Apparently, they actually have a whole hit "reality" show that does it without fatalities; "Naked and Afraid". But they get training, and have an "out" back into civilisation.
So I can completely imagine they---the poor hapless tiktok influencers---meeting the unfortunate captive parrot's fate, if suddenly sent out into the maw of the wild, without any warning, preparation, or way back to second dibs at a home.
Why I think this sort of "High-tech Computer Hardware Cottage Industry" stuff is significant (ignoring the fact that it's One Internet Rando versus One Trillion Dollars).
IMO, we --- as in someone somewhere who's seeing it coming --- stand to gain far greater indirect benefits, as and when GPU datacenter over-investments transmute into serving today's severely under-served but world-reforming science/industry application areas…
Think Massive GPU Infrastructure -> Industry application transmutations... "on-campus GPU supercomputers too cheap to meter".
My optimistic LLM-AI scenario is a hope that we get a version of what happened after the boom years of railroads, telecoms, and/or cloud computing (currently in progress)… Which was the decades after massive capital investments, the implosion of which unprecedently fuelled large-scale industrial and economic and socio-political phenomena, by way of infrastructure ownership re-allocations through write-offs, fire sales, and bankruptcy style M&A.
A hope that we get a disintermediation of datacenters. Back to the neighbourhood VPS provider. People shipping out containers to private industry and universities and so forth — stacks of supercomputers in your backyard... A whole new breed of Oxide Computer Company companies.
But this dream-like phenomenon is not going to happen in places in poverty of hands-on local neighbourhood "Computer/GPU hardware mechanic" expertise. (A poverty that is tied to zoning laws, tariffs, import duties, and public policy --- Are you pouring gobs of cash into making large datacenters, at the cost of all the other sides of the equation; education, training, small and medium businesses, precision manufacturing capacity, long-range sponsorship of the various sciences, R&D, arts etc. etc. etc.)
The revolutionary proliferation of mobile telephony in India (where I live), for example, was---and continues to ride---largely on the back of a mobile phone cottage industry that proliferated.
Mom-and-pop shops that can do pretty much everything you need to ... repair, update, un-bork your cell phone, your phone plans, prepaid sims etc. Print you your documents and photos, fix your broken screens, replace bloated batteries, do "whatsapp agent" stuff (government paperwork). This has been an unbroken trend from the early days of the Nokia 3310 to the now-a-days of cheap ubiquitous android devices, and even "feature phones" participating in money flows via zero cost-to-consumer UPI payments.
A similarly revolutionary thing did not happen for computers in India, because of decades-long protectionist policies. High import duties ("luxury goods"), and regulatory capture by computer hardware distributors who still maintain a choke-hold on imports and supply. We do have an equivalent cottage industry of computer repair people, but it's nowhere close to the ubiquity that it could have had because it's just so damned hard to sell computer hardware in India.
I'm feeling a rather "HN moment"... I found out, because I'd submitted an essay for the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay competition too (aiming for last place --- no delusions of grandeur here, no siree). They just announced the results, and I'd noticed "Reppel" last night on hnpwd. I'd also submitted my site for hnpwd. And here we are.
> The English-language jury also awarded Honorable Mentions to Ian Reppel and Helen Yetter-Chappell, recognizing their essays for originality, clarity, and thoughtful engagement with the year’s theme.
> The English-language jury also awarded Honorable Mentions to Ian Reppel and Helen Yetter-Chappell, recognizing their essays for originality, clarity, and thoughtful engagement with the year’s theme.
> I'm feeling a rather "HN moment"... I found out, because I'd submitted an essay for the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay competition too (aiming for last place --- no delusions of grandeur here, no siree). They just announced the results, and I'd noticed "Reppel" last night on hnpwd. I'd also submitted my site for hnpwd. And here we are.
Least I can do --- terrific essay!
(And, mine's here: https://www.evalapply.org/posts - "A Consciousness is A Dedekind Cut" ... flight of fancy, but it was a lot of fun researching / thinking / writing.)
How can I stick with my project? Are rewrites bad? How do I get the community involved? What are some development practices which can make life saner in a long-running project?
In this talk, we'll discuss answers to each of these questions. We'll cover my experience building jank, the native Clojure dialect, for over a decade. We'll also look forward, at the next decade of jank development.
You'll leave this talk equipped with some practical philosophies to help you finish your projects and hopefully some inspiration to check out jank.
Biography
Jeaye is the creator of the jank programming language, a Clojure dialect on LLVM with seamless C++ interop.
Jeaye has a background in C++ systems programming, focusing on games and game engines. After over a decade in game development, he's focused on building tools to make native programming saner.
Recorded Nov 14, 2025 at Clojure/Conj 2025 in Charlotte, NC.
Notes on Managing ADHD offers clear perspective and practical advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45083134 The author frames strategy v/s tactics well, something seldom done [0].
Dr. Russell Barkley's youtube videos and book and the How To ADHD youtube channel are other resource I like and refer to, because they've surfaced useful information and perspective to me. How To ADHD is especially nice to share with friends / family / dear ones who happen to be in one's (erratic, surprising, incredibly fun, incredibly annoying, seemingly lawless) orbit.
[0] It irks me how many people say "strategies for ... xyz" when they're talking about procedures, or tactics, or personal hacks.
So I can completely imagine they---the poor hapless tiktok influencers---meeting the unfortunate captive parrot's fate, if suddenly sent out into the maw of the wild, without any warning, preparation, or way back to second dibs at a home.
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