rwyinuse

Over here in Finland our road infrastructure sucks too, and pensioners take lion's share of all the resources. Yet our trains aren't crashing. There's something wrong with systems and safety culture in your railroads. Bad maintenance doesn't cause trains to crash into each other if proper procedures are followed.

Still I agree, pension systems in most EU countries are unsustainable.

Yes, the causes are mainly genetic, but you can't diagnose it based on genetics, instead it's diagnosed based on symptoms. So if environmental factors (like giving toddler a tablet) worsen it already in childhood, the chances of getting ADHD diagnosis increases, in particular for milder cases. It's impossible to fully know what is caused by genetics, and what is caused by environment.

There is also something called "Attention Deficit Trait", which is case of ADHD like symptoms where the cause is not in genetics, but solely in environmental factors. While real ADHD is largely in genetics, I fully believe any individual can mess up their dopamine system by spending enough time browsing social media on their smartphone.

Most people who get ADHD diagnosis do have the condition (assuming proper diagnosis procedures were followed), but in a different environment it could probably be much less of an issue for many.

Somebody should study whether giving a smart device to a toddler increases their chances of getting ADHD diagnosis and medication at later age. Probably the answer is yes.

If shitty parent's don't care about well-being of their children, they could at least consider the cost of future medication, not to even mention likely worse performance in school and job market.

I agree. As an EU citizen, I'm much more worried of spying and election interference from USA than China these days.

If I have to choose between being subject of the Chinese Communist party or American psychopath billionaires, I'll gladly choose the party.

I think LLM's will prove to be useful in any domain where most work happens in front of a computer. As LLM's make programming cheap, they also reduce the cost of building new software that automates work currently performed by humans in other fields.

If you provide best models with all the data and context an average white collar worker has to perform their job, in most cases they will do just fine. But in real world that context is often scattered over multiple systems, or sometimes exists only in people's heads. I believe that's the main bottleneck for adoption now.

I agree. Programming was just a natural first problem to tackle, but the impact will not be limited there. If you give today's best model access to all the data sources and systems an average white collar worker has, it probably could do most of their job. But organizational change takes its time, systems need to be integrated into new AI tools and so on, so it will take a while.

People tend to overestimate change in short term, and underestimate it in long term. AI hasn't replaced programmers yet, but I believe it will replace most white collar workers in 20 years.

Hetzner, OVHcloud are decent European options. I migrated to them after geopolitical risks with US providers got too high. No problems so far.

Try see if you can find some physical hobby that has nothing to do with computers.

Mine is gardening. With relatively little effort, I can grow a decent amount of foods, much of it interesting varieties that are not grown commercially anywhere. I really doubt that we're going to see affordable humanoid robots out-competing me in this hobby any time soon.

I don't see much of a need to buy from Amazon anymore. Almost always there is a smaller business selling same stuff cheaper, and as a plus I feel good about not supporting big American corporation.

Of course there are exceptions, like some businesses selling exclusively through Amazon.

According to Wikipedia, this Helmer is based in Moscow, and allegedy recruited by KGB already in the 80's. Sounds like a very unbiased source!

"I’m afraid that this is the end of a very long honeymoon for software developers. We have spent the past 30 years being treated like rock stars in our companies. "

Maybe this is true for FAANG engineers in America. In my country over here in Europe, salaries for software devs have never been that different from other STEM / business fields requiring similar education level.

Some of us like to be healthy and fit, and choose walking over e-scooter or car for that reason alone. I wouldn't count it as a "hobby", more of a lifestyle thing.

Large scale invasion is not likely, but they could try some limited operation to test NATO's unity. Most likely location would be somewhere in the Baltics.

I can understand why people take their job seriously if they have a big mortgage and mouths to feed.

Now with AI threatening my job, I've decided to never take a mortgage, and generally live as frugally as possible, preparing for the worst. If I get laid off, I can at least always move back to my parents without being stuck with a house that I can't afford.

I predict AI might be the factor that finally causes a big a drop in real estate market. No need for offices when you replace workers with AI, no demand for housing when young people continue living with their parents and don't have children.

After all white-collar jobs have been eaten by AI, you have hordes of ex-white collar workers applying for blue collar work, and simultaneously decreased demand, as these well-paid white collar workers were primary customers of many of those blue collar businesses.

Supply and demand will be very different from today, for the worse.

If AI causes a mass displacement of academic workforce, good luck finding a job in any of those sectors you just mentioned.

I live in Finland, the country with highest unemployment rate in OECD. Over here hundreds of applications for one cashier, warehouse, coffee shop, bakery job is perfectly normal. It's not realistic for some random unemployed IT guy with no field specific experience to find a job in them right now. In case of AI job apocalypse, I would imagine the situation would look similar elsewhere as well.

I see plenty of birds in these Finnish planted forests, and definitely lots of bugs too, though you can't see them most of the time. Squirrels, moose, foxes, bears, wolves, deer, all live in them. Blueberries, lingonberries and wide variety of mushroom too. Of course you don't see any of them from aerial pictures or Google Street view. You see the big trees.

Obviously a naturally formed forests would have even more biodiversity, but these Finnish industrial forests are by no means dead. Some areas are more lush than others, depending on the ground and whether there's lakes or rivers nearby. If the ground is good, other types of trees tend to spread naturally, in addition to whatever was planted.

Even cheap models like GPT 6 Luna do decent job in programming these days. Token prices would need to rise A LOT to make companies return to writing code by hand, instead of these models.

My company has largely switched to Luna after Microsoft raised prices for Copilot.

That mono plantation still has way more biodiversity than your average agricultural or urban area.

Still better than most of Europe. Tree plantation has more biodiversity than French or German field growing wheat.

What you call "monoculture plantation" looks just typical Finnish planted forest to me. I mean sure, it's not in its natural state, but I wouldn't call it a "monoculture plantation" either. Plenty of wildlife and species live in these forests. The species are endemic, non-endemic trees are only planted in cities, private property and such for their looks.

There are moose, bears, wolves, foxes, rabbits and so on living in these "monoculture plantations".

Thanks for the tip, I've seen those small e-ink display on sale in Aliexpress, but wasn't sure about their quality. Maybe I'll get one for my next project, I can see many use cases.

It's just karma, Russians fascists reaping what they sow.

Taxing profits of companies that use AI probably. I really don't see other way, if AI starts replacing human work in large enough scale. In that situation, without welfare there will be soon nobody buying products and services, leading to an economic collapse.

Thanks for sharing, maybe it's time to buy some more old Kindles... I use bunch as smart paintings (with changing pictures generated locally with stable diffusion), and of course Home Assistant dashboard. They are awesome little machines.

Your job will probably disappear, if it involves creating software.

I think nearly all white collar office workers will be replaced eventually. For lots of jobs, the limitation is not the ability of current models, but lack of integration to existing systems. This will change quickly, as writing new systems and integrations is cheaper than ever, thanks to agentic programming.

If the job involves mostly working on a computer, it will be probably gone in 10-20 years.

I agree, and the field possibly not existing in 5 years is a big issue. Like, how are young people supposed to take a mortgage, start a family, or any other big commitments like that, if their whole education and work experience may be useless in a couple of years?

I don't care whether I'm writing code or reviewing LLM generated stuff, but the prospect of losing my job and having to survive on welfare for the rest of my life isn't nice.

Yeah, I agree with you there mostly. There's plenty of fix in America and UK too, and their military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan in particular have brought way more misery than good. Still, their military support of Ukraine is justified, as Ukraine is fighting a defensive war.

Yes, I think Europe should take a stronger stance towards what is happening in Gaza. But I wouldn't be so hopeful about Russians learning from that. The culture of political tyranny, apathy, corruption and indifference just runs too deep there. As long as Russia is that way, German weaponry is needed to defend kids in Eastern Europe.