schiem

Sure, I agree that progress (towards something) is inevitable. But in the dichotomy presented ("progress" vs. "programmers feelings"), I took progress to mean "the things we're currently making progress on [with regards to AI]." Which I would say are largely a wealth concentration machine, and will probably be a net negative for humanity. To more directly respond to the original question of "progress or programmer feelings", I would ask why we can't just do something else entirely?

I'm genuinely happy that you're having fun with it. I can't get over the feeling that _I'm not building anything._ To me, it seems like hopping on an IRC channel and copy-pasting code from a greybeard instead of writing it myself. I just don't find that satisfying at all.

I find this comment fascinating for a few reasons. The first is that it has the underlying assumption that all "progress" is good (regardless of what we're progressing towards). From my perspective, it seems like most of the progress being made is towards bringing about a sort of techno-feudalism and environmental collapse. Maybe a little bit less progress would actually benefit humanity?

The second thing revolves around this:

> In fact using AI brings back the magic of technology that we lost in the 90s with the "business-ifying" of tech.

This is the complete opposite of my experience. AI seems like the logical conclusion of the business-ifying of tech. Get rid of all those pesky nerds, and the MBAs can just create whatever grift pops into their head.

Sure, that's a fair point. You're right that I don't have those numbers, and I would be willing to be that at the moment, no one does.

> I'm betting they aren't that actually egregious compared to..anyone else building things

And I'm betting the opposite. As little as I trust the current industrial leaders, I trust Altman, Dario, Zuckerberg, and Musk far less. Maybe in 5 - 10 years when the dust is more settled we'll have a better picture.

Regardless, data centers are drawing moratoriums and regulation because they're the ones building things. If 500 new massive auto plants were planned to be built out in the next 5 years, they would also draw similar ire. It's only specific to data centers because that's what's actually happening, and we live in a world that is capable of responding to the actual events that are unfolding.

For what it's worth, I do agree with you about the politically impoverished communities bearing the brunt of our negative externalities. I would like it if we had regulation that priced in those externalities so we couldn't just dump them on communities that are unable to combat them.

It's illegal to ship queen ants across state lines (let alone from out of the country) without a USDA permit, so you'll be hard pressed to find many sites willing to admit to it.

That said, Bugs In Cyberspace is well respected within the invert space - I'd be shocked if they were engaged in any kind of illegal insect trafficking. Roach Crossing is another solid place to buy from as well.

There are, just not lowercase characters that are valid hex.

The irony of this comment is that deportations were higher under Biden than during Trump's first term, which makes it seem exactly like it was "written by teenagers, based on emotions." The administration with the highest deportation rate in the past 60 years was the 2nd Clinton administration.

It depends on the AA battery, but you'd need 6 - 8 to get equivalent performance.

The Google Pixel 9 has a 4700 mAh battery at 3.9 volts. The total energy is around 18.3 watt hours.

A high capacity rechargeable AA battery is 2500 mAh at 1.2 volts, or around 3 watt hours. If you wired 3 AA batteries in series, and then 2 of those series in parallel (for a total of 6 batteries), that would give you 3.6v at 5000 mAh. 3.6 volts falls within a normal discharge curve for a lithium ion battery, so you probably wouldn't need a boost converter.

I don't use it at all for a variety of reasons, but I rarely bother to get into discussions on HackerNews.

Looking at how new it is, and how quickly things are changing, it seems likely that I could adopt it into my workflow in a month or two if it turns out that that's necessary.

On the other hand, I've spent the last 2 decades building skills as a developer. I'm far more worried that becoming a glorified code reviewer will atrophy those skills than I am about falling behind. Maybe it will turn out that those skills are now obsolete, but that feels unlikely to me.

They actually asked for quantitative evidence.

People who heavily utilize any of those _do_ have the associated skills atrophied. It's just that in all of the listed cases, the actual associated skill may not have actually been important.

The younger people at my job have atrocious spelling.

My ability to do mental math is much worse than it was when I was regularly doing math without a calculator.

People who have exclusively learned digital art do not have the muscle memory built up to seamlessly transition to analog art.

Almost everyone I know has awful handwriting.

So the question then is "What is the actual skill that AI tools are replacing?" And if the answer is "thinking," then that should be terrifying.

The point of dog whistles is that most people can't hear them.