3 ms·

If you had ten million dollars, what would you spend it on?

by kentonv 18d ago

kubb 18d ago
Immediate retirement for me and 4 more people who I like. What's that got to do with anything?
- kentonv 18d ago
  But that's such a waste! 5 whole people taken out of the economy, no longer producing value, just going around consuming resources in retirement. How is that any better than me spending to build a nice house that facilitates my family's comfort and my friends' enjoyment of getting together to play games?
  - kubb 17d ago
    Yeah I accumulated wealth and it resulted in waste. You’re proving my point.
    - kentonv 17d ago
      Is your "point" actionable? Are you recommending any change of behavior or policy?
      - kubb 16d ago
        Amazing how trained you are to connect the most basic observations about the world to politics. No wonder you deployed all of those debate tactics. How about a change of mindset first?
        kentonv 13d ago
        I'll take that as a "no".
mwcampbell 6d ago
I'm actually curious about why you didn't spend yours on reviving Sandstorm. If the terms of your employment with Cloudflare prevent you from doing that, then that makes sense. Or do you believe you've been building Sandstorm's true successor at Cloudflare? For a while the Workers platform didn't satisfy the self-hosted part, but I guess workerd addressed that. For what it's worth, if I had $10 million, I currently think I'd spend it as follows: 1. Developing and bringing to market my dream open, general-purpose pocket computer specifically for blind people: https://toot.cafe/@matt/116788125409771800 https://toot.cafe/@matt/116788125409771800 2. If there's enough left, buying the ETI-Eloquence text-to-speech engine from whoever owns it now and open-sourcing it.
- kentonv 6d ago
  Note that I'm not claiming to have $10M, that was a hypothetical number for the purpose of the question. That said, sure, I have certainly entertained the idea of retiring and working on open source, particularly on days when work is frustrating or overwhelming. But if the goal is "recreate Sandstorm", I do believe my current work on Cloudflare OS[0] is much more likely to succeed at that than anything I could reasonably accomplish independently. More broadly, at the moment it feels like my position at Cloudflare puts me in the middle of something really important. There isn't anywhere else where I would have more influence over the AI revolution. [0] https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572 https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572

If you had ten million dollars, what would you spend it on?

by kentonv 18d ago

If you had ten million dollars, what would you spend it on?

kubb 18d ago

Immediate retirement for me and 4 more people who I like. What's that got to do with anything?

kentonv 18d ago
But that's such a waste! 5 whole people taken out of the economy, no longer producing value, just going around consuming resources in retirement. How is that any better than me spending to build a nice house that facilitates my family's comfort and my friends' enjoyment of getting together to play games?
- kubb 17d ago
  Yeah I accumulated wealth and it resulted in waste. You’re proving my point.
  - kentonv 17d ago
    Is your "point" actionable? Are you recommending any change of behavior or policy?
    - kubb 16d ago
      Amazing how trained you are to connect the most basic observations about the world to politics. No wonder you deployed all of those debate tactics. How about a change of mindset first?
      - kentonv 13d ago
        I'll take that as a "no".

mwcampbell 6d ago

I'm actually curious about why you didn't spend yours on reviving Sandstorm. If the terms of your employment with Cloudflare prevent you from doing that, then that makes sense. Or do you believe you've been building Sandstorm's true successor at Cloudflare? For a while the Workers platform didn't satisfy the self-hosted part, but I guess workerd addressed that. For what it's worth, if I had $10 million, I currently think I'd spend it as follows: 1. Developing and bringing to market my dream open, general-purpose pocket computer specifically for blind people: https://toot.cafe/@matt/116788125409771800 https://toot.cafe/@matt/116788125409771800 2. If there's enough left, buying the ETI-Eloquence text-to-speech engine from whoever owns it now and open-sourcing it.

kentonv 6d ago
Note that I'm not claiming to have $10M, that was a hypothetical number for the purpose of the question. That said, sure, I have certainly entertained the idea of retiring and working on open source, particularly on days when work is frustrating or overwhelming. But if the goal is "recreate Sandstorm", I do believe my current work on Cloudflare OS[0] is much more likely to succeed at that than anything I could reasonably accomplish independently. More broadly, at the moment it feels like my position at Cloudflare puts me in the middle of something really important. There isn't anywhere else where I would have more influence over the AI revolution. [0] https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572 https://x.com/KentonVarda/status/2084990137180590572