8f2ab37a-ed6c

In the Bay Area it's easier to create AGI than reliable, consistent, clean public transit.

Throwback to when Microsoft swapped a black guy out for a white guy in an ad meant for Poland: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/aug/26/microsoft...

Exactly. Just need to find time to properly read this.

I tried to find a good term for this trend and the best I could do is "defining deviancy down" defined as "the tendency of societies to respond to destructive behaviors by lowering standards for what is permissible."

It's like a behavioral Overton window that grows downwards.

Having lived in SF, LA and NYC, I find it very hard to believe that the homeless or the addicts roaming the streets in big cities are being thrown into jail for much of anything short of overt violent behavior. You can see people drop a deuce in the middle of Mission St any day of the week and nobody bats an eye. As people say, "it's just a normal part of life in a big city".

Cue https://www.persuasion.community/p/ugh-capitalism in response

It’s probably inevitable in places like the US where in major cities tons of products are behind plexiglass due to “changing consumer habits”.

Pretty much this. For those of us who had to live through the Great Awokening in places like San Francisco, the workplace became a place to be questioned and re-educated in your political and moral beliefs, unless you already had the correct opinion.

Except, even if you did, you could always be just a little purer. You could show off to your coworkers how you were a better ally than them, maybe they would be as good as you if only they “did the work" harder.

https://americandreaming.substack.com/p/memory-hole-archive-... captures the experience pretty well

The answer for years was to just keep your mouth shut while the hysteria subsides. It still is likely the right answer. In theory bringing everything to work would be great in a perfectly liberal environment, but we just don't live in that world. The illiberal and the intolerant will just gain leverage over you in a competitive environment such as the workplace.

Please don't bring your whole self to work, the rest of us don't need that from you. Be polite, congenial and professional. You have the rest of your day to let it rip however you'd like.

Say you join Anthropic now as an employee. What are the chances of your equity appreciating in value? I don't think we have any historical precedents to this.

There's a super long episode on The Drive going deep into the mechanics and economics of the US healthcare system, could be a useful addition to the conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqrpFICtqpQ

The author in particular strikes me as a thoughtful, considerate and unbiased individual, a paragon of inclusivity: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534

Is that not exactly what https://www.mercor.com/ does?

Thanks for sharing all that, appreciated. I had looked at that particular store last month and they were sold out of the lighter springs, but I'll check with them again to see if that's changing. And great point around switches being stuck with the lighter springs, definitely something I'll have to watch out for if I ever get that far.

I've also enjoyed Topre switches in the past, I remember those feeling pretty light as well, although I can't quite recall how my injured joints worked with them, that was in the healthy days.

Big fan of my Dygma Defy and I've been using WisprFlow super heavily this last year, but the immediacy of typing is still hard to beat. But yeah, I hope the voice tools keep getting better, they've been a real life-saver so far and fortunately I'm a very fast talker.

Where have you been able to find ultralight springs available to consumers? I was looking into this last week and the 10-20g ones were only available straight from the factory in South Korea with shipping costing $200... I was happy to get them and swap them out, but that shipping pricetag was too much of a highway robbery.

Would appreciate any advice here :)

And, intrigued about the idea of not using key switches at all. Are there any aftermarket alternatives available online for "keycaps" that are better at softening the impact on the finger, something softer and bouncier perhaps? Seems like something people would have experimented with.

Yep. On a keyboard with 8 thumb cluster keys per side, and custom 35g switches to lower the force needed to actuate, that helped a lot, but still not enough to be pain-free. Unfortunately once the damage is done on certain joints you can only do so much short of not using those fingers at all. 30 years of hammering keys pretty hard eventually catch up to you.

I would love this for some of my finger joints beat up from decades of typing.

What are the best modern tools to get started with in simulation for those who have never dabbled before?

Language learning apps are an Eternal September tarpit for well-meaning developers. The economics an the pedagogy are fundamentally in tension in this space, and it’s crowded to say the least. Work in it out of love for building, not because you expect to make real income.

Definitely easier on the wallet in Italy where an espresso is say, 1.15 euro or in that ballpark.

The Italian morning caffè ritual is already extremely fast: the barista works at the speed of light and the coffee you get is pretty standard, but in exchange you get a moment to rub shoulders "al banco" with others like you about to go into work, or elders just getting out of the house, a mother taking her kid to school, a policeman taking a break. You say hi to the same few people you've been seeing at the establishment for years. It's familiar and heartwarming.

It's a sprinkling of human connection as you start your day. A small homage to the tradition of coffee culture. Your grandparents did it, your parents did it, you did it, your kids will do it, etc. You rejoice in knowing that, as everything else changes around you, maybe this one minuscule secular ritual will stand the test of time and provide a symbolic sense of continuity with the past.

With little growth and hiring happening outside of firms betting the farm on AI—and getting the funding to stay alive and play the lottery—what is a random tech employee supposed to do here?

It seems like right now the most rational move to stay in the industry is to milk the AI wave as much as possible, learn all of the tools, get a big brand name on one's resume, and then land somewhere still-alive once the AI music stops? But ultimately if nothing outside of AI is growing, it's one big game of musical chairs and even that might not save you?

Also curious about this. I tried https://moondream.ai/ as well for this task and it felt still far from being bulletproof.

Why do they bother wasting time on interviewing the person though? Or does it never get that far?

Do you have a thesis for why that might be happening? Ageism? Overqualification? The next generation of hiring managers not knowing what to do with you? Past experience being deemed irrelevant to modern SWE problems? Is it all just a bad market? Your profile strikes me as the last one that would struggle with landing a gig.

It's funny that we've now been having this conversation on HN for at least a decade.

I'm with you. In their position I did the most of the educational opportunity I had, but then I didn't live in a world where people told me my job would soon cease to exist thanks to Claude and I spent every waking out flipping through short form videos. I can't relate to what that does to you.

Yep, meet as many people as you can who might later give you a job or ask you to join their startup. Meet a potential spouse, you're in the same social class, about the same age, probably similar interests. You are alumni of the same institution. Do sports, drink beers, learn social skills.

Reminiscent of this thread talking about undergraduate-level students mailing it in: https://bsky.app/profile/jesbattis.bsky.social/post/3m6pvvko...

Is this not rational behavior? If, through grade inflation, the only thing that matters to an employer is what school you went to and that you completed it (the sheepskin effect), then isn't the correct optimization to reduce wasting time on levers that won't make any practical difference in the end?

Sure sure, there's the love of learning and the formation of the well-rounded modern individual, but most people are much more pragmatic than that.

They need to get in, get the piece of paper for the least effort, get a job. Everything they need can be taught on the job or asked to ChatGPT most likely anyway.

A Case Against Education https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/th... was prophetic of this phenomenon years ago.