You can write with AI

But please, if you're going to attempt to say something about AI...something any of us would ever want to read...something that reflects your originality and humanity...please, just, don't write it with AI.

That's all I ask.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380906

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Or how about, "Nice place...you live alone here?"

Absolutely would choose the robot.

I would check to make sure this can't trigger migraines or seizures. Maybe it's just me, but also, please double check.

Every few months I see a paper about this sort of thing or a startup, but then it seems to go nowhere.

Does anyone know of people or groups working in this space? I'd be happy to be beta tester. I'm immune-compromised and the lack of progress in technical solutions to airborne infection control after 5 years is a major bummer.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45084597

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

This leads me to wonder -- is manual QA even a valid career path anymore? Or are these jobs being eaten by automation, AI, and the usual protestations that "devs do their own QA" and "we don't need QA"...in other words, forcing your users to become unpaid beta testers for a finished product and hoping for the best?

Just curious.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43985188

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

That is to say, some people really are willing to be activists. They will organize protests and boycotts and things like that.

Other people are in marginalized communities and are trying to get a feel for whether they should move to a different region or even a different country.

Some folks don't really have a plan but they want to stay informed. If at some point a magical line is crossed, they might suddenly say, "That's IT! I can't take it anymore! I have to DO SOMETHNG!" and that's when they'll become activists.

But some folks are realistically never going to lift a finger to help themselves or anybody else. They'll just bitch online and/or be stressed.

What I'm working on is figuring out in what ways I might, in the right situation, be moved to contribute. If things get really bad (and they will), what will I realistically be doing? I'm disabled, so I can't be out in the streets. If things get even worse, I might write about the niche public health / politics topics I've accidentally become an expert in. And if something happens where medicare and medicaid are shut off, well then all hospitals everywhere will basically be non-functional. This will be a crisis for all but most immediately for the chronically ill -- any of us at that point who are able to will be leaving the country ASAP.

In other words, I need to know enough to keep writing (which I would do anyways) and I need to know when things are hopeless enough that a person with a messed up spine should travel out of the country anyways. That is currently all I need to know because it's all that is actionable for me.

There is a massive temptation to doomscroll into infinity, but that merely serves the enemies of sanity. I know what happens next because I've read Sarah Kendzior and Hannah Arendt. It's not good. But I also know that one of the first things that happened during the anti-semitic purges in Nazi Germany was that a ton of Jews got appendicitis from stress. Sometimes the body wants to align with power so badly, it aligns even with evil power and against its own interests. We have to be very careful not to poison ourselves and make evil's job easier.

Unfortunately, in this day and age it's like choosing between two different forms of torture. Social media is so toxic and fries the nervous system so much - it's awful. The news is awful. And being alone with OCD is awful. (And yes I've tried various treatments - so far, nothing's worked great. B12 shots did help a bit and so did prednisone accidentally, but I can't stay on that long term.)

Also ozone machines, when used properly and safely (no occupants), can sometimes help to speed up the offgassing process. If you're interested in doing this, please read up on it so you don't do it wrong or dangerously. It can also in some cases cause new, worse VOC's to form, so...user beware.

He keeps talking about wanting to do something "important." But I think he is conflating the "prestigious / expected" meaning of important with another interpretation: "meaningful."

Plenty of next steps for a founder are prestigious. But few are meaningful. Most new companies make money by finding efficiencies and disintermediating people from processes in various ways. This usually means pushing an entire sector (like travel agents) out of gainful employment. For whatever reason, Silicon Valley startups rarely punch up - they don't find efficiencies in health insurance or healthcare billing, they don't do "Moneyball" for CEO's and figure out how to run a company for less, they don't find efficiencies that cause us to pay less money to the rich (except Cost Plus Drugs).

No, they punch down, and make increasing numbers of the middle class into the new precariat. For that, the founders are praised and told that they are important. But the work, being morally questionable, is not meaningful.

  By contrast, many meaningful endeavors are about charity - giving access, opportunity, dignity, and money to those on the bottom rungs of society. 

  The emptiness he feels is a lack of meaning, but he's trying to fill it with more prestige, and that's why it's not working.

Why are they more expensive? I hoped they would be cheaper without a driver to compensate.

...but I dropped out of Harvard, in part because of health problems that were delayed consequences of extreme neglect and an unhealthy home life.

My take on things is this. When you are the "exception," people talk a lot about how you should Just Get a Good Education, and then you can escape all this. You may get a scholarship to a good school, but that's it. Abuse in the home? That's your problem to deal with. Parents poor and overwhelmed? Screw those parents, we're abandoning those parents, we only care about their kids, and only if they're such prodigies that they can succeed in spite of the other numerous obstacles.

Here's the thing. I've known several prodigies from challenging backgrounds who got into great schools. Many of them had a lot of problems because of physical and mental health issues caused by their upbringing and environments. Some of these problems interrupted or curtailed their educations.

By contrast, I've also known people who had safe, stable homes, and long-term affordable housing. These folks were always able to further their education. But smart, educated folks with chaotic and abusive home lives were not always able to make it to happiness and stability.

Saying education will fix all woes is a cop-out. It's a way of uplifting a few show ponies and leaving everyone else in misery. Speaking as a former show pony. If you replace "two parent household" with "safe, stable, healthy home" I agree with what he's saying. I would also add healthcare. My knowledge of calculus did not help me as a young person when I was injured and had no money for physical therapy. Only socialized medicine would have helped me. Education is great, but it's not a substitute for a functioning society with a safety net.

Long before actual submersion, the effects of rising seas will affect property in the forms of more frequent storms, flooding, and the effects on groundwater like in the Florida condo collapse. Inland, many parts of the world will start having water scarcity, or fire risk.

Instead of an all-over rising real estate market, I think prices in places like Florida, parts of Texas, Louisiana, etc. will crater due to uninsurability. The places that are still standing undamaged in 15 years' time will be incredibly expensive.

The only tricky part is knowing where those places will be exactly. The areas that were "sure things" just a few years ago, such as the Pacific Northwest and Vermont, have been shown to be not nearly so certain. Lytton, Canada spontaneously combusted, while VT has had many damaging storms and floods. So it's a guessing game at this point.

One could make the argument that renting is the best gambit, because that's the only way you won't get stuck with a climate change "lemon."

All in all, I have frequently had to reschedule or erase something I thought was "set in stone" for a variety of reasons. I've never regretted writing something in erasable ink whereas the same cannot be said for permanent ink.

TL;DR - the more dynamic, the better.

Secondly, if I have to make a change, my biggest problem is not changing the one item, but changing the downstream issues, such as dependencies, or energy levels. If I'm cancelling task A then I'm also having to figure out how to get dependency B and C done another way. If I'm moving appointment Y to another day, do I have the energy to do appointment Y along with what I already had scheduled for that day?

Dependencies and working with your "energy budget" might be two places for AI to help with a digital planner.