sobchak

@sobchak@programming.dev

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sam Altman Says If Jobs Gets Wiped Out, Maybe They Weren’t Even “Real Work” to Start With⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  They invest in things they think they will be able to sell later for a higher price. Expected consumption is sometimes part of their calculations. But, they are increasingly not in touch with reality (see blockchain, metaverse, Tesla, etc). Sometimes they knowingly take a loss to gain power over the masses (Twitter, Washington Post). They are also powerful enough to induce consumption (bribe governments for contracts, laws, bailouts, and regulations that ensure their investments will be fruitful). They are powerful enough to heavily influence which politicians will get elected, choosing who they want to bribe. They are powerful enough to force the businesses they are invested in to buy/sell to each other. The largest, most profitable companies, produce nearly nothing, they use their positions of being near-monopolies to extract rent (i.e. enshittification/technofeudalism).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sam Altman Says If Jobs Gets Wiped Out, Maybe They Weren’t Even “Real Work” to Start With⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is the capitalist investor class, by and large, determines what work will be done, what kinds of jobs there will be, and who will work those jobs. They are becoming increasingly out of touch with reality as their wealth and power grows and seem to be trying to mold the world into something, somewhere along the lines of what Curtis Yarven advocates for, that most people would consider very dystopian.

  This discussion is also ignoring the fact that currently, 95% of AI projects fail, and studies show that LLM use hurts the productivity of programmers. But yeah, there will almost surely be breakthroughs in the future that will produce more useful AI tech; nobody knows what the timeline for that is though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From the outside looking in⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  As an American, since I was a teenager, I always thought Canada or the Scandinavian countries would be better places to live (mostly due to cannabis laws and healthcare). I grew up in rural US, so was aware of high levels of bigotry and poverty, but yeah, it seems to be getting worse. Rights have been getting eroded since W (except LGBT rights, until MAGA). The economy, for the working class, has been in decline since I’ve been alive. We seem to be going through a corpo-fascist self-coup now, so it’s definitely worse. In terms of foreign meddling, I don’t think much has changed since I’ve been alive until this Trump term. Disregarding LBGT acceptance, I think the late 90s were peak. Regarding WASP men, I think the 50s may have been the peak. The country was built on genocide and slavery in many uniquely brutal ways, so don’t think it was really “great” until the mid 1900s, but not even sure it was comparatively great to other peer countries back then, in anything other than having a large economy and plentiful resources to be exploited.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Know the difference⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think abstract support of genocide should probably be legal, I don’t think organizations, institutions, or people should be forced to tolerate it though. Anti-fascists being anti-free-speech in regards to pro-fascist speech seems ok and natural?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Huge internet outage live blog: Amazon, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max and more experiencing issues⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For these large businesses, I imagine they get favorable deals, and all the executives probably know each other and scratch each-other’s backs. For smaller businesses, AWS can decrease time-to-market, it’s easy to find people who are already familiar with it, and is seen as less risky than going with some smaller provider. Though, I hate the “cloud” with a passion, and whenever I’m given the choice, I avoid it. It’s quite a bit cheaper in the long run to avoid cloud providers too. On one long project I worked on, we hadn’t had downtime on any of our VPSs longer than a couple minutes over the course of 8 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any decent GPT-detection tools that can be run locally?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Excessive use of em-dashes, emojis, and other characters that aren’t on standard keyboards. I think these companies purposely have the models generate this stuff so it is easily detectable (so they avoid training on their own slop).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft wants you to talk to your PC and let AI control it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I was curious about an LLM-powered terminal, so downloaded it to check it out. The first thing I did was ask it to do something like “open my resume file,” and instead doing something like “ls | grep -i resume” in the current directory, it ran the find command on root and started hitting all my NFS mounts as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jesus hates American "Christians"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They often operate on the “just-world fallacy” too. I.e. if people are poor, starving, arrested, deported, raped, it’s because they deserve it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Commercials seem to be normalizing an unhealthy work-balance more.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The first one at least seems to think people want the people who do work for them to not have a life. Indicates they think their customers have no empathy or class solidarity; which is probably mostly true. We use a lot of products that involve slave labor or something close to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Death to Spotify’: the DIY movement to get artists and fans to quit the music app⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been downloading FLAC (lossless), and when I transfer to my phone, I encode to Opus, which is supposed to have better sound quality than MP3 at comparable file sizes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨i enjoy high fructose corn syrup too⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  She made something like this: allrecipes.com/…/fried-dandelions-appalachian-sty…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have one of those echo ball looking things with a clock on it. I mostly just use it to play atmospheric noise and set alarms and as a clock. I do get ads sometimes. Sometimes I ask it to play something and it will ask me to subscribe to something. Sometimes it will notify me of a price drop on Amazon. I’ll probably get rid of it soon. My life has just been hectic lately, and I haven’t had the time to set something else up to replace it yet. Going to completely de-big-tech soon (I’m mostly there already); I don’t trust them, with them being so close to this fascist admin. I think it’s likely these will be used for state surveillance; some of big tech’s products and services already are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨i enjoy high fructose corn syrup too⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tbf, many are kinda disgusting to modern palettes. Lamb’s quarter sucks compared to stuff like spinach, kale, or collards. Pokeweed needs extensive preparation to make it safe. Wood sorrel, horseherb, and prickly pear grows where I currently live, but I haven’t tried them yet. My dog likes horseherb despite the little spines for some reason. My grandmother used to fry dandelions and plaintain which was pretty good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyday AI looks more like the '08 housing bubble⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know the answer, but during 2008 onwards (seems like the economy didn’t fully recover until the end of Obama’s presidency), every industry slowed down. Was hard for me to get a fast food job or consistent minimum wage assembly line work through temp agencies. Things can go into vicious negative feedback loops during downturns (investors afraid to invest due to bad economic outlook -> factories and such don’t get built or expanded -> unemployment rises -> people spend less -> companies start laying off -> economic outlook worsens -> investors selling and moving to "safer’ assets -> …). The entire banking system pretty much imploded during 2008; I don’t know how much exposure banks have to AI (commercial real estate is another thing to worry about though). With any luck the AI crash would be more like the dot-com crash, which mostly just hurt one industry (but I remember my father talking about factory layoffs during that too).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The capitalist class loves the idea and rewards companies with investment money. They think it could be the ultimate tool to snuff out any power the working class still has; making many employees optional, total surveillance of the population, etc. I think it will be a long time until it can do many jobs, but the surveillance tech seems to be coming along pretty well (with “AI” cameras recording license plates and biometric identifiers being put up everywhere).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨wax on⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TIL beeswax is pretty cheap. I typically use shellac on stuff that is indoor and low wear, Looks like beeswax is cheaper and about as easy to apply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyone should have a home server (or a friend that has one)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Outside of the “stars” and directors, people working in the film/tv industry already have a fairly low income (median salary for professional actors is ~$47000/yr).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to manage docker compose apps?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think compose files are usually pinned to a version, or use a .env file that needs to be changed to update to a new version.

  I personally don’t update very often; usually not until I’m forced to for some reason. I find that just checking the documentation for any upgrade/migration guides, and doing it manually is sufficient. I don’t expose this kind of stuff publicly; if I did, I’d probably update regularly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Renewables blow past nuclear when it comes to cheap datacenter juice⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of the companies and people responsible for having all these datacenters built are heavily invested in SMR. So they’ll probably be used anyways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Windmill': China tests world’s first megawatt-level airship to capture high winds⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tidal too. Slows the Earth’s rotation a minuscule amount more than usual.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sniper attacks Texas ICE facility amid soaring tensions over US immigration⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not really big on “conspiracy theories,” BUT are we supposed to believe the shooter was shooting detainees, and “engraved” a single bullet casing with a sharpie with the message “anti-ice”? Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A ‘demoralizing' trend has computer science grads out of work — even minimum wage jobs. Are 6-figure tech careers over?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Idk, I’ve worked with recent grads where their work likely did bring in > $100k in a year. Maybe only took a month to get up to speed. Commits from all devs should be reviewed, and all code should be tested before pushing to prod, so those catastrophic costs should rarely be a problem. We had a good relationship with professors at a local university, and they’d send us their top students. The students would work with us for a while before usually getting picked up by big tech.

  Pretty sure my work right out of college brought the company around $300k the first year (wrote the firmware for an electronic control board mostly by myself, which allowed the company to secure a large contract).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A ‘demoralizing' trend has computer science grads out of work — even minimum wage jobs. Are 6-figure tech careers over?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Didn’t something like 150k employees and contractors get DOGE’d and the admin is targeting 300k by the end of year?

  I was doing contract work related to environmental research that relied on grant money and all that dried up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A ‘demoralizing' trend has computer science grads out of work — even minimum wage jobs. Are 6-figure tech careers over?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If their work brings in > 100k in revenue then they should.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hmm, I missed the part about being maxed-out on roof space. Great article and blog by the way!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Guessing it would be more practical to have enough solar panels to fulfill energy needs in winter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are Cars Just Becoming Giant Smartphones on Wheels?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Kind of disappointing Bezos is involved though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are Cars Just Becoming Giant Smartphones on Wheels?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think that’s the reason. China makes tons of aftermarket replacement parts and even OEM parts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Big Surprise—Nobody Wants 8K TVs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  HDR is more noticeable, but yeah, I don’t care if it’s 1080p or 4k.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla sales plunge 40% in Europe as Chinese EV rival BYD's triple⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m completely out of shape and don’t exercise at all, but commuted to work on a bike when my workplace was ~5 miles away. Wasn’t hard at all and only took a little longer than a car. Had a rack on the back and bags to pick up groceries too. If you need carry a lot of heavy tools every day, it obviously wouldn’t be ideal. Even then a bicycle trailer could be used up to something like 100lbs.