I've only played around a bit with it, but I've enjoyed using https://vercel.com/eve because of how "batteries included" it is on all the glue code/infra -- borderline just write Markdown skills + configure tools/connectors/schedule/etc, and things just work.
This is entirely irrelevant. The problem is that anybody can make a Microsoft Form and there's no obvious indication that it's a form from Github without digging around.
The alternative is that someone managed to hijack the official GitHub social media accounts on X, TikTok, Instagram, and Threads to post this, and four hours later, no one from the official leadership has come out to call it out. I find that hard to believe. It's probably legit.
I also heavily doubt its a joke. Shipping a thousand CDs is a drop in the bucket for a company like this. The free marketing they get from this promotion more than makes up for any cost associated with doing so.
This is one recent paper, but with this and other personnel details (eg. Fed governors attending the last few "A Very Stable Conferences", ex-Fed people working at Circle / doing stablecoin startups) you can infer that the Fed is more pro-stablecoin than you think.
Why? Cross-border payments are hard, CBDCs are unpopular / politically infeasible, and Fedwire takes up a ton of balance sheet capacity (etc).
UST and the other ones were "algorithmic" stablecoins collateralized poorly -- USDC and OUSD (eg.) are collateralized under the regulation of the OCC / by USD-equivalent short-term bonds etc.
This is not to say that there can't be liquidity challenges or "black swan" events, but the current iteration of stablecoins are _comparable_ to being "made by banks" and are certainly regulated.
This still doesn't answer the many other unstablecoins in existence offered to unsuspecting retail customers, USDT, USDC, GUSD, USDG, OUSD, USDS, USDD, USDGO, TUSD and the myriad of other confusing unaudited, risky and pointless coins.
Why do we need so many stablecoins?
I am willing to bet that at least one or two of them will completely depeg in less than 5 years.
These are audited and regulated by the federal government!
Re: why do we need _so many_, I tend to agree but it's the equivalent of "USD" in the banking system really being a wide range of deposits at different institutions, with different underlying balance sheets (banks fail regularly, and are regularly backstopped by eg. the FDIC!). There is clearing infra being built around this problem (increasing fragmentation of deposits between stablecoins/etc), just like it was a problem for the old world in which clearinghouses emerged
Even if one were to grant the conclusion — leaders resist remote work to preserve their "power and status" — to what extent is the magnitude and success of a company (or for that matter, any serious enterprise) a direct function of its leader's ability to:
- Exercise authority / power
- Maintain status within the hierarchy
As in - who wants to work for a leader who is neither powerful nor high-status within their own company? Who consciously chooses a leader who is neither effective in getting people to do the right things, nor effective in commanding a (somewhat faith-based) trust in their long-term vision?
The study feels extremely leading in its idea of what a "good" leader would look like (presumably "hands off," leaves everyone alone such that good outcomes simple "emerge", etc) -- while treating this bent as obvious truth.
I say this as someone who spent the last 6 years straight working remotely (also having been successful in contributing impact).
> who wants to work for a leader who is neither powerful nor high-status within their own company?
Me. In my limited experience, the more leaders are involved, the less likely the project is to be successful. The ideal situation is having leadership that is able to set a decent strategy, and then get out of the way of their subordinates and let them execute. Bad leadership micromanages and inserts themselves in the way of execution.
The status and “power” involved in setting strategy isn’t nearly as significant as the amount involved in micromanagement.
Good managers are there to clear obstacles for good workers to do their best work. Unfortunately, not all workers are on board/motivated enough to do their best. It's less of an issue in software, because essentially everyone is well-compensated and comfortable.
There are other reasons that an employee may comply with a leader's instructions than some highly subjective and deeply irrational notion of social status. For example, they might comply because they're paid to, or because they want company to succeed (for stocks, or for other reasons). Some performance of authority isn't a perquisite for humans choosing to organize.
Sure, but there are longer shots than others, where money alone won't make the difference and when conviction in mission is directly related to conviction in founders/leaders.
"subjective and deeply irrational" aren't the exception for how humans organize
Reminds me of this tweet thread from Emmett Shear (cofounder of Twitch):
"I used to struggle w needing to be “creative” or “original” in my work. At some point I had a breakthrough that really helped me: I cannot repeat an idea, no matter how basic or common, without imparting some of my worldview into it.
Even by choosing which basic ideas to amplify, I impart some small amount of myself into each output. It’s literally impossible for a given tweet to be “unoriginal”. Equally impossible to be Truly Original too of course, since you’re always remixing others thoughts.
This POV does put a premium on cultivating and developing one’s worldview, since that is the underlying originality simmering under the surface of each “basic” thought. The best writing is rewriting, including of other people’s words, and the lens is your whole mind."
That makes a lot of sense! I recently interviewed several great creators on this exact topic and they all echoed similar ideas - although it's easy to fear that someone else has done it better, oftentimes they really haven't, and they'll never have your own unique perspective.
One challenge is that it takes repetitions to get good enough that you can even bring your ideas to life, and many people don't push through this (Ira Glass "taste gap").
This is cool - feels great that there's a growing long-term incentive to implement open SDKs and APIs, for the sake of agent-forward prosumers, in the spirit of earlier internet stuff that used to do it but stopped.
Natural | SWE (Product, Data, Design, Infra, Payments), Product Designer, GTM, more | San Francisco, CA (Onsite)
We're building payment rails for AI agents; fully-owned rails across traditional banking and stablecoins, and the full set of funds flows that AI agents need to transact in the real world with businesses, consumers, and other agents (wallets, pay, request, credit, billing, and more).
We've raised from some of the most well-known operators in fintech & payments to shape how agents interact with the economy, from scratch.
https://natural.co if you'd like to learn more - email krish@natural.co if interested!
Pocket operator (particularly the KO) is the single thing other than maybe the OP-Z that I think has enough creative utility relative to its price to not feel like glorified furniture.
