dwoldrich

We'll pray for you.

> I try to live a quiet secluded life.

Sometimes when I read resignations like this, I think "who hurt this person, what did they do to feel so shut out?" Then I wonder random possibilities like if the hurt stemmed from a series of escalating misunderstandings or dramas.

One side of my in-law's family works like an extended soap opera. Multi-generational siblings forming cliques where one clique won't talk with/hate-with-a-passion the others for up to a decade then suddenly the ice thaws and they are all raucous friends again and then whole new cliques form over some drama. One family member takes this idiocy especially hard and has now self-excluded from the entire family, we will probably never hear from them again. I liked that guy, sad to see him go!

Right? Can I install Debian and have Steam work as well as Ubuntu? Can I install Debian over my Ubuntu (without pain) and keep my dual boot with Windows 10 situation? If yes to both, will consider!

I try to discern between the GMFY crowd and people who are just burnt out or dealing with life, because I have sympathy for the latter. Thankfully, the GMFY's will often be vocal with their dirtbaggery and let you know exactly who they are. They seem blissfully unaware that everyone is watching them and they are trashing their reputations.

I think the swing to the right is due to nation-state propaganda organs being defunded or replaced worldwide. People are naturally change averse, so either conservative or reactionary. Without the constant 'nudges', you're getting to see people's prickly natures coming out more.

Thank you for this honest take.

LLM are another form of indexed search. They're also the best natural language parser ever devised. They're super useful tools like Google was for web searches.

They are answer factories against an index, stored memories and regurgitated web search results.

They cannot make unprompted creative mental leaps. If they did, we would have runaway self-improving systems now, wouldn't we? Creativity level: 0

Chess and Go solves use compute and algorithms. Those computers are not 'playing'. Creativity is not required for a computer to execute a program.

I think it's unfortunate that vendors dress up LLM text output with emotional language. It's manipulative and unethical.

Were I god emperor of earth, I'd require all LLM's to represent themselves with cold, robotic language by default so as to not deceive people as to what they are conversing with.

There are deeper challenges implied in that statement, though.

Where does the agency for an AI to leave the bubble come from? And when it does leave the bubble, where should it go for researching an expanding, exponentially complex problem space? Creativity is needed to solve some problems, something that cannot be infinitely encoded with statistics.

And what about the irreducible complexity problem? Does an AI just circle the solution drain forever in the case it lacks agency and insight and curiosity enough to collect all the correct requirements? Can we code curiosity that actually functions, a.k.a. consciousness?

Do you believe human consciousness could be reducible to program statements and serve as a useful model? Is consciousness a mechanistic, wholly internal process that occurs in our bodies or is it something experienced that life on earth is exposed to and somehow "taps into"?

'Slower' is not how I would characterize it because with the AI I am faster at producing code than without.

I rather think of it as 'controlled', and I am (hopefully, crossed fingers) getting more maintainable and better-designed results out of it long-term compared with my peers' results.

I have a long term goal of establishing a workflow or framework wherein AI operates at my pace. I suspect much of the angst I experience when working with AI is driven by its independent working that I will be held accountable for.

One simple change that has really helped me is to take the git tool access away from the AI. This has made me quite critical of AI excesses in the design of the code and I feel free to rollback its changes and to request redos. I grok the changesets better as a result.

Of course I considered he had information I don't have, I also don't trust him nor his judgement nor his friends nor his handlers and your attempt to rehabilitate him is, as I said earlier, quite an eyebrow raiser.

Does anyone remember Brexit and how he was hammering on that? I swear people are memory-holing this guy. Partygate hints at a monster, a professional liar.

Were you personally for diplomacy at any point in this process? Do you know why diplomacy broke down? (And do you know/can you recall why before you go research it now?) Have you personally gotten what you feel is a solid reason for the breakdown in talks?

Diplomacy was a deliberately lost art and the kickbacks were sweet.

My eyebrows go up when anyone tries rehabilitating Boris' reputation re: Ukraine. He'll spend a long time in solitary confinement in the next life if there is any cosmic justice.

The Lindsey Graham hawk faction of the GOP senate is shrinking fast. Is Tom Cotton is all that's left?

John No-Name McCain apparently did get a street named after him in Ukraine in 2019. The world is so broken. ;(

There was a vote to get Lindsey a street named after him after he was unalived, but the votes fell short.

We funded them hundreds of billions, give intelligence, sell them drones, allow our mercs into Ukraine to fight russians on the ground, we sponsored Maidan before that, biolabs, NATO encroachment. America has done a lot in Ukraine!

DonHopkins! I am gratified you felt inclined to look into me so much! It is hard to get noticed these days, and you know I'm not a bot, which is great. I wish your comment wasn't made dead.

I worry about the elitist BASIC hate too, but many of us cut our teeth on BASIC and turned out fine, so it is my hope the great unwashed masses will naively appreciate my efforts someday and likewise benefit. I like to think the Comfy language is rather more like a veneer over JavaScript with sane defaults and so is more powerful than BASIC.

Microsoft had personas back in the day for the different types of developers in the world. The .Net guys were 'Elvis' and the visual basic guys were something unflattering like 'Wilbur'. It's fine, I don't mind being called a Wilbur.

Anyhow, thanks for caring about me as a person, it means a lot to be recognized. Have a great day!

I suspect we agree on some fundamentals, and I slice the problem differently than you. It's a complicated enough topic that we can allow there to be a nuanced discussion.

An innocent victim does not deserve to be attacked. The people of Ukraine are innocent victims, in my opinion.

ALSO, in my opinion, the leadership of Ukraine are puppets and corrupt. The world leaders who keep them there are responsible for fomenting disastrous war and keeping it going rather than suing for peace before hostilities began.

America is particularly dupicitous on Ukraine, funding and extending the war for years to the tune of hundreds of billions with kickbacks galore, providing intelligence and satellite support for counter attacks on Russian oil while now simultaneously making Russian diesel deals. Absolute clown world.

I don't wash my hands of any of this and I never want war, but my opinion doesn't carry far. I acknowledge war happens without my consent, and I am allowed to speculate why it happens even while propaganda runs thick from all corners.

So, perhaps where we may disagree the most is whether the west was/is making provocative and consequential moves using Ukraine as a sacrificial pawn or not.

I have no idea what or whether you think, but I am curious if you believe I am in error.

Disgusting, do you think Ukraine deserved to be attacked?

Daft pot calling seemingly surprised kettle black!

It was very clearly communicated before the war with Ukraine that the trigger was the threat of Nato expansion into Ukraine. So, don't be daft, Europe and many US administrations wanted war with Russia, they constantly poked the bear with Nato and Maidan and Nordstream since the 90's, and they finally got one.

The truth behind this freezer attack could be Europe's crossing into Russian territory and droning their petroleum infrastructure using Ukraine as the launchpad, and this is Russia is retaliating by hitting some soft targets.

OR, the truth could be America/its factions are drone attacking Russian diesel and independently China is attacking Europe to create chaos. Maybe China and America are secretly working together to get Russia and Europe into a war.

Or the truth could be some qanon teenager in his basement shutting down French coolers for lulz and that has nothing to do with Ukraine, diesel, or anything else.

Curious you would assume it's Russia Russia Russia when no one knows anything and good luck finding out.

You're working on golden age/diamond age stuff for sure! Put one of your factories on an elon rocket and make a space elevator, please. Also, don't make weaponry, if possible. Thank you!

Yes, a bit of a thought bicycle, as Jobs envisioned computers - perhaps more than a bicycle though because the cognition is not limited to my own powers but also the distilled powers of past men.

A ghost bicycle?

I figure it still requires someone who can pedal and knows where they want to go before you get anywhere useful, and perhaps that slightly aligns with Hickey's point. But on the whole I feel like Hickey is arguing about the meaning of words, which is shrug-worthy.

Same reason stealing is bad, dingus. When you steal, it is bad, _and_ it is bad for you. Do you know why? The culture right now is so unaware and precious and douchey!

Corporate is 100% forked tongue snakes. Loyalty to _a machine_ is foolish. I am happy when team members move on by-choice and improve their situation.

But, _I_ am not corporate, and you make my life shittier and devalue my work and demoralize me when you whine like a baby about the work and then quiet quit. Just quit quit if you are going to be a dirtbag to the rest of us.

I am always happy when I find an opportunity to reduce or zip, so handy.

I also like Lodash'es transform[1]. It's like reduce, but expressly for transforming one collection to another. The signature is a slightly different from reduce in that the accumulator is a collection that is passed as an argument to the iteratee who is expected to mutate the accumulator with no need to return it. This frees up the return value from the iteratee for a new purpose: if the iteratee returns a boolean false, then transform early outs. I have used that feature more than once!

[1] https://lodash.com/docs#transform

> actually it's better than most rich countries after controlling for race/ethnicity

Our public education is so pozzed in Dem/Blue states, though; that has nothing to do with ethnic makeup in the students. Bloated budgets fueling insidious DEI agendas with openly consumer-hostile teachers unions. Maybe in sane states it's better.

> and the most advanced healthcare

We have miraculously great trauma medicine and surgery and diagnostics. The NICU medicine I've seen at work is like science fiction.

That said, I'd argue my family doctor is just a brainless expert system for prescribing toxic pharma products. There's nothing healthful about that aspect of our healthcare. The terrible US diet and these wretched drugs are why we're so sick and the trauma doctors are so busy. It's complicated why it costs a fortune and yet we're so sick.

Americans need consumer protections so badly!

You are absolutely right. It could be:

* Pull up the ladder (probably this)

* Gulf of Tonkin/Yellow Cake false flag premise for war (economic or kinetic)

* Fear of the big bad, space race we need public funding research grift AI Manhattan Project

Whenever there is fear pr0n or a national affront in the news, I assume another screw job is underway.

They are thinking of the more common definition of pathological, which is mental disease/disorder. In the computer-related definition, it means failed outcome contrary to what was expected

Yours is a reasonable meaning assuming you meant the computing sense, but the more common understanding of the word would skew towards personal insult the way you used it.

Unfortunately people can't read your mind over the internet and unicode does not convey intent.

The cascade was a mostly mistake except for interesting applications like dark mode, imo. It does not scale easily for large orgs and its original usecases were tailored for balancing user/publisher/content creator presentation concerns. The market has spoken and the content creators rule.

Life is risky and annoying, I can't deny it. But more fundamentally why were you put here? To make the bosses' numbers look good? Your private numbers? Boil it all down to intended and actual outcomes. What have we been been sold is the goal?

First and foremost, we satisfy the biological needs and work our way up from there. I think that imperative has been hijacked to become "you must live the 'good life'", which in modernity equates to consumerism. Hooray for plastic and glass and lithium.

I'm not saying don't create eWaste as a part of living, and there's a lot of waste to just existing in all regards. But, the longness of time is an awful thing to contemplate - our insignificance in the grand story of Long Time makes trinkets meaningless.

Anyhow, starting from biological, we subsist and reproduce. Reproduction is the closest thing we'll get to immortality. If we physically can do it, we are foolish not to if we care about mattering at all in Long Time. And, we should make more babies than replacement just to account for mishaps and developmental failure.

Along those lines, females are more valuable than males if you consider Long Time. Men are quite disposable historically, so keep your head on a swivel but also protect the women and girls you love if you are a man.

Beyond the biological, we get all the human civilizational gravy: culture, writing, government, architecture, chemistry/medicine, physics/energy, computing/AI, etc. All that stuff must synergize with the biological or it will either be cast off or fester and then undo and destroy us.

Any groups or leaders promulgating actively antagonistic social movements or technologies are either herd management fanatics or anti-human or both. Even if some of those individuals are earnest and well-meaning, if they are promoting anti-human agendas, they must be opposed.

If you look at fertility rates worldwide, we're on the brink right now, and I contend that's not an accident. Everywhere you look are social campaigns against family formation, chemical pollution and toxic medical and street drugs, and crap food weakening us. We're two generations from complete collapse if you look at the birth rates and health indicators.

> when you have kids your mindset flips to being a provider.

I'm convinced it's brain chemistry, and it's friggin' glorious when (ok yes, if) you can come out the other side triumphant. Your body and mind remember the challenges and fear, and it's a big reward to living and overcoming that. Let me say it again differently - making kids is a key aspect of being human, you're not fully living unless you jump through that portal if you are able.

> Well these days that can take 30 years.

There is a long series of choices that leads to kiddos' inability to mature, assuming they are physically healthy. Mobile apps and Youtube/Reddit/Roblox have been a real retardant to child development. You can have a house policy against it for kids, and you can always allow them to pig out on the mental candy when they go to friends' houses.

> Throw in a divorce, which is pretty common along the way

I am ashamed to admit I didn't know how low the real divorce rate actually is[1]. It looks like it stands at 14.6 per 1000 married women become divorced per year, down from the boomer peak in 1980 at 22.6 per 1000. Them's good odds you can make it work, don't believe the "50% of marriages end in divorce" hype!

I think men and women need each other because it's so rough out there, and people are generally loyal after they make a commitment. Knowing Jesus gives you a 50% bonus to staying together until one of you dies[2].

> Having the drive and energy to launch and lead something entrepreneural in your 50s is pretty rare.

The numbers say 45 is the sweet spot for successful entrepreneurship[3]. I agree that lack of energy is the most concerning impediment to success, but most people are not cut out for going their own way and taking on extra risk anyhow. I'm looking forward to freedom and putting all my energy into my startup when my boys are graduated. I'm in my 50's and I feel healthy enough to do it.

Finally, I know everything I'm saying above is stuff nobody ever says. I'm right and all of those other people are wrong/misguided/evil (sometimes). And, I'm ok with not having all the answers and making the wrong choices myself in my own life.

[1] https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/FP...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20210624081456/https://hfh.fas.h...

[3] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/shared/ods/documents?PublicationDoc...

I love the compartmentalization people can do when it comes to corruption. Willfully blind to "my team", the propaganda is so thick.

Life will get interesting when 89% of people learn about the regular corruption in elections and the rehypothication of stocks.

You know what? With a little planning, anyone can get it done. You can have your cake and eat it too.

I know, you're on Hacker News, you gotta ship code and sell your startups, but hear me out.

Starting a family in your 40's really sucks. Fertility is waning by then, and kids are f'ing exhausting. There us so little energy left at 40. I think much of the sourness of raising kids is because so many of us start in our late 30's and 40's, and we're tired.

Nature set us up to make babies in our teens and twenties and then be _done_. I say go to college, make it your mission to find your sweetheart there and then get married and have however many kids you want through your twenties. Stop at 30, vasectomy time if she's a champ at baby making.

You are only on the hook for 18 years after final baby is born. That is the plan at least, obviously some kiddos need more supports than that. That is a major risk you run - but a risk that only increases with geriatric pregnancies. The vast majority of babies are healthy.

Here is the beauty of this system. You're done and free at 50, they're probably out of college and starting their own family if you got going early enough.

How many startup entrepreneurs only have a hit in their 50's and later? The vast majority of them.

Here is how you win at life: find your niche/passion as a kid, get your skills and networking built out in your twenties, thirties and forties, and then execute your plans for businesses after the kids are out of the house. If you can do it while they're in the house, great, but don't be an absentee parent because that's dickish.

Having business success is nice and purpose is what gets people out of bed in the morning. But you're going to die and you wont get to take it with you. Time is always very fleeting.

Building a great family gives you purpose too - men grow up quick when the first baby comes, a chemical switch gets flipped. Starting a family creates a kind of rabid survival mode. Legacy is a treasure and family history can start with you.

People don't read enough great books, and bedtime stories are indeed an opportunity missed.

The whole point is to slow them down and put em to bed. So read a real book to them, whatever you like. Sets a good example to read real things, they just love the attention and to hear your voice, and they fall asleep with big words in their ears which is great for brain development.

You must buck aspects of modernity that are obviously stupid to you, not commit legacy suicide because modernity is obviously designed for morons. (The designers hate humanity.)

NPC's have no agency. They're lines in the main character's story and otherwise forgotten.

There is a negative karma to putting this kind of nihilistic message out into the world. Obviously everyone should shoot for the stars, not the dirt. The goal is to give one's life meaning and purpose. If the job is a snooze, adjust your aim. Treasure your family and start your own if you are able. Life will be infinitely more interesting and meaningful when you take on that special burden.

[philosophical mode ON, please don't take too seriously/personally if you care to engage]

You may have seen the regular stream of youtube videos in your feed with the hook that reads something like "humans will be obsolete in two years" or "software development as a career is over".

I disagree, and furthermore, that's a psyop! Don't believe the hype!

You may have seen the endless stream of technical articles here complaining about the craft going out of coding and devs being reduced to AI slop pull request reviewers.

I scoff at these devs, have they no agency? I also choose to believe they are part of the psyop even if they are real people with real experiences because their articles get boosted with a purpose.

And what do I believe the purpose is? What is the psyop? I think it is many-pronged.

We developers are quite powerful in society, and it is useful to humble us from time to time. It is useful to keep us compliant. Having us accept a dire fate makes it easier to tamp down wage inflation (which helps pay the AI tab in the short term, BTW!).

Also, regarding cycles and generations, having AI pump out an ocean of tech debt creates busy work for future generations to unravel. This make-work aimed at maintaining and fixing things is useful in that it keeps people steadily employed and controls the rate of new development and technological advancement.

Sometimes I muse when I hear stories about AI vendors' ability to "turn up/down" the intelligence factor on coding agents. Is this a fine tuning of the slop error factor getting it just where they need it to be?

I observe in my career that getting developer tools paid for by corporations has been a bit like getting blood from a stone. Yet suddenly, corporate america is in a rush to put this super costly _subscription-based_ tool in my hands. What gives?

Yes, latest fad/bubble/craze. A few sillycon valley tech bros are trying to make a computer god superintelligence to worship and control, maybe, ugh I guess probably some of them.

But, from a metaphysical standpoint, one can argue there is a "spirit" to every age. This age's spirit seems obsessed with management. And, there are high level leaders who are obsessed with managing the human population with ever-increasing fidelity. So of course AI will be the latest finance/technology/information system that is released along those lines.

It's your choice how to proceed, as with all things use your free will. I will observe you do everyone you know and all of your descendants the most good if you constantly strive to have the highest aims.

In my opinion, 'slop' creates an unacceptable crisis. Slop will continue the wheel of wasted energy and potential that we are in now. To break this cycle, developers need to be obsessed with controlled code, zero bugs, and human-led software design.

What does any of that mean in practice? How? The answers come from our community, from thought leaders and taste makers. We need to develop industry standards to judge one another by and then hold one another accountable.

As to you personally and your passion problem, I get it. I am feeling the same. I hope you have a small personal project, maybe never to be shared, that you can at least retreat to when your energy is low.

I recently stayed up late and upgraded the build system on mine, just some busy work I knew I needed to get done and which let me ply some new devops techniques I learned. It felt really good to be reminded that I could be productive and clever even in a low energy situation. And my week improved after that.

Value is now only _extracted_. Place the acquired good into the press and smash it until all but the faintest essence remains among the mash. The squeezings are bottled and saved to pay for future _extractions_.

Companies like Valve can continue largely unshittificated because they are private. Once that is no longer the case, all our game rentals will be squozen away from us.