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Why software stocks are getting pummelled

submitted by peteth+(OP) on 2026-02-02 04:50:06 | 182 points 275 comments
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1. ciconi+421[view] [source] 2026-02-02 14:35:02
>>peteth+(OP)
https://archive.ph/37Hwn
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24. senko+W32[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-02 19:53:31
>>idle_z+512
> Could you hire engineers or use an LLM to make your own Google Docs

Or you can just ask your LLM to install https://github.com/CollaboraOnline/online

Between open source, LLMs, and SaaS vendors getting greedy and privacy invasive, the total pain minimization calc might shift for some orgs.

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45. zdw+P82[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-02 20:11:48
>>rglull+A72
Excel spreadsheets have little to no validation logic that you're actually getting a good result, unless you have a secondary check (most spreadsheets are structured as "single entry" accounting, so lack the checks)

A prime example of this was the Reinhart/Rogoff paper advocating austerity that was widely quoted, and then it was discovered that the spreadsheet used had errors that invalidated the conclusions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt#Metho...

Just because technology is in use and "works" doesn't mean it's always correct.

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110. Manuel+js2[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-02 21:38:15
>>soloma+Jp2
I‘m not sure it’s a perfect example, but at least it’s a very realistic example from a company that really doesn’t have time and energy for hype or fluff:

We are currently sunsetting our use of Webflow for content management and hosting, and are replacing it with our own solution which Cursor & Claude Opus helped us build in around 10 days:

https://dx-tooling.org/sitebuilder/

https://github.com/dx-tooling/sitebuilder-webapp

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118. TSiege+cu2[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-02 21:46:31
>>flerch+352
I'd look at things beyond the magnificent seven. Economists and traders have noticed that the SP 500 now has a K shape similar to our class wealth distribution. https://fortune.com/2025/11/10/markets-k-shaped-economy-apol...
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150. zamada+uN2[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-02 22:54:59
>>jeroen+vI2
Nintendo is one of the three 1/3 owners in The Pokemon Company and an early investor in Niantic. I'd be curious how much was actually confusion as to who is making money vs just a normal hype cycle. I'd also be curious how much the game itself made the various owners vs what Nintendo made on the general interest in other Pokemon games/merchandise from the launch.

At the very least, the stock looks to have shot up for most of the launch month with the peak not occuring until July 18th and the stock still being significantly higher at the end of the month https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NTDOY/history/?period1=14673...

I think the funniest bit of pure confusions was "Zoom Technologies (ZOOM)" being mistaken for "Zoom Video (ZM)" at the start of the pandemic to the point the SEC halted its trading on concerns around the confusion being the only reasonable driver. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/zoom-technol...

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174. keeda+E03[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-02 23:53:09
>>Sleake+Uf2
Totally makes sense. Turns out that a lot of what Palantir's "Forward Deployed Engineers" do is navigating these bureaucratic and political obstacles to get access to the data: https://nabeelqu.co/reflections-on-palantir -- which may be Palantir's real secret sauce, rather than the tech itself.
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209. skydha+lr3[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-03 02:42:52
>>walker+UL2
> I expect the markets are reflecting that soon there will be more competition.

> It'll take time, and as LLMs improve, it'll take even less time.

People have written great software in ed(1). We have tools like uxn[0] written on potato computers and billions and years later, we still have to hope for AI output.

[0]: https://100r.co/site/uxn.html

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210. themaf+Rr3[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-03 02:46:29
>>Sunlit+7q3
It has to annotate it too.

We've let models do this before. They devolve into an incomprehensible mess in very short order. Errors multiply. Lossy weight compression on erroneous material makes it all that much more worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEzhxP-pdos

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229. jeroen+g44[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-03 08:28:51
>>zamada+uN2
I was referring to the day Nintendo stock fell 17% after they published a notice on their website (outside of trading hours) that they did not in fact make Pokemon Go: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/25/pokemon-g...

The Zoom story is even crazier. The idea of the SEC needing to step in because traders were absolute idiots throwing their money away is laughable.

Let the traders burn their cash if they're too stupid to Google a stock's name, I say. Let them prove that the markets are intelligently driven and not just gambling for those under the influence of cocaine on the job.

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252. magica+gK5[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-03 18:04:57
>>mwigda+5R2
> Programmers on staff were likely engaged in what was at least perceived as higher value work, and replacing the $250/mo subscription didn't clear the bar for cost/benefit.

Agreed absolutely, but that's also what I'm talking about. It's very clear it was a bad tradeoff. Not only $250/month x three seats, but also apparently whatever the opportunity cost just of personnel tied up doing "2-3 files a day" when they could have been doing "2-3 files an hour".

Even if we take at face value that there are no "programmers" at this company (with an employee commenting on hacker news, someone using Claude to iterate on a GUI frontend for this converter, and apparently enough confidence in Claude's output to move their production system to it), there are a million people you could have hired over the last decade to throw together a file conversion utility.

And this happens all the time in companies where they don't realize which side of https://xkcd.com/1205/ they're on.

It's great if, like personal projects people never get started on, AI shoves them over the edge and gets them to do it, but we can also be honest that they were being pretty dumb for continually spending that money in the first place.

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261. roboca+A07[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-04 00:18:41
>>ethbr1+Jt4
> I'd bet on in-housing

I wouldn't.

Knowing what to build is part that many businesses struggle with.

As much as consultants are lambasted, my experience of companies is that they struggle to develop or maintain anything in-house - even where it should theoretically make economic sense. >>46864857

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