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6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#161

Post by throwaway7ahgb »

majewsky wrote: post #144
poincaredisk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can’t be a techno-optimist anymore. You can be, we're just getting old. LLMs are very exciting! WASI (and a bit older WebAssembly) is a bold idea! Rust is a breath of fresh air and ancient tools are finally being rewritten! Edge computing may change the way we write programs! Hardware is finally ready for VR! Now, I'm quite sceptical and pessimistic about all of the above. But I think this says more about me tha…

> LLMs are very exciting This just goes back to your grandparent comment: "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." Also, I'm not particularly excited about my day job becoming about fixing up half-broken scripts that other people pump out with LLMs. > WASM/WASI is a bold idea I will admit that I have not looke…

"I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."

To read this and get upset is very bizarre to me. LLMs as most of the public know, is just a few years old. The things these services are doing are nothing short of sci-fi ideas 10 years ago. And were complaining it can't do our laundry?

IMO this is peak first world complaning. Give it some time.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#162

Post by prox »

FrancisMoodie wrote: post #128
prox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like historical revisionism. Not saying Apple wasn’t part of a certain trend, but it’s an odd bone to pick since Apple technically is one of the few companies that relies on hardware sales, not ad revenue. Google is far more likely to fit your profile. It’s where ads (adwords and adsense) started to transform the web. First just a few cute banners at the top. And these days some sites just plaster the whol…

It's hard to pick any singular company that started to make tech suck because it's a result of the economical structure in which these companies are trying to exist. The neverending search for more profit, more growth every quarter has made it impossible for companies to adopt a strategy that is not focussed on consumer exploitation, at least in the long run.

Agreed, they also calculate in “future profit” in the valuation and so you need to always hit your targets.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#163

Post by throwaway7ahgb »

wnc3141 wrote: post #39
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty demonstrably not true, historically. The explosion of the middle class of the 20th century was because technology still required a huge amount of labor, but it increased productivity to the point where that labor could live much more comfortably on their wages.

A changing means of production will likely shift the wealth from a previous ownership class to another. Whether that diffuses into the middle class is mostly a political problem. However the stronger a middle class is, (through access to capital) the faster technology production and adoption will become. Or so is a school of thought of contemporary political economy (read Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu. et. al. )…

This is nihilist thinking. There is no complete barring access to capital, even in the 19th century "middle class" loans were possible.

Today access to capital is as easy as it ever was (except maybe '06). The people who take risks are rewarded and there are countless stories of people moving out of middle class.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#164

Post by throwaway7ahgb »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #21
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty demonstrably not true, historically. The explosion of the middle class of the 20th century was because technology still required a huge amount of labor, but it increased productivity to the point where that labor could live much more comfortably on their wages.

Productivity has been increasing even more rapidly, but the middle class is collapsing, so I'm skeptical that these two things are very strongly related

How can the middle class collapse exactly? It is a statistical group.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#165

Post by throwaway7ahgb »

zoul wrote: post #37
atoav wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is now a mercenary in the battle for people's attention and/or a fraction of their monthly money. The number of people in tech grew in absolute terms. That also means the fraction of people giving back to open source also grows and we are getting better open source software. Many however don't give back, they just take.

Are we demonstrably getting better open source software? By what metric? (Not sure myself, asking in good faith.)

"Are we demonstrably getting better open source software?"

Yes.

The friction to create something good and useful is as low now as every. Anyone can create a github account, share source and overnight millions of people can use that thing. It happens here on HN frequently.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#166

Post by throwaway7ahgb »

mordae wrote: post #84
seoulmetro wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is fine. It's the money we made along the way that ruined it. Somehow money ruins everything. The internet just made it easier for people to extract money from everything.

Sadly it's not money. It's inequality. To build a stable business, you need to carer to the rich more then to anybody else.

This statement keeps getting postulated here and I still don't buy it.

The economy is NOT 0 sum. Inequality in itself doesn't doesn't do anything bad. Billionaires existing can be true while poverty shrinks.

IMO it is a low value argument to state that we could fix world problems by removing "inequality". I'm happy to be proven otherwise.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#167

Post by throwaway7ahgb »

tim333 wrote: post #153
mordae wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it's not money. It's inequality. To build a stable business, you need to carer to the rich more then to anybody else.

I don't think that's the issue so much as the global reach of tech makes it winner take all. Instead of 100,000 retailers making a bit of money they go bust and Jeff Bezos makes all the money.

That's not what is happening though.

Millions of companies and indie developers have a platform to make money. This never existed before.

Amazon, Google and Apple also employ thousands of SWEs that make a good living building these services for customers.

Bezos doesn't "make all the money".

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#168

Post by mdhb »

roenxi wrote: post #76
disqard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "freeing us up as a species from needing to do a bunch of artistic and creative chores." Would you please clarify something? You're saying that we need to be freed from "artistic and creative chores" -- so that we can be free to do what? For me personally, the highest-quality leisure I can think of is to follow creative pursuits and hone my artistic abilities (e.g. playing a musical instrument, making something wit…

Free to do whatever you like. If you want to sit around playing musical instruments in your spare time nothing is stopping you. We've had superhuman chess AI for decades and that hasn't stopped anyone playing chess. But if I want to review a game showcasing the highest level of chess play I wouldn't turn to human games. Similarly, sooner or later, if I want a specific picture of something I'm not going to be wasting…

This is such a genuinely weird worldview to me.

Like you’re missing a huge and meaningful chunk of one of the best parts of humanity.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#169

Post by roenxi »

mdhb wrote: post #168
roenxi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free to do whatever you like. If you want to sit around playing musical instruments in your spare time nothing is stopping you. We've had superhuman chess AI for decades and that hasn't stopped anyone playing chess. But if I want to review a game showcasing the highest level of chess play I wouldn't turn to human games. Similarly, sooner or later, if I want a specific picture of something I'm not going to be wasting…

This is such a genuinely weird worldview to me. Like you’re missing a huge and meaningful chunk of one of the best parts of humanity.

I'm talking about work. There are people who enjoy their work, but they are rather rare. Work is a "huge and meaningful chunk" of our lives, but frankly it'd be a better world if it wasn't.

Re: 6 months ago, I left the bullshit industrial complex

#170

Post by ryandvm »

prox wrote: post #116
m463 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how I felt. Computers made everyone's life better! My opinion is that "the big sellout" happened when apple introduced the iphone and the apple app store. and it basically came down to a couple nuances in their policies... #1 apps have unfettered network access #2 apple would never approve security apps like a firewall (because #1) and when a big player sets an example, it normalizes the situation for everyon…

This seems like historical revisionism. Not saying Apple wasn’t part of a certain trend, but it’s an odd bone to pick since Apple technically is one of the few companies that relies on hardware sales, not ad revenue. Google is far more likely to fit your profile. It’s where ads (adwords and adsense) started to transform the web. First just a few cute banners at the top. And these days some sites just plaster the whol…

Agree. Ad-based businesses are eating the world. They hoover up data, invade your privacy, and then set up moats around their little fiefdoms (when they aren't selling your data to the other fiefdoms).

And every ad-based business has the same underlying strategy: steal from the finite amount of attention you have and use it to extract your wealth.

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