bevr1337

> o we only have the choice to assimilate the AI-driven, algorithmic future or to become complete Luddites living on subsistence farming?

A few days ago someone posted an article linking luddites to the NASA moon landing program to AI-generated furry porn.

The interesting gist is that Luddites were misrepresented then and continue to be misrepresented today. The Luddite movement isn't conservative nor regressive, it is human!

> Whenever you pine for the old internet stop and think: Do I just miss the freedom of childhood?

This rings very true for video games. I cut my teeth on MUDs then MMOs and find myself craving pleasant social environments. It's easy to blame Discord or other social tools that gobbled up the gaming I enjoyed, but I'm old and all my peers are old, and the truth is I don't have 4 hours to roleplay about werewolf vampire monks.

That said, sometimes things really do change. I do get excited when I find a cool hobby website from a passionate nerd, or something like the MMOndrian game shared here a few days ago. There's more cool stuff than ever, but it does represent less of the general web experience.

Here's a skeptical write-up about the mailers I was referencing. I like this view because it acknowledges human fallacies. For example, that an untargeted ad could feel targeted or that we may exaggerate the amount of ads that feel targeted.

https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-t...

It's an established strategy to serve you irrelevant ads. When the targeting gets too specific, the people start to notice and panic.

Target is a fun example - they had cases where they revealed pregnancies through targeted ads. Now, they'll put an ad of a lawnmower (untargeted) next to the bassinet (targeted) and customers are less creeped out

> So, is it right to say biology is “just” a planetary fungal infection?

Excellent closing statement. In my own life, I'm working to remove "just" from my vocabulary so it's fun seeing this called out in other context.

Maybe a false dichotomy. For ex, modern transportation could have been in service to sustainable agricultural models, providing resiliency between communities.

> Growing food is most certainly profitable; but only at scale

The agricultural practices you hint at only make sense in a boardroom. I'm sure it seems rational or logical, but it's not based in experience or ethics.

> But that's not a foundational discipline of humanity;

It is probably the foundational discipline of humanity. Cultivating and cooking food is what allowed us to do everything since.

> Things are cyclic, nothing new

Must be a convenient worldview

In my experience, it's the functional part, not immutability, where they fall short. Any LLM can write immutable C# because it's easy and there's incredible amounts of training data.

> what's the largest scope of work some engineer can do entirely on their own recognizance?

None. Everything we develop was built on someone else's work. Even when our collaborator is not physically in the room with us, the work is still a collective endeavor.

> more likely that Western law enforcement and intelligence have free access to the data

This I have firsthand experience with and agree. Why invest effort when agencies can simply take what they want?

> There's good reason to believe lots of western apps have back doors

A common sentiment in this thread. My gut and practical experience both tell me this is true on some level, but how do folks distinguish tinfoil hat conspiracy from legitimate speculation?

Complex cases are indeed complex! Data viz is an interesting example since visuals are often misleading and time sinks regardless of ability. It's less effort to provide an HTML table or CSV export than gluing D3 and React together (or whatever stack your team uses).

I try my hardest to push back on canvas viz so we're not reinventing every wheel. SVG is easy to extend and make interactive

It takes the same amount of work to use an <aside> or <button> as a <div>. I have never accepted the argument that accessibility is more work. It is the same amount of work but done correctly. Aria attributes are only necessary when extending HTML semantics.

I recently had a coworker tell me he liked his last workplace because "we all spoke the same language." It was incredible how much he revealed about himself with what he thought was a simple fact about engineer culture. Your comment reminds me of that exchange.

- Employers, not employees, should provide workplace equipment or compensation for equipment. Don't buy bits for the shop, nails for the foreman, or Cursor for the tech lead.

- the workplace is not a meritocracy. People are not defined by their wealth.

- If $1,000 does not represent an appreciable amount of someone's assets, they are doing well in life. Approximately half of US citizens cannot afford rent if they lose a paycheck.

- Sometimes the money needs to go somewhere else. Got kids? Sick and in the hospital? Loan sharks? A pool full of sharks and they need a lot of food?

- Folks can have different priorities and it's as simple as that

We're (my employer) still unsure if new dev tooling is improving productivity. If we find out it was unhelpful, I'll be very glad I didn't lose my own money.

It's unlikely we can extrapolate market share and user-base data from individuals who self-select into discussing DRM on Hackernews.

You'd be surprised if less-than 99% of Firefox users didn't switch to Chrome to stream television? Am I understanding?

They "caved" because it's a browser for humans and lots of humans stream TV. I don't miss the daily "how can I watch Netflix on Ubuntu?" posts in different communities. Users can disable Widevine in FF.

Streaming television

There's definitely some bias around personification. Several religions and cultures place importance on personification and/or anthropomorphism.

Perhaps like auditory hallucinations, the experience can be distressing _or not_ and we can observe that between different cultures.

I appreciate that the abstract highlighted where personification is unhelpful.

> As long as the benefits outweigh the hazards, I use it.

You and the author may be in agreement but with differing risk tolerance.

> Ironically, the best answer to many of the article's suggestions... is to write your own software with LLMs.

I don't think it's ironic but I do think it's false. How do LLMs satisfy a single requirement from the author's punchline list?

Why not? Why would we treat mental health as separate from physical and cultural health? Society should have a moral obligation for the health of its members.