specproc

There will be no peace till Bibi is dead or behind bars.

It's horrifying how many people I see here being threatened into using AI. I guess I'm fortunate in that I have a choice.

I've used it plenty, more recently than ever before, but I'm coming more and more to the conclusion I don't want anything to do with it.

Botsitting is low-skilled. Low-mental reward work will become low-financial reward work before long.

I was initially worried that I had to keep up, learn the new tools or get left behind. But I'm beginning to see it as an entirely different domain of work, and one I'm fine not doing.

I think I'm best off preserving my skills and autonomy, rather than fighting with an agent and fretting about tokens for the foreseeable. I've no desire to be a botsitter.

Worst case scenario, this really is the future, and I become unemployable in tech: I've done other sorts of work in the past, things I'm happy returning to if this is the future.

I've a hunch that's still going to be a while off. I hope so anyway.

I can't believe "prioritise context switching" is now advice being doled out on HN.

My experience has been that I can't.

I've just started up a new gig where I'm swearing off any agents, I'm even not looking up answers with an LLM. There's nothing so crazy I'm doing SO still doesn't have the answer.

So far, I'm having a great time. I'm progressing quickly, understanding the domain better.

I'm also finishing an older job at the moment, which has been almost 100 percent agent-driven. Real brain-dead drudge work, there's no flow to get into with these things. I'm not sure it's been any quicker than the old-fashioned way. Certainly a lot less fun.

A strange game.

I operate in a bit of a niche, in terms of my clients. They're all typically people I've worked for full time in the past, or closely related. There are some fundamentals of that business I worry about, but I'm able to do things they can't, and I'm looking alright for the year. That's as good as I can generally wish for.

Longer term, I don't know. I'd happily take something more secure if it came along, as long as it's not childminding for an agent. Super busy and bored out my mind the last few weeks, the worst sort of work.

I'm a consultant, and had my first conversation about an AI clean-up job this week. I'm also just starting another gig analysing LLM output, my sell is that the analysis is hand-coded, as they weren't able to do it themselves with LLM support.

On the other hand, I'm just finishing an agent-heavy piece. After getting it set up, it's been some of the most mindless and soul-destroying work I've had the displeasure of in a while. This stuff will be near minimum wage in a few years, totally unskilled babysitting.

AI really hasn't been all that bad for work, by volume at least. I know where I want to focus my efforts though.

I love my Surface laptop. I use arch, BTW.

I'm saying I don't need to give sleazy American companies money in order to enjoy great music, and that I put money back into my local economy when I go out for a gig.

The older I get, the less interested I am in seeing big bands. I'm lucky to live in an area with a great local music scene, plenty of independent venues.

I can't think of a single band I'd pay these extortionate prices for, I'd much rather support a local band and local venue.

Yeah, flash is crazy fast, but I've found performance variable.

At no point in this thread have I claimed there are no other countries with imperialist characteristics, I'm just highlighting the fact that the US is very much an empire, an empire which runs my country and many more besides, and is very much the biggest and baddest of them all today.

Territorial conquest here is very much a legal, not a practical distinction. To return to my previous point, different empires function differently. I don't think absorption into one's de-jure territory is is necessarily a defining characteristic here. Much of India under the British, for example, was run through vassals.

To address your question directly, I'd say India is a major world power, with about four times the population of the US, and you'd be hard pressed to describe them as an empire.

China, for its part, maintains three overseas bases, only one of which in a country it has sent troops into during a conflict (Cambodia). This is in comparison to over fifty US bases, the largest of which are all very much the result of invasions.

In the 21st century, China has had a few border skirmishes with India. In the 21st century alone, the US has fought in Afghanistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, Uganda, DRC, CAR, South Sudan, Niger, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Venezuala, and Nigeria.

If you want to pin me down on a definition, I'd say an empire is a network of countries, controlled by and for the benefit of a central country, predominantly taken by force and maintained at least to some extent through the threat of force.

How would you define one?

I stopped travelling the world to build up a library.

*streak

The USA is terrifying from a non-US perspective now, and it's never been great. We're furious at the states and sick of being dependent on its enshittified technology.

Anti-AI sentiment absolutely and correctly has a "USA bad" steak.

> I don't think it's fair to compare US foreign policy to actual imperialism as practiced by the Soviets, the British, etc.

All empires function differently. The modes of empire were very different between the British and other recent European empires, which were very different to the Soviets, the Ottomans, the Romans.

Empires are heterogeneous even within themselves over time and across Geographies. The British empire took a very different form in Ireland, to the Americas, to India, to Kenya.

Similarly the Soviet experience was very different between the Ukraine, the Baltics, Georgia, Tajikistan; or in non-Soviet Warsaw pact countries, which were -- as for most countries in the American empire -- nominally independent, but practically not, see Hungary and Czechoslovakia for particularly pertinent examples.

Ultimately, this is a duck test thing. The American empire looks like an empire, acts like an empire, so to my mind it very much is an Empire.

> The US does not maintain colonies

This, I'm sorry, is categorically false. America has colonies in American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

I'd go further to suggest, that as Israel's most substantial economic and political backer, Israel could be considered something akin to a US colony in the Middle East.

Firefox relay also good for this sort of thing.

I loathe both Russian and American governments, what's a boy to do?

What's wrong with Yandex? I think every possible criticism of Yandex I can think of could just as easily be leveled at Google or Bing.

It depends where you're sat and when. It's almost certainly a fringe perspective in the US, because I don't believe American's really think about it that much.

Whether troop presence is viewed as occupation or not in each of the >50 [1] countries currently "hosting" troops is very much a matter of personal perspective, the fringeness of which will vary from country to country.

I don't believe that it really changes the fact that yes, US troops occupy the UK, Germany and Iraq, and many more. The most substantial deployments, e.g., Germany, Japan, South Korea, and until recently Iraq and Afghanistan, were very much the product of invasions. At the time of those invasions, many of those on the receiving end would have very much felt on the receiving end of a land grab. It's just their grandchildren have been conditioned to view this state of affairs as natural.

The general pattern is "bomb the bejesus" [2] out of a country. Plant base. Install a friendly government and ensure a favourable operating environment for US interests. The UK is an exception in that it wasn't bombed by the US, but the upshot is the same. We're a wholely-owned subsidiary of corporate America, and a giant aircraft carrier on the other side of the Atlantic -- as the US's latest adventure in Iran has clearly demonstrated.

You may quibble over the "land" in land-grab, but the strategic bits (e.g., oil fields, bases) are very much owned, and the territory as a whole controlled by pliant governments.

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...

[^2]: Kissenger, 1972

One does not need to dictate every item of policy to control a country, one just needs to ensure that there's alignment on strategic issues. I think this was America's key point of learning when it took over the reins of the European empires after WW2.

In Germany, historically the strategic issue was anti-communism, but now it serves as a military logistics hub; in Iraq, it's about trade in oil in dollars and access to Iraqi oil fields for US companies.

The UK is more complex and more total, ranging from support in the security council, to access to markets for US goods and services, to stationing of US troops and hardware. Most of our economy is geared up for the benefit of US investment funds.

Any government, whether it be Germany, Iraq or the UK, which tries to alter any of these fundamentals will quickly find out the extent to which their land has been grabbed.

I think something Brits don't fully understand is the extent of our vassalage under the US.

We do, as you rightly note have quite the history of a policy of imperialist land grabs, now we just play a support function to somebody else's empire.

I'm a bibliophile. My current library stands at over 600 books, I'd wager I've purchased around a thousand in my lifetime. Please shed any assumption that this is the only way I read.

I am one of the book industry's better customers. This is pretty typical, AFAIUI. We see study after study suggest that pirates spend more on music and film than non-pirates.[1] Just the other week, I bought a physical copy of a book I'd first read from LibGen.

I pirate when I'm broke, or when living somewhere where certain books are hard to come by, as I did for a good 15-20 years of my life.

I have zero qualms about anything I've pirated. Not because of my prior "support" to authors, but because I'm aware most people in the world cannot afford to spend 65 dollars (plus postage) on a book.

Let me invert your claim on rights. What right do US lawyers have to deprive the majority of reading? Why should only the wealthy be able to access quality material on Linux? There is a particular irony in your gatekeeping of knowledge on an operating system which is designed to be free and accessible for all.

Imagine a world in which there was no Libgen, or Anna's Archive, or people sharing PDFs on forums. Would this be a better world? These things exist today, authors still get paid. In a world without, we'd have worse engineers, dumber people.

Frankly, I wish book piracy was much more mainstream. I'd much rather everyone was sat down of an evening with a copy of Linux Basics for Hackers, or The Leopard, or God-help-me, even Harry-chuffing-Potter, than doom-scrolling bile on their social media platform of choice.

Piracy is, all told, globally, a service to humanity, and we'd be better off with more of it.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/study-again-shows-pirates-te..., https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/06/piracy-fi...

Also not the poster you're replying to, but I get email with ProtonVPN, which I've linked to my domain.

I'm not without my questions about them as a company, but Google are getting beyond a joke.

Full migration away is coming with next phone upgrade.

People trying to justify anti-piracy was embarrassing in 1997. It's petty and sanctimonious now.

Not everyone lives in rich Western countries with cushy Silicon Valley pay grades; lots of folks are young, studying; they may be temporarily underemployed, or simply have to prioritise other costs.

Knowledge is a right, not the privilege of a moneyed minority.

You know what feature I'd love for WhatsApp? Out-of-office.

"Hi there, I am no longer using WhatsApp. To contact me, please..."

That's not a particularly constructive response, now is it? What do you mean, "you people"?

I reiterate, the closure of one's territorial waters is a perfectly valid response to an unprovoked assault.

The world paying a very real price for the arrogance and chauvinism of the US. Both countries should be shamed, shunned and isolated for the good of the rest of the planet.

Trump and Bibi did this, Iran's response is perfectly legitimate and proportionate.

I loved my Steam Deck, lovely bit of kit bought on a whim, but ended up selling it as I just don't game on the go.

I definitely wouldn't have done an impulse purchase at that price point.

Not loving the price of hardware right now.

I'm sorry, what the feck does "value creation" mean here? I live in a place where people are so, insanely squeezed from every angle. Wages are stagnant, prices rocketing. Where is the money to pay for this value going to come from?

No one I know feels richer than they did a decade back. I've not been able to meaningfully put up my prices for a decade. People are tired and stressed and scared, particularly scared of a technology everyone keeps telling them will make them redundant.

There is no rising tide lifting all boats, just most of us drowning whilst a few whizz past in their yachts.

I honestly hope these guys faceplant ASAP. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.