Guid_NewGuid

While "for everything there is a season" is my preferred approach to tech hype cycles this one does _feel_ different. While you could broadly ignore say blockchain and the crypto hype and not really miss much of value; I do think there's a fundamental shift happening as of this year.

If model progress completely froze here what does that future look like? Chinese labs would continue to bring down the cost of what we have and a lot of companies would lose a lot of money on data center buildout but does software as an industry ever close Pandora's box?

As much as I'm loathe to use it and think criticisms about a loss of capability, quality and skill are valid I also think for the majority of software jobs as-was will remain changed for good. There was always a struggle between 'cheap and quick' offshoring and actual quality software but I don't think the author is necessary overreacting by feeling unsettled.

We have torture factories for animals so I'd rate the chances of avoiding LLM torture factories as... not good.

While that might seem a facile rebuttal I think I might actually agree with the substance of the article. My point I guess is that we're societally pretty bad at assigning consciousness to anything non-human. While I don't think LLMs are conscious and this is primarily the ELIZA effect in action I also agree there's something emergent (perhaps within language rather than within the neural nets) that dismissals as a mere stochastic parrot miss.

This broadly covers something I've been musing writing a post about. The real bad things that happen, much like the good things, happen slowly and don't have the salience necessary for people to pay attention in the current age.

We're always looking for catastrophes or victories that happen in a matter of days, something that can be summarized in a Chyron. But in general the systems that really count work more slowly and with more complexity than that.

Things don't have to be apocalyptic to be bad. We have been on a rollercoaster of sea freight costs (SCFI) since COVID and the knock on impact on prices only seems to go in one direction. It adds to demographic and housing crises and government debt crises. Add in an energy crisis following on from the same crisis barely weathered at the start of the full invasion of Ukraine, add in a fertilizer crisis, add in a once-in-a-thousand year El Nino and things fall apart.

Humanity has always faced crises, many thought the world would end in nuclear fallout roughly half a century ago, but things don't have to have the salience of a nuclear bomb going off in the neighborhood to make everything worse. And it is a slow and gradual disaster.

The current strain of populism works the same way. Screwworm eradication efforts aren't sexy, they don't have high salience and they play into people's view that the government spends money and time doing nothing. And you remove the system and it doesn't fall apart immediately, and the effects are muddied with climate change impacts and so on. The doomsday predictions don't come to pass and people don't stick around to see the slow, creeping disaster they unleashed.

I feel like I was a line-cook in a bog standard eatery, stressed, drinking to cope and hating the work but now they've replaced the cooking part with using a microwave. The last thing I enjoyed even though I hated it in aggregate, is gone from the job, the skill expression.

I almost feel like it doesn't matter if Joe-public is on board or not at this stage. For as much as capitalism kinda got us into this mess, at this point the flywheel is going in the other direction and it's a natural market consequence that renewables will win. Lack of priced in externalities created the problem but the same economics will now save us.*

The money men have no moral attachment to any source so given how cheap this mix has gotten it basically wins.

* I'd point out without China and its Leninist command economy (as well as publicly funded research) getting the price of these technologies down to where it is now we'd still be doomed, but we are where we are so now the system necessarily will act in its own self interest to use the basically free energy. Is it going to be enough at this stage? Who knows, but I see reasons to be optimistic.

There's a difference between informed speculation and uninformed speculation and most of the opinions so far fall into uninformed speculation where the writer implicitly blames those suffering for poor diet and lifestyle choices.

In addition a lot of the speculation assumes something specific to the US where this is a trend in multiple countries, predominantly high income ones[0][1], but this speculation that it might be 'chemicals' is fairly dull to read and adds nothing. Why this cohort specifically? What commonalities are there between countries with an observed increase? If it's diet why would it only impact the younger cohort?

[0]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2... [1]: https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(21)00010-X/...

I mean doesn't your take strain credulity as well? Let's actually think where most discussion happens these days, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, the few remaining newspaper comments sections. I'd struggle to list more off the top of my head.

Why wouldn't influence campaigns, we know every big country to be running, target this site? What reason would they have to leave it out from their list? Why not target a major news forum for the more wealthy and connected (predominantly) Americans in tech? This is not an uwu smol bean site anymore and the cost of (undetectably) botting any given site is rapidly approaching cents.

Indeed, and try suggesting there should be minimal accountability for flagging[0] and you'll likewise be flagged. Sure maybe the data says there's not some cartel flagging conspiracy but it starts to seem awful suspicious that even reasonable discussion of this misfeature gets flagged.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44962005

This site has always been easy to co-opt to fascism with their supposedly apolitical outlook. Flagging from unknown accounts easily kills stories of importance, even where they have relation to the supposed interests of the site. Such as the AI altered image being posted by the White House this week.

The idea we have to treat arguments in good faith like the other user in this story excusing fascist death squads show how well this moderation approach aligns with the Thiel-ite sympathies.

More Zhongnanhai-ology from our cold warrior correspondent.

As usual I feel like he overestimates the US' ability to impose rules and underestimates the Chinese ability to both circumvent those rules while developing self sufficiency. In addition we've all seen the Chinese ability to retaliate across a range of industrial sectors from rare earths to drug precursors. While these embargos would have some impact on Chinese chip development; initiatives like Huawei Ascend clusters and DeepSeek being trained on less powerful chips show that China will find a way to innovate whether or not they have access to the most powerful chips.

I feel like the piece overstates the importance of the AI race specifically. The recent field tests of the US' automated weapons systems are... not encouraging. [0][1] Unless you're an AGI booster that rather implies that crucial ability of US tech that China is missing is being able to generate Sora videos of fat people causing disasters.

In light of the 15th 5 year plan and its focus on self sufficiency without reference to the West these China hawks are increasingly irrelevant to the conversation unfolding outside the borders of the increasingly irrelevant and mistrusted US.

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-navy-i...

[1]: https://www.techbuzz.ai/articles/anduril-s-autonomous-weapon...

Correct, in every thread about BYD or other car manufacturers people seem to forget about the other 7.5 billion people in the world outside of the US and Europe. Sure the US' broken dealership laws and red-scare tantrums will stop these cars selling there, and in their economic satraps, but for the global majority countries there's no such barrier.

The cheerleaders for the current authoritarian coup that swarm around here are all too happy to conflate the Hunter Biden pardon and what's currently going on. As if we can't currently open a god-damned news website and read about the Comey, James and Bolton prosecutions and deduce that, yeah, Biden pretty much had no choice even though it was a shitty thing to do.

This is because these dipshits are eagerly carrying water for a vindictive dictator. They are not operating in good faith but due to the alignment of the owners of this site with those self-same fascists you are meant to act as if they're not trolls.

It's exactly like cigarettes because it is the same companies. https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/news-events/all-news/faculty-new...

Funnily enough just like guns the reactions in this thread seem to more or less be "no way to stop this says only nation where this happens regularly".

Best as I can tell, and I'm just some guy, is there is a real problem with the job market, not just in the US. AI is mainly interesting for the media to report on and hype for CEOs and the kind of MBA airheads no one with any self respect should pay attention to. It's a fairly cool search, synthesis and retrieval tool with real value but it's not as impactful as 'thoughtleaders' want us to believe.

In the US as elsewhere it's a combination of factors, COVID overhiring and inflation, interest rates going up, market concentration and, US specific, the since Trump-reversed Trump-imposed tax changes. While this reversal probably helps the job market some in the immediate term the indicators of the fundamentals are flashing red everywhere and outside of the US it all just continues to be part of the same Omnirecession since 2008.

Worth reiterating since the phrase "attacks on institutions" more usually implies bureaucratic maneuvers. These people have incited actual murderous gun attacks: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0y796qqp9o

I'm not actually sure what the karma threshold is for flagging, I've already crossed it on this which is my alt account.

Perusing active at the moment it looks like a fairly quiet time for flagging, though the example didn't get to active so it's a lopsided sample. The flagged articles are roughly:

- UBI doesn't work because the poor are lazy

- 2 different aliens/UFOs related articles

- Zohran Mamdani and reaction of tech scene in NYC

- Israeli settler violence in the west bank

I don't really see a compelling argument that any of these except perhaps west bank violence is worthy of a flag. We have tools to deal with these topics already such as the front page fall off for flame wars. I don't think the site is enhanced by flagging in it's current state and absent a larger change like increasing the flag karma to be closer to vouch karma so recovery is less lopsided, I think at least being transparent about flagging helps restore confidence in the system and would help reduce conspiracy thinking.

Thanks for providing some food for thought on the specifics of the proposal. These are real and justified drawbacks. My interest is more in access to the flagging behavior in aggregate rather than campaigns against any specific person. But this being the internet it certainly creates a new avenue for deranged people to kick off. However does the risk of this hypothetical hate campaign:

a) exceed the likelihood of people doing this via commenting anyway

b) justify the opaque and powerful nature of flagging as-is

Perhaps you stopping flagging if you're not willing to justify a flag is a good outcome in aggregate? We have mods to kill threads which violate the guidelines already. But looking at the /active list there's certainly an amount of (probably organic) censorship of controversial threads in either direction (though my gut feel is it biases more towards censorship of articles about the latest outrages of US government).

I'm not really interested in say, Ruby, I think people should probably use languages which are type-safe if they want to avoid catastrophes in production and 1am pager calls. However if I see an article about Ruby I'm just going to not engage with it. Perhaps your existing interpretation of the unwritten rules is too broad and actually we ought to rein in the amount of flagging anyway?

But the exact reason for flagging per-person is kind of orthogonal to this request right? It's a request for transparency. You are able to override other people's interest in discussing topics for no real personal cost. Is there any drawback to you having those flags be on the public record? Or any reason not to make those flags public? Why exactly should flagging be private.

I think a lot of people agree with your reasons for flagging and wish politics didn't cross over into tech, but that doesn't really impinge either way on making flags public. (In the example article that prompted this a debate about the relative benefits of different vaccine research approaches seems patently tech/science based, but again it is not really relevant to a proposal to make the flags public record).

I'm not too interested in the reasons for flagging since they don't currently exist and would be self reported and largely irrelevant. I'm more interested in just seeing a list of the users who flagged and the times they flagged.

This would allow anyone to perform network analysis and reporting and full audit ability and is a minimal level of accountability for using this functionality to close discussions down.

While the site is pseudonymous and that's a good thing, making flagging data public would still allow analysis on why exactly flagging seems to be so aggressive. E.g. are these all accounts who flag the same stories? Are they accounts in 'good-standing'? Etc.

We have dang's word that he hasn't detected any funky behavior with respect to flagging and that these are organic events. But I don't see a reason that the information shouldn't be available. I struggle to think of a downside.

Not really relevant to your main point but the idea there aren't social media influence campaigns from all sides is more of a tinfoil position than acknowledging that there absolutely are, whether or not they are effective.

It was interesting to read how much of the US drugs market relies on imports. The article deals with the high value stuff. However, by volume, 90% of drugs used in the US are cheaper generics often with no US manufacturers. The US is heavily reliant on India and ultimately China for both active pharmaceutical ingredients and key starting materials. With 80% of Indian production using starting materials from China.[0]

The US had no domestic production of penicillin between 2004[3] when its last plant shuttered until 2021 when a factory reopened.[1] (source 1 and 3 appear to contradict, the 2019 testimony states there was no manufacturer after 2004 whereas it sounds like the plant closed in 2020, regardless the domestic capability is extremely weak)

As usual for American sources this is painted as some nefarious scheme by the evil red Chinese to destroy America by making cheaper drugs available. To add my own editorialising I think US companies are easily capable of ruining US manufacturing and focusing on screwing US patients over.[2] The average citizen should probably be glad of low cost Chinese supply, but nurturing domestic capability as per Biden is sensible.

[0]: https://prosperousamerica.org/skyrocketing-pharmaceutical-im...

[1]: https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufacturing/reopening-penicil...

[2]: https://www.rand.org/news/press/2024/02/01/index1.html

[3]: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/RosemaryGibsonTesti...

[4]: sources per https://youtu.be/hS0-ugYA-ko?si=xCNzctCGr9f2M7ct

Evidence for the Republican party becoming more authoritarian:

- attempted illegal book bans

- suppression of right to protest and free speech on university campuses with lawfare

- US citizens being black bagged and deported to foreign concentration camps without due process and against court rulings

- deploying the army to the states unconstitutionally

- continued gerrymandering over the ruling of state supreme courts (Ohio)

Evidence for the Democratic party becoming more extreme:

- ... I'm struggling to think of an example, maybe you hold that prosecution of violent insurrectionists and their ring leader, the current president, was political extremism and authoritarian, but one would be so far detached from the reality-inhabiting community if so I don't know what to tell you.

Xiaomi is such a deranged (not a negative statement) company. I think most people in the west don't really have exposure to this but I was transferring through Panama City (Panama) on a recent trip to the US and they have a couple Xiaomi stores in the airport so I popped in.

I've used the Xiaomi Poco X3 phone for a while and other than an unreliable charging port it has been pretty solid so I thought I'd look at the newer phones.

The shop has everything, there's robot vacuum cleaners, phones, tablets, fans, humidifiers, glasses (?), watches, blenders. It's like the middle aisle of Lidl on steroids. For a company I associated with cheap phones it has a truly bewildering range of products. Their shares are also up almost 230% over the past year.

On C# this could be your country/sample. As far as I remember, though this is from almost a decade ago now, C# is more popular than Java in the UK and Australia but Java comes out ahead in the US.

In my misspent youth I've tried to introduce Cucumber/Gherkin a couple of different times but it's something with a deceptive promise.

The preconditions are that you have domain experts or business people interested and willing to engage in writing or reviewing these tests. Unless you have this and it's something that those people are going to sustain when the going gets tough you're just making writing tests harder for no real benefit.

Good thing TB respects borders and that drug resistant TB isn't a thing.

Yes, never again is right now and I am afraid to even say that under my real name because it would put my job at risk.

Watching a redux of the Warsaw Ghetto being livestreamed, watching children starving to death because of state military decisions, watching 500 pounder bombs being dropped on seaside cafes and ambulance medics being murdered. Never again is right now and I'm doing this, bitching pseudonymously. It is truly dystopian as you say.

Further, state influence campaigns using social media are well known, it is absolutely happening on this forum and all forums as you say. What to do? I have no idea but I know that those who suffer the consequences of speaking out against this, such as the tens of people arrested in the UK, are truly brave.

Never again is right now. One day everyone will have been against this.

I'm sure existing restrictions have had exactly the desired impact and that China -- being a state that prioritizes science and engineering over lawyers and financial engineering -- has no answer to it... Oh...

https://semianalysis.com/2025/04/16/huawei-ai-cloudmatrix-38...

I have a theory that this is built into the American system. People are brainwashed into thinking the system of government is perfect and unimpeachable (pledge of allegiance, constitution being this holy scripture). So when the imperfect system inevitably breaks down it is regarded as an unavoidable outcome.

Because the system delivered the outcome it must be the only possibility.