Yup, likewise Starlink - while space internet is an interesting and viable concept (whether it'll earn itself back is another question, I'm not convinced), the real motivation behind it was to create demand for many SpaceX launches. There have been 352 Starlink launches [0] so far, out of 596 total [1]. If it wasn't for Starlink, SpaceX would only have been operating at 1/3 to 1/2 of what it does today, cutting into their "economics of scale". And they'll need demand to make Starship viable, the possible moon missions aren't enough to fund or justify the whole project. Hence also the ideas of colonising Mars, which - if someone is willing to pay for it - would create a large and steady demand for launches / flights.
I always wanted to crunch the numbers but never got around to it, so I'm glad someone actually went and did it. YC company IPOs always smelled like pump-and-dump than a true liquidity/fundraising event, and if those numbers are correct, I was right. Or to put it another way, if someone asks "should I buy IPO shares in a YC company", the answer is "no".
Absolutely. What we’re seeing is a familiar pattern in tech: when things go well, the rewards are private, but when the risks build up—whether financial, regulatory, or technical—they get socialized onto the public. IPOs become a way to offload responsibility, recapitalize, and let early stakeholders cash out while passing long-term uncertainties to a broader set of investors and the market itself.
Closest I guess is hiring of juniors is down, but it's possibly just due to a post COVID pullback being credited to AI.
I definitely think a lot of junior tasks are being replaced with AI, and companies are deciding it's not worth filling junior roles at least temporarily as a result.
I don’t think this is unique to software. Across the US over the past decades there’s been a massive contraction in companies being willing to “train-up” employees. It’s greedy, and it works for their bottom lines. But it’s a tragedy of the commons and a race to the bottom. It also explains the dearth of opportunities for getting into the trades, despite sky-high demand.
If anything, the expectations for an individual developer have never been higher, and now you’re not getting any 22-26 year olds with enough software experience to be anything but a drain on resources when the demand for profitability is yesterday.
Maybe we need to go back to ZIRP if only to get some juniors back on to the training schedule, across all industries.
For other insanely toxic and maladaptive training situations, also see: medicine in the US.
> I definitely think a lot of junior tasks are being replaced with AI
I think team expansion is being reduced as well. If you took a dev team of 5, armed them all with Claude Code + training on where to use it and where not to I think you could get the same productivity as hiring 2 additional FTE software devs. I'm assuming your existing 5 devs fully adopt the tool and not reject it like a bad organ transplant. Maybe an analogy could be the invention of email reducing the need for corporate typing pools and therefore fewer jr. secretaries ( typists) are hired.
/i'm just guessing that being a secretary is in the career progression path of someone in the typing pool but you get the idea.
edit: one thing i missed in my email analogy is that when email was invented it was free and available to anyone that could set up sendmail/*.MTA
> I definitely think a lot of junior tasks are being replaced with AI
one last thing to point out then my lunch is over. I think AI coding agents are going to hit services/marketplaces like Fiverr especially hard. I think the AI agents are the new gig-economy with respect to code, I spent about $50 on Claude Code pay-as-you-go over the past 3 days to put together a website i've had in the back of my mind for months. Claude Code got it to a point where I can easily pick up and run with to finish it out over a few more nights/weekends. UI/UX is especially tedious for me and Claude Code was able to take my vague descriptions and make the interface nicely organized and contemporary. The architecture is perfectly reasonable for what i want to do ( Auth0 + react + python(flask) + postgres + an OAuth2 integration to a third party ). It got all of that about 95% right on the first try.. for $50!. Services/marketplaces like Fiverr have to be thinking really hard right now.
From the pharma side, I have heard discussions with other technology companies who insisted on a share of discovery revenue. Nothing has ever killed discussions so quickly.
He's not in the book or miniseries but the film adaptation gave him some arc iirc about doing something heroic on John Malkovich's planet to get the girl (Trillian). That all seems highly intentional based on the OP.
Your childish naivety values universities, the rule of law, a free press and the military? We had very different childhoods; and more importantly, clearly different definitions on what maturity is.
I definitely thought there were adults, who are basically gods when you are a child, that were in charge of or steering these institutions and they had principles and values beyond careerism and greed.
Go talk to any academic about how they view their field as a child versus today and it will illustrate what I'm talking about.
Doesn't mean institutions in general aren't a net good for society. What would replace them? Also doesn't mean you can't structure institutions to incentivize values beyond careerism and greed.
Yes the hope is that the institutions under attack can rebuild or be replaced by ones with better alignment with social good. There's a lot of disagreement about what that means and that's part of the chaos, but yes.
Hacker news is good for one particular use case: reasonably informed discussion of technology industry news.
I don't view it as a community and every time a topic goes outside that space (e.g. society, culture, economics etc) I'm frequently horrified by some of the comments I see here.
I'm far more horrified by what I don't see, by how biased and lopsided the flagging is. Constantly covering up interesting relevant topics. The gatekeeping about what to discuss is, imo, a pox. It's easy to avoid, costs nearly nothing to just not read, and it's little but endless naval gazing about what you think the purpose ought to be. It's not productive and trying to levy judgement is harmful, for an upside that even if we could get it perfect is near zero.
I have some sympathy for the cost to mods. But people having strong opinions about what other people are allowed to share is anti my interest and imo a mockery of hacker spirit.
I personally regard hackers who are intersectional, who see the relationships of things broadly & see how aspects of the world reflect in each other as great. But some people are obsessed with limiting and filtering, and I cannot understand what they are going for.
I If I had to choose an online community that resonates with me, it would be Hacker News. For years, it's served as my muse, therapist, book club, and intellectual playground; all rolled into one. I deeply value the culture it fosters, especially the emphasis on thoughtful discussion.
Paul Graham’s essay "How to Disagree" remains essential reading for anyone engaging in online discourse . It provides a clear framework for constructive debate, and I agree that posts falling into the lowest forms of disagreement (ad hominem attacks or name calling) deserve to be flagged.
Yet, I share your concern, sometimes a post isn’t inherently bad, but attracts low quality replies. Flagging the entire thread in such cases feels disproportionate like amputating a limb just because there’s an itch you can’t scratch. It risks silencing potentially valuable discussion due to the behavior of a few.
I empathize with the moderators. Their job is thankless and difficult, and I appreciate that the warnings we see aren’t automated bots but messages from real humans trying their best. We all have limits and that’s ok.
The sympathy I have for mods is very real. But I do want to mention that flagging is typically not a moderator activity (afaik). Hacker News allows anyone whose been around for a bit to join in suppressing whatever they feel like. There's very few checks or balances on this. There's no accountability. Silent veto, silent death.
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