I wish you were joking, but one of the giant companies we work with as a supplier suggested we switch to the Windows version of their (desktop) software, running it under Wine.
In fact they told us they have plans to discountinue the true native Linux version, and going forward. they're going to package their Windows version with their version of Wine as the 'native' Linux solution.
This is a company that has both tremendous resources and deep Linux expertise.
I've been wondering if a linux GUI applucation can be made by compiling wine libraries into a linux ELF executable, skipping the EXE format. Do I still need the wine supporting extra processes or is this shippable?
I know I'm probably going to get some shit for this, but, this actually is one of the reasons I like using Rust. I know, I know, but, the fact that cargo can be used as a package manager universally across distros (and operating systems!) is a pretty huge boon to me as a developer.
Zero (Linux) package manager involvement and onerous rules.
I mean it's a general sign of the times across all of computing that problems keep getting solved wrong at all levels of the stack, and since the low level implementation can't be relied on for some reason, an implementation gets stacked on top.
More specifically to your case, Linux package management is an unmitigated disaster when it comes to development. Having to have root access just to install a few headers of whatever version your distro happens to ship with, have some scripts discover said versions (too bad if they are not the ones you wanted).
Every single professional (for profit model) piece of software tends to carry half the userland with it. Steam, Spotify etc..
Besides, Rust isn't big on the concept of dynamic libraries anyways, which once again, I don't think is a purely good thing, but there are a lot of arguments can be made pro or contra.
Let's just say it's a devil we know, which is more than can be said about a lot of other approaches.
There might not be much of a market for true EV supercars, but that market is so small as to be inconsequential anyway, with many models selling 10s of units and many of these cars never actually being driven significantly.
In the 'high performance but actually driveable' toy zone, there are plenty of Porsche Taycan 'company cars' around London. But sports cars are niche. Lots of rich people drive SUVs, and there are plenty of Porsche / Audi / BMW, etc, SUV EVs around outer London.
EVs will keep getting cheaper as China puts pressure on the market and as the number of EVs on the roads increases. In the UK, you can already get a second-hand VW ID.3, a great EV, for well under £15. And new cars from BYD and MG are available at ever more reasonable prices.
I don’t get why someone would want to own an electric supercar. A Ferarri engine is beautiful even if it’s impractical. Electric motors aren’t special even if they are tremendously powerful and efficient.
I could see a market for hybrid supercars if cities go further on being clean air zones, enough of a battery to let the owner drive slowly around Knightsbridge.
In my (generally affluent) zone 4 neighborhood in London, the number of green plate EVs had multiplied like rabbits over the past few years, but few houses have off-street parking. A huge percentage of the cars parked on street are EVs.
But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts and since most people don't drive their cars much on a day to day basis, it all works fine even without off-street parking. There are also several reserved medium-speed charging spots around the neighborhood and lots of fast chargers at the local large grocery store.
> But since you can plug in to charge at many street lamp posts
Are these the standard UK 230V 13A fused single-phase receptacles? Those put out about twice as much power as a 120V 15A circuit protected by a breaker, 3kW vs 1.5kW
230 * 13 = 2990W
120 * 15 = 1800 * .8 = 1440W
Using those for L1 charging would be a lot better than US L1 charging.
No, they are 3.5kW - 5kW standard EV chargers. But it's probably easy to install them using the existing power run.
But you are right that standard wall charging is much more viable in a 230V system here than in the US. Some people just run a cable from inside to their car if they don't have a 'real' charger yet.
The world is full of these weird business cases where people aren't aware of the actual product, like how Starbucks US morphed from a coffee shop into an iced dessert drinks company that also incidentally sells hot coffee.
Edit:
Other fun examples -
In the mid-2000s, Porsche was an incredibly successful hedge fund that also sold cars who tried to acquire VW using a short squeeze.
Most US airlines are profitable frequently flier points companies that also operate airplanes to justify the program.
Target US is a real estate company that operates also (profitable) stores.
I don't know if the Starbucks example is quite the same as the band example. If anything, their focus on iced desserts shows that they know exactly what their audience wants and is paying for.
When I think about the band shirts, I think about this time an indie game dev youtuber did a full breakdown of their different revenue streams. They were a "full time indie gamedev", but the overwhelming majority of their income came from gamedev Udemy courses.
So really, they were an online course seller that used their gamedev youtube content to convince people to buy the courses.
The reality is that Starbucks is the world's biggest unregulated bank, with their claws in the real estate industry. Who got that way by selling the experience of hanging out in a convenient coffee shop.
Their business has run into trouble a couple of times because MBA types in the company lost sight of this, then focused on trying to sell drinks efficiently. Thereby diluting the brand and business.
If you've got 22 minutes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym7YwFq8ZuM is a very informative walkthrough of the history and the business by the always funny youtuber, The Fat Electician. Highly recommended.
IMO, they, like many other companies, were doomed by the constant chase for growth. Once they had a large share of "have a milk-coffee drink in a nice lounge" market, growth slowed. But having a large market share, good margins and growth that is the same as population/gdp (+/-) is just not acceptable.
So they try to find a way to get more growth, even if it changes and perhaps kills what the business was.
Around 2000 the founder stepped away, and MBAs brought in automated machines. They were more efficient and consistent at making the drinks than the baristas, and business tanked. The founder came back in 2008, got rid of the machines, and brought the baristas back. Business took off again.
In the context of AI automation I keep coming back to "cute Starbucks barista" as the archetypal automation-proof job. Because the job isn't producing the beverage, but the little moment of human interaction. (Especially these days, when not much of it remains!)
Same goes with supermarket checkout. I noticed many people intentionally take the line where the human scans your stuff. They enjoy it!
Unfortunately many zoomers do not appear to have been informed of this fact, and will give you a worse experience, "humanity wise", than the self-check out machine!
When you treat your job as robotic, aside from making the experience worse for all involved, you are also competing with actual robots, i.e. competing on speed, price and consistency, which is not a great place for a human to be.
I'm assuming you're talking about those Clover machines. They were really, really good and well designed IIRC. Trying to automate the barista with them; well, that's where they messed up!
Well, not the original role. That was to bring some americanized version of European/Italian coffee culture to the US. Serving espresso based drinks in a comfortable public cafe style setting. It was very popular for a long time. Busy cafes full of people, selling lots of drinks, opening new shops, etc.
I thought it was also, so I looked at United Airlines 2024 Annual Report to confirm or deny my position. [^0]
If you look at their revenue sheet, you'll see that UAL made ~$51B from passenger revenue (tickets sold * available seats across their entire fleet) while they made ~$24B from "other revenue", which includes, amongst other things, annual fees from credit cards.
Same with Delta, though they made ~$10B from their "other" revenue. [^1]
However, it's a bit of a positive feedback loop situation. The "other" revenues in these 10-Ks don't tell the whole story.
Airline frequent flyer programs have tiers with minimum flight and spend requirements per tier. This benefits both frequent flyers and VFR customers (visiting friends and relatives).
If you travel a lot for work (frequent flyer), there are very heavy incentives to get to that top tier. Customer service at the highest tiers is eons better than what you'd get at lower tiers. You also get priority boarding, first-crack at upgrades, upgrade certificates that move you to the top of upgrade lists, and more. These benefits make air travel, which many people don't like doing, much more tolerable.
If you're an infrequent flyer, getting to that airline's mid-grade tier usually gets you more free checked bags and priority boarding. Checked bags are EXPENSIVE after the first freebie (thanks, Southwest!) which is usually enough of a draw to get people to chase that status. (If you live near a hub, you can gamble and hope that the gate agent offers to check bags gate-side for free to speed up boarding, but that's not foolproof. Anyway, checking baggage is a fool's errand; one-bag for life!).
Getting the airline's co-branded card usually provides bonuses that make it easier to hit those tiers. So you get the card and put all of your personal (and corporate, if your company allows it) expenses on the card.
Airlines also have gotten very aggressive about pushing the card onto gen pop. You're almost certainly going to get hit with a 60-80k mile offer on every flight you take in the US for spending ~$3k on that airline's co-branded card, no matter the airline. (It's almost always enough for a round-trip ticket to some coveted location in the US, on an award flight, which are harder and harder to come by, but that's another topic for another post.)
United flew 173M customers in 2024. $3k card spend from even 10% of those customers is $52M! And that's before you consider that most people will continue spending on credit cards after earning the spend benefit! (However, at $0.01/mile earn rate, the $14M worth of flights United would be beholden to is recorded as a "frequent flyer deferred revenue" liability. But, again, the chase for status and benefits would generate more revenue that's hard to forecast, though I'm sure the airlines have forecasting models in place.)
If this interests you, and if you like math, "The Global Airline Industry" by Belobaba et. al. is a fantastic book that explains this and other peculiarities of how airlines work. This was recommended to me by an old colleague that ran a small airline. It's excellent.
And McDonald’s is known to be primarily a real estate company. Berkshire Hathaway is meant to be an insurance company. Military aircraft manufacturers are really maintenance companies.
Now do the International Code Council, and Harvard, and Unicef, and government departments, and, and, and.....
The reason we don't evaluate things in this "measure what is actually goin on" manner is because the actual goings on are only able to go on as they do so long as a public image that emphasizes something else is maintained.
People wouldn't go to starbucks in the manner they do if they thought of it as a sugary drink place.
Similarly Wether spoons, the chain of pubs in the UK.
More interestingly, they tend to set up in historically significant or listed buildings and as a result, preserve them. Not unusual to find a Spoons set up in an old 19th century bank or something.
RVs are put together by methheads and there are less protections (such as no lemon law for RVs) for the consumers. Many RVs spend there whole one year warranty period in the shop with no actual fixes being done and then the warranty runs out. The people that do hear about RV problems, buy new thinking that will be less problems, when in fact the newer RVs are the lower quality ones that have issues. There are YouTube channels dedicated to this phenomenon (https://youtube.com/@LizAmazing), and why one famous consumer lawyer (Steve Lehto) says "You Must be INSANE to buy an RV These Days":
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xElhTNS_xn8
A great video where one major manufacturer does not even properly VIN their RVs leading to a $600,000 fine given to one RV owner:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zGOANydJURQ
The dark truth no one wants to say out loud is that 'real' cameras are dying to cell phones not just because phones are more convenient to carry, but because phones take 'better' photos for 99% of people than they can manage with any other camera - and that's without any editing. It's all software.
Yes, enthusiasts here are spending hours editing RAW files and most think cell phone pics are over-HDRed messes. But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically. Most people are at a disadvantage with a DLSR/mirror less, not an advantage. That leads to ever-declining sales.
Why can't someone make a traditional camera with modern software instead of something that looks like it is out of 1994? The software on a Sony DLSR, for example, looks like the on-screen menu of a VHS player, but is somehow slower and dumber to use. The number of overlapping, incompatible picture adjustments on a Fuji is just as ridiculous.
I don't even think you're necessarily wrong overall, but damn does the photographer in me want to strongly disagree with this:
> But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically
I don't know man, what you get out of a DSLR/mirrorless is just on another planet compared to a phone camera... The raw quality, detail, and richness of a photo captured with a big sensor and big lens is something special.
Phone photos can look superficially good. And for some photo styles this is enough. But when I look at a phone photo, I'm often left lacking a "draw you in" factor, because so much of the detail and lighting is more or less faked through software. There is no ambience, no mood.
Not sure what you mean by real cameras. If you're talking about DSLR, then I would agree that they're in decline, but if you're talking about any non-phone camera, I would disagree. The mirrorless market is still quite healthy. Smartphones fill 80-90% of demand, the majority of the dedicated camera market is mirrorless. Commodity cameras are less popular, but demand for higher end dedicated cameras remains strong with new cameras (and innovations) coming out all the time.
The software on Sony Cameras is known for being very bad, but that's not the only brand. All the other brands are definitely better in that regard (but I prefer my Sony because of other aspects). And Blackmagic is in my opinion the best and most modern.
lol, not at all. It's a new category, people can take loads more shitpics and store them indefinitely which is a fantastic capability. People who had no photos of their family now have hundreds.
At the end of the day, light is a physical property and the more of it you get into your lens, the more of that light can fill your sensor. Phones are still doing a lot of guesswork, post-processing that create photos that aren't underexposed, but are quite unnatural.
Plus gen-z is running around with all the point and shoot cameras we threw away 15 years ago
I don't mean to nitpick but really the only thing they have in common is a)rackets b)being played in pairs and c) being very popular at the moment. Padel is orders of magnitude richer and more complex than pickleball. Pickle is a lot of fun though.
Having played both there's a lot of overlap in the social side. You can find games with randoms or join social match plays with little friction. From what I've heard, it's not that easy with other racket sports like tennis.
I agree the skill gap is wider in padel, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you want to play with.
Is it just a lame rehash of the same phone from the last 4 years with a faster CPU and a screen privacy feature? Yes. But man, the screen privacy feature is so good. I expect that everyone will copy it. Once you have it, it seems irresponsible to not have it. Having it auto-enabled on an app-by-app basis is so nice.
Also, yes, it is absurdly expensive. But whenever Samsung launches a new phone, they offer large preorder bonuses and generous trade-in rates for 2-3 year old phones. So don't believe the price. I think they have to do this to keep growth going, but you get them much cheaper than the stated price if you pre-order. I paid less than 50% of the list price after trading in my near identical S24 and got a free bump to the 512GB model.
People who make (mostly good) decisions and ship stuff as quickly as possible. Ideally while being nice people to work with.
Your first hires need to be people who make the company faster, not slower. A single bad hire can sink the ship. Someone who is great in a large corporation can ruin an early start-up.
Personally, I'm hoping for low-ego high achievers. But that's up to you. This is where you get to define what the company culture will be.
It's 100% illegal to present a non-US passport at the US border if you are US citizen.
The law is 8 U.S.C. 1185 - "it shall be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid United States passport."
In the past, the penalty for violating this has generally just been "a stern talking to," like you said. But no guarantees on that.
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