Hacker News Reader

Devastaon I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline

I have definitely found my enjoyment of coding in my spare time is lessened now that AI is on the scene. I know very few if any were going to use the code, but it felt like working on a classic car, the act of working on it was fun even if the final results seem like the effort could have been used more productively.

Now, I just feel like I am transcribing a phonebook.

Devastaon Is AI causing a repeat of frontend’s lost decade?

People don't use web tech because they care about quality, they target it very specifically because its one of the places where quality doesn't matter. If your native app crashes, your users will curse your name. Webpage or Electron slop freezes? They'll shrug and restart.

This idea that quality ever existed on the web is ahistorical at best.

Devastaon Tech Billionaire Peter Thiel Finds a New Escape: Argentina

Makes sense, lots of people like Peter Thiel found refuge in Argentina.

Devastaon Jira Is Turing-Complete

> Quite a few have, the issue is that every Jira instance is a fractal shit snowflake of custom properties several layers deep through old failed migrations to new organization strategies.

This is key, Jira is fantastic so long as you have an angry commissar enforcing discipline, otherwise its a total free for all wasteland.

Devastaon Anthropic blames dystopian sci-fi for training AI models to act "evil"

Nobody forced them to build the torment nexus, blaming the authors of Don't Create The Torment Nexus is just silly.

Devastaon Ghana proposes mandatory licensing for IT professionals and businesses [pdf]

Honestly overdue. A small town lawyer can face all manner of professional sanctions if they screw up badly, but a software engineer can cause untold amounts of social harm and it's all fine so long as they got a few people to click ads along the way.

Devastaon US Is Starting to See Heavy Job Losses in Roles Exposed to AI

Am I meant to pretend that companies weren't for years beforehand using RTO to drive layoffs? They are always doing it, AI is just the cover.

Devastaon OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft Back Bill to Fund 'AI Literacy' in Schools

The Chromebook has already been an unmitigated disaster for computer literacy, this will only make it worse.

Devastaon The woes of sanitizing SVGs

> In 2019, a few months after the initial release of Scratch 3, Scratch discovered that SVGs can contain <script> tags that Scratch would cause to be executed when the SVG loads. This is known as an XSS.

> Example from Scratch's test suite:

  <!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
  <svg version="1.1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
    <circle cx="250" cy="250" r="50" fill="red" />
    <script type="text/javascript"><![CDATA[
        alert('from the svg!')
    ]]></script>
  </svg>

Is this really an issue? This is the method that the chrome teams polyfill to replace XSLT suggests you do. https://github.com/mfreed7/xslt_polyfill/tree/main#usage

Devastaon Chernobyl wildlife forty years on

Just like the Falkland's penguins who inhabit an area filled with landmines, keeping humans out is just as crucial to biodiversity as any measure to assist the wildlife within.

Devastaon The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

I agree that it is mostly that the discovery mechanism is shot to bits, but its also the case that before I could find a new artist and marvel, now I have to treat with suspicion to be sure there is no AI before I do anything else.

Devastaon The AI Industry Is Discovering That the Public Hates It

> The easiest way would be a straight tax on AI usage, and using that tax to pay a universal basic income.

If the Epstein class wouldn't go for something like this in a world where they needed workers to produce, the idea that they will when we are surplus to requirement is inconceivable.

Devastaon The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it

It has destroyed art, it has destroyed public trust with fabricated videos, it has caused skyrocketing prices in components so stuff like Valves console cannot get made, and its enriched freaks like Sam Altman.

The fact that AI acolytes are positively giddy about the above is just icing on the cake.

Devastaon Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

This is trying to manage their personal image; they know exactly what they are and what they do.

They are just annoyed Karp is breaking Kayfabe

Devastaon Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

A few years ago, during the initial stages of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, John Deere was remotely bricking any tractors that were stolen by Russia.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/01/europe/russia-farm-vehicl...

I'm sure this was meant to be a story about the bad guys being thwarted, but it only made my blood run cold. A single company can remotely destroy the agricultural sector of a country if they felt like it.

This is a welcome development.

Devastaon Irony as Meta staff unhappy about running surveillance software on work PCs

Meta employees shocked to find out they work for Meta.

Devastaon In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition

I don't know, Stephen King couldn't write anything that matches the horror that was the management of UK car companies in the second half of the 20th century. British Leyland was a disaster from start to finish.

Devastaon WebUSB Extension for Firefox

I really don't understand the use case. Why would I want hardware that I own to be managed by a web app that could disappear?

Devastaon The Technological Republic, in Brief

This is the sort of thing I'd expect to see in the manifesto of a school shooter.

Devastaon UK PM Starmer tells social media firms in No 10 meeting 'things can't go on ...

We are far, far beyond the stage where Zuck and Elon should have targeted sanctions against them like we would any Russian Oligarch.

They are driving millions of people insane with the constant barrage of far right propaganda in their users feeds, and are totally disinterested in solving the problem.

Devastaon The future of everything is lies, I guess: Work

Why wouldn't it be?

Devastaon ChatGPT Pro now starts at $100/month

The difference between Silicon Valley and Wall Street is that Wall Street knows they are lying when they justify the awful things they do in the name of enriching themselves.

Devastaon AI and remote work is a disaster for junior software engineers

He mentions that they have physical equipment they must interact with and that is an excellent reason to be at least hybrid sometimes, but if you cannot make remote work successful that is an issue to be resolved, not a justification for RTO.

* Most companies have staff spread across different office locations

* Your clients are in other office locations

* Your suppliers are in other office locations

* Even if somehow you and your clients and your suppliers are all in the same building, you should still be conducting your meetings through something like Teams so that you have recordings of everything, something that juniors can go back to see the rationale behind decisions or revisit the training sessions done for them.

Even if you are going into the office 7 days a week, you should be operating a remote-first model.

Devastaon I Won't Download Your App. The Web Version Is A-OK

The web version being ok is a sign of the degradation of the desktop experience more than it is a sign of the capabilities of the web.

Devastaon Delve removed from Y Combinator

YC invests in military startups, they have no problem killing people if it would make them money. What makes a fake HIPPA compliance cert worse than that?

Devastaon I wore Meta's smartglasses for a month – and it left me feeling like a creep

That makes sense; you were being a creep.

Devastaon The first 40 months of the AI era

A big part of the benefit of AI has nothing to do with AI and everything to do with leading point haired bosses around. They won't approve needed refactorings but promise to integrate AI and suddenly budget is no problem, just add an easily removable chatbot afterward and you're golden.

I think we'll find that for most AI stuff.

Devastaon “Collaboration” is bullshit

https://www.vice.com/en/article/taliban-bureaucrats-hate-wor...

Apparently the Taliban find office work far worse than being fighters, so you never know!

Devastaon Iran launched unsuccessful attack on UK's Diego Garcia

You are absolutely deluded if you think the removal of the IRGC will result in any improvement in the situation of the Iranian people. The US and Israel want to bomb he place into a lawless wasteland, even if a secular democracy was to arise it would make no difference.

Devastaon I'm OK being left behind, thanks

I want to cure lung cancer, therefore as an Effective Altruist™ I maximize my income by selling cigarettes to children outside playgrounds. The money will go towards research in my will, and in the meantime the incidence of lung cancer in teenagers will incentivize the free market to find a cure!

People don't become quants because they are EAs, they become EAs to justify to themselves why they became quants.