HN user
Over the years, I have accumulated a really sweet desk setup: standing desk, Herman Miller chair, Kinesis Advantage, BenQ programming monitor, nice lighting, decent audio setup, etc. I have a dedicated office, entirely separated from the rest of the house.
It's great, but I think being dependent on all that stuff can make you soft. I still do some of my best work from my laptop in the garden, coffee shops, the library, etc.
To each their own.
(Assuming that LLM does indeed multiply productivity) We are likely in for some rough days, as it's much easier to just fire people and maintain the same level of productivity. Musk (arguably) did that with Twitter, even before this started. I was impacted by a post-COVID layoff, myself.
But do you think that once that has leveled out a bit, the bandwidth/market bottleneck you referenced will be identified as the new bottleneck[0]? Like, new businesses will launch, or existing companies will identify new growth areas that they did not have the capacity to move into.
I don't know how to respond to your second paragraph. Looking in that direction is a bit too overwhelming.
[0] I think this was always the problem, not developer productivity
Yeah I don't disagree with him on a lot of the substance, but it's more about the tone of his writing (there's like 20+ exclamation marks in that article). Listening to his podcast, he is even more insufferable. It just has a feeling of "preaching to the choir", and as the parent commenter stated, it gives you a feeling that he is following where the wind is blowing.
I dunno, I guess I just don't like him.
I agree. He plainly has an axe to grind. I'm as AI-skeptical as the next guy, but I can't handle Ed Zitron. Doesn't seem like a good faith actor.
It's only a feeling that I have, but I think that some folks live in a scarcity mindset, where they are only barely holding on to what they have. Note that this does not actually have to be their lived reality - you can be rich and think this way. Trying to adjust the system to "give more" to other people means less available to them. Sort of a zero-sum perspective on the world. If someone else gains, that means I lose.
This logic is fundamentally flawed. Pointing this out to people (often in strong language) makes them defensive. This creates the perfect combination to get people to vote against their best interests.
It's not about "being progressive" or "elite". It's about playing to the fears of people who are already fearful.
it wrecks my guts. so, no.
You come off like a dick, but it's really true.
I saw a tweet where some Zoomer was roasting an "Elder Millenial" for switching devices from a mobile phone to a desktop when making a big purchase (airline tickets? I forget).
I didn't feel like wading into that argument (what's the point? like spitting in a campfire), but... yeah.
Some folks say that we are regressing wrt technological proficiency, but it's really just that more people use technology than they used to. Regression to the mean, maybe? Is that the right expression?
Interesting. If it's not too personal, would you mind sharing what the "cause" turned out to be, and how you were able to discover it?
I think the population of people buying bespoke suiting is small enough that you would not want to alienate your existing customers. I agree that they should raise the prices, but I've got to think there's an aspect of a relationship there. It was hinted at, a little bit, in the article. It's not just a financial transaction, I mean.
You can assume they'd rather be constructing new clothes, rather than doing alterations. You can also assume that there is some amount of their previous customer base who aren't interested in restarting the process at 0 with creating custom patterns, etc.
It's quite possible that the lasting effects are more dramatic, as this plays out over time and we move increasingly towards casual dress.
Fifteen years older?! You think that woman looks 78? To me I'd put her in her mid-60s. She's 63. She looks like a 63 year old.
I think part of the problem of this talk is that it introduces the fact that older people/people with disabilities are judged on their appearances instead of their capabilities (which, with respect, you have just demonstrated). Then the talk sortof goes off into a "how to age gracefully" direction and abandons that original line of thinking (disclaimer, I only watched the first 30 minutes so far).
I definitely would be interested in addressing the first issue because, as they say, everyone becomes a old and/or disabled (unless like Tom Petty, you're dead).
Hey can you help me understand what you mean? There's an entry about "Hardware Root of Trust" in that document, but I don't see how that means Apple is avoiding stating, "we can't access your data" - the doc says it's not exportable.
"Explain it like I'm a lowly web dev"
I feel like using copilot chat in my editor has really been a boost for me, in the way you describe. But it's also super janky. Like lots of times I'll be having a conversation about my code, and then I say, "what if I were to make this change here" and it comes back, "Sorry, I don't have access to your files. Can you paste the code in?" And I'm like, WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT IT. It's like the file fell out of context, but it didn't tell me. Sometimes it's hard to get the current file back in context.
Or I'll go to great pains to be explicit about what I want (no code snippets unless I ask for them specifically, responses hundreds of lines long with dozens of steps it wants me to take), and for a little while it does that, and then boom, back to barfing out code snippets.
People talk about this tool as some kind of miracle worker and to me while it is helpful it is also a source of major frustration for me, because it cannot do these most basic things. When I hear about people talking about how amazing LLMs are, I'm extremely confused. What am I doing wrong? I really would like to know.
The first step to alleviate these specific situations could be to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon hole it
I dislike arguments made in this vein, it's sortof a way to intellectually dismiss someone's point without addressing it.
I share the grandparent poster's concern. Parasocial relationships feed us in a certain way, but do not nourish.
Don't get me wrong; I'd rather have OnlyFans than pimps. But that's not the point.
This is one of those things I don't get why people go so gaga over them
I think it's because they look so fucking cool.
A housing development will create parks because they are required to do it. This is not market forces at work.
I agree, it's not exclusive to NY. I live in a college town of around 65k (100k with the student population) and it's amazing. We have a very modest home, but it's super walkable: 1/2 mile to a small grocery store, 3/4 mile to downtown, 1 mile to the river, 1 1/2 mile to the library.
We moved during COVID from one of those cities where "a park is a giant empty field of grass". Major life changer.
Wow yeah you really hit the nail on the head for me. My wife and I weren't trying to have kids but we weren't trying not to have kids either, if you get my drift. Looking back on it, if we had been "smart" about deciding when the right time would happen, we might never have had kids.
Having kids is hands-down the best thing I've ever done but also the hardest. Not because of the amount of work, because it's really not that much work. It's more of the dramatically uncomfortable shift in perspective: Realizing I'm not the main character in this story. It still hits me sometimes.
User data (and the resultant behavioral prediction) is the new gold rush. Even if the data is not immediately useful, it can be stored and used later.
There's the (now) old saying, "if the product is free, then you are the product" but that's not entirely accurate. You are the source of raw materials. These materials can then be fed into a model which will predict your behavior. Right now this can be seen simply in the space of funneling content to you, in order to get you to buy things. But companies are not governments and can sell their product to anybody (including governments) in order to predict or direct your behavior.
You know what’s even worse? The audiobook version, narrated by Will Wheaton.
Yeah it's complicated. I guess an analogy could be like walking up to a fat person and shouting, "Calories in, calories out, bro!".
Simply, it's not helpful. Fat people know they're fat because they have a caloric surplus. They've tried eating less. They're not stupid.
I think the defensiveness people exhibit is a byproduct of their cumulative reactions to a bunch of unsolicited advice. My own (unsolicited) advice would be: don't give people advice, unless they specifically ask for it. I can guarantee you that every depressed person on the planet has heard that exercise is good for your mental health. Instead, you can say something like, "I'm very sorry that you're having a hard time. I want you to know that you're important to me, and if there's ever anything I can do to help, let me know"
Yeah, same here. I don't exercise as much as you - 3, maybe 4 times a week - but yeah, it doesn't help. Sure, it feels good right when you're doing it (sometimes, hah), but the feeling doesn't persist. Some days, I actually feel worse emotionally after exercise.
I agree with you about therapy and medication: in my experience, they are the only things that work. Expensive though.
As a side note, I sort of feel triggered by this kind of article.
Depressed? Have you:
- exercised enough?
- drank enough water?
- slept enough?
- meditated enough?
- gotten outside enough?
It's passed as "helpful advice" by well-meaning people but always makes me feel like I'm not "enough". If I've done all those things but I'm still depressed, I must not have done those things "enough". Does that make sense? I'm so tired of trying to explain how hard I'm working, I just don't talk about it with people for fear they'll bring out "the list" of things I ought to be doing, and I'll have to explain that, yes, I get 8 hours of sleep a night. Yes, I drink a gallon of water a day. Etc.
I'm certainly no expert, but I believe all that historical talk about corporations doing the right thing by their workers (and by extension, society) came after many years of struggle (unions) and regulation (trust busting etc).
This is just an idea that I have, I'm not sure if it's even true. In any case, corporate speak is and always has been tuned to what the public expects of the corporation (current example is the whole LGBTQ+ signalling). Don't get it twisted: corporations aren't people and they don't really have feelings. They don't care about you; they're incapable of caring about you.
I was hired in Aug 2022, laid off yesterday.
Looking at it from their perspective, I would have made the choice to lay me off (or fire me). The reality is that I just did not get enough meaningful project work. I talked to my manager frequently and it was always something "just around the corner". My manager went on parental leave 3 months after I started. Pretty much everybody took most of December off. Our division did a re-org which shook everything up, wasted more time. I didn't get any meaningful projects until the start of February, my 6th month of employment at Shopify. I was doing really well there, felt good about my work and my contribution, whereas I'd been floundering for 6 months with impostor syndrome and existential crisis.
But it was just too late. I got the axe. I don't feel too personally bad about it, although I hate interviewing and have performance anxiety when it comes to technical interviewing stuff. I want to take time off to rest but I'm afraid I'll use all my savings up and still not have a job.
I wasn't there long enough to really know for certain, but I feel like part of the problem is the monolithic nature of the codebase. Getting projects greenlit required a bunch of political wrangling and convincing of the senior leadership team by the product folks. Things just moved really slowly. The "Get Shit Done" (I kid you not, that's what they call it) process of shipping projects seemed interesting but nobody really followed the documented process. I got the feeling it was a lot of back channel conversations, gate keeping by higher up folks, with people every step of the chain asking themselves, "Will this decision make me look more impactful in my upcoming review?". Kinda feels like the way I imagine the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union operated.
I don't know. I have a lot of feelings about all of it, I'm personally really sad because I feel like I really had something to offer, something to contribute, but I spent most of my time just fucking around. Scale that up to a company the size of Shopify and it's just a tragic waste of human potential. But they will just pat themselves on the back, congratulating themselves on "making difficult decisions".
The 16 weeks severance is nice though. Takes the edge off.
Most of these kids are not addicts, they bought what they thought was a Xanax from some dude on Snapchat, and it turned out to be fentanyl.
I somehow feel that maybe the pharmaceutical marketing machine, which has successfully turned drugs into name brands that are recognized by kids, might have something to do with the problem. But what do I know?
c'mon, dude. his hair is an icon of classical music in itself
The problem is it isn't "good" thumbnails. It's that stupid fucking, "who farted?" face. Or more often for young women, it's "Uh-oh, I did a bad thing" face.
I agree, race to the bottom of the brain stem. I sympathize with GP
I definitely agree - the level of formality is significantly increased, even over Slack, because of the "permanence" you referenced.
I switched teams 4 months ago (old team dissolved in a merger) into an area where I don't have any experience (Django backend -> "DevOps-y" microservices in Go and infrastructure type stuff). These are skills I want to possess and I was grateful for the opportunity. Unfortunately the outcome has not been what I had hoped. I'm trying hard to teach myself but I'm missing so much. My teammates are all significantly more senior and are extremely busy. My experience and reputation in other areas feels like it actually hurts me -- am I not actually a competent programmer, like I thought I was?
Worse is I feel worried about switching teams again. What if I don't succeed there, either? Will I need another 4-6 months to ramp up and gain knowledge? I don't want to end up a pariah, or be seen as an incompetent developer who can't be relied upon.
I'm applying to jobs at other companies now. I know I'll face many of the same challenges there as well, but I don't really know what else to do.
No, I really was asking a question. I don't know, was the phrase "All Lives Matter" in common circulation, before "Black Lives Matter" came around?
I really do not know, that's why I asked
I'm pretty ignorant of this, but was the phrase "All Lives Matter" really out and about in normal use for a long time? Or did it rise in popular use after "Black Lives Matter"?
If it's the first one, yeah I agree w/you. If it's the second, well...