Burning question: why is this worth paying for as a layman? I can sometimes find a use for all these LLMs for software development, but I can never find a good use for any of this outside of "slightly better search engine".
311 karma · joined January 8, 2018
I don't know about the stability/market value of this if you intend to turn this into something that attempts to make money, however. Said friend is currently using stuff like Gemini to generate HTML mini-apps as well; while he's not storing anything in databases, he's able to generate receipts and other things for essentially free.
Shorthand notation exists and it's more than possible to develop your own. I'd trust a OBS recording going in the background over some AI slop that has some chance to micro-hallucinate what it's hearing. It also sounds like a skill issue that the author can't control the pace of his own meetings to where being able to take good notes is seemingly impossible.
The author's AI use cases seem like a band-aid to cover bigger problems. Let's not even get into the part of the blog post where the author has started delegating internal thinking and reflection to conversations with a LLM.
While this may be an unfair generalization, and apologies to those who don't feel this way, but I believe STEM types like the OP are used to problem solving that's linear in the sense that the problem only exists in its field as something to be solved, and once they figure it out, they're done. The OP even described his mentality as that of a "Thinker" where he received a problem during his schooling, mulled over it for a long time, and eventually came to the answer. That's it, next problem to crack. Their whole lives revolve around this process and most have never considered anything outside it.
Even now, despite my own healthy skepticism of and distaste for AI, I am forced to respect that AI can do some things very fast. People like the OP, used to chiseling away at a problem for days, weeks, months, etc., now have that throughput time slashed. They're used to the notion of thinking long and hard about a very specific problem and finally having some output; now, code modules that are "good enough" can be cooked up in a few minutes, and if the module works the problem is solved and they need to find the next problem.
I think this is more common than most people want to admit, going back to grumblings of "gluing libraries together" being unsatisfying. The only suggestion I have for the OP is to expand what you think about. There are other comments in this thread supporting it but I think a sea change that AI is starting to bring for software folks is that we get to put more time towards enhancing module design, user experience, resolving tech debt, and so on. People being the ones writing code is still very important.
I think there's more to talk about where I do share the OP's yearning and fears (i.e., people who weren't voracious readers or English/literary majors being oneshot by the devil that is AI summaries, AI-assisted reading, etc.) but that's another story for another time.
"IMO it should be considered quite rude in most contexts to post or send someone a wall of 100% AI-generated text. “Here, read this thing I didn’t care enough about to express myself." - https://x.com/littmath/status/2010759165061579086?s=20
Rather than ignore it, I'd deem it rude that something as low-effort as an AI generated blog post was shared here. I may not be able to set rules, but I wish we could flag posts like these. Some faux-gineer told their agent of choice to write up another fearmongering post about software developers and AI; I feel like my time was stolen from me.
I cannot remember if it was here or elsewhere but there was an amazing blogpost making fun of beginner and intermediate "coding" tutorials (coding as a catch-all for programming, markdown, etc.) where the author assumes the reader has deep familiarity with the subject at hand and all of its jargon. This has the exact same vibe.
1) This is a people problem, not a site problem. Technology professionals do not have a good track record of being socialized and generally well-adjusted, and for every singular tech professional who is, there are a dozen horrid maladjusted ones who are unfortunately successful and find themselves with power they aren't mature enough to have.
2) StackOverflow is still a treasure trove of information and a place anyone can go and ask questions about even niche and deprecated technology. Just recently asked a question about InnoSetup on StackOverflow and got a great response from possibly the expert fellow on InnoSetup.
Having an "invested community" requires an inordinate amount of effort from a tiny handful of founders for uncertain reward.
No sarcasm, no humor; 996 posts should be met with nothing but flat out ridicule and disgust. One's life isn't solely about work and this kind of behavior just makes everyone else's life worse in the long term because there's a chance for short term gain.
> What I'm talking about isn't just awkwardness and lacking charisma. I'm talking about randomly telling women that they can tell she is on her period and things like that.
These don't seem limited to SV and Big Companies™ like Google, all it takes is a cursory scroll either through this website (even this thread!) or a trip to any of the CompSci-focused boards on Reddit. Additionally not limited to women and minorities, but anyone from a non-traditional background as well.
If anyone feels like working on these issues, the problem is extremely local, you don't even have to leave HN!
My belief is that the idea Kabat-Zinn had, which is paraphrased in the article, is good. "Pay attention to the present moment, on purpose, without judgment" - stop, take some time to reflect on your feelings, process them. Maybe just take some time and not "think", where you give yourself some away time from the world. The anecdata from countless people seems to vaguely support the notion that this view on meditation works; I wouldn't call it concrete by any means, but it's as solid of a scientific start as one can get with something like meditation.
Software developers and those adjacent love to tout acronyms like "Keep It Simple, Stupid", why does the buck stop at software? The further one gets into the article, the more outlandish things get: electronic stimulation, microdosing various drugs (mentioned a lot on HN, which I've always found disturbing), cranial ultrasounds, even the stock photo of the lady meditating with a VR headset?
At the end of the piece, Laukkonen provides the following rhetorical question: "[W]hat is liberating about chasing different states of consciousness, and not enjoying the one that you have?" I think a lot of the comments here and the research presented towards the end of the article are in too deep in either side and are unable to see the forest for the trees.
I think we're all in this Catch-22: it's an obviously elitist thing to say that various demographics drag down quality by default, but it's something that can't be denied. I believe a lot of online landscapes have changed for the worse as the nerds that used to fuel them have gone from the majority to the minority.
However, I do value some of the changes that have come about in terms of general internet UX because we're not limited to the nerds anymore. It's a hard balance to strike.
However, the author makes references to things like MUDs, IRC chats, web forums, and then antagonists like "random internet Nazis" (come on dude) and Gamergate of all things, and I can't help but feel that the author of the article is part of a intellectual group that appeared after things like internet forums, transient chatrooms, and video game servers. It's very popular to try to "dunk" on sowing doubt in a case like this because everyone cites that "Yet you participate in it. Curious!" comic in some way or another, but I think the doubt is warranted in this case.
The author may have been around when those things were active, but expressed no deep interest at worst or a passing interest at best in any of them until centralization became a problem to think about, and SUDDENLY all of those things captured their attention. A HN poster who doesn't really care about non-techie niche communities but puts on big airs about caring because rebelling against centralized monoliths like Twitter is part of (hacker) counterculture/social signaling.
The author didn't have to deal with being a powerless normal user as internet Nazi groups infiltrating communities they were a part of, never had to watch independent sites and projects get absorbed into Reddit and its abhorrent community; it's all just a fun intellectual thought puzzle to ruminate on with a buddy at a bar and philosophical soapbox to stand on with their web blog and Twitter account. The author even boils it down to political pundits retreating to private circles, which completely separates it from the real experiences of loss of and yearning for smaller communities.
We've read this same song and dance here on HN almost weekly if not daily here on HN: everyone's glued to their smartphones, Twitter and Facebook control all online content, return to tradition, yadda yadda. I don't really know how this comment is going to be taken but because of all these things, I find it very difficult to believe the author isn't subject to the tyranny of likes and internet attention himself, and that the post reads more as disingenuous intellectual fellatio than anything else, intended to resonate with those who closely follow hacker culture on HN for traction.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had an interesting co-op mode where you and a friend could be deployed into a customized campaign level, accomplish the objective, and exfiltrate. I'd love a game to really own this: good characters, fun gameplay, custom levels, mutators, etc.
The gameplay is sustainable for a little bit in terms of randoms joining servers but all that's left of NS1 and 2 are extremely niche competitive scenes that don't reach the scale of what you want and Nuclear Dawn has no playerbase. It's a nice idea and NS1 produced some of the best competitive FPS players for a few games (Quake 3/CPMA/Live, Team Fortress 2) but ultimately it lacks the fun factor needed to keep a substantial amount of people playing.
Are you a hybrid publisher translating these in-house, or are you a middleman service working with publishers who are handling the translation?
It's peace of mind that I have the material, but I've noticed that various items in there are either old or not as good/useful as I had thought prior. Your comment has given me a bit more impetus to try to focus on deleting stuff (pdfs, ebooks, bookmarks).
Think a lot of companies who were in the bidding war for Discord dodged a bullet when Discord pulled themselves off the market. Reading the way the people "Mason" and "kadybat" mentioned in the gist conduct themselves with users, especially competent library developers, of the service is concerning. Might even prefer if a BigCorp™ expand their more sterile chat client into Discord's market at this rate.
The author tried to open a discussion about their position with an incredibly well-thought out response, and all "kayla" could do was respond to their own post afterwards about having sympathy for the users of the "dead berdoom" board on Reddit but still behaving in the same manner that the author outlined (i.e., just fix your problem you lazy bum).
It's very troubling that the type of person described by the author immediately arrives on site and starts their spiel.
There's a lot of noise in regards to the signal-to-noise ratio, and I have my own biases and petty views (i.e., it's common for users to post articles from people I dislike sharing the same industry with), but there's simply so much to open yourself up to in terms of even reading the comments for a submission I flat-out dislike or otherwise don't particularly care for.
There haven't been any miracles on this website in terms of feeling part of a unified community or experiencing random bouts of generosity in person-to-person interactions, but I consider spending time on HN so valuable that I'd willingly pay a membership fee to preserve some kind of member standard like SomethingAwful hoped to do with the "10bux" membership fee (paying $10 to access the site's forums).
I'm not built like some of the people on here or Reddit who get thrills from solving interview questions or coding for the sake of curiosity about math problems. When I'm solving a puzzle with code where the reward is just knowing an independent answer, I think programming is just a chore. The feeling of it being a chore is alleviated a little if I have someone to talk to about the problem in question. Unfortunately, that type of person who loves solving code puzzles for the sake of solving them is not only the majority, but that type of person is usually in a position to decide whether or not I get to make a living writing software.
1. The people who would rely on this site should really consider upping their reading and social skills to determine if they should even consider expending the effort to respond in the first place. If it's deemed worth it to respond, get a feel for the language the question-asker is using to see if it's someone with vast dev experience but new to a certain system, someone with mid-level or just enough experience, etc., before one types out a response. This could be its own article, but this is a huge problem.
2. There are a lot of people who simply do not care that HackerNews/StackOverflow/etc. are communities and are just looking for answers to their questions. I've come to see that people can make all sorts of guides and resources like https://xyproblem.info/ and community-specific resources like for IRCs, Discord channels, etc. but there are simply people who, while they aren't vindictive, don't give a shit about a given community's etiquette. The people who care enough will at least scan these guides and try their best.
My biggest concern is that both of these aspects overlap and if this was actively used, there'd be situations where:
- Experts/those knowledgeable in a certain domain but lacking in social acumen will lazily link these answers to people who are new but who have at least scanned community guides and have tried their best to create a post, leaving the new user feeling like they're simply being turned away
- The same group noted above will perform the same deal with someone who doesn't care about the given community and just wants an answer, inciting this individual's vitriol and perpetuating the cycle of apathetic or "control freak" experts and outsider chumps expecting free work for no effort
Solving the StackOverflow empty downvote problem is hard, but simply adding a hyperlink to someone else's pre-written words as a SO comment is not the right move.
ESL is a separate problem.
You're right that there's a lot about it that isn't fun. One's ability to enjoy fighting games and RTS games begins and ends with understanding a multitude of different mechanics and having the physical execution to make one's plans a reality. People who play those genres have to practice daily to derive some decent enjoyment from the games in them, almost as if it's a second job (maybe even a third depending on what you do for a living, i.e. the software developers of HN still have to carve out time to keep up with tech advances).
It's worth it in the end in my opinion because of the people one meets in these communities. They're usually very dedicated, most like to see more people be able to compete and are really helpful, and will participate in group events in real life (tournaments for both fighting and RTS games, locals for fighting games).
Example: [John/Jane Smith] was a software engineer at Big Bill's Railroad working on a content management system. When Covid-19 hit, people suddenly stopped riding the trains on Bill's railroad, and Bill had no other recourse but to reduce his workforce: less ridership, less revenue. Unfortunately, [John/Jane Smith] was part of this RIF and [John/Jane Smith is] now back on the market.
If it comes up in a HR screen, substitute [John/Jane Smith] with the appropriate "I" during conversation and it's a Covid-themed template that everyone will get. The above is a crude example, but you should try to turn your experiences into paragraphs. Not everyone has the "leisure" of being in an impacted industry and it's more difficult to do if you've been fired rather than laid off, but it's important to package yourself for various audiences. Put your experiences into singular paragraphs, trim out all the cruft and fat, and you have good blurbs about yourself that are quick and informative.