HN user
Thanks for your great input. But you might have mistaken what I was trying to get at - certainly not that there's no difference between a computer program and a person.
Non sequitur.
Maybe it's just me, but when I was younger one reason that got me into AI research was the idea that one day we would have these seemingly intelligent entities that we could talk to and interact with just like we do with humans.
Now that we have that, everybody hates it.
Except me. I still like this. There might still be room for improvement, yes, but I think this is a cool attempt to making AI agents part of the team.
I think what could help make this better is investing into giving agents actual personality, instead of them being just sycophantic clones of each other. AI agents as team members should have clear aspects of distinction both in their abilities and behaviors.
High prices might be an incentive for piracy but it cannot be a justification.
It's a bit like saying it's okay to sneak into a movie theater because the prices for movie tickets are too high.
To me, I feel it's an integral part of a democracy that if there is a law you don't like, you have means to get it changed, but it always involves convincing others that your viewpoint is the one everyone should adhere to. Likewise, it is a part of this system that you accept and adhere to the laws as they are until they have been changed. I don't system a society can work where everybody takes laws and regulations as mere suggestions and picks the ones they like to follow.
When a providers offer something at a certain price and you don't like the price, but you would still really like the thing they're offering, you have two options: you either suck it up and pay the price they're asking or you simply move on and do without that thing. I find the idea of "these prices are outrageous, so I'm entitled to getting this thing without paying at all!" not ethically justifiable.
There is a world of difference between "here's a problem that I'm really concerned with and poured all my expertise to solve it" and "I told Claude to fix it for me and now I'm gonna abandon it as soon as I'm done with the HN advertising"
I've always dreamed of having the ability to just talk to my computer (in the right circumstances) so I actually worked in the field for many years. The main reason I never use speech recognition today is because I have zero interest of sending recordings of my voice to the servers of some global corporations.
Running speech recognition and TTS locally is quite feasible, as projects like this one show.
Be precise: the quote does not say "individual people deserve...", it's talking about the country as a whole. And even then, you don't necessarily have to agree with it.
Awesome family constellation, thanks for taking the time to explain!
I feel you. My son is still younger, but I have similar fears.
As any good husband would, I bought my wife an old SNES for Christmas a few years ago. And my son loves playing Super Mario World on it.
So I thought some time back, that it could be a great father-son bonding experience if he and I were to code up a simple pixel-style 2D jump'n'run together that he designs and I program.
Except that he's been taking way too great a liking in it. He's kinda obsessed with the development of that game already, and now I'm worried that I turned him onto something that I pray to God will never become his career...
Btw, completely OT but something I found puzzling when reading your blog post: how did your aunt communicate with the Austrian guy who didn't speak English?!
One of my best friend loves making music. And he was also always interested in recording tech. So after we both graduated from high school, he went on to become a sound engineer. But even right after getting his degree, he said that he never really wanted to work in that profession because he didn't want to lose his passion for it.
I guess both you and my friend did it right. I went all in with studying for a degree in CS and whatnot and here I am today, wondering what I was thinking...?!
You kept your passion, I lost mine. I envy you.
Btw, that LucasArts-style adventure game for the C64 that my other friend and I designed as teenagers is still something I must finish before I die.
There's certainly that. But a lot of the points of the sibling and nephew comments here ring true, too.
I could probably write a blog post with the opposite title, sth. like "My life got ruined by the Commodore C64". Equally hyperbolic, the narrative would go something like this: I was the exact same child/teen as the guy from the other blog, but the problem from 2026 me is that I got lured into IT through games and BASIC, and now I so wish I had chosen a different career. Alas, it's all I know how to do, and at this point in my life, changing careers is not a viable option.
So, thanks C64!
I still love you, though...
Every country gets the government it deserves.
-- Joseph de Maistre, 1811
> And here I am driving a 2003 Golf with a tape deck (and CD player).
That sounds wonderful.
I don't know if people are really serious but there seems to be a good market interest in car's that's not just equipped with touchscreens and Apple CarPlay. It's interesting (and perhaps understandable) how no car manufacturing is interested in tapping into such a niche segment.
One of the hobby projects that I want to do, and hopefully will find the time for before we get rid of my wife's car, is to retrofit it with a CD player, powered by a Raspberry Pi or something alike. It could nicely live in the glove compartment and I believe the in-car entertainment system is already equipped with an aux port.
I have to admit I don't understand what exactly the problem is we're trying to solve with ML here...?
Especially if you don't have a phone and don't want to use your google account for anything but gmail, for privacy reasons. Both of these point apply to me, for instance.
Fun fact: a bouncing ball was one of the first programs that the C64 User Guide taught you: https://archive.org/details/commodore-64-user-guide/page/n57...
Yes, that's right kids: the C64 came with a manual that didn't just teach you where to flip the power switch of your computer but actually how to program it!
Yes. It was around the time when "UI design" changed to "UX design".
This one maybe? https://archive.org/details/ibm-saa-cua-basic-interface-desi...
PDF link in the box on the right.
Reading this makes me feel like we have not learned any lessons at all in software engineering and UI design since the 1980s.
Prediction: Germany is going to be your worst train experience.
Plus, I'm not very hirable to begin with, having wasted most of my professional life in academia.
I've worked at more than one place where administration and sys admins were the ones calling the shots. Certainly not the people actually producing stuff.
That, and also the fact that everything is well-integrated and interoperable, allowing a more seamless interaction between the different tools.
That was just an example.
The point of the parent is that in an ideal situation, where everything works without flaw, theoretically it makes no difference which tools everyone uses. In real life, you having a homogeneous setup across a team makes the sysadmin's job a lot easier.
I worked briefly in public administration at one point in my career. I asked the admins the same thing, could I get Emacs installed on my machine. I got a bit concerned when the admin staff asked back: "What is Emacs?"
By looking at my screen? But also, why would you disobey a direct instruction from you super?