iamnothere

Right, but the internet survived the Melissa virus and other early widespread worm attacks. They caused widespread disruption and economic damage, but they weren’t the end of the world. And besides, at present people are using AI to find and patch software at a faster rate than they are using it to compromise software (more dollars are allocated to security these days).

IMHO the biggest problems will be with poorly written AI slop software, probably small business crapware produced with minimal investment (maybe entirely without an experienced developer) and legacy equipment that’s been abandoned by the manufacturer. This will lead to disruption but not catastrophe.

Time will tell. I think the problems will come from humans automating things that shouldn’t be automated, like the disaster of the Minab school targeting, not out-of-control superintelligence.

I guess I don’t really see the internet as a disaster, sure it brings issues but so did factories and mass production, and so will AI.

> The reason it doesn't work like that IRL is centralized marketplaces.

Well yes, that’s why I mentioned those specifically. But even if the marketplaces were split up, someone could create an aggregator to comparison shop and the same effects would apply. The problem for producers is that the Internet erases information asymmetry.

It’s also not just affecting low end goods, it’s a constant pressure on everyone, which is why many formerly upscale brands are seeing the same problems. It’s also a general problem with public companies, as large shareholders demand constant growth, as well as many private companies owned by PE where brands are stripped for short-term profits.

My experience is that the best low cost mid-tier products right now are coming from fronts like Vevor and Fanttik who do sourcing from noname factories in China. I’m not sure if their position is sustainable; it’s not like they have much of a moat. (I guess Fanttik has a team that adds some slick design to their otherwise utilitarian items.) If that model holds up then maybe that’s the future, but I suspect that they just have a temporary advantage thanks to a dual presence and connections in both the US and China.

It’s not game over because AI doomers are wrong in their projections. LLMs are a transformative technology like the internet, but they’re also overhyped and the useful applications aren’t as broad as people think they are. They’re also not Skynet.

Well then do your best, people like me will keep sharing models just fine. (Not like I even do anything with them, but I’m a compulsive data hoarder.) It’s not like the copyright industry has been able to stop sharing either, and there’s serious money at stake there.

I predict that the AI scaremongering will fizzle out when the bubble bursts. There will still be die-hard believers but the public will lose interest.

China has a different perspective on it, they believe that there is such a thing as harmful competition and they are willing to step in to stop it.

Enshittification and related problems can be a result of market forces just as much as they can be a result of monopoly/duopoly or a small cartel. Excess competition sometimes results in all firms scraping the barrel to squeeze out pennies, especially with technology (such as large online marketplaces) making pricing more transparent.

Marx actually predicted that ever-intensifying competition would destroy markets through overproduction, although he did not use the term involution.

All concerns balance against competing concerns, and in this case freedom of computing and knowledge wins over safety. Especially since it’s trivial to copy and share open models.

The usa.gov site is a good start, but it’s not really comprehensive, and I’m not sure it can be.

A few queries that I couldn’t find answers to through that site:

* How can you get a permit for a group event in a national forest?

* How can I become a federal contractor as a small business?

* Where do I go to get an amateur radio license and what are the steps involved?

* What are the requirements for purchasing tribal land?

Basically usa.gov seems to mainly exist for people following the “happy path”—go to school, get a job or run a simple business, get health insurance, buy a house, retire. It’s got a few exceptions for large minority groups. But the issue is that the total number of people deviating from that path is huge, even if they only need to find one thing that’s not on the path. Right now they rely on commercial search to get answers, which often leads them to scam sites or intermediaries who take a cut for filing paperwork.

I forgot about this problem, this is so true, but I will say that maybe surfacing these contradictions is the first step in fixing them.

Especially at the local level, we have a huge problem with opaque bureaucracy whose only function is to privilege incumbents (such as developers with connections) and make life difficult for anyone doing something unusual (even if it technically complies with all legal requirements).

This is where people usually point out POSIWID[0], but ideally government agencies should stick to what it says on the law/regulation, not have some hidden purpose that was never put to a vote.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

The problem is that this isn’t possible without making it impenetrable to ordinary people. It’s a usability problem with tradeoffs.

My local county government has a pretty good website, but even then it’s completely overwhelming if you try to find something off the happy path of the most common services/tasks. I can’t imagine the nightmare of trying to organize a federal portal manually and keep it up to date. Plain search isn’t sufficient because there are so many overlapping functions that are just slightly different.

I hate to say it, but this is one area that an LLM assistant actually makes sense. Maybe it needs a second validation pass with routing to a human assistant if it can’t figure out how to give an accurate answer to a query.

(Personally I’ve found that “search assistant” LLMs are the only task where I’ve found LLMs to be occasionally helpful to me.)

Edit: the big problem with this sort of thing, even if not AI powered, is that government itself isn’t well-organized and the legally “accurate” answer may not be the correct one, as per this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49895741

He only used that metaphor a few times, and he did not attribute the sort of mystical power to the metaphor that modern neoliberal economists do. He never proposed the modern extreme interpretation of the concept, nor did he suggest that government should release all control over the economy.

Marx treated Smith rather favorably, and credits him for first understanding that labor in general is what creates value. Smith is best understood as an early pioneer in understanding political economy and trade. He likely wouldn’t recognize or understand the capitalism of today (nor would Marx).

Do you have any academic sources for this claim?

I see my old self in what you’re saying. I used to be extremely extroverted, spending nearly all my free time socializing, but now I find much more life satisfaction as an introvert. I derive a lasting sense of pleasure and peace from the things I build, especially physical things, while social interactions only created at best a fleeting sense of satisfaction. I also have much more time for reading, contemplation, and enjoying nature.

I get more than enough social time from my partner and a small handful of friends that I see on occasion. I lived quite a full social life, with a huge variety of people and activities, yet surprisingly I don’t find it all that memorable or important in retrospect. It’s a similar feeling to looking back on one of my former careers.

They won’t need to have drones peek through the window, your router[0] and smart TV should be sufficient to figure out what you’re up to.

(And if you don’t use one of those routers, similar tech is coming to the next generation of cell towers.)

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paullamkin/2026/08/24/comcast-t...

Yes, they are neoliberals, which are hardly left by international standards. European social-democratic parties, which are the traditional Euro center-left, are generally on the back foot right now.

As long as the mods/admins aren’t friends with the people running the bots, true.

It’s not impossible, I just don’t see it happening here before there’s a serious crisis.

I also think there’s a chance that costs of renewable construction and replacement go up as fossil fuels get more expensive. Right now most heavy industry and mining relies on fossil power due to portability, energy density, and preexisting equipment. It’s not necessarily going to be a smooth transition, especially in politically dysfunctional countries. The bottleneck period will be difficult.

But political and logistical problems are real, and they have teeth. Some places will be better off if they can build out in the near future, but some places (including the US) may be too dysfunctional to make the required investment.

Good point, it looks like battery-backed PV is comparable when you factor that in. Non battery is definitely cheaper. I was not aware of that.

I guess it all depends on if EROI estimates hold up over time, how quickly we can scale up on renewables, and how much data centers and reshoring cut into available energy. There will still likely be a crunch going into next year, though.

It may be that the people most likely to blindly follow astroturfed suggestions don’t pay attention to these indicators. In which case volume is more important than camouflage.

Fossil EROI is steadily declining and renewable EROI isn’t as high, in fact it’s much lower when you include battery storage. It’s going to get more expensive.

Cheap energy will do that, statistically. It won’t be cheap for much longer, so enjoy the reprieve.

This is making weird judgements about people just trying to find information.

I don’t have any friends who are code inspectors, so I can’t ask them obscure questions about something that I want to repair in a way that it will be done properly.

I don’t have any friends who are mechanics, and even if they were they probably wouldn’t know what specific part I’d need to fix a specific problem on my old shitbox—they would look it up.

I don’t want half assed guesses to these questions, I want to find the exact correct answer. My friends and I can talk about other stuff that’s not just trading random facts. Trading facts usually makes for poor conversation unless you’re a hobbyist talking shop with another hobbyist.

Now Gemini (and Google) are not good at finding the right answer anymore, so I have to use other sources for that, but I find your judgement about people using search or search LLMs to be misplaced.

Yes, it’s not whataboutism if it’s part of a discussion about bipartisan corruption, for instance. Or when discussing the causes of conflict between two countries. It’s a problem when it is used without context to deflect from the bad actions of one actor or one “side”.

In this sense, running (and heavily tuning) a local LLM could be seen as a form of self-authorship.

Not that I find them all that useful, still.

Find a way to test informally, like taking metrics on the number of times that someone misunderstood written questions, instructions, or requirements at work. If it was possible to measure that cleanly, I bet you’d find a similar trend.

I often find that people simply don’t read anymore beyond a sentence or two, which makes it impossible to communicate complex ideas. If it can’t be expressed as a bullet point, it may as well not exist.

Not better, just more profitable (for a small handful)

Ironically this may finally force the fulfillment of the Web 2.0 paid API service dream. Remember when people were pushing companies that just provided a paid API?

I have one with a spam filter that I control myself, not some BS like GMail who wants to decide for me. It’s well-tuned at this point and hasn’t given me problems.

If I want to, I can opt in to any number of spam blocklists. That’s kind of the point—it’s opt in.