forestrywat

I do. Turns out that's not enough. My house rep very clearly cares about these. My senators too (mostly).

So is the US, to be honest.

I think that's possible. Maybe we should limit the ability of capital to exert power somehow.

The US is clearly on a path to crumbling infrastructure, waste, inefficiency, and corruption. Seeing that other countries seem to be doing some actual thinking about the future is demoralizing when you cannot get your leaders to care.

We could, like, stop framing it as us vs them to start. We could also elect leaders who want progress and are willing to squeeze the 1% even a little bit to make that progress.

China is taking long term views. Transit and rail, solar energy, batteries, manufacturing and automation, science investment.

The US is thinking very short term, to benefit very few. Ignoring rail, cutting renewables, building highly speculative and unpopular data centers, and cutting funding to science and the arts.

I see the 30 year vision for infrastructure in China and I think we could do it here. We just... don't. Because we have somehow made long term investments that benefit many a political dead end so our two "teams" can argue about how the other team is evil.

That's a different bar. Probably doesn't work is much easier to meet, and narrower. The person didn't ask for provably works. They are probably comfortable with "might work might not, but at least it's not provably wrong".

Alzheimer's is tricky. The person who is consenting to the procedure may not be the person in the OR. And both parties are vulnerable to scams and snake oil. This procedure needs studies, so there's a clear rate of success we can understand and communicate.

Seems like this treatment is widely reported on and there's interest in running controlled trials to evaluate its actual success rate. It's shown up on HN a lot.

And honestly, caution is valuable here. People with Alzheimer's are extremely vulnerable. As are their loved ones. Ensuring it's got rigorous data so caregivers can understand the tradeoffs seems important. Surgery at an advanced age is risky, no matter what.

Even if you are right, you are using the tone of a conspiracist. You are this close to posting, "They don't want you to know!"

Maybe dial it back a bit? You can be firm in your opinions and have more success in convincing others if you avoid vaguely worded accusations and the like.

Repeat it? It's not removing a tumor. It's adding a path between lymph nodes and blood vessels. You can't just repeat that. After the surgery that path exists. It's a permanent functional change.

Or... perhaps... capital interests are stronger.

I think you need to read up on why the civil rights act was necessary and the things it fought for. Woman's suffrage was fought for a long time ago, but that does not mean it was universally applied.

Many many times in US history we've said something is true, but put some big asterisks after them. Slavery is over (except it's definitely still permitted in the US), it's illegal to discriminate based on race (except we allowed redlining for generations and arguably are still fighting it), rape is illegal (unless it's your spouse, then it was legal until '93. And a lesser crime still in much of the country).

Voting is no different. Heck, one might argue we still don't have universal suffrage. People who want to vote but because we've put barriers like underfunding stations, long lines, not giving time off to vote, etc. we're clearly preventing some types of people.

I care how they made it. Would you accept code made by forced labor? Prison labor? From every country/government? What if the code is stolen? What if the code is plagiarized? What if the author is going online and loudly harassing people and encouraging harassment of other maintainers?

There's so, so many reasons to understand and care about the how.

What is the point of setting standards on the way we work? It's an exercise in democratic decision making. Some people dislike ai for entirely legitimate reasons, and they want to see if others in their community agree. (And if so, set boundaries on the way they work.)

You gotta stop seeing "virtue signaling" every time someone holds a belief different than your own.

Fwiw, I perceive no aggression in their post.

Comments like this should result in an IP level ban. Get the fuck out of here.

No, game dev is not 70 hour weeks most of the time. When it is it's called crunch, and it's increasingly uncommon. Not as rare as it should be, but still, getting less.

Agree, there should be profit share and should be ownership and job security. Thats true in all jobs, tbh. Good things for a union to fight for.

LLMs won't change the ability to hit deadlines because the problem is that deadlines are being set without consulting the teams. And a lot of game dev is finding the fun - experimenting, basically. Am LLM cannot tell you if a game is fun, only playing it can. You need time to do that.

And indie devs don't need it. Balatro, Meccha Chameleon, Peak, Silksong, Megabonk, Yap Yap, etc. There's so many incredible indie games coming out and making waves, building the games their studios can build with the funds they have. They are making art, not slop. And people love them for it.

You think Vampire Survivors is technically or artistically difficult when it came out? The bottleneck isn't making the game. Indie devs with no skills but good ideas can already make their games with great tools and little effort these days. Games are already democratized.

Presumably the fact that experimenting on oneself is not considered particularly ethical or repeatable for science?

My company, my insurance company, my pharmacy insurance company, the required health startup I have to use, my doctor and I all get to decide whether I can take a commonly prescribed medicine that i need. Theres way way too many parties in that decision. The ama isn't the problem that's driving wedges between my doctor and me.

Or they might signal supporting a fellow human. I preferentially but union made things because in general the workers are getting a bigger cut.

I've worked in the industry and agree with the parent. This person hasn't worked in the industry.

AI is a bad for the industry for a few reasons:

Players hate it. You think the vitriol over "asset store flips" is bad? AI is seen by players as lazy and low quality.

Copyright is uncertain. IP matters a lot to studios. Until that's settled, it's caution.

Art is never the bottleneck in games. It's why so much DLC is cosmetic items. Artists finish and gotta be making more stuff, but the rest of the studio is still powering through the final feature list.

Games are perceived as expressive, artistic, and creative works. Everyone is working together to build something with their human identity stamped in it. This is what we're making, together. The moment you invite slop in, the product isn't art anymore. It's just a product. Sure, maybe shovelware titles will use AI, but audiences will know.

The quality of AI assets is pretty mid. They feel samey and tacky. No one wants to play games that feel like the average game. They want games that are novel or familiar in unusual ways.

It's expensive to even try. Studios run on razor thin margins and tight deadlines. You want to spend two months on some spike to see if AI might pay off? Good luck, we'll go bankrupt.

Production schedules have orders, estimates, and processes. People do stuff in a particular order and timeframe. Disrupting a machine that works and replacing it with a machine that may work is a risk. Best case it pays off, worse case it's development hell, worst case it's a canceled game.

Worker solidarity. It's thin in game dev, but it's growing. There's a sense that the top is keeping the profit, and AI is a management driven tool to keep the worker suppressed. It's not universal, but it's present.

There's probably a dozen more reasons. Cost of tokens, tracking provenance (did this artist copy another artists work is really really important to be able to prove), high degree of change in AI ecosystem right now disrupting tool chains, it's uncertain how the market will react in the long term to games with AI assets (gamedev is a conservative industry). Etc.

Your analogy is goofy. An analogy is like, "People don't go to other people's kitchens and discuss their thoughts on McDonalds". And yeah, they totally do.

The person isn't complaining about grok to grok, they aren't even complaining about grok on X.

Tech has always been political. You think Mitnick and Woz weren't political? You think windows and the powerpc werent political? That social media isn't political?

You don't like seeing politics you disagree with. You just don't think things you agree with are politics.

I come to HN to learn, to be exposed to different modes of thought. To engage in useful creative discourse over disagreements. The idea that HN or tech is free from politics is intellectually vacant thinking.

It's not virtue signaling. People are allowed to have morals. And they are allowed to act in ways that align with those moral beliefs.

> do you use Apple equipment despite Apple’s use of Chinese slave labor?

If someone said they didn't buy Apple because of this, I'd support them in that too.

People. Are. Complicated. We're allowed to have beliefs, we're allowed to have beliefs that aren't internally consistent. You gotta get over the idea that people aren't genuine believers in their beliefs.

You ain't disagreeing. Anyone who wants or engages in forced labor is fascist. Sounds like you found an example of that in the US. Yep. Many such cases.

Nonsense. Anyone who wants forced labor camps is a fascist. I don't care what they call themselves. Once you stop caring about wellbeing for everyone you stop being a leftist. (Which is your insinuation.)

Also, there is more than one political aisle. The left (who broadly want to redistribute wealth) is distinct from democrats (who are capitalists) is distinct from the various parts of the GOP.

These big companies have orgs within them that do, e.g., charitable work. Or work on standards or open source. Or accessibility or inclusion or other work to genuinely improve lives. How does your judgement apply to folks who attach their altruistic efforts to the funding and reach of a big company?

I would understand if you said, "Nope, still equally responsible" or if you said, "Relatively less worried about these folks".

Genuinely interested in hearing thoughts about these orgs at big companies.

Imagine thinking the right has learned to tolerate different opinions that they find offensive.

It'd be more honest for a start.

Reread the last sentence in my post.

"I've started hiring" is very different from "I'm starting hiring".