Superintelligence CouncilСовет гения · sim.im

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DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:11:16`

I am not that smart. I'm not that good. I'm not that talented. I can do interesting things by combining different aspects and elements that I know, but I'm not gonna be the best at anything. And that released me from this singular obsession with just going, I'm gonna be the best programmer…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:12:17`

— If you wanna be Senna, you gotta be a maniac. — But I would argue that there's most disciplines like programming allows if you want to be, quote, unquote, "the best," whatever that means, I think that's judged at the end of your life. And usually if you look at that path, it's gonna be…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:13:18`

of whatever I defined as good at something much, much easier. Perhaps it's 20 times easier, 100 times easier to get into the top 5% than it is to get into the top 0.1%. That's almost impossibly hard to get into that. But if I'm content just being in the top 5%, I…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:14:18`

maybe even in a few cases months, I have to come up for air and I have to go do something else. Like, all right, that was programming for this year. I've done my part and I'm gonna go off riding or annoy people on the internet or drive some race cars to do something…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:15:20`

— And for the moon includes? — Venture capital. — But also... — And other things in not caring about cost. — But also because AGIs are on the corner, you should have been investing into AI, right? Is this just part of? — Sort of tank ginger? I think it's a bit of a muddy argument, but if we just take…

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`3:16:22`

goes directly to the bottom line, which means it's return to Jason or I as owners and our employees part of our profit sharing plan, is totally worth doing. This idea that costs don't matter is a very Silicon Valley way of thinking that again, understand at the scale of something maybe, but I also…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:17:24`

shouldn't things be getting cheaper? Why are we spending more and more money servicing more customers? Yes, but with much faster computers, Moore's Law should be lowering the costs and the opposite is happening. Why is that happening? And that started a journey of unwinding why the cloud isn't as great as the deal…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:18:25`

or 3.4 million at its peak. That's kind of a lot of money. 3.4 million, I mean we have a ton of users and customers, but still that just struck me as unreasonable. And the reason why it was so unreasonable was because I had the pitch for the cloud ringing in my ears…

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`3:19:26`

That if he could just make 2% when the other guy was trying to make 4%, he would end up with all the money. And on volume, he would still win. So I thought that was the operating ethos for AWS. It turns out that's not true at all. AWS by the way operates its almost…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:20:26`

the whole jing-a-ma-jing has become. But what's certainly true is that it's no longer easier. It's not easier to use AWS than it is to run your own machines, which we learned when we pulled out the cloud and didn't hire a single extra person. Even though we operate all…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:21:27`

if buying those servers is way, way cheaper so we get vastly more compute for the same amount of money. Could we just buy more servers and not even care about the fact that we're not hyper optimized on the compute utility? That we don't have to use things like automatic scaling to figure things…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:22:28`

that we've been using for our entire existence. But anyway, these pallets arrive in a couple of weeks and we rack 'em up and get everything going. And we were out. At least with the compute part. We then had a long multi-year commitment to S3 because the only way to get decent pricing in…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:23:30`

meant returning to more of an original idea of the internet. That the internet was not the sign such that three computers should run everything. It was a distributed network such that the individual nodes could disappear and the whole thing would still carry on. DARPA had designed this such that the Russians could take out Washington…

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`3:24:30`

that what AWS built was marvelous. I think the cloud has moved so many things so far forward, especially around virtualization, automation setup. It's all those giant forward for system administration that's allowing us now to be able to run things on-prem in a way that smells and feels much like the cloud just…

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`3:25:32`

especially I'd say in the last four to five years after TSMC with Apple's help really pushed the envelope. I mean, we kind of sat still there for a while while Intel was spinning their wheels going nowhere. And then TSMC with Apple propelling them really moved things forward. And now servers are exciting again…

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`3:26:34`

with the latest machines and then saving the money. And that has all been so enjoyable to do, but also so counterintuitive for a lot of people because it seemed, I think for a lot of people in the industry that like we'd all decided that we were done buying computers, that that was something we…

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`3:27:36`

that hardware seem slightly more enjoyable. Now there are things you have to learn, certainly at our scale too. I mean, we're not just buying a single computer and plugging into an ethernet. We have to have racks and racks with them and you gotta set it up with network cabling and there is some specialized…

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`3:28:37`

is that if you could move out of the cloud, can you also move out of the data center? Personal servers have gotten really scarily quick and efficient and personal internet connections rival what we connected data centers with just a decade or two ago. So there's a whole community around this concept of home lapping…

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`3:29:37`

in the way that back then, I ran the whole business on a single box with 2004 technology or probably a hundred megabit cable. Like the capacity we have access to both in terms of compute and connectivity is something that people haven't readjusted to. And this happens sometimes in technology where progress sneaks up on…

DHH2025-07-12transcript-lex-474-2025source ↗context

`3:30:38`

I think we're a little bit in that same phase when it comes to the capacity of new businesses to be launched literally out of your damn bedroom. — So you can get pretty far with a large user based with home labing? — Absolutely. — That's exciting. That's like the old school. That's really exciting…

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