jmpman's comments

On: Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat

[jmpman]

When there was an over buildout of fiber back in the dotcom boom, how did that turn out? Who were the winners and losers? At what timeline did new winners emerge from that bubble?

[esaym → jmpman]

Oh do tell.

On: Microsoft announces new "mini PCs" for Windows 365

[jmpman]

I want this for two reasons - Solidworks - the non cloud version, doesn't run on my MacBook. I don't want to have two full sized computers. Steam - again, too many games don't run on Macs.

I'd also go for a single click launch of a GPU powered virtual machine I can remote onto from my Mac. You'd think the various cloud providers would offer a single click solution. I haven't found it.

[tokyobreakfast → jmpman]

If you're doing any serious CAD work you really need a Windows PC, and better yet a config that is ISV approved and tested.

Apple still quietly designing all their products on Windows these days? Not that there's anything wrong with that...

On: $30B for laptops yielded a generation less cognitively capable than parents

[jmpman]

I doubt it's the laptops. The problem is they removed the physical books. I have a hard time teaching my kids using their laptops. Before, you could just crack open their textbooks and follow along.

On: IBM down 13% after Anthropic launches an AI tool that converts old COBOL code

[jmpman]

This is IBMs moat. The entire reason corporations don't move off the mainframe is due to the cost and complexity of migrating the old code, oh, and the reliability of the mainframe. There are many architectures which can be made more reliable than the mainframe. 13% is just the beginning.

On: Red Robin Died by Spreadsheet. Don't Make the Same Mistake

[jmpman]

I'd like to see more companies have clawback compensation for these "bold" decisions - stuff goes wrong, we are clawing back all your stock, even the tranche which vested during the first quarter pump and dump scam.

And I'd like to see it implemented further down in the hierarchy. In the companies which just implemented layoffs for AI efficiency, and then asked their more senior employees to dig in and help on the now overflowing work - I suspect a mid level manager or VP made that decision and was wildly rewarded for the initial cost savings, and now, with the resource disaster - was their bonus clawed back? I suspect not.

[silisili → jmpman]

Same.

This will never change until CEO pay is tied to long term performance. Why not make it 5 year lagging?

The whole problem is that CEOs have zero incentive to care about the longevity of the company. They want share price to go up now, make their money, then cash out.

It's easy to blame the CEOs, but they're just doing what's smart for them. We need to change the definition of what that is.

[renewiltord → jmpman]

All that stuff is just the same approach but applied to the CEO. You’ve just got the same mindset.

By contrast TSLA gives Elon options in the money if he 10x valuation. And he did.

This punishment and austerity approach is doomed.

On: Microsoft team creates data-storage system that lasts for millennia

[jmpman]

I believe the helium in the hard drives allows the heads to fly closer to the platter due to the different Reynolds number, not dust.

On: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin

[jmpman]

I’ve wondered if something like this would drive down inflation in the US food supply.

On: Tesla moving Full Self-Driving to a monthly subscription

[jmpman]

I paid for FSD the first month it was offered monthly. Was so bad I wanted my money back but couldn’t figure out how to get Tesla to refund. Feel worse for those who paid the full $8k

[jerlam → jmpman]

It was $15k at the peak of Tesla hype. That's the cost of subscribing for 12.5 years.

On: HPV vaccination reduces oncogenic HPV16/18 prevalence from 16% to <1% in Denmark

[jmpman]

You sound like my fellow citizens who have decided to use their theocratic power to push this view across my city and school. It impacts my children and their future mates. Sure, there’s an ideal world in which every person finds their ideal partner on the first time, falls madly in love and remains forever faithful. I don’t live in a Disney fantasy world, and would prefer public health policies are based on pragmatic principles.

[albatross79 → jmpman]

If you prefer public health policies you prefer the solution for the lowest common denominator.

On: Clock synchronization is a nightmare

[jmpman]

Back in the early 2000s I was programming on an IBM AIX server. Multicore, maybe multiprocessor and within the same machine, the clocks were skewed between the processors. If you’d dispatch a process, and then check its outstanding running time, it would differ depending upon which processor you’d check from, and of course it was a signed type, and then we would get negative values, which sent our code down the wrong path.