ryandvm

Hmmm. I wonder if you get to choose between window maker or window breaker.

Oof. Good thing they're a "robot company" now. At least until an Optimus decapitates somebody and Tesla has to pivot to monorails or whatever...

I don't get it.

A trillion here, a trillion there and all the AI companies are also telling us they're planning on wiping out 2/3 of jobs in the next 10 years? Nothing about the economics of the AI boom makes any sense.

I'm not saying it's not possible, but if we wipe out 2/3 of jobs with AI, who is going to be buying *all the stuff*?

Unemployed people aren't much of a demographic, and you can't just say UBI because that doesn't make sense either. You think the billionaires are going to allow themselves to be taxed heavily enough to support UBI just so that there's a market for people to buy stuff from them? That's nonsense.

Not trying to creep anybody out, but I just don't see a stable outcome for a society that doesn't need 2/3 of the population.

The real breakdown in the rule of law occurred when the US Supreme Court made the specious decision that amoral business entities (corporations) had the same rights in a democracy as citizens.

All this shit flows downhill from Citizens United.

It does if you assume there is somebody dumber to buy your stock.

Wait until they announce that Optimus is only going to have ears because "bats get by just fine"...

Why don't all the other automakers wise up and just start promising full self driving "next year" as well?

I think the only people that don't think we're going to see AGI within the next 70 years are people that believe consciousness involves "magic". That is, some sort of mystical or quantum component that is, by definition, out of our reach.

The rest of us believe that the human brain is pretty much just a meat computer that differs from lower life forms mostly quantitatively. If that's the case, then there really isn't much reason to believe we can't do exactly what nature did and just keep scaling shit up until it's smart.

Yegge is smart guy but, I get the impression that he mostly works real hard to not work too hard. And while I'm sympathetic towards that tendency, I feel like most of the advice in this space is about using multi-agent configurations to effectively convince your management and co-workers that you're massively productive. Whether the mountains of code and architecture your agents are crapping out is actually adding value to the organization is a question that most companies are ill-equipped to evaluate - so these agent swarms are just a way to keep the gravy train rolling.

I think I'd rather hear what somebody who is pathologically productive like John Carmack is doing with multi-agent environments...

Show me some full theaters. Various GOP organizations have a well documented history of buying books to get them onto the best sellers lists.

Don't worry, after a decade or two of having Windows reinstall and re-enable it every couple weeks against their users' wishes I'm sure they'll get the market penetration they're looking for...

As a US software engineer that is worn out from the last 10 years of politics here, I'm just waiting for the EU countries to start dropping Tech Worker Visas and fast-tracks to permanent residency...

Exactly. He can croon about DOGE all day, but the reality is his entire fortune was built on feeding at the trough of government largess. That's why he talks about Mars all the time. He's not stupid enough to think we could actually live there, but damn if he couldn't make a couple trillion skimming off the top of the world's most expensive space program.

He just says shit that sounds smart and then rides the vibes to financial success, but it's not working anymore.

10 years ago when Tesla actually revolutionized the retail EV industry everyone took his word for it. Then after a few failed prognostications the nerds started to doubt his credibility, a few more years of this and the tech press started to see through it, and now he's reduced to only the MAGA-faithful falling for his Phony Stark act. The ground is coming up fast.

Absolutely true. Especially so with poorly abstracted software design.

This is why so many new teams' first order of business is invariably a suggestion to "rewrite everything".

They're not going to do a better job or get a better product, it's just the only way they're going to get a software stack that does what they want.

Tesla has completely fumbled a spectacular lead in EVs and managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And instead of turning it around, we're supposed to believe they are going to completely pivot and then take over a market with far more developed competitors (e.g. Boston Dynamics).

That Elon is riding this wave amidst the transparency of the whole thing is the funniest part. It's like watching people lose money at the "three cup" game but the cups are clear.

Citizens United. It's always Citizens United.

The insane conclusion that amoral and mostly unaccountable conglomerations have the right to direct US legislation and policy without limit is why we are in this mess. Until we sentence an entire Board of Directors to a life sentence in prison, I think I will remain unconvinced that "corporations are people".

The longer I develop software, the more I realize just how awful most software engineering it.

Your logic is exactly why Trump's gambits always work. Everyone knows that individually standing up to a bully is a good way to get the raw end of the deal; so nobody stands up and the bully continues racking up wins.

It's certainly not guaranteed, but taking an aggressive defensive stance is the ONLY possible way to stop having your lunch money stolen.

I mean, I understand the frustration, but this like asking why don't the Russian citizens just, you know, make Putin stop invading Ukraine.

I did my part, but I have 70 million compatriots that are just all too willing to allow the earth scorching as long as it means they don't have to see another black little mermaid.

We would see exactly what people in the US have been dealing with for 10 years. Everybody would wring their hands and say "unbelievable!" and then nobody with the actual capability to do anything about it actually does.

The entire world is just rooting for Father Time on this particular problem.

Honestly I think he's right. This is all for one man's vanity and the Republicans are fine with letting him do whatever he wants as long it means they get their policy wins and, more importantly, he doesn't post something nasty about them on Truth Social.

Dumbest fucking timeline ever.

There are a lot of problems with age verification schemes, but you are doing your position a disservice by suggesting that anybody that doesn't want their kid to be bullied on Snapchat is actually just a puppet of fascist regimes trying to stifle political speech.

You should learn to appreciate the nuance of opinions that differ from your own if you actually want to, you know, convince anyone of anything.

Adderall OR finding a job that 100% matches your interests.

The entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale.

To go from a brilliant satirist to becoming terminally online and just completely falling off the far right cliffs of insanity is incredibly sad. And unfortunately, this is plight is not uncommon. It is incredibly dangerous to make politics part of your identity and then just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber.

You could certainly create a pro-user EULA that specifically locks in your company's ideals and forbids reneging on them in the future. This is essentially what the GPL is - it's an end user license agreement that is exceptionally user friendly.

Pro-user EULAs just aren't popular because they limit future monetization paths for the company, but it sounds like that is exactly what you want.

“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”

-- Norm MacDonald

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MS has been doing shit like this for decades. Every couple months I log into my dusty Windows account and lo and behold there's a bunch of weird shit like Candy Crush or Copilot or whatever that's just decided to reinstall itself for the nth time.

I just noticed yesterday that Copilot or OneDrive is pressuring me to set it up and my options are: Yes, Remind me in 1 week, or Remind me in 1 month. Like, what the fuck is that?

It is a testament to the power of tech policy momentum that a company can crank out absolute shit for decades and the corporate world just keeps on using their software because "that's what we've always used".

As far as I'm concerned, I'm fine with these tech CTOs replacing their software engineering workforce with LLMs because the bar is already on the fucking floor when it comes to use experience.

The extra price of Apple products was never about not having advertising. The extra price is the feature.

It means you have enough money (status) to have a green bubble.

It means you can afford an adorable little infotainment gewgaw.

Apple products don't look unique because they need to, they look unique so that you can effectively signal your consumption.