The Market Basket used to calculate the BLS CPI changes over time, which can make long range comparisons difficult.
I’ve read of political influence on the market basket to lower the reported rate of inflation by the incumbent party, but I’m not educated enough on the topic to give an opinion on if it happens.
> Software development is one of the most capital-intensive activities a modern company undertakes
The article is definitely written from a "high tech" industry lens. A mid-sized utility might spend $80-$150 million USD on IT capital projects in a year, but $2b on power pole maintenance. Utilities are a strong example, but any large enterprise manufacturing company is spending more on factory upgrades that programming.
> [...] built a functional replica of approximately 95% of Slack’s core product in fourteen days using LLM agents.
IT and Finance leadership and asset heavy companies are currently trying to wrap their head around the current economics of their 100+ SaaS contracts, and if it still makes sense with LLM powered developers. Can they hire developers in house to build the fraction of the tool they use from many of these companies, save on total cost and Opex?
I work with these companies a lot, and won't weigh in on the right decision. Bottom line "it depends" on many factors, some of which are not immediately obvious. The article still holds weight regardless of industries, but there is some nuance (talent availability, internal change cost, etc.) that also have to be considered.
Yeah, that line came across as a little out of touch. I work for US DOTs, and a yearly allotment from a STIP of a small DOT is still measured in billions. Software spend is negligible. In fact, I would say software was always costly in terms of labor, but hasn’t been capital intensive until recently.
But I would like to agree with what you said with respect to SaaS spending coming under scrutiny. Our technical experts are becoming aware that we spend 5 or 6-figure sums on software with barely any users that we can clone with a coding agent in an afternoon. Eventually management will find out too and we’re going to cut a lot of dead weight.
A modern pharmaceutical manufacturing plant costs two-billion dollars just to build, and that doesn't include developing a drug to actually manufacture there, or a distribution network to sell what you make inside it.
the SaaS isn't going anywhere. you're going to AI yourself a Tier 4 data center and all of the requisite generators and UPS systems.
And how do you put liability on an LLM agent? I outsource to SaaS and consultants because 1) they're good at what they do, and 2) if they do it wrong I can sue them, escalate, berate them in social media, etc. and get things fixed; the AI pulls from so many places who is responsible? How do I validate that?
I blackbox that I can't audit is a lot of risk compared to expensive consultants with shortcomings.
I had a car with an all wheel drive computer in a similar spot in the late 2000s.
I had a small crack in the rubber seal around my sunroof from parking outside in the elements. When it rained, water seeped in, made its way down the a-pillar, pooled under the seat, and fried the computer.
Expensive fix but I was able to drive it to the shop.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass
It's a little out of date, but the conclusions are still relevant.
Main things of note: Brickheads are pretty economical as a "parts pack." No significant correlation between per-piece pricing and IP licensing (except for Star Wars). Star Wars and City sets are overpriced.
As a kid I loved the giant boat hull piece because it was sealed and actually floated. This in combination with some larger pylon-type pieces from the Star Wars set meant you could build floating cities and vehicles and such and mess with them in the kitchen sink.
Lego suffers from a fandom problem among adults: They have strong nostalgia for how it was when they were kids and they think everything since then is against the natural order of Lego.
The best way to enjoy Lego is to give it to some kids and watch them get creative with it. Unlike all of the Internet complaints, kids have no problem having fun with Lego and being creative in their own ways.
- iMessage & SMS for most US based family, casual friends and co workers.
- WhatsApp for European Family
- Signal for one group of friends
- Telegram for another group of friends
Every time I message someone I have to remember what app to use. It’s annoying. This in addition to random threads that pick up with the same people on instagram, discord, etc., which I try to redirect to our “standard” channel as aggressively as I can.
While I knew that one off the top of my head... one of the neat "Show HN" that I recall from a bit ago: Show HN: Find the relevant Xkcd comic for your post using RAG https://hackernews.hn/item?id=44799291
> How it works - Simply paste your entire message or post into the search box to get the most relevant xkcd for it. No need to search by keywords, etc.
I will add that FreeCAD has come a long way in constraint based and parametric part design, and I'm able to use it exclusively running an Arch-based distro.
Deltahedra has extremely impressive tutorials on YouTube. No fluff -- no long intros or filler -- 30-60 minutes of dense content, clearly explained: https://www.youtube.com/@deltahedra3D
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