When the first mentions and prototypes of the Amiga started surfacing in 1984, I began saving my paper-route money to buy one. I finally got it on the first day I could.
It was way ahead of its time, but it was also an early lesson in managing expectations. The way it was marketed, I expected things like real-time 3D graphics. It certainly couldn’t do that, at least not in the way I imagined.
What the Amiga really prepared me for, though, was tolerating instability.
It could multitask and had an incredible amount of functionality for the time, but it crashed constantly. I mean, an insane amount. Part of the problem was the lack of an MMU, but still: it was flaky as hell.
I got the EVO-X2 for $1,599! In 44+ years of buying computers, I've seen some appreciation, but nothing like this. Going from $1,599 to ~$3,500 in a year is just insane.
I bought the Snapdragon Elite X over a year ago based on the promises of Qualcomm to bring solid Linux drivers at some point. Fast forward to today, Linux for that SoC is still a hot mess.
I use them ALL THE TIME. If anything, I have my 'local remote' in my Syncthing shared dir - its great for sharing code between my dev workstation(s) w/o using Github, etc.
I was in Warsaw a few weeks ago and ended up visiting that museum almost on a whim, so I wasn’t prepared for the experience. I don’t think a museum has ever hit me that hard — inspiring, gut-wrenching, and unforgettable.
The “created vs transferred” thing is more nuanced than that.
At some point, accumulated wealth becomes power, and that power can be used to pull energy, attention, labor, and public resources out of the system for one person’s agenda.
And in Tesla’s case, the stock value creation story is insanely unorthodox, to be charitable. A lot of that valuation was supercharged by years of market-moving hype done personally by Elon: 10+ years of FSD timelines that never happened, the more recent “buy a Tesla, it’s an appreciating asset!” super-lie, the mission gradually being abandoned, GOP craps on EVs and it’s crickets from Elon, etc.
Now we have the ultimate example of wealth gravity distortion: Musk helped put Trump back in power, and the relationship looks openly transactional. But Elon is not just benefiting from Trump’s transactional nature. He is also benefiting from an administration where white collar crime and regulatory accountability seem to have basically stopped being real things.
So with all that, the kind of shady behavior Elon pulled that might normally trigger government scrutiny or enforcement is now being smothered by political influence.
Even today, Tesla appears to be the highest P/E outlier in the S&P 500 among profitable companies. So the market is not just valuing the current business. It is valuing the story, the hype, and increasingly Musk’s ability to buy influence to stay outta trouble.
And to be clear, I’m not trying to pretend nothing real was built. SpaceX is impressive. Tesla really did help kickstart the EV market. But that does not make up for the harm, distortion, and unaccountable power being exercised now.
So yes, maybe the wealth was “created” in an accounting sense. But the concern is what happens when that created value becomes an unaccountable force acting on everything else.
I don’t know who his wealth was transferred from, exactly. But I do know what he’s using it for now: as a gravitational force to unilaterally screw with public institutions and systems the rest of us depend on.
Even if you agree with some of DOGE projects’s goals, the way it operated was wildly thoughtless about consequences beyond Musk’s personal wishes, and almost completely unaccountable.
I’m honestly sick that my personal Model Y purchase helped add to that power.
And I say that as someone who was a huge Musk fan for years, despite the warning signs — the Thai “pedo” comments, and his very public turn during COVID.
How are you installing Resolve in Arch? I have not actually tried installing directly (in Arch at least). What problems are you having in the Fusion page too?
It helps you build and run Resolve in a Docker or Podman container. I’ve personally used it on Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch-based setups (well, CachyOS), and it’s worked great for me.
Right now it supports Nvidia very well. I’m also personally working on adapting it for AMD GPUs so I can run Resolve on my Strix Halo workstation.
One especially nice thing about this setup is that I can run multiple versions of Resolve on the same computer. If a new beta comes out, no problem — I can build a new container and try it out while keeping my stable version as my daily workhorse.
I have the same beef with the Signal Foundation. A few years ago, I engaged with the new CEO when she was soliciting donations and asked whether they were going to publish any kind of high-level feature roadmap. I explained that there were a few features I was really looking forward to, and that I’d even written some code that might help expedite them getting rolled in. She told me that stuff like publishing roadmaps takes time and resources they don’t have.
My favorite example is here in the Phoenix metro area. We had DSL and cable internet pretty early compared to the rest of the country (mid/late 90s), but then things stagnated.
Then in 2014, Google Fiber announced they were expanding here and, all of a sudden, the local telco and cable companies (Centurylink and Cox) started rolling out fiber all over the place -- like pretty much overnight. Then Google backed off, and the incumbents slowed their roll too.
It was a on-the-nose reminder that these companies can move fast when they think a real competitor might show up.
It was way ahead of its time, but it was also an early lesson in managing expectations. The way it was marketed, I expected things like real-time 3D graphics. It certainly couldn’t do that, at least not in the way I imagined.
What the Amiga really prepared me for, though, was tolerating instability.
It could multitask and had an incredible amount of functionality for the time, but it crashed constantly. I mean, an insane amount. Part of the problem was the lack of an MMU, but still: it was flaky as hell.