scorpioxy

Oh definitely seems like it. In Australia, at least, I am seeing job ads from recruiters with titles like "AI Engineer" or asking for "LLM-assisted development" or "agentic development" and so on.

I noticed that some of these roles come from businesses that recently had layoffs and were now asking their staff to "do more with less" so not exactly places people would be eager to work at, unless they have to.

I don't know if this is the new norm but this craziness is not helped by the increase in the number of "AI influencers" pushing the hype. Unfortunately, I've been seeing this on HN a lot recently.

I wasn't aware that migrating projects off Cobol has become cheap and it would only take a Claude subscription.

In my experience, the problem had always been maintaining the business logic and any integrations with third-party software that also may be running legacy code-bases or have been abandoned. It can get quite complicated, from what I've seen. Now of course if you're talking about well maintained code-bases with 100%, or close to 100% test coverage, and that includes the integration part along with having the ability to maintain the user experience and/or user interface then yes it becomes a relatively easy process of "just write the code". But, in my experience, this has never been the case.

For the 2.x code-bases I maintain, the customers simply doesn't want to pay for any of it. They might choose to at a later time, but so far it has been more cost effective for them to pay me to maintain that legacy code than pay to have it migrated. Other customers have different needs and thus budget differently.

I'll refrain from judging if 2 to 3 was a missed opportunity or not. I believe the core team does actually know what they're doing and that any decision would've been criticized.

The text encoding stuff wasn't a small change considering what it could break, at least. And remember we're sometimes talking about software that would cost a lot of money to migrate or upgrade. I still maintain some 2.x python code-bases that will be very expensive to migrate and the customer is not willing to invest that money.

Although your general sentiment is something I agree with(if it's going to be painful do it and get it over with), I don't believe anybody knew or could've guessed what the reaction of the ecosystem would be.

Your last point about being able to change internals more freely is also great in theory but very difficult(if not impossible) to achieve in practice.

I don't know. Having maintained some small projects that were free and open source, I saw the hostility and entitlement that can come from that position. And those projects were a spec of dust next to something like Python. So I think the core team is doing the best they can. It was always going to be damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I noticed this thing on Youtube in general with cover images and I've always wondered if it was the content creator that does it or Youtube's platform. I find it both depressing and understandable that this is the kind of content that gets the most views.

Thanks, I'll check out Bedrock. I was under the impression they only provide "enterprise" access as OpenRouter uses them as one of the providers but I didn't actually check. Looking at their docs now, seems I was wrong.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing. But in terms of privacy policies, I have to review(and trust) 2 providers instead of 1. OpenRouter and whatever provider is used for any particular model. I agree with you that it is more convenient though.

Besides trying to run on your own hardware, anybody have recommendations for running some decent models on one of the many "AI clouds" providers? This is for sporadic use and so maybe one of the "serverless" providers that bill by the hour or minute or similar as opposed to monthly renting GPUs.

There are quite a few of them but their marketing is just confusing and full of buzz words. I've been tinkering with OpenRouter that acts as a middleman.

Both of these comments are needlessly snarky. Although it is true that the RSS capability of Thunderbird has been around for quite a while, I enjoy articles that simply reflect the author's discovery or use case.

Like you, I was consuming RSS through Thunderbird around that time as well and thought it was really good. I have since moved to something else(many times) as my needs have changed.

In the spirit of HN, the poster maybe wanted a discussion of how the use of RSS has declined and walled gardens took its place which is not good for the longevity and usefulness of knowledge.

I've read several reports from customers saying that their customer service is really bad. Difficult to know with online reviews of course. Does anyone have positive stories to share? I am looking at Australian hosts specifically and Hetzner doesn't have any data centers here.

Well, in general worrying about the future is not useful. Regardless of what you think, it is always uncertain. I specifically stay away from taking part in such speculative threads here on HN.

What's interesting to me though is that very similar promises were being made about AI in the 80s. Then came the "AI Winter" after the hype cycle and promises got very far from reality. Generative AI is the current cycle and who knows, maybe it can fulfill all the promises and hype. Or maybe not.

There's a lot of irrationality currently and until that settles down, it is difficult to see what is real and useful and what is smoke and mirrors.

From what I am seeing, no one is feeling coy simply because of the cost savings that management is able to show the higher-ups and shareholders. At that level, there's very little understanding of anything technical and outages or bugs will simply get a "we've asked our technical resources to work on it". But every one understands that spending $50 when you were spending $100 is a great achievement. That's if you stop and not think about any downsides. Said management will then take the bonuses and disappear before the explosions start with their resume glowing about all the cost savings and team leadership achievements. I've experienced this first hand very recently.

As someone who's been commissioned many times before to work on or salvage "rescue projects" with huge amounts of tech debt, I welcome that day. Still not there yet though I am starting to feel the vibes shifting.

This isn't anything new of course. Previously it was with projects built by looking for the cheapest bidder and letting them loose on an ill-defined problem. And you can just imagine what kind of code that produced. Except the scale is much larger.

My favorite example of this was a project that simply stopped working due to the amount of bugs generated from layers upon layers of bad code that was never addressed. That took around 2 years of work to undo. Roughly 6 months to un-break all the functionality and 6 more months to clean up the core and then start building on top.

I would encourage you to write about it as well. It seems interesting and unconventional.

I used to tinker a lot with my systems but as I gotten older and my time became more limited, I've abandoned a lot of it and now favor "getting things done". Though I still tinker a lot with my systems and have my workflow and system setup, it is no longer at the level of re-compiling the kernel with my specific optimization sort of thing, if that makes sense. I am now paid to "tinker" with my clients' systems but I stay away from the unconventional there, if I can.

I did reach a point where describing systems is useful at least as a way of documenting them. I keep on circling around nixos but haven't taken the plunge yet. It feels like containerfiles are an easier approach but they(at least docker does) sort of feel designed around describing application environments as opposed to full system environments. So your approach is intriguing.

I recently had to pay the "Microsoft tax" to Lenovo. Which felt more like an unfair punishment rather than a tax since your taxes are meant to fund public services. I kept on thinking that this feels like it should be illegal. I don't use Windows for my work. My servers all run Linux, my clients servers all run Linux and I have no need for it so why am I being forced to pay?

I keep a Windows virtual machine for software that doesn't run on Linux but my use of that over the years has declined dramatically.

To me, the earlier versions of Windows 10 were somewhat OK when they're stripped down. But Windows 11 is bloated beyond belief. And shoving AI functionality in it is going to make things worse.

Not the person you're replying to but I am confused by your comment. What would you do? You'd try and meditate. If that doesn't work, you distract yourself with something else. The mind whirling keeping you up at night is rarely a productive thing, speaking from experience.

I hope my comment doesn't come off as dismissive but learning to meditate is practicing to "let it go". It isn't a switch. You're teaching your mind not to get "too attached" to anything you consider unwholesome.

There are community-contributed relay servers that you can use. Check out the syncthing website, they explain how all of this works. It's a very good piece of software.

Interesting to read. It would be more interesting to know if lowering those levels had a positive effect on their cardiac event outcomes over a few years. I thought it was unclear that lowering those levels makes a difference.

Interesting and unsurprising. Until there are some meaningful consequences and fines for companies that treat data security so lightly then nothing will improve and customers will have to deal with the effects.

I once received notice from a business letting me know that my medical data has been stolen. The letter was quite evasive and carefully worded but I understood that someone walked in and grabbed an external hard drive that had all the medical data on it, unencrypted. This is one of the larger medical businesses in Victoria by the way. Included with my medical information is my identity information that can be used maliciously. This is happening frequently here with big names being reported but many smaller names going unnoticed.

The problem is the amount of information that organisations are asking for and are lax in protecting. Making the so-called "identity theft" a big risk.

I can also share that I've been in meetings with clients where security and privacy advice wasn't welcome and brushed off as being unimportant. There's been some welcome moves by the federal government somewhat recently to get businesses to treat this issue seriously but so far it's only in the form of advice and I can tell you the advice wasn't the thing that was lacking.

edit: Oh and the notice that my data was stolen came a few months after it happened, from memory.

That's a huge topic but I would say implement a hobby project and learn by doing. Pick something you're interested in and start writing code to exercise the theoretical concepts.

A small piece of advice is to make sure you're motivated before diving in. Debugging a race condition, just as an example, can be quite involved and consume a lot of your time and energy to even reproduce.

I am not confident enough to say that someone in Australia does or doesn't pay the 5%. I can ask the ATO but otherwise can't know. I am stating the range of how much it is.

That's incorrect. I'll choose a couple of points to correct.

For the "elective" surgery, it's false to state that they are covered by private healthcare. There was also a push to move away from the term "elective" to something like "non-critical" if memory serves. Simply because a knee or hip replacement, as an example, isn't really something you can choose to do or not do when you're unable to walk. You can wait for a few months perhaps but since it affects your quality of life, including your ability to earn an income, then it's not a choice.

For the 1% claim, that's unlikely considering all the "operating blitzes" that had to be done in Victoria to decrease the huge list(the numbers were reported by the media if you're interested).

The pandemic lockdowns wasn't "several" years ago and the effects were felt long after, definitely not a "short period". You're forgetting to mention the ambulances writing on their vehicles where they're coming from and how long were their shifts just last year. Ramping is also still a problem but I am reading less about it in Victoria since the beginning of this year. Again not sure if it is better or just less reporting on it.

I'll grant you that some people don't get to experience this side of the system and some are lucky that they don't need it at all. Hopefully the more people talk about their negative experiences, as opposed to being surprised, the more accountability and improvements can be introduced. It can be a very good system if it was better maintained.

I'll refrain from commenting any further on this topic and thank you for your contribution.

It's actually anywhere between 1%-5% depending on your income but I didn't want to get too detailed in my comment. And you'd still have the absurdly long wait times. And the out of pocket expenses. Again, not a problem if you can actually make use of what you're paying for.

I do have to state though that the US healthcare system, minus the fact that most healthcare research/advancements happens there, is crazy.

I don't understand where you got that I am saying public health care systems are flawed. Both systems have pros and cons. And I have seen the "going to take time" phrase for quite a long time now and so don't think it holds any value anymore.

In terms of affordability which you also referenced in a separate comment, I disagree. Compared to some prices I've seen in the US, it is cheaper. Compared to other countries I've experienced, it is more expensive. Comparing private and public systems is not straight forward and I don't think this adds any value to the discussion.

In terms of attributing failure to correct sources, Victoria hasn't had a "they"(who you're claiming gimped our public system) for many years now but I am not interested in a discussion about politics.

It depends on the location and it depends on what services you're after. If you have private healthcare insurance, you get to skip the wait times at hospitals and get a choice of public or private hospitals. For clinics, it's a different story and can get quite detailed. The private insurance can help you with the payment there but not wait times.

For some regional and rural locations, the wait times can be better or can be worse than metro depending on the service.

By the way, I also pay out of pocket on top of the medicare rebate so my experience is not with bulk billing clinics. When you get access to medicare, you'd probably still need to pay out of pocket on top of the rebate as bulk billing clinics have all but disappeared. Recent government incentives aim to bring them back but with cost of living increases I doubt that'll work.

Oh yes. Quite bad and I don't know if things are getting slightly better than "bad" or the media is tired of reporting about it.

Up until a year or so ago, an appointment at a GP would take weeks of waiting. Specialist appointments were 1+ years waiting time. This is somewhat better now with the establishment of critical-care clinics operating after hours. This is from personal experience.

The emergency rooms often had waiting time of 12+ hours(or more). I know someone who has been waiting on a procedure at the public hospital for 6+ years. Another has a child waiting for an appointment with an estimated wait time of 3+ years. All non-urgent but a wait list in the years is no longer a wait list to me, it's a system that is not fit for purpose.

Initially all of this was attributed to the pandemic and the harsh lockdowns in Victoria. But a few years out, it seems difficult to still do that. When asked, our government just re-states that they've invested in this and that and then deflect. Recently, due to the horrible state finances, the healthcare system was being downsized with services cut and the bloodshed continues. This is without talking about the systemic issues and incompetence I've seen.

The funny thing is that outsiders think that public health care means free. It's really not. We pay for it on top of our income tax(1-2% on top, more if you're above a certain threshold) and it is not cheap. It wouldn't be so bad if it was working like you'd expect but paying for a non-functional system is....I don't know what to say.

For some definition of "large" and some definition of "impact" within an Australian context, the law firms(and legal departments) are using GenAI to produce and review legal documents. There are redundancies and less hiring with management apparently asking their staff to "use AI" for more productivity. That means less interns and less juniors and businesses pushing more and more work on experienced staff, that they can retain, and mandate that they use GenAI to do more with less.

They can. What are you going to do? Quit? That's exactly what they would want. Much cheaper to increase the squeeze than pay redundancies.

By the way, it's very similar here in Australia. I don't think there's anything an individual can do in this case. This needs regulation. Even with better workplace protections, the forums are full of people describing what you described and worse.

When the term "AI bubble" is used, is this referring to the idea that some businesses think that the current GenAI tools can replace humans and act as cheap labor or the amount of money being invested into this specific industry and corresponding stocks being inflated? To me, they both sound like bubbles.

From what I can see, it's been decreasing rapidly especially this past year. Hybrid arrangements used to be offered at 1-2 days in the office and now it's down to 1-2 days at home. I've also seen quite an increase 2024 onward of full time at the office. Coincidentally, that's when the AU job market took a hit and layoffs started becoming a weekly occurrence.

That's a misleading title. A better source is at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/energy-retailers-offe...

Basically, it is 3 hours in the middle of the day and not everyone qualifies. If you have solar, then you wouldn't be paying anything during most of the day anyway. If you don't and you're a working adult, then you wouldn't be home anyway. Just from my observation, there's a lot of solar installations here and the power companies were starting to complain about grid stability and negative prices. The feed-in tariff(what I get paid for exporting my power back to the grid) is now very close to zero and I believe will actually drop to zero next year. Some states are now contemplating charging customers for the export.

So all in all, I think this announcement will have no effect on people's ability to afford the ever-rising energy prices here. The government did start a rebate for solar batteries recently though. And that had a beneficial effect on the prices and uptake for residences. Before that, the batteries would take too long to repay themselves and people were reluctant to install them.