I think the primary thing I've learned about open vs closed source products this last decade, is that the difference in marketing is huge.
Both Firefox and Chrome are great browsers, end stop.
But most articles on HN about Chrome start with glowing praise.
And most articles on HN about Firefox start with "What's wrong with FF" and condescention.
I'm past the point of thinking that this is actually reflective about the browsers and their organizations.
Chrome is actively ending ad block support in its plugins. Its CEO is actively engaging in the political process. Firefox has always had a messy relationship with advertising, in which it generally tries to walk the line between reality and ideology. There are pros and cons to both products, depending on what you care about. The fact that articles on each browser so consistently fall into the same pattern does not seem reflective of the actual products themselves.
Yeah, I'm not in the movie industry or anything, but it seems to me like if one was so inclined, they could put together a list of all of the things that have to be done well in order to make a fantastic movie.
If we ignored all of the things that aren't obvious in the end product, like market research and staff salaries, etc, I think it would probably look something like:
* Plot
* Well written
* Inherent meaning
* Intelligent
* Acting / Directing
* Name brand actors
* Size of cast
* Cinematography
* Music
* CGI / Special Effects / Locations
* Props / Clothes / Styles / etc
* Action budget (choreography, explosions, etc)
* Marketing / Marketability
* Release logistics
Its rare that someone, usually a director, becomes a large enough force in Hollywood that they can actually get the funding and political pull to invest in every category. Most films sacrifice a few of them to put out a lower quality but hopefully still acceptable product.
What's interesting to me about a list like this, is that they are by no means equal in terms of cost and profit.
Marketing and Releasing internationally have major ROI, so every film leans as heavily into both as they can afford.
After that, Cinematography, music, CGI, props, and action budget are all far, far cheaper than the other items on this list. Which is how you wind up with so many beautiful looking movies that you leave wondering "really, did no one spend 5 minutes thinking about X in the plot? How do you spend this much money on a movie and not consider X?"
Similarly, Plot is probably the one thing on this list where creators can exchange time for capital. If you are low on capital, you might be priced out of better actors, and you won't be able to buy them on layaway, but you might be able to survive off of ramen for a few years while really building out a fantastic script. Hence why we see so many interesting indie films invest heavily into this aspect of their movies.
And that's before you start factoring in things like trying to make a plot that is accessible to world-wide release in every culture, or factoring the plot requirements particularly restrictive governments and cultures (China) will have about your movie in order to access their markets.
So yeah, most of the time when I see a movie now, I've noticed I'm more or less giving a score into how much I think the movie producers invested into each of these categories, to bucket the overall film. You invested 3/10 in every category, but tried for 10/10 plot? Okay, indie film, we'll judge you accordingly. Or, oh, this is another all-cgi-all-cinematography-all-big-actor-no-plot movie? Okay, judge it against the other AAA marketed B movies.
The script is the cheapest part, but also where the most damage is dealt. The higher-ups always want to meddle with the script to feel some control for the money they are spending. Changing some character or plot point. And the damage just runs downhill from the script like a cartoon snowball building up size.
(Even the cheapest "indies" these days are running to hundreds of thousands of dollars and someone is paying that, and that someone wants to change something)
Yeah, writing a script can be the cheapest part. Developing a full script, and getting that plot vision expressed on screen, blocking the meddling along the way... THAT's expensive.
Nicknames include variations like Mikey, Mickey, Mikail, Big Michael, Little Michael, Gas Station Michael, Angry Michael, Tony (obligatory wrong name your group uses because there were already too many Michaels and this Michael liked his middle name)
But if you’re looking for something robust and production ready, I think installing Claude Code with npm is your best bet. It’s one line to install it and then you plug in your login creds.
Claude code does it.
Goose does it.
Cursor Composer (I think) does it.
Thorsten Ball’s post does it in 400 lines of Go code: https://ampcode.com/how-to-build-an-agent
Basically every other IDE probably does it too by now.
Haven't used Windsurf yet, but in other tools this is called 'Agent' mode. So you open up the chat modal to talk to an LLM, then select 'Agent' mode and send your prompt.
They did. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that while the President is in charge of foreign policy, and can deport people however, these people have to see a court room before they are deported. Yesterday, Trump made various statements that heavily leaned towards not obeying that order. The rest of the Republican Party supports these actions.
3: The top of the economic ladder reacts to worsening conditions by switching from promoting riskier growth based economic policies from which they might glean opportunities from new wealth, to allowing only status-quo reaffirming policies in an attempt to protect their already aggregated wealth and positions of economic power.
This leads to worsening economic and social conditions for all non-elite parts of the population, as their economic and social issues are left unaddressed and thereby worsen under the status-quo.
This leads to more pressure for the body politic to act to solve those problems, but as the top of the economic ladder now only endorses policies that support the status quo, a new political movement will need to grow that focuses only on stagnating and blocking any attempt for the government to act. All proposed reforms that allow the government to act for the benefit of the masses are blocked, all existing abilities of the government to help the masses are hollowed.
This worsens economic and social conditions, which then means this becomes a catch-22.
The political entities that are responsible for this dynamic, out of quiet guilt, instead begin lauding themselves that their actions are not the cause of worsening conditions for the masses, but are instead the realization of the representation of the ideological soul of their nation. This leaves these individuals intentionally deaf to the possibility that they might be wrong, and further reinforces their inability to compromise or present solutions that would challenge the current status-quo. This also becomes a catch-22, and can reach the point of fetishization. It also increases the tendency of this political class to promote policies that are ideologically driven political projects that hurt the country economically, because they fundamentally arise from a position that large parts of the population are not true citizens and deserve punishment.
If this trend continues unchecked, as things continue to worsen, merely rendering government unresponsive becomes insufficient. So it results in the election of strong-men type characters that sell themselves to the populace as being the only ones capable of breaking the political deadlock that prevents solutions to issues within the country, while simultaneously promising to their richest funders that they will actually use their power to further entrench the positions and wealth of the existing economic elite.
This creates a new group of politicians that seek power for themselves by exploiting this new dynamic, where they compete by their willingness to break cultural norms in order to service these two groups, and much later, a reactionary progressive cadre that functions similarly on the opposing side.
This new dynamic worsens the economic and social issues at play, as the crumbling competency of hollowed out social norms and institutions lose their ability to function as effectively for the mass populace until the standard of living has fallen sufficiently to match the capabilities of the country to support it, and an increasingly deaf and authoritarian political class is far less effective at managing the needs of the people than in the previous more-decentralized state. Quality of life continues to drop, either slowly over time, or violently.
At this point, the new political class will consider usurping power and wealth from the rich elite, as there are no longer legal norms to constrain them.
Regardless, with decreased capacity in an ill functioning state, where the new political elite has acquired power by servicing an elite class focused on maintaining wealth instead of driving growth in the nation, the country loses its ability to compete economically with rival nations, and begins falling further and further behind, thereby worsening the above cycle.
But what you have to remember, is its all worth it, because the alternative includes potential taxes, promoting policies to raise wages, or reinvesting in your fellow countrymen, and those things are all worse than what I just described /s
Put MCP in front of every GET API, and let teams explore on their own