West Texas or Hialeah for a few weeks. I am guessing those local populations might have a few problems with it as well.
> discouraging local law enforcement support of federal law enforcement.
Strawman. You can't blame ICE's failure to sustain due process on local law enforcement, even if you think they're against you. Their hands are clean because they avoided cooperating with ICE.
I have never had to even think about the steps a firm with massive utility requirements would need to take to secure supply. So assuming you could wave a magic wand and instantly build out a datacenter in northern Virginia right now, the local power utility (Dominion Energy in this case) would not be able to provide power?
It isn't like you can snap your fingers and magically transport 10MW+ of power to your doorstep. Plus, as I said in other threads, it isn't just power... it is everything around supporting that power. Try ordering a transformer. Or getting EPA approval to install backup generators.
I recently called my senators and congressman about this issue. None of the staffers were able to provide me with their public opinions on the project. Two mentioned that they haven't received any calls on the matter. If you care about this issue, and are a US citizen, call (http://www.contactingthecongress.org/) your elected officials.
This is by design. Lockheed first learned how to game congress with the B1B (another useless plane).
Here's the recipe:
Talk to the military, see what's giving them a hard-on these days. Get them to start coming up with a project to put on contract.
Military issues Request for Information/Request for Proposal based on requirements you told them to use
Contact any and all congressman. Let them know that you intend to make widget X for Aircraft Z in their respective District. Ensure that virtually every congressional district in the country contains a business that is making at least one or two parts for the aircraft.
A new general comes in who is honest, realizes the weapons system is useless, wants to can it. Congress says no, we need it. Who wants to be the guy who threw away jobs in his district?
Critical general leaves, is replaced by politically minded General who wants to be in charge of a "successful" program, drinks the kook-aid and pretends its not a giant boondoggle.
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