dolebirchwood

You can win without being an asshole. Try it sometime.

Tangential rant: I find myself getting viciously angry when these support bots lead with, "I'm very sorry to hear that. I understand how [rehashed summary of complaint] would make you feel frustrated." Mother ****er, you don't understand what it means to feel anything.

I'm all for having these bots process inquiries if it means a speedier resolution, but, please, anyone out there using these things, turn off the simulated sympathy. It's infuriating how condescending it comes across.

There's a lot more to business in America than the corporate S&P. If you think AI isn't paying off for businesses, then you probably aren't a consultant right now. I have small/mid-size clients who, in pre-AI times, would have never been able to afford the work they're currently scoping out for me. Now I can quote them cheaper rates to build more custom solutions that they didn't even imagine was possible, and they are loving it.

> Now, my software engineering is for my own company, maybe that makes a difference.

That is 100% the difference. Most people working as employees aren't passionate about the company as an entity. They won't love your baby like you do. What they did love was taking your baby for walks; now they're left with just changing dirty diapers.

Yes, imagine when cancer becomes a solved problem, and oncologists react online by lamenting the end of their life's work. They'd be viciously scorned and ridiculed.

I'm on my HOA board, and not because I want to be, I can tell you that.

I showed up to my first annual meeting where basically no one was there other than the president. He asked if I wanted to be on the board because they didn't have enough people participating. I asked what I'd have to do, and he said "just vote on things". I said OK, and he said the rules let him appoint members to vacancies (spoilers: the rules don't), so he "appointed" me on the spot.

At subsequent meetings, I discovered most of the board was completely disinterested in doing anything, other than the president who would probably fall under the "petty little shit" category, but he seemed like he knew what he was doing (spoilers: he didn't), so everyone pretty much just voted in favor of what he wanted to do. I was the only board member who worked from home, so I would be the only one on site to deal with things that involved vendors working on the property, so then I became the guy everyone expected to do everything.

The president got diagnosed with cancer and had to step down. He wanted me to be president, but I was like fuck that. The VP took the role, but she has pretty much done nothing and is clueless, so I keep being the one people expect to take the lead on everything.

I'm honestly tired of it and wished some competent people in the association would get on the board. There were massive mistakes I caught as a board member because I'm the only one who actually reads anything in the bylaws, CC&Rs, and all that shit. The HOA had been paying hundreds of dollars a year for decades on things that didn't need to be performed because our property management company misclassified us under some statute that didn't even apply to us, and nobody knew any better or even bothered to ask, "Hey, why the fuck are we actually doing this?"

I'll not say I'm a "good" board member. I don't care about enforcing house rules, and I don't want to get involved when people complain about their neighbors unless it's something that affects the association's financial health. The only reason I stay on is because I've done enough after-the-fact clean-up of the previous president's mess that I'm terrified of what insane things might happen if no one is keeping an eye on the other members. If you're in an HOA, I'd encourage getting involved to keep the crazies in check, at least for as long as you can stomach it.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my TED talk.

> the biggest unforced error in United States public policy in living memory.

I'm going with the rollout of LED headlights on that one, but reasonable people can disagree.

> How is it you guys feel like the future is better when humans don't do things for themselves like driving?

I live in a location that has won the top spot on "worst drivers in the country" and "worst roads in the nation" lists multiple times. By all means, put the robots in the driver's seat. Can't be any worse.

Nah. I'm permanently jaded from an experience I had as a teenager visiting a doctor.

I don't recall the specifics, but there were symptoms of an ENT infection, nothing serious. I remember being concerned about a white lump on one of my tonsils. The doctor's diagnosis? A stuck piece of rice.

No, it was not a piece of rice. It was a tonsil stone. It happens almost every time I get sick. And I guarantee that if I shared my symptoms and a photo with AI, it would render the same conclusion.

Would it be dumb to blindly trust everything a model says? Sure. Should you trust it alone, especially for major issues? No. But having received such a stupid and brain-dead diagnosis from a supposed "professional" doctor in the past, I would never give them the automatic benefit of the doubt.

We fuss over models being confidently wrong. Reasonable to apply the same standard to people.

From the study:

> We study the impacts of AI coding assistants and agents on software engineering work... across 718 firms.

> Our primary source of data is Jellyfish (“JF”), an analytics platform used by firms to understand the activity of their software engineering teams.

What about all the software being built by everyone else not using Jellyfish? What about the small companies that don't have the same operational bottlenecks and truly are building more than their larger competitors? What about the solo founders starting companies and building software which they never would have built without AI?

No, most of the leverage you have is how much time and money is on your side vs. the opposing party.

As a former litigator, I would consider that to be litigation the moment a complaint is filed in court, regardless of whether the dispute is settled without trial.

But, for your sake, it's probably best that you accept your wife's definition.