For a VC "running" would mean re-invest in the next thing to get more money. What alternative would you prefer? Keep doing the same thing without investing in new stuff?

They don't "take the money", there are other people that believe some things (profits/growth in a field) will last forever and will bring 10x return, so they are willing to give them the money.

> As long as this hierarchy exists, the problem will exist.

I would encourage you to try to setup a place where no hierarchy exists and see how it goes. In my experience people have wildly different opinions on multiple (even minor) things and without someone to "take a decision", things end up just going in circles.

Of course, if the person taking the decisions repeatedly takes decisions that have a negative longer term impact (much easier to asses on longer term than at the moment you have to take the decision), something should change, but that can include contributors looking for other companies ...

I've worked in teams where both Team Lead and Product Manager were peers to everyone else. Everybody reported to a manager above the team. They were some of the best performing teams in my career.

You put agreements/processes in place to make decisions in a flat hierarchy, and as last resort business (PM) makes the calls.

I also find that essentially 100% of the time - if there is no formal power structure, and informal one forms. Every time. And that informal one is essentially always relationship-based.

Science has progressed a lot in the last 57 years. And probably SpaceX can do what it does now also because of some of those progresses (computational, communication, materials, etc.). 50 years ago you would not have a need for a Starlink constellation, so nobody built enough capacity to make one.

Science progressed, but it didn't bring the kinds of physical innovations we expected. At least, not until recently. Where are the flying cars? Why haven't we cured ageing? Why don't we have a base on the Moon? Why isn't energy effectively unlimited and free? We had an explosion in information sciences. The internet is a marvel. iPhones and chip technology are incredible. AI is unbelievable to witness. But why did we slow down so much on physical scientific innovation?

Not sure about this one, but there is another engine that started as a Total Annihilation clone: https://recoilengine.org/

Some of the (open source) games on that engine (https://beyondallreason.info/ and https://zero-k.info/) have similar feeling with the original TA, with quite different play styles. I do prefer Zero-K over Beyond All Reason, but I would recommend anyone interested in the genre to try both and decide for themselves.

Zero K is deceptively amazing, like StarCraft mixed with supreme commander.

The lead Dev's "Cold takes" blog series are dripping with the sort of insights you only get from years of hard won iteration and if you like RTS games are a joy to read : https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes

It's really unfortunate that it's as good as it is because awful players (racists, cheaters, tactical pausers) really ruined the community.

Not sure about which game you talk about, at least in Zero-K pauses in team multiplayer games are quite rare and annoying people get moderated out.

ZK. Maybe it's better these days.

I am sure people could find code such that an LLM can optimize it 10x fold. I have seen many types of code in my life (well written, horribly written, fast, slow, etc.).

I do feel there is a limit to LLM-s today. I did not try, but I doubt it will work if I would tell it "make me a web browser that is bug free, perfectly secure, works as efficient as possible on my architecture and has best UX for me personally".

Knowing where that limit is, is as hard as it always was knowing how fast a team of engineers was going to do a project.

> I do feel there is a limit to LLM-s today.

I felt there were limits 4 years ago. I couldn't get even an 8k context window.

It's starting to feel like the important gaps are the only ones left that need to be closed before there aren't any left. It also feels like next year they will start meaningfully closing.

You mean move back to Africa? It might be a bit un-natural for humans to even live that far north, which forces the consumption of more resources (heating, clothing, food transport, etc.) than we would if we would live in milder climates.

On top of which, people seem to have a large variation in preferences, see : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...

I guess I was selected for the cohort "never show a useful ad to hide we're listening" even if I don't try to protect a lot (except an add blocker in a navigator).

Honestly I wish I would get more targeted ads for the stuff I look for, when I look. Instead, for some, it happens that after I buy them, I get repeated ads after couple of weeks or even months (like, invoice is on gmail, photos of the object on my phone, but nooo they want to trick me, so they still send me more ads of the same shit that I will not buy again in years).

Seriously, I think the tracking is as crappy as most software is. Sure, it might identify one/two keywords and throw ads at you, but it does it a dumb volume way that corporations work, not in a smart "we know everything about you way", that a true geek might implement.

It's absolutely true that companies are pretty horrible at actually targeting ads.

Right now the amount of data about you companies have is just massive. Everywhere you are at every moment of the day, who you were with, what you talk about, everything you buy, and every website you visit, what your mood is, what your level of education is, how you react to stress, it's all too much information for companies to extract useful data out of right now. AI is going to help with that. Unfortunately, like everything else AI does, it will do it pretty badly and with lots of errors and hallucinations. The companies using AI won't care though as long it works enough times on enough people that they make money.

To make matters worse, ads are only a small part of what all that data is used for. It's the thing that's most visible to you though, so you can imagine that if your ads show that companies think the wrong things about you that HR departments and other companies you interact with offline probably do too.

Yeah, like the way US citizens now are not targeted at all by ICE because their data is out there? Future evil government will not care about your data, they can just invent shit. The idea is to instill fear and uncertainty not "finding the correct people".

On the other hand, said data can be today use because various entities use extremely shitty authentication methods, like just insert your birthday and first name and voila you have a credit with our bank (not an actual example, just for illustration purposes).

I think we can have both and it might even be smart.

A lot of people causing issues are people that can't make sense of many things (like many terrorists). They get a fixed idea and they end up doing something bad. You would catch those with some (basic) surveillance.

A lot of normal people (not wanting to cause issues) might benefit from some privacy, if they understand what are the trade-offs (like government overreach). They can then use a slightly more complex tech.

We would still remain with the couple intelligent but sociopaths (think Unabomber style), but I think no solution can fix all cases.