Insightful comment I fully agree that the hardest part needs to be automated fully, there's plenty of DNS providers with API access so it can be done. Naming is oftentimes the hardest part we have in tech, I dream of a future we are more decentralized and we have alternatives to DNS to access ressources,see this great text by Andrew Nesbitt about the subject of naming: https://nesbitt.io/2026/03/03/package-management-is-naming-a...
Congratulations on the launch, I 100% agree with your vision:
> run on your instance (it's really easy!)
I silently published AliaJS a year ago, since it's still in alpha in my opinion., But I keep releasing improvements, coming in the next few days, a one liner CLI turnkey quickstart script: `npx aliajs new`. I'll also provide a clickable user interface (Electron app). This is exciting, happy to see where the community is going with cloud tools that empower the individual actors.
I am currently building this vision with AliaJS (platform engineering tool), where the solid base for the platform will be ERPNext, I agree with the author, we can be flexible on solid bases, it just needs to be more open (not SAP) so we can iterate faster.
ERPNext (Frappe) is absolutely brilliant. My only complaint was that it is in Python and is a bit heavy weight (setup etc) for quick prototyping.
They call a table definition - that defines a table at both the SQL level, and at the domain level - a DocType (see: https://docs.frappe.io/framework/user/en/basics/doctypes). When you declare a DocType you immediately get a working table, foreign keys transformed into combo boxes for lookups, forms, and a whole set of conveniences that are common to ERP-like applications.
Before seeing ERPNext I would've thought that such a declarative approach would fail to satisfy the critical remaining 20% of most requirements, but they've built around it in a way that has enabled them to ship a complex ERP system that thousands of businesses of different shapes use. I think it is one of those gems that are not in popular conscience among software engineers, compared to regular frameworks (but very much so in business-ERP adjacent circles), and is worth learning from.
"Is Revenue Model More Important than Culture?" is a very interesting read, I read it twice, once yesterday, once again today while taking notes about it. The "dominant term rule" is concept that is similar to what you are describing Eric with the concept "financial gravity". Which is is similar to the [[large object theory of history]], explained on the podcast episode [[The War on Cars: Tony Kushner on The Pushcart War]]:
>[[large object theory of history]] is that all human misery is the product, not of some sort of general malevolence, equally distributed among the human population, but located among certain people who feel that they have to basically get into a gigantic truck and run over pushcart peddlers in order to be safe and secure in this world.
You frame corruption as financial gravity, fixable by governance design at the firm level. But the dollar's strength has been reinforced for fifty years by oil trading in dollars. Tying our money to a conflict asset implicated in war, pollution, and enormous suffering. Can any company be incorruptible inside a monetary system that isn't?
I wish you the best, my brother-in-law (also a close friend) lost his fight against cancer in 2019, it changed my perception of life forever. What we live is a bit like how we die, I had some of the best moments with him while he was more aware than myself about how we are all going to die, he changed my perception of caring much more about the uniqueness and the present moment. One of my favorite quotes is from Buckminster Fuller, "You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you ... (see full quote on Wikipedia)". Thank you so much for all the creation you have done in this world Sid, just for Gitlab it's plenty. I am a long time & very satisfied Gitlab customer, I switched a long time ago for its superior CI/CD integration and its super inspiring handbook. Another favorite quote is actually from you ... "My reasoning was I got to tell everyone what I do, and I want it to be a really good story." Lately I fundamentally changed my perception, the most important computer of all is the planet Earth, you seem to be aligned with this vision as well, correct me if my perception is wrong. I hope you keep going on with all those beautiful stories, we are lucky to have you with us.
> You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to highest advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of other men.
As long as banking works with web browsers, I think the future looks good for this usage, but I could de-bank my phone and still have plenty of useful things to do with it.
the problem in my case is that the authentication for the banks website requires an app, and that app doesn't work. i am locked out of online banking for that bank because of it. (they also have a windows app that i could not yet get to work on linux/wine)
Find a new bank. Mine has another problem, so behind they don't support mfa beyond a symantec program I've not heard of before. I don't use it, but can't use my yubikeys either.
Vegans are and were as happy as vegetarians to eat non-processed vegetables patties. I could push this point further by stating that a high percentage of vegans are turned off by the meatiness of those fake meat products. Those who pushed or asked for the product are companies and clients with an environmentalist motivation. It also appears that the product is easier to manage for restaurants which is also a reason why most restaurants are picking this product. The meat-like is really just an industrial product designed to please the largest crowd as possible which also includes vegans. So please, don’t say it’s the vegans that pushed all “real” options off the menu because the situation is much more complex than that.
“Veganism is making being Vegetarian increasingly harder.” This is a bold claim. Those people you met needs to chill because the problem you described is light years of being a “real” problem. Adding or removing ingredients is possible in most restaurants and quite easy: “Please can you substitute the absence of cheese or the vegan cheese for real cheese.”
In London (UK) Veganism is a REAL problem to Vegetarians. I am not saying that it is the Vegan people's fault, but simply that currently Veganism is the lowest common denominator between Vegans and Vegetarians and 7/10 restaurants have mostly replaced their Vegetarian options with Vegan options and Vegetarians are getting really pissed off.
Vegetarian here (though often I end up going many days without eggs or dairy), I don't have any beef with Vegans.
I'm fine with eating vegan options as well, I only use eggs and dairy products at home because I can't replace everything yet. I'm currently looking at some new egg replacement products, which would allow me to get far closer to the ideal, 100% vegan, diet.
That said, I actually like Beyond Meat, Moving Mountains, Nestlé's Garden Gourmet's Incredible Burger, Rügenwalder's products, etc. When I started living vegetarian in 2011, all the replacement products were shit and I ended up just making all food from scratch instead.
I'm genuinely happy that all these options exist nowadays, while I don't use them every day, they've become a staple of our diet by now, as they make adapting omnivore recipes much easier. I can always adapt it further later.
And I know some vegetarians who get "meat cravings" every few months, which these products help with – they allow fulfilling the craving without resorting to actual butchered animal flesh.
This is an unusual point, and one that I've never heard before.
If anything, since veganism started becoming popular, the options in restaurants have increased. There are places that previously didn't offer any or many vegetarian options, and now have more options (Gregg's and KFC are two that come to mind).
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