alt Hacker NewsHey, all. I really don't know what to do with a post like this.
I'm being sincere when I say (as I've said on two threads here) that this genre of posts --- "I'm leaving this company I've been very publicly associated with, and here's the new thing I'm doing" --- is deeply cursed. There's no way to say anything interesting without it just stinking like an ad for the new thing.
Obviously, anything at all you say about a commercial project you're working on is easily read as promotional. And you're right, this kind of writing almost always is promotional. But there's a way to do it where at least you're trying to be in conversation with your peers, rather than hitting people over the head with how awesome you think the project is.
But I don't know how to do that in a post like this. I think the only way to read it is as, like, an investor memo. Not my goal, but I don't make the rules.
So my strategy here is just to stay kind of vague, and talk about where I think the world is going, rather than the specific thing we're doing. I can talk your ears off about capability systems, datalog, models driving hardware, virtualization, whatever. Those are fun conversations and I'm very psyched to have them; it's what lights me up about the work we're doing now.
But I don't think it can work here. I didn't submit this post and I didn't upvote it. I wrote it because I didn't want the whole thing I'm leaving Fly.io for to be wrapped up in some dumb Twitter thread.
If you're unsatisfied with the post, I don't blame you, but it's less a bid for the front page of HN than it is an update to my "about me" page. I'd literally rather talk about HN meta, and how to write for HN, than I would about operating systems at this moment. I truly appreciate the interest though.
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I really appreciate the post.
I completely agree that we haven’t even gotten past the first post yet in terms of the magnitude of change that is likely to occur. People fail to comprehend that we’re still assimilating the Internet as a means of communication. Cell phones. It will be decades before what we have today is fully utilized, let alone what is likely to be developed. Anyway, thanks for the article.
You are overthinking it :) You are one of the most interesting people on HN. I am sure others think along those lines too and would love to learn more about what you are building and where the industry is going. Others can just tune it out.
Hi Thomas, I think you're being too defensive. It's ok, I look forward to your technical posts, on what you imaging this OS powered by AI to be. Will be a fun ride.
If you're looking for a UX idea, when the phone boots, it asks "What are the top 5 things you do?". And that's how the phone experience starts.
All the best. (Ignore the silly haters, they're lost in their AI pessimism to just look forward to a new intersting thing).
We were on a call recently where I mentioned that as a fly user SDLC and declarative config was more important than ever, and so I was pushing for sprites to have OCI images.
I'm pretty AI pilled, and I'm building a local-first personal software platform, but I dunno... I've been feeling like i need to cram the "AI spirit" into very specifically shaped boxes to actually build robust software tastefully at speed. Like software on the outside and AI on the inside instead of the other way around.
I do think the future of computing will definitely be more like the Linux diaspora than the apple ecosystem, but also.. it is easy to get "duped" by AI without actually shipping. I'm starting to want "KPIs" to help me measure if my time is actually well spent against the things i care about.
I guess I'm extrapolating from your post, but even if the programming language is English, we'll probably still want to spend a large amount of additional compute to produce "artifacts" that have things like performant code, security hardening, and certified taste.
I do think the future of computing will definitely be more like the Linux diaspora than the apple ecosystem, but also... when i first got into linux i spent way too long trying to get my desktop perfectly aesthetic because it was all suddenly malleable. Now i vibe more with Debian.
I wish you luck, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with! Fun times ahead for sure.
I think you hit a lot themes I've personally been thinking about as well and was a nice read, thanks.
Circa 2005 I was thinking about "sessile robots" and how even smartphones of the time had enough sensors to know you were putting them in your bag and then riding on the bus and acting appropriately.
The model I see is that it is like a butler instead of a home computer, like you are driving into a strange town and looking for food and you are not going to open the McDonald's app but instead your agent does a search and through a conversational recommender you get sent somewhere. It might be sitting in your pocket the whole time and you are talking to it through something like AirPods. Maybe you put on smart glasses and it can show you things.
Apple can't give you the A.I.-native phone because it is too dependent on the app economy. For a few months I've been asking "Who is working on this?" and figured it was one of those cursed ideas that Silicon Valley would be unable to fund much like the pharmaceutical-industrial complex of Cambridge was unable to fund Facebook. I was expecting it to come out of some hungry Chinese manufacturer so I'm happy to see another horse in this race.
(e.g. I love the image that Meta has developed around Muse which makes it look like it is a "butler" when it is really much more like the old Kraftwerk song where "I program my home computer")
>If you're unsatisfied with the post,
I actually think this post gets the point across better than most.
no idea you were working on fly !
As someone who's building its news project on it, it's both reassuring, but also not since you're leaving..
My 3ct:
1. When you write a comment in a discussion of an article, be upfront with being the author. It took me a while to understand that from your comment. "Author here" is a thing.
2. Your article itself doesn't have clear authorship stated. At the very bottom there is a copyright notice, but that's pretty generic and not a single person either. Just place your name at the top together with a date. Not everybody knows you or follows your blog.
3. When I read this ...
> When I was a little kid, a family friend sold us our first “computer” — scare quotes because I’m pretty sure it was a VTech Laser 200 clone, a chiclet keyboard Z80 that ran off cassette tapes and plugged into our TV.
.. I prepared to stop reading since .. how is that not a computer? After another paragraph or two which just felt like rambling, I gave up.
Reading this, my first thought is to worry about the security aspects of it. But if you're the author, I expect that you've spent a few brain cells in that direction...
This is absolute bullshit.
These are bad-faith arguments toward "What about self modifying software".
Self modifying software has no grounds in reality or predictable behavior. It is an unreasonable expectation that software is magic. You would not fly on a self-modifying airplane. This is not a future i want to live in.
No; sorry, no.
Personally, I'd like to hear the full pitch, and I suspect many others would too. If the ideas are interesting enough for you to dedicate the next N years of your life to, I'm probably willing to spend 10 minutes reading the blog post. Particularly from you, a known-good writer.