Saying that "we're firing to use AI" makes you look like you have ROI on your AI investments and you're keeping up.
In fact there are possibly other macro-economic effects at play:
1. The inability to deduct engineering for tax purposes in the year they were spent: "Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) from 2017, the law requires companies to amortize (spread out) all domestic R&D expenses, including software development costs, over five years, starting in tax years after December 31, 2021, instead of deducting them immediately. This means if you spend $100,000 on software development in 2023, you can only deduct 1/5th (or $20,000) each year over five years"
2. End of zero-interest rates.
3. Pandemic era hiring bloat - let's be honest we hired too many non-technical people, companies are still letting attrition take place (~10%/yr where I am) instead of firing.
4. Strong dollar. My company is moving seats to Canada, Ireland, and India instead of hiring in the US. Getting 1.5-2 engineers in Ireland instead of 1 senior on the US west coast.
Otherwise AI is an accelerator to make more money, increase profits and efficiency. Yes it has a high cost, but so does/did Cloud, every SaaS product we've bought/integrated.
Why does the motivation matter so much? It’s not a global ban, it’s not a permanent ban, nobody is going to jail. It’s like seeing if moving the smoking age to 18 will improve health outcomes.
It’s ruining their lives as far as we can tell, and at the end of the day it’s just one country testing it out. It’ll be stastically significant, culturally close enough of a sample set for us to learn from.
I’m curious to see what the 1-2-3 year effects are. We need to let some real life experimentation happen, somewhere, instead of accepting what every conglomerate wants.
I get that “it’s easy to say” for me as someone completely unaffected by this law.
The study that was posted last week regarding at school banning of phones was enlightening. It improved scores within two years after a bit of resistance. Boom!
I want them to have a chance at being healthy and well-educated; we can’t stop teens from smoking altogether but we can sure limit their access by default.
Similar. Charged $150 for 2 bottles of wine that never moved off their shelf. I cancelled within the minute.
You'd think that given no services were actually rendered and no perishable items, it'd be an easy open-shut support case.
But, no, you see: "that automatically accepted order itself was the service rendered"
Cool. I took the L because I order food all the time. Hate them for it. I don't know what our alternative is. We all laughed at this company as they burned through billions a year to acquire us, and now it's a monopoly robbing us all.
HN's approach to political stories has been stable for many years: most are off-topic, but some are ok; but only some.
'Stable' here means stable over time. The proportion of political stories goes through pretty big fluctuations (mostly in response to macro social events, e.g. elections), but HN's principles remain the same, and the swings eventually subside*.
* perhaps ironically, this 'stability' includes the phenomenon of users complaining that HN is turning too much into a political site. For a glimpse into how far back that goes, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.
While I too find it distasteful and distracting, the inclination to expunge politics from conversation may have played a role in getting us (at least in the US) where we are: 1) where people have forgotten to talk about politics politely, and 2) where politics have been weaponized by tuning to especially divisive issues specifically for high-engagement.
And that is where many of us have played a role: increasing engagement.
DOGE is a creature of Silicon Valley. Paul Graham spends his time now opining on woke [1]. One can escape base partisanship. But the political economy makes any attempt to escape politics pretend.
Disclaimer: I own one.
TL;DR: What can you give me for ~$70/mo (amortized over 5 years including bed) that makes my sleep better without me having to do anything or put anything in my body?
Think of the alternatives I have: Sleeping pills. Sleep studies. Benzos. "Supplements." Weight loss. Working out. Sleeping hygiene routines. FWIW, I've done/do all of these. They work, and they are work.
Sleep is more important to my health than what I eat. Some of us are like this. You know us. We're your colleagues, friends. You've seen us, heard us mope around.
I checked it out because I saw Bryan Johnson talk about it. Found it to be stupid, the price, the app, the subscription, I get what everyone here is saying. You are right. But, there was a free-x-nights trial policy and curiosity got the better of me.
So far, it's been amazing (5-6 months in).
+ You can slap a faux button/area on the bed to change temp without the app.
+ This App, mentioned in the article, it works 100% of the time, and it's fast. I suspect it's over LAN when you're home, at least it's that fast. For comparison, $3.2 billion dollar Nest's app isn't reliable nor fast -- How many total days of your life have you already lost to a synchronous thermostat app that needs to auth/connect with Google before you're allowed to change the temperature of the room you're sitting in? :) Come on, tell me the truth!
Does that help clarify why this sells?
Note: The bed is now $3k, not $2k, plus sales tax. Amortized over 5 years $3k + $240 * 5 = $4200. Divide by 60 months.
Note: Lots of misunderstanding in the thread by people who haven't checked the product out. It's not even a bed, guys, it's a liquid-cooled cover that fit's on top of your existing mattress. If you want the motorized mattress that lifts you when you snore, that's another few thousand dollars.
Hey Peter! I wanted to thank you for doing this. I just got my green card last year, and it all kind of started with me asking you a question about H1B caps in a thread like this almost a decade ago. Super appreciate you doing this for people that are dreaming of a better future, dreaming of the American dream.
Thank you all so much for chming in about rewind. I’ve been ruminating about what to do about my subscription. To see that I’m not alone in paying for this app that the founder ditched… I finally feel heard. Thank you!
While we’re here, has anyone been able to export audio from Rewind.ai’s local storage?
Totally agree, seen it too. Do you think it can be fixed over time with better training data and optimization? Or, is this a fundamental limitation that LLMs will never overcome?
In fact there are possibly other macro-economic effects at play:
1. The inability to deduct engineering for tax purposes in the year they were spent: "Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) from 2017, the law requires companies to amortize (spread out) all domestic R&D expenses, including software development costs, over five years, starting in tax years after December 31, 2021, instead of deducting them immediately. This means if you spend $100,000 on software development in 2023, you can only deduct 1/5th (or $20,000) each year over five years"
2. End of zero-interest rates.
3. Pandemic era hiring bloat - let's be honest we hired too many non-technical people, companies are still letting attrition take place (~10%/yr where I am) instead of firing.
4. Strong dollar. My company is moving seats to Canada, Ireland, and India instead of hiring in the US. Getting 1.5-2 engineers in Ireland instead of 1 senior on the US west coast.
Otherwise AI is an accelerator to make more money, increase profits and efficiency. Yes it has a high cost, but so does/did Cloud, every SaaS product we've bought/integrated.