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JSavageOne

2,078 karma · joined April 2, 2020

Software engineer

https://twitter.com/jeremybernier

Personal Site https://www.jbernier.com

Some personal projects:

• Open source offline-first Notion clone - https://mindgarden.app (work in progress)

• https://zsync.xyz, an attempt at a better Hacker News / Reddit

• https://nomadz.app, a crowdsourced site for useful places for nomads and remote workers, specifically work cafes.

Other social media:

https://www.youtube.com/c/JDiculous1 https://www.instagram.com/cityofjeremy

Posts here don't necessarily reflect my views as I may steelman an argument for the sake of greater understanding.

submissionscomments
JSavageOne··on Human Programmers Will Be Mostly Obsolete in 5 Years
I think it's much easier to replace digital workers because

1. Significantly more people are tackling digital problems (eg. you don't have many solo entrepreneurs working on self-driving car projects because of the high capital requirements, regulations, and it being fairly niche)

2. Replacing digital work is safer because unlike driving it generally doesn't involve life or death.

JSavageOne··on Human Programmers Will Be Mostly Obsolete in 5 Years
Human programmers will be considered mediocre compared to machines in 5-10 years, just like chess and Go.
JSavageOne··on Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
Why does anyone work in countries that already have strong welfare systems then (eg. Scandinavia, Germany)?
JSavageOne··on Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
> UBI is a bane because it kills meritocracy.

How does UBI kill meritocracy?

> none of the hard jobs gets done.

Hard jobs that society doesn't value won't get done by humans, but hard jobs that society does value will certainly get done. UBI does not remove free markets, and if anything increases the reward of working hard if large swaths of the labor force do decide to drop out.

JSavageOne··on Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
In 5-10 years most humans will be economically obsolete because AI will be vastly superior, making UBI inevitable to avoid societal collapse. At that point it will be funny to look back at the arrogance of statements like this.
JSavageOne··on Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
UBI would ideally be funded by a land value tax (see Henry George's "citizen's dividend")
JSavageOne··on Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
Completely disagree. In 5 years AI will be so advanced that most humans will be economically irrelevant and unable to compete, forcing governments to implement UBI to avoid societal collapse. By 2030 I would be willing to be money that UBI or something resembling UBI will be the norm in most advanced wealthy countries.
JSavageOne··on Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)
> like optimise some multithreaded C++ service. And often in our jobs these types of things do come up

What are the jobs where this kind of thing comes up? I've never had to do anything with multithreading or C++, and I'd estimate that the jobs where that stuff comes up is a tiny minority. I think it'd be cool to encounter these kinds of problems, but it just seems more like a niche thing to me these days.

JSavageOne··on Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
Great, practical advice. I do think however that by 2030, UBI will be the norm in many wealthy countries, and thus more people will be able to pursue their passions rather than having to sell their soul as dayjobbers to make money for corporations and rich people.
JSavageOne··on Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student
> but playing music is not an especially valuable thing

Sure if your definition of value is "income generated".

JSavageOne··on Threads: The BBC drama which affected a generation of viewers
What a terribly written article. Wasted so much time reading this trying to get to the point but the author just rambles on about how traumatic it was without explaining how specifically. You'd think the author was trying to fill up sone word quota, just get to the damn point.
JSavageOne··on Threads has 10M sign ups in seven hours
There actually is high quality content in Twitter threads. Of course most content on Twitter isn't high quality though.
JSavageOne··on Once hailed for decriminalizing drugs, Portugal is now having doubts
So essentially the homeless and mentally ill in the U.S are incentivized to be dangerous, explains a lot
JSavageOne··on Threads has 10M sign ups in seven hours
I'm not going to download this because there's no web application.

It's clear that they intentionally did not release a web application in order to maximize app installs and thus maximum control over their users (eg. scrape your contacts, push notifications, and most importantly to show you ads).

In 2023 nobody wants to install yet another app, so this is a clever strategy to optimize for app installs. Not going to work on me though. If it's just a Twitter clone only accessible to mobile users, then content quality is going to be low because nobody is typing thought provoking, in-depth analysis from their mobile phones.

JSavageOne··on Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?
https://jsavage.xyz

I write mostly about travel (been living nomadically the last 5+ years, currently in Asia), random thoughts I have (eg. on mindset, politics, occasionally even touchy topics like dating and sex), and updates on side projects I'm working on. I originally started the blog as a place to rant about wage slavery and the need for universal basic income, but I've already said everything I wanted to say there (also that topic is very depressing) so now I focus on other things. I'm a software engineer but I don't talk about tech here (currently using my Reddit / HN alternative as a pseudo-blog as a I build it out https://zsync.xyz/) - any serious technical writing I'd rather post to my personal blog under my real name or maybe Twitter.

I try to be as unfiltered and polarizing as possible - not because I'm an asshole, but because that's the type of content I personally enjoy the most. I don't plan out posts, just brain dump and never look at it again. Here are some posts:

- Tokyo Trip Reflections – The Nicest City https://jsavage.xyz/2023/06/30/tokyo-trip-reflections-the-ni...

- Left Bali, now in Hong Kong https://jsavage.xyz/2023/05/30/left-bali-now-in-hong-kong/ (at the end I question the conflation of love and sex)

- When AI Can Execute, Your Job Will No Longer Be Necessary https://jsavage.xyz/2023/05/09/when-ai-can-execute-your-job-...

- Addiction is a Lack of Self-Control, and Every Choice You Make is Interlinked https://jsavage.xyz/2023/02/11/addiction-is-a-lack-of-self-c...

- Execution is The Most Important and Underrated Skill https://jsavage.xyz/2023/01/03/execution-is-the-most-importa...

- Life Needs Challenge to be Fun (thoughts on work, happiness, and fulfillment) https://jsavage.xyz/2022/08/31/life-needs-challenge-to-be-fu...

- Happiness = Fulfillment + Community. Should You Do What You Love? https://jsavage.xyz/2022/05/07/happiness-fulfillment-communi...

Was going to post some older posts as well but looking back at them now some of them look like they were written by a different person, which is cool because it shows how much I've progressed.

JSavageOne··on Tips for programmers to stay ahead of generative AI
Interesting take, but I think you're drastically underestimating how much work the programming part is. I think currently at least 90%+ of the work is actually programming / implementing the thing, and that's what AI is going to replace.
JSavageOne··on Lemmy now has over 2M users across 915 instances
You literally have addressed nothing in the comments/articles you criticized, and are simply dismissing a combined 2,340 words across two articles as "ad hominem". Just admit that you aren't interested in debating any of the points raised, and are simply offended by the aggressive language. That's fine, but you're not refuting anything or engaging in any form of debate.

> you can in theory still present a strong argument in addition to insulting the other side

There is clearly an argument here in addition to the use of the word "idiots". 2,340 words of ad hominem would be pretty boring and meaningless.

> You could improve the argument, for example, by offering sources/statistics, having a clear argument structure, or making a sincere attempt to engage with material on the other side (plenty of accessible feminist literature exists).

I'm not asking for generic feedback on writing a research paper here. You posted a screenshot of some comments/articles claiming they were low quality, and have failed to demonstrate how any of the points made in the articles were incorrect.

In any case I appreciate the feedback. It doesn't surprise me that aggressive language is polarizing and turns some people off. I personally don't have a problem with that though so long as one also presents an argument. I personally think intensity can actually be a positive because it's more entertaining. For example had the comments/articles instead been written in a more dry and neutral tone, I highly doubt you would've bothered to comment at all.

JSavageOne··on Lemmy now has over 2M users across 915 instances
I actually didn't see you'd referenced the Andrew Tate article as well in your image (full article: https://jsavage.xyz/2022/09/28/why-we-need-andrew-tate/)

I was referring to this statement you'd made: "I'd claim the mission is a failure right from user #1: https://i.imgur.com/57BhkkJ.png - the quality standard of ad-hominem soapboxing is already near rock bottom."

You seem to be claiming that the quality is low, so I was wondering if you had any specific counter-arguments to anything stated in those two comments/articles you referenced in your image. Or did you just want to criticize the 1,800 word and 540 word articles because you found the language not to your taste? Personally I'm more interested in the content of one's arguments rather than simply the presentation, but to each their own.

JSavageOne··on [dead]
Being a software engineer in 2023 is knowing that 95% of everything you're doing now will be obsolete in 5 years. By 2028 app creation will be a commodity & coding will be writing prompts that update themselves

Tech was always fast-changing, now we're supercharging exponentially

Humans cannot compete with AI in the long run. Now is one of the last moments in time where as a human you can still have an edge. In a decade, that will mostly be gone.

Human labor being obsolete to AI would be something to celebrate if we had a UBI (basic income), but we don't

10 years ago I thought it was obvious that implementing UBI would be an enormous net-positive for society, especially since it was obvious AI was automating labor. Now you'd have to be an idiot to not see the writing on the wall, yet I don't see much talk of UBI.

Anyways, the golden age of human labor is coming to an end. We can embrace & applaud this, implementing a UBI, freeing the wagcucks, etc. Or we can cry & deny it while desperately clinging on to the last remains of our own waning relevance like luddites & boomer politicians

JSavageOne··on Lemmy now has over 2M users across 915 instances
> At the risk of being snarky myself

Did you have an actual counter-argument? (article referenced in the image: https://jsavage.xyz/2022/09/30/debate-exposes-bigotry-of-wok...)

You're kind of proving my point here. On Reddit this would get downvote censored with no one even attempting to come up with a coherent counterargumemt, just people using downvote as a disagree button, squashing out all unorthodox views, and breeding the hivemind.

JSavageOne··on Lemmy now has over 2M users across 915 instances
The problem with these Reddit alternatives is that just like 99% of Reddit, they're a complete waste of time. There's nothing of substance, no real community, and no value add to anyone's life. I just opened lemmy.world and I don't see anything of substance, just posts talking about Lemmy and how Reddit is dead.

For me personally to use any of these sites, it has to at a minimum be a place where one can learn and have stimulating conversation. Reddit was like that in 2008, and it stopped being that way when memes, marketers, and political correctness took over. HN is the only site of this style that I regularly frequent because the quality is relatively high. Without keeping a high quality bar, I don't see why anyone would care to use any of these sites unless there's enough of a differentiating factor, and I don't think fediverse is an attractive enough of a feature to attract any serious users long-term. I mean look at Mastodon - it peaked when Elon took over Twitter, but has just been in decline since then.

I built my own HN/Reddit alternative [1] with the sole mission of retaining a high standard of quality. Will it work? Doubtful without at a minimum getting the ball rolling seeding it with content, and marketing is not my forte or interest. But in any case I hope we'll see more competitors trying to build a "better" Reddit than attempt to replicate the cespool that is Reddit (outside a few high quality niche subreddits), that persists not due to any superiority but simply just from network effects at this point. We don't need more of the same, we can do better.

[1] https://zsync.xyz

JSavageOne··on English as the new programming language for Apache spark
Agreed but remember we're only looking at the first iteration of this stuff, like the internet in 1999.

By 2030 I would not be surprised if programming was mostly a human telling a computer what to do via text prompts. That is certainly the direction things have been moving.

JSavageOne··on Show HN: I made an open-source Notion-style WYSYWIG editor
Thank you, will add that to the long list of remaining work!
JSavageOne··on Show HN: I made an open-source Notion-style WYSYWIG editor
Yup!
JSavageOne··on Clojure is a product design tool (2015)
If you're only interested in downvoting rather than expressing an argument, perhaps you don't have an argument
JSavageOne··on Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions
The solution to racism isn't more racism.
JSavageOne··on Is ORM still an anti-pattern?
I use TypeORM for Node.js, and it's extremely frustrating and littered with bugs, but even then it still saves me time vs. using SQL for everything. Automatic table synchronizations are a huge time saver. Even if one doesn't use an ORM, I think one will eventually end up rolling their own, so why waste that time? Anyways ORMs have query builders, so one can always write SQL queries when necessary. I just wish TypeORM's query builder was just knex because knex is far superior to the TypeORM's bug-ridden querybuilder.
JSavageOne··on Clojure is a product design tool (2015)
No programming language is a product design tool, what a ludicrous title.

I think there are more blog posts about Clojure than software written in Clojure that people use.

JSavageOne··on Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision
Yea but the tech for a truly decentralized site of this nature just isn't there yet, so what's the alternative?
JSavageOne··on Show HN: I made an open-source Notion-style WYSYWIG editor
The features sound great. Some advice though:

- I was about to tell you that there really should be a demo, but just now I realized the "World Wide Web Phase 2 Begins Here" button links to the demo. You really should change that text to "Live Demo" or something more clear.

- The demo itself takes a long time to load and seemed to refresh multiple times

- The GitHub should also have a link to the demo, and an image would be nice as well

- The landing page is very ugly. Any generic template would do better and inspire more confidence.

- Why not highlight some of those features you mentioned on the landing page?

Best of luck! The features sound great.

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