DrewADesign

They clearly want to believe it was a valid response, but I didn’t bother responding because we, they, and everybody else, knows it was an obvious cop out.

You see, the only reason our society’s systems aren’t perfectly efficient, logical, and smooth, is because a software developer hadn’t briefly mulled over their challenges with a few casual thought experiments.

What do you propose as a more scientifically valid study of this cartoon?

> it deserves scrutiny and demands elaboration.

These challenges never go anywhere because it’s essentially a religious conviction. We’re likely in sort of uncharted territory on a macro scale and I reckon people a) either acknowledge that or refuse, and b), either trust or distrust the tech world’s stewardship of this technology. There’s a hundred bazillion data points, and I’m pretty pessimistic about the tech scene at large right now, but I think reasonable people can disagree on this without being factually or logically wrong. But true zealots in the midst of such uncertainty are driven by faith, which can certainly be deftly swayed over time, but definitely can’t be conquered in a debate.

There could be a whole set of Yakov Smirnoff “in Soviet Russia” style one-liners about the tech industry. “In Silicon Valley, software monetizes you!”

Not even close. It’s a homemade dune buggy vs a unimog. Nuke is a giant beast that doesn’t really do what comfy does, and comfy doesn’t do 99.9% of what Nuke does. It’s like 4k/seat for a reason.

> labs should take all of their fundamental research and turn into products entirely designed, limited and scoped only to empower artists instead of obsessed with trying to bypass them.

The software companies aren’t going to start doing this because the media companies aren’t interested in doing that. Tools like Nuke that already do this are expensive tools for people that the tech industry is trying to make obsolete. The media companies want to sell anything that will sell, and spend as little as possible in the process.

I’m pretty sure this will have to come from skilled and experienced artists doing amazing things with technology despite the tech industry sabotaging their careers, which in turn develops demand for actual art rather than bulk-created ‘content’. Sadly, I think we’re years away from that. I graduated in this field in 2024 and my career was dead before it started. Most people in this business with the hard-won skills to do this work that spent years developing their taste, storytelling sophistication, and craft are in the process of being systematically fucked over by the tech industry. Sad.

Your experience with office workers does not match mine. None of the ones I know are willing to pay a dime. In the administrative parts of my job, I document and tersely communicate data that I gather based on things in the physical world, which means AI features are less than useless to me — copilot is something I have to find and disable because it’s constantly trying to do things like fill in spreadsheets with complete nonsense.

Office work is many fields in many businesses of all shapes and sizes in many industries. It doesn’t make sense to generalize.

I’m willing to bet 98% of developers buy cars, practical tools, appliances, houses, electronics, etc. without personally verifying that the one they’re getting is suitable for its advertised uses. Developers have subject matter expertise in software, and to a lesser extent, computers. They don’t have to know how to inspect a transmission to have recourse if their new car has one not suitable for its advertised uses. My mechanic shouldn’t have to know how to evaluate a software product to determine that the underpinnings are suitable for its advertised use case. This industry overrun with hucksters and there’s zero accountability.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. If the customer set the agent in motion, the customer is no less responsible for the damage than someone that (as i think Cal Newport said) ties a weedwacker to a dog. It’s reckless.

If they were sold a product that claimed to be safe, they could in turn sue whoever sold it to them. Jeep’s insurance wouldn’t pay someone I crashed into because of defect in my jeep, but I could in turn sue Jeep for my legal trouble.

> Major U.S. banks detect unauthorized third-party AI agents inside customer accounts

Step 2 is instead of waiting to be caught, the instigators should issue a press release blaming cunning rogue agents as part of their research, call no felonies because they’re working for the greater good of eliminating a shitload of jobs, say the real problem is a lack of regulation. They could even return the money if it looks like they’re going to get sued, and collect some sweet, sweet reflexive investment money.

> so low density please

I’ll take either genuinely rural, or high-density urban over low-density urban/suburban any day of the week. (And have lived in each of the above for at least 5 years each.) I intellectually understand that it ticks a lot of people’s boxes for convenient, low-friction lifestyle, but viscerally, even nice suburbs with a little character just feel like a superficial, tepid, soulless simulacrum of an actual community to me. I’m clearly missing some connection or meaning in those places that other people are more attuned to.

I, too, tend to make meta commentary when a comment compels me to say something but have absolutely no consequential thoughts to contribute.

It’s cool how you killed a crow because you didn’t feel like getting a shade and removing the toy that you gave them to play with. They were clearly at fault.