I think it’s a material different for SMEs, especially bootstrapped firms small consultancies. But you’re right, I think some skepticism is warranted since there’s a lot of factors depressing the tech sector rn.

This is an excellent writeup. Even though I come with a bias against MS, I did some work on the .NET framework and was just blown away with how great the dev experience is. Maybe I’m overselling it but I wouldn’t consider any other platform (except that it’s managed by MS). The old school win32 api is surprisingly powerful too.

Then looking at the spider web of new technologies they’ve released, half-released, and half-deprecated it makes me seriously doubt the future of MS. I mean they’ll always be a profitable, popular company just not whose tools I want to be locked into.

Working in the SharePoint ecosystem, for example, was totally miserable and I’ll never do it again if I can avoid it. Still love C# though.

Luckily .NET is not married to Windows and MS ecosystems at all for good 9 years already. I'd be long gone and using something else if it did :) (very happy I've stayed though)

Agree with your worries and hope they find their engineering excellence again, because while DevDiv teams working on .NET are isolated from problematic influence, it would be a shame for MS troubles to affect them. It's just too big of a project to continue without significant funding and there is probably not enough community goodwill and traction in absolute numbers (which are wasted on worse languages like Go) to carry the torch.

Well there’s a couple of things at play here

- extreme survivorship bias in the tech and startup world distorts your expectations

- most startups fail, most businesses do not see exceptional returns

- intelligence is necessary (in most cases) but not sufficient for getting wealthy

- If you work in big tech with an MBA you’re probably much wealthier than the median USian.

- I suspect that lifestyle creep/peer comparison is distorting your view of your own personal wealth.

So yeah, there’s a number of cognitive biases that are distorting your ability to assess yourself here. What level of wealth are you aiming for? It would be easier to work backward from that number and try to model what you’d need to do to hit it.

I've tried this but never got the PyInstaller deployment process down smooth enough for my taste. Even for small apps, I end up rewriting in C# to compile executables with if I need to deploy to people who don't use code. With PyInstaller, since you have to package the Python interpreter the .exe always ends up too large and slow for my taste (especially since I usually compile with --onefile. I'm wondering how you do it, if you use onefile or have some better way to run PyInstaller so the final exe is smaller or faster.

I use -F (--onefile).

It's certainly not fast to start, but in my case, it's not a quick one-and-done type thing, so I don't mind too much

C has a really solid community and (imo) the best online content of any programming language. It’s the Python Effect but in reverse now: every Python video on YouTube is now clickbait about elementary pandas functions while C videos are made by extremely talented programmers (Tsoding, Jonas Birch).

Banks are absolutely allowed to ask for your income and credit history. Why would phone model be a better signal than credit score, for loan defaults?

Yeah ironically enough I think what’s cutting edge about LLMs is their ability to let you spend more time in the command line and less in the gui. With AI writing the time cost/opportunity cist of writing shell scripts is so low, even if you find yourself working on a machine you’re not used to (e.g. Windows for linux users).

F# sounds fun, I’ve been goofing off with Haskell in my spare time and really liking how it handles parsing problems. I’d think F# would be elegant for AOC too

Wow that is unbelievably user-hostile design. I'm not able to recreate this behavior on my Mac (Ventura 13.6.3) or Chrome (Version 130.0.6723.117). Are you running a different OS/version of Chrome?

Anyway if I can get it to trigger the unmute I think I'd try the following:

> userscript in Chrome that blocks access to system settings

> userscript that automatically mutes volume when new page is loaded

> (lame GUI way) check system settings in mac for app restrictions

> (super hacky) write a bash script that perpetually mutes volume

This is a bit of a tangent but it's odd you're having this problem since Mac's tend to be pretty locked down with 3rd party permissions. I'm having trouble write now writing a bash script just to toggle the natural scrolling setting on a mouse.

You’ll face a high regulatory and liability burden, but neither of those are insurmountable (note that I am not a lawyer or financial advisor and this is not legal or financial advice). Liquor license to serve drinks is the first that comes to mind. Then there’s the risk factor that running a bar involves dealing with unsavory people (people who start fights, harass, other levels of petty crime and violence). You also need to screen guests for valid IDs.

You need a rent-a-bouncer service for your hosts, too at the very least.

Again, not impossible but difficult (and solving the difficulty is the whole value prop of a business). Consider synergies with other event organizers, especially in the music scene.

Totally right, regulatory and liability burden take the huge part of cost.

However, Consumers can take some of these responsibilities, That's why the price of service mentioned by OP can be less expensive.

Yeah, your right. There are certainly some regulatory challenges with liquor and if a host a serving food. But to get around the liquor license issue, it could be byob. The events also do not necessarily have to involve a party - it could be other events focused around a theme or activity.

Bouncers for hosts would probably not be necessary. I've used airbnb experiences before and this is basically the same concept. Airbnb doesn't have bouncers for their hosts. The ability to leave reviews by both hosts and guests would deter bad behavior. But this is an issue I need to dig deeper into.