jschveibinz

Follow the money: European wealth is concentrated in a smaller number of centralized institutions that are more conservative investors compared to U.S.

Pension funds: - U.S. has over 5,000 independent municipal, state, and corporate pension systems that invest aggressively. - EU pension capital is in national funds.

University Endowments: - U.S. has over 800 active endowments (with 130+ exceeding $1 billion) - EU universities are state funded, with little or no endowment funds

Corporate Financing: - U.S. businesses get > 70% of funding from VC, PE, mutual funds - EU companies favor banks

Family Offices: - U.S. system has created over 10,000 single-family offices that invest aggressively - EU has ~2,000

State investment: - U.S. moves .16% of GDP into small business with no equity ownership -- free market VC takes equity - EU moves < .08% of GDP into small business with full equity ownership.

Live music is the best!

This is a pretty good idea. You should pursue this.

I love projects. But this reminds me of the model we used in signal and image processing:

- detection: just separating signal from background with confidence

- classification: confidently separating different signals in noise (e.g. PCA)

- identification: requires ground truth (perfect example), but still difficult to do with confidence

If the scientists have ground truth, e.g. "this call means [xyz]", then it’s a signal processing problem to do identification.

If there is no ground truth, then AI would have to have a lot of background data on whale activity at different locations including visual and audio content to try to infer (and that's about it) what the vocalization might mean. And this is where science starts to leave the building.

It's kinda' like inventing the Rosetta Stone using AI: probably not going to be very accurate or repeatable.

I've been thinking a lot about this transition happening, and I hope that everyone is recognizing that this is what the web will probably look like very soon.

URL-->user request--> answer & visualization.

No more static menus, buttons, lists, etc.

There's probably some good work out there helping small businesses adapt to this change? If done right, the real-time token use to generate dynamic pages can be minimized.

This is very, very well done. Thank you.

The implication that biology defies physics is just incorrect on many levels. There is no "truth" to ignore. The claim that life requires information that is otherwise not defined by physical laws is a misinterpretation of what defines information. A tree "bending toward the sun" is an emergent property of underlying physical laws--not a creation or demand for information.

I think it's important to to point out that there's a lot of "slop" to go around. I mean, making bad decisions and/or projections based on flawed data is nothing new.

The entire human scientific community has been shown recently on average to be generating "slop" and calling it science.

My bottom line: humans generate a lot of BS--and LLM's are just averaging it and giving it back to us.

For those interested in brain evolution and practical neuroscience/human behavior:

Carl Sagan's books "Broca's Brain" and "The Dragons of Eden" from the 70's-80's are good initial reads on brain composition and evolution. The Sapolsky lectures and books are also great resources.

That's very plausible and a good point!

So here is an excellent example and interesting race condition that is developing in AI applications and venture-backed startups: what is truly AI-resilient enough to invest millions of dollars in a "land grab"--when the land is literally falling away with each passing day.

There is no doubt that AI will be helping to run businesses. But, there is also little doubt that existing businesses will have the wherewithal to develop the proprietary tools they need to do this work--without needing to buy it from others.

With respect to scope, it is not an overstatement to say that developing trust in AI tools enough to allow them free reign over critical business workflows may be a bridge too far. Look at self-driving car technology--that last 10% is really, really hard. So adoption will be slow and methodical.

There are no secrets. The basic model for starting and running a business (or a project) is straightforward. I like many of you have developed my own models (using AI assistance) for doing this and have been testing for months. And I like many of you have 30+ years of small business experience to back up my models.

This says nothing about the R&D happening at every major corporate & professional software services company in the world right now using the same AI tools to build their own solutions--let alone the enterprises who would be customers doing exactly the same thing.

So there is an enormous amount of competition and what I am calling a "race condition" between the crowd trying to disrupt professional services with AI-developed software and the crowd already in professional services software e.g. SAP and business in general that is doing the exact same thing--with more capable tools, more staff and much more R&D funding.

For the big companies, it's a race to survive.

Investors in startups have a tough decision to make on these small startups that have so little moat and so little prior knowledge and experience.

As an angel investor myself, I am skeptical of investing in any kind of software right now--and maybe forever.

On the plus side, every freelancer now has the power (and responsibility) to optimize their own offerings.

It's going to be very, very interesting...

Look, folks. I'm an old man and pretty much out of the workforce at this point in my life. But what I see in these comments day, after day is rather pitiful. As your Uncle John, I'm going to give you a lecture:

From the article:

>I can’t really blame anyone who’s just gone along with things

Whst is this supposed to mean "blame"? Do you "blame" people for driving cars instead of riding horses? Do you "blame" software engineers for eliminating entire industries?

Folks, writing software can be fun and satisfying. Do it for the enjoyment. But suck it up, because the technology wave you rode to a well-paying job was always going to be short-lived for the majority of programmers.

Just like the engineers who built steam engines, or living room radios, or tube TV's, or Internet dial-up modems and long distance phone networks, or whatever other technology that has come and gone: just move on, because you helped to put those people out of work--and they moved on.

You're going to drive yourselves crazy with the constant re-hashing and sobbing over the obvious changes that are happening. Figure out how you go forward and start going forward.

Not much discussion here, but this is a good observation about not just incorporating something like creativity into your life, but how much emphasis we all put on incorporating pleasure into our work lives. That transition happened sometime in the 80's.

I'll step up to the mic and give my opinion:

There was a time when most jobs were physically demanding in one way or another. Working on a factory production line doesn't allow much opportunity for adding creativity into your work. The answer: avocations.

My dad was a machinist--which can be a very creative job--but he always preached to me the need to have activities (creative or otherwise) outside of work. He played music, built projects in the garage, and played around with drawing and painting at home.

We are likely transitioning away (once again) from a majority of jobs that include opportunities for creativity to a majority of jobs that are just plain "work." So it's a good idea to remember that time outside of work can be the opportunity to be creative.

I can hear the comments already about no time outside of work: family, commute, etc. But remember, if you want something bad enough, you will make time for it.

I'm just as likely to neglect this fact as anyone else: we only get one chance to live. If it’s important, then make time for it.

I yield the floor.