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Comment by meindnoch | Hacker News Reader

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where is the grift from him? he's not a salesman pushing a particular product but is talking about his experience with them. That's a really unkind and unfair thing to say about him.

He's a salesman pushing an entire industry who regularly receives special treatment and access from LLM vendors. The fact that he's open about getting these favors and subtle enough to sprinkle his salesmanship with a thin veneer of skepticism and plausible deniability doesn't make it any less of a grift.

I'm obviously biased when it comes to FOSS foundations, but Simon is also a member of the board of the Python Software Foundation, which is not nothing in terms of looking after our craft.

The LLM stuff feels minor in comparison, even if it may be what HN knows him for. It's certainly not the same level of achievement as your average bargain bin AI rambler in your LinkedIn feed.

If anything, Python programmers should be mortified that PSF leadership includes someone who seemingly spends all his free time and social capital trying to normalize slop and downplay the negative externalities of a bunch of companies that openly wish to undermine software authorship, depress programmer wages, and obliterate career opportunities for novice programmers.

The Industrial Revolution is coming again. Look at data center spend for massive companies like Microsoft. Love it or hate it, the AI you see today isn’t going away. It will only become more capable.

Maybe the next generation can / will need to start the Butlerian Jihad but we’re stuck for now.

Other sites beckon.

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