[Levitating]

> golden age of computing

I feel like we've reached the worst age of computing. Where our platforms are controlled by power hungry megacorporations and our software is over-engineered garbage.

The same company that develops our browsers and our web standards is also actively destroying the internet with AI scrapers. Hobbyists lost the internet to companies and all software got worse for it.

Our most popular desktop operating system doesn't even have an easy way to package and update software for it.

[davidw]

Yes, this is where it's at for me. LLM's are cool and I can see them as progress, but I really dislike that they're controlled by huge corporations and cost a significant amount of money to use.

[seanmcdirmid]

Use local OSS models then? They aren’t as good and you need beefy hardware (either Apple silicon or nvidia GPUs). But they are totally workable, and you avoid your dislikes directly.

[bdangubic]

> they're controlled by huge corporations and cost a significant amount of money to use.

is there anything you use that isn't? like laptop on which you work, software that you use to browse the internet, read the email... I've heard similar comment like yours before and I am not sure I understand it given everything else - why does this matter for LLMs and not the phone you use etc etc?

[joquarky]

Unfortunately we live in a "vote with your wallet" paradigm where some of the most mentally unhealthy participants have wallets that are many orders of magnitude bigger than the wallet of the average participant.

[wtetzner]

> our software is over-engineered garbage

Honestly I think it's under-engineer garbage. Proper engineering is putting in the effort to come up with simpler solutions. The complex solutions appear because we push out the first thing that "works" without time to refine it.

[sumedh]

> Where our platforms are controlled by power hungry megacorporations and our software is over-engineered garbage.

So similar to IBM in the 80s. Time for a scrappy little startup to disrupt the industry.

[Levitating]

> So similar to IBM in the 80s

In 1980 IBM earned 3.56 billion dollars[1] (15 adjusted for inflation). Apple earned 416.16 billion in 2025, Alphabet 402.8 billion.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/17/business/earnings-ibm-net...

[sosomoxie]

Dystopian cyberpunk was always part of the fantasy. Yes, scale has enabled terrible things.

There are more alternatives than ever though. People are still making C64 games today, cheap chips are everywhere. Documentation is abundant... When you layer in AI, it takes away labor costs, meaning that you don't need to make economically viable things, you can make fun things.

I have at least a dozen projects going now that I would have never had time or energy for. Any itch, no matter how geeky and idiosyncratic, is getting scratched by AI.

[pocksuppet]

They're possible, but they're not exactly relevant, and you couldn't do something like that on newer hardware. It's like playing a guitar from a museum because the world just forgot how to make guitars. Pretty dystopian.

[AndrewKemendo]

It’s never been easier for you to make a competitor

So what is stopping you other than yourself?

[linguae]

I’m not the OP, but my answer is that there’s a big difference between building products and building businesses.

I’ve been programming since 1998 when I was in elementary school. I have the technical skills to write almost anything I want, from productivity applications to operating systems and compilers. The vast availability of free, open source software tools helps a lot, and despite this year’s RAM and SSD prices, hardware is far more capable today at comparatively lower prices than a decade ago and especially when I started programming in 1998. My desktop computer is more capable than Google’s original cluster from 1998.

However, building businesses that can compete against Big Tech is an entirely different matter. Competing against Big Tech means fighting moats, network effects, and intellectual property laws. I can build an awesome mobile app, but when it’s time for me to distribute it, I have to either deal with app stores unless I build for a niche platform.

Yes, I agree that it’s never been easier to build competing products due to the tools we have today. However, Big Tech is even bigger today than it was in the past.

[tock]

Billions of dollars?