Re:Val Town is winding down
by swyx on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @02:53PM
(#50445430)
or this is just normal startup M&A cycles and you just happened to pay attention to this one more closely
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Right, they said an era is coming to a close. Their tone’s maybe wistful but not final. M&A cycle is an expression of the same idea? New era beginning. Containers and sandboxes and “harnesses” are in. (I hate that word harness - wish we’d call them rigs or something with less questionable metaphor.)
harness initially annoyed me as well. i asked chatgpt why it’s called a harness and since then im now fully onboard heh.
the agent explained that the metaphor is about steering, a horse harness steers but it’s not technically the control, it’s a suggestion to the horse. The harness is about defining boundaries and such. You perhaps already know this, it’s just that in this instant-meme world, the fact that a word has a substantive meaning is comforting.