skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on The Boring Company faces Nashville tunnel criticism in ~transport
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Comment on The Boring Company faces Nashville tunnel criticism in ~transport
skybrian Link Parent"Just build another lane" isn't cheap or easy, and when there's traffic, it's not actually an independent route. I don't think the Boring Company has had a successful project yet and don't have..."Just build another lane" isn't cheap or easy, and when there's traffic, it's not actually an independent route.
I don't think the Boring Company has had a successful project yet and don't have much hope for them. But in principle, cheaper tunnels for cars isn't entirely a bad idea. There are situations where more tunnels would be useful.
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Comment on llOOPy lOOPs in ~comp
skybrian LinkWhen I asked a coding agent to convert a Typescript interface and associated functions to a proper class to enforce some invariants, it had no trouble doing that. So I think you can get this if...When I asked a coding agent to convert a Typescript interface and associated functions to a proper class to enforce some invariants, it had no trouble doing that. So I think you can get this if you want, but you have to ask for it?
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Comment on Whatever happened to the Uber bezzle? in ~transport
skybrian Link ParentWasn't Google the first tech company to announce that they were were working on driverless cars? I'm not sure what innovations can be attributed to Uber in that market, since they didn't get to...Wasn't Google the first tech company to announce that they were were working on driverless cars? I'm not sure what innovations can be attributed to Uber in that market, since they didn't get to the point of offering a service.
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Comment on Whatever happened to the Uber bezzle? in ~transport
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...]From the article:
In August 2021, the consensus was that Uber was finished.
Critics argued that the company was a ‘bezzle’. It looked like a company, but it was actually a long con. Its putative core business, selling rides, was dressed up with regulatory arbitrage and accounting gimmicks to suggest future profitability, in order to separate credulous investors from their money now. According to the critics, at some point soon the investors would realize they’d been taken, dump their shares, and the whole enterprise would collapse.
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Doctorow’s language is explicit and blunt: pungent examples include “Uber was never going to be profitable. Never”, or Uber “is about to die.” And it included specific predictions.
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All five claims, taken together, congealed into a meme: Uber is a bezzle.1
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The simplest way to say what happened between 2022 and 2025 is not that Uber proved the critics wrong, but that Uber stopped being the same object the critique was describing. The company that achieved profitability in 2023 operates under different constraints, charges different prices, and extracts value differently than the company Horan analyzed in 2016 or Doctorow declared dead in 2021.
Several factors spurred the company to change. The obvious one was the pandemic, which delivered a massive shock to ride-hailing demand, temporarily collapsing trip volumes and forcing the company to confront how expensive its growth-at-any-price strategy was. Less obviously, when the pandemic went away, so too did the cheap capital that had been a feature of the markets from the 2008 global financial crisis onward. But those macro-environment shifts only provided an impetus; they weren’t the changes themselves.
So what were the changes that made Uber profitable?
It did exactly what its investors expected it to do: it charged riders more and paid drivers less.
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The critics had predicted this move, or something like it. What they didn’t predict was that Uber could pull it off without triggering the expected consequences. Horan’s model assumed that raising prices or cutting driver pay would invite one of three responses: riders would defect to cheaper alternatives, drivers would quit for better opportunities, or competitors would undercut Uber’s new margins.
None of these materialized at the scale required to discipline Uber’s pricing.
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The critics’ second major bet—that regulators would eventually force Uber to internalize its true costs—also failed to materialize as predicted, though not for lack of trying.
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On the expense side, Uber made cuts that would have been politically difficult before the pandemic forced the company’s hand. In 2020, it laid off thousands of employees and shed over $1 billion in fixed costs. More importantly, it abandoned the moonshot projects that had consumed capital without generating revenue.
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I’ll give them their due: Uber’s critics correctly identified that early Uber ran on subsidized growth disconnected from operational fundamentals, and correctly predicted that reaching profitability would require raising prices and squeezing drivers. They incorrectly predicted that Uber would prove unable to do this.
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Whatever happened to the Uber bezzle?
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Comment on Jeff Bezos orders layoffs at 'The Washington Post' in ~news
skybrian Link ParentMaybe this is more of a personal preference, but if someone cites a talking-head video on YouTube, that doesn't count as evidence as far as I'm concerned. An article written by a journalist does,...Maybe this is more of a personal preference, but if someone cites a talking-head video on YouTube, that doesn't count as evidence as far as I'm concerned. An article written by a journalist does, whether it's in a newspaper or not.
When people use cameras to shoot what's going on out in the world, that does sometimes count (provided it's not faked) but I don't want to have to analyze that evidence myself.
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Comment on Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentThe point of experiments like this is to see what the model can do. Yes, the model is trained on the Internet, but so were all the previous models they tried, and the previous models couldn't do...The point of experiments like this is to see what the model can do. Yes, the model is trained on the Internet, but so were all the previous models they tried, and the previous models couldn't do it.
Maybe the wording isn't quite right, but I don't think anyone is misled, since they clarified what they meant in parentheses.
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Comment on Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI wonder how they compiled the Linux kernel? Does it take any compiler flags? I doubt they modified the source code to put absolute paths everywhere.I wonder how they compiled the Linux kernel? Does it take any compiler flags? I doubt they modified the source code to put absolute paths everywhere.
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Comment on OpenAI exec becomes top US President Donald Trump donor with $25 million gift in ~society
skybrian LinkFrom the article: [...] [...]From the article:
More tech money is flowing into Donald Trump’s coffers. In September, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman gave Trump’s super PAC a whopping $25 million — the largest of the six-month fundraising cycle.
The gigantic donation is a sign of Brockman’s political allegiances, and of the ChatGPT-maker’s attempt to curry favor with the Republican administration. MAGA Inc., the super PAC, was launched to support Trump and has become his primary fundraising vessel. Despite Trump hitting his term limit, money continues to pour in from supporters and those seeking favor, helping the political action committee build a war chest it can use in the 2026 midterm elections.
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As Bloomberg reported, MAGA Inc. currently has more money in its accounts than the main super PAC for House Republicans spent in the entire 2024 election cycle. And people like Brockman are a big reason why. The OpenAI executive’s donation makes up almost a fourth of the super PAC’s $102 million fundraising haul from the back half of 2025. The money arrived on Sept. 12, according to a Thursday filing by MAGA Inc. with the Federal Election Commission. Most recently, the PAC helped the Republican Matt Van Epps win a special congressional election in Tennessee.
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His spending isn’t limited to swaying Trump. Brockman and other tech leaders announced this summer that they’re launching a super PAC to push for candidates who support AI industry. That places Brockman’s effort in the same vein as Fairshake, the pro-cryptocurrency lobbying group that successfully helped tank Katie Porter’s run for Senate in 2024.
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OpenAI exec becomes top US President Donald Trump donor with $25 million gift
19 votes -
Comment on Any software engineers considering a career switch due to AI? in ~comp
skybrian Link ParentCoding agents do make "rewrite it in Rust" a lot easier to pull off. People working in less popular languages could port code more easily, too.Coding agents do make "rewrite it in Rust" a lot easier to pull off. People working in less popular languages could port code more easily, too.
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Comment on Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes in ~tech
skybrian LinkFrom the article: ... ... ...From the article:
To stress test it, I tasked 16 agents with writing a Rust-based C compiler, from scratch, capable of compiling the Linux kernel. Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs, the agent team produced a 100,000-line compiler that can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V.
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Previous Opus 4 models were barely capable of producing a functional compiler. Opus 4.5 was the first to cross a threshold that allowed it to produce a functional compiler which could pass large test suites, but it was still incapable of compiling any real large projects. My goal with Opus 4.6 was to again test the limits.
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This was a clean-room implementation (Claude did not have internet access at any point during its development); it depends only on the Rust standard library. The 100,000-line compiler can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V. It can also compile QEMU, FFmpeg, SQlite, postgres, redis, and has a 99% pass rate on most compiler test suites including the GCC torture test suite. It also passes the developer's ultimate litmus test: it can compile and run Doom.
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As one particularly challenging example, Opus was unable to implement a 16-bit x86 code generator needed to boot into 16-bit real mode. While the compiler can output correct 16-bit x86 via the 66/67 opcode prefixes, the resulting compiled output is over 60kb, far exceeding the 32k code limit enforced by Linux. Instead, Claude simply cheats here and calls out to GCC for this phase (This is only the case for x86. For ARM or RISC-V, Claude’s compiler can compile completely by itself.)
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Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes
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Comment on A case for increasing computer literacy (but also a rant) in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI suspect it’s easier on a Mac. Also, I just use Linux from the command line, which is all you really need as a developer. (Your browser and text editor can run outside the VM.)I suspect it’s easier on a Mac. Also, I just use Linux from the command line, which is all you really need as a developer. (Your browser and text editor can run outside the VM.)
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Comment on Jim Pattison won't sell US warehouse proposed as new Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in ~society
skybrian Link ParentFortunately it’s cancelled now. @DefinitelyNotAFae shared some good links about what’s happened elsewhere. Also, I assume they are trying to buy other buildings.Fortunately it’s cancelled now. @DefinitelyNotAFae shared some good links about what’s happened elsewhere.
Also, I assume they are trying to buy other buildings.
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Comment on A case for increasing computer literacy (but also a rant) in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentWhat about running Linux in a container? It seems like that would bypass a lot of hardware issues?What about running Linux in a container? It seems like that would bypass a lot of hardware issues?
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Comment on Jim Pattison won't sell US warehouse proposed as new Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in ~society
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Comment on Any software engineers considering a career switch due to AI? in ~comp
skybrian Link ParentI think it’s still too soon to see widespread impact on existing projects. But I expect that we’re going to see a lot of open source projects that were written largely with coding agents from the...I think it’s still too soon to see widespread impact on existing projects. But I expect that we’re going to see a lot of open source projects that were written largely with coding agents from the beginning. This is a bit meta, but an example I can point to is the Shelley coding agent.
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Comment on Any software engineers considering a career switch due to AI? in ~comp
skybrian Link ParentCAD is definitely not there yet but in a couple of years, who knows?CAD is definitely not there yet but in a couple of years, who knows?
I believe the original concept for Boring was that driverless cars could use a tunnel to bypass a congested area and continue on surface streets, connecting you to a lot more places than a train could without doing a transfer. But a lot got lost going from concept to implementation and I don't see the point of what they're doing now.