wfurney
Joined 3 years ago
Joined 3 years ago
I don’t have an example off hand, but I know that it’s easy to dismiss something an LLM does as trivial if your work is extremely marginal. Most devs aren’t creating their own programming languages. I can’t help but think people who hold this opinion also think the work most software professionals do is “trivial” (“you’re just moving strings around, that’s not impressive/trivial”)
To me learning to use LLMs is the same as doing anything else, you have to practice and put in the hours to get good. Maybe some harnesses will eventually allow LLMs to function more as scissors than lathes. This seems to be what Microsoft is trying to do by embedding Copilot in all their products and saying “choose the UI that works best for you”. If that doesn’t end up working we’ll need another paradigm for “non-technical” users to effectively operate computer assistants
It seems like this site had a “neoliberal” wiki entry but it got removed, or I at least I can’t access it, I would be interested to see it
The goal of my comments on this site is to learn more by engaging with others who may know more than me. Here I tried to point out ways in which the movement may be alienating itself it by excluding capitalists. If it makes me naive to not realize that was its core purpose, so be it
> Whether you are a tech specialist, someone who uses a computer for daily tasks, or deals with technology only occasion, there are steps that you or the group you are involved in can take to reduce the environmental and socio-economic impact of your digital activities.
Sounds great to me, but then they have these:
> To mitigate this situation, this principle calls us to step outside the capitalist model of perpetual consumption and growth.
> The history of computing is deeply intertwined with capitalism and militarism. From playing a role in warfare and geopolitical power struggles to driving the automation of labor, computing has significantly contributed to the increased use of resources and fossil energy. The latest example of this trend is the construction of hyperscale data centers for running generative AI. Despite the promise of increased efficiency, the Jevons Paradox applies: higher efficiency tends to lead to greater resource use. Efficiency is often presented as a technical solution to a political decisions about how and why we use computing —without questioning the extractive business model.
The authors here (fairly or not) signal their in/out group preference. And the implication is that "those not willing or unable to step outside the capitalist model are not able to sufficiently apply the principle to affect change in the way we are wanting."
They're smuggling in an omission of technologists who recognize the benefits of a capitalist system compared to a collectivist one. It reads like they are trying to be careful, but still end up significantly limiting their potential audience.
People with strong capitalist beliefs may be willing to volunteer their time at a repair cafe or in taking other action to incrementally move their communities in the direction they're advocating for. But it seems to me like they would not even want those people to be a part of their movement. If I recognize the historical injustices that marginalized groups have faced but I still believe that a capitalist system is generally preferable to a collectivist one, would I be supported by this movement? I think that I doubt it.
EDIT: I missed on this on their homepage:
> With that said, permacomputing is an anti-capitalist political project. It is driven by several strands of anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional feminism, post-marxism, degrowth, ecologism.
> Permacomputing is also a utopian ideal...
Utopian? No thanks. I expected this to be a technological movement first with politics snuck in, but it sounds like it is the opposite.
I'm wondering if the author or anyone else familiar could suggest some good tools to help manage kubeconfig files. I don't have this problem using Rancher for example, and it's a big reason why I've struggled with K9s and OpenLens.