ejj28

Y Combinator had no problem backing Flock, you should give them a try.

It doesn't have to be profitable, it just has to get investors believing it might be.

Obviously I'm going to have beliefs about what I think is good or bad for society, same as yourself.

> I do not think it's a good thing for normal people to have to learn programming languages to built programs to solve their problems.

Is this not also "orienting all of society around your aesthetic preference"?

It's meant to communicate that building is something that requires effort on the part of the builder.

I don't write assembly, but I still had to learn how to code. I had to practice and put in the effort to develop it as a skill. Then, when I write something, I have to put in the effort to do it.

Of course, building things with AI generally takes varying levels of domain knowledge and guiding for now, but if we're talking about ordinary users making their own software, the implication is that in some cases existing skill won't be necessary, if not now then eventually.

At that point it would be truly effortless, and I don't think that you can rightfully say you built something if it required zero effort on your part.

I'm not expecting to orient all of society around it, but I do believe that it's harmful to remove or replace it where it does exist.

Ease and convenience are not worth the cost of giving up bits and pieces of our humanity here and there until there's nothing left; Pre-AI computing has already taken enough of it.

If I tell you to build me a house and you do so, I have not built the house.

I can give you requirements, give you feedback during the process, and otherwise contribute to the design, but at the end of the day I did not build the house.

I think it's just easy to dismiss "the hacker ethos" without considering the qualities it actually consists of. Maybe you'd disagree, but I think those qualities are very important and worth protecting.

Sure, lots of things are more important than "the hacker ethos". Like critical thinking and independent thought, self-reliance, the joy of actually creating something yourself (which AI is a hollow, artificial substitute for).

Why shouldn't one lament sacrificing individuality and creativity, and increasing our reliance on corporations, all for the sake of convenience?

Those people who couldn't build anything before still can't.

Supposing it is true, then I'm glad the AI companies are getting a taste of their own medicine.

I would argue that Steam and Homebrew users are relatively niche portions of the userbase, and that they would be more likely to own newer systems.

Neither statistic comes from a sample group that's more representative of the average user, who is mostly browsing the web and using a handful of undemanding applications, and is therefore less motivated to upgrade for performance reasons.

Interestingly enough, the original Backrooms creepypasta was cited by the creator of Severance as one of his inspirations for the show.

The cloud isn't the only other option, they could still own and run their own hardware but do it in a proper colocation datacenter.