throwaway0236

Great cartoon with comment about this problem:

https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html

> big government programs are easy with oil revenues

Sweden doesn't have much oil revenues as far as I know

The book has some valid points when it states that the government has too much money and does not need to make the hard prioritizations.

It has however been heavily criticized. It seems like he had a point to prove and found numbers that fit with his view, and not a neutral description. He also seems to ignore that the trends he points to, also exists in other countries.

That said, he does raise some valid concerns. The number of employees in the public sector grows, even under conservative governments. Part of the reason is that Norway can afford it at the moment. Another reason is that the number of rules and regulations increases, and the government needs more people to enforce them.

The latter is mostly a political issue, and something that also happens in countries that are not wealthy. The author's solution is to reduce taxes and cut public spending.

It works for me (desktop chrome on mac). There are some glitches sometimes when the movies start spanning more than one row.

The initial movie needs to be dragged on the thin white line (not exactly good ux). Perhaps it's not visible?

Also, if you have dragged the first movie and place the second movie incorrectly, it will be placed back in the "stack"

> So you have a billing process that includes a step where you extort the customer and demand substantial amounts of money or else you delete the customer's data on very short notice

I think this is the most important finding from this story. It's not that someone has mistakenly billed a non-profit, but that this form of "customer relations" is apparently part of the standard billing process for business customers.

They are free to do so of course, but I imagine that this may impact customer retention if the practice continues. This short notice is something that I would have reacted very strongly about if I had integrated Slack so deeply in my business as the OP did. With the push for workflows, agents and additional functionality, it is actually a huge risk to the business if you get a short notice to migrate if the new terms can not be met.

I think there are finger sleeves that you can put on to avoid that.

A random example from Amazon (never tried it myself):

https://www.amazon.com/PXIRQ-Sleeves-Touchscreen-Sensitive-B...

I asked it to make a game where you place movies on a time line by dragging the movie poster.

Instead of the movie poster, it decided on its own to use icons that represent the movie instead (a pill represents Matrix, a gun Goodfellas etc.). I was surprised by its creativity to get around any copyright issues.

https://great-orca-9mjte9.manyminiapps.com

I sometimes use Docker Desktop on my Mac to view logs. It's more convenient.

I think you are underestimating the salaries in other "developed" countries, but you are right that US salaries are much higher than any other country (especially in Silicon Valley)

You have a valid point in that many HN commentators seem to live in a bubble where spending thousands of dollars on a developer for "convenience" is seen as a no-brainer. They often work in companies that don't make a profit, but are funded by huge VC investments. I don't blame them, as it is a valid choice given the circumstances. If you have the money, why not? But they may start thinking differently if the flow of VC money slows down.

It's similar to how some wealthy people buy a private jet. Their time is valuable, and the cost seems justified (at least if you don’t care about the environmental impact).

I believe that frugality is actually the default mode of business, but many companies in SV are protected from the consequences by the VCs.