That's because word got out that the field pays well but most people who had the sociopath desire to make a lot of money didn't also have the skill to get a programmer job. So they did what they always do: attach themselves to a living host and leech it's blood. In a pond of IT field water, for every fish (programmer) there were at least 20 leeches (project managers, product managers, scrum masters, designers, architects, you name it).

I thought several times why I chose to be a fish and not a leech and the answer was not that it's the moral thing to do or that I'm not that bothered as long as they let me with a little blood left. Rather pragmatically that it seemed safer being able to find and make my own food than rely on finding and sucking out the blood of someone who does it already.

For 20+ years they added more and more blood sucking parasites to the poor fish and now, finally, they eliminate the fish altogether. Fine!

I'm just curious where will all the leeches go. What they'll suck on from now on. Can you suck the blood from an AI agent? The future looks exciting if only to see how the parasites adapt (or die).

Noone owns their land because of their race but because they can defend it. The moment you can't defend it anymore, you're conquered and driven out. And conquering is attempted either naively by armed conflict like Russia in Ukraine or insidious like migrants in EU. My bet is that the first will fail and the second will succeed.

Not least because of defeatists like you!

And then there are LLM realists ( Read realpolitik: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger ).

I hate LLMs to the bone and am a master at "people not using the technology can change their behavior to neutralize the impact of the technology". Coupled with an 150+ IQ, I can tell you this technology won't go away. Cynically and pragmatically I use and will use it to the maximum extent of enslaving and eliminating the drone of drones who worship it. Go ahead, replace your mediocrity and lack of critical thinking with something that surely won't spit you out in a ditch a few years from now!

What bubble are these people living in?

Morții mătii the ones who downvote. I guess ‘bad things’ for you is an abstract concept rather than a Lubianka cell that can happen to your sorry ass.

I'll revert to vernacular Latin.

Futu-ți Dumnezeii mătii! So "let them eat cake!" you say.

Anafura, Cristoșii, Biserica, Dumnezeii (și) Evanghelia! (ABCDE!)

Not only Star Trek were visionaries!

Today's AI is a lot closer to how dumb me was imagining computers back in 1985, when I had my first interaction with a Romanian clone of ZX-Spectrum in the school's newly equipped computer science laboratory: https://retroit.ro/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/IMG-20200707-2...

Must say, I was quite afraid to even press the keys at the time! My brothers, many years later, had an epiphany on why that was. You see, I was a countryside boy. I grew in a world where becoming a tractor driver was a sought of career. Thing is, a tractor is a mechanical contraption. And you know what mechanical contraptions have in common? You can't just pull levers and push pedals at random without knowing what you're doing and expect the thing to work, au contraire! You'll break the expensive damn thing.

So my first interaction with the KEYBOARD of the Home Computer '85 was overly gentle - which probably helped because they were shit.

But beyond that, nobody told me what computers are good for and I could only imagine they could help me solve the numerous math problems that were left as "exercise" in the textbooks that gave two helpful examples "1+1 = 2" and "1-1=0" and then posted the problem without the answer: "now prove the Fermat theorem!"

Fuck math and fuck the educational system! The only purpose of those textbooks, just like AI, is to provide me with WORKING examples from which I can LEARN. That's the whole point of living, learning to solve increasingly harder things so eventually YOU can be the frontier. And no AI will take that from me, they are just glorified textbooks.

People somehow forget that the original Turing Test was designed to compare two participants chatting through a text-only interface: one AI and one human. The goal was to spot the imposter. Today, the test is simplified from three participants to just two: a human and an LLM. This changes the test from a comparison to a judgment.

Stop spreading misinformation and partial truths!

Gently introduce them to the realization that death is inevitable.

Ahh, the salaryman lament against contract workers (plumbers, car mechanics, lawyers etc): he makes $25/hour, why don't they charge similar or less?

Because unlike you, who get a steady stream of money even if only sitting on your ass, these people only make a living if someone calls them and asks a job done. If lawyers would charge per effective time spent as much as you would deem negligible on your side, they'd have to work a construction worker job to make a living and do lawyering on the side./

Didn't know that. Good to know.

For reference, I pay about 0.1% property tax (live in Romania), while income tax is about 43%. For $100 I make, I get to take home $57, forget all the "you're only paying part of tax, employer pays another. No, I pay everything because without me there's no income, I can't believe some people still fall for "Out of $100 I take home $1 but I live in a tax paradise because I only pay 1% tax although company pays 98%. But that's the company, not me".

So while the level of income tax is definitely nothing I'm happy about, at least once I draw a net salary, it stays on me. At least I don't have to rent my own apartment from the state after I already paid an arm and a leg to the bank for it in real estate mortgage. Same goes for land and I mean arable land, of which I own some 10 hectares (well shared with my 2 brothers). Not only I'm not losing money on it, I actually get subventions for cultivating it (again, outsourced, I'm not working it myself but lending it to someone who does it, while the terrain retains / increases in value - never in the history of humanity has arable land in a viable area decreased in value over time).

"A 10-hectare (about 24.7 acres) piece of land in Texas typically costs between $40,000 and $430,000, depending heavily on the location and region." says Google AI. Well, where I live it's around $100k. At least I wouldn't sell it for less, not that I would sell it. If I sell it, I have money for a day then inflation and bad investment makes it disappear. Not to mention that it's a highly asymmetric market: I can sell the land in no time but even if I have money, A LOT OF MONEY, people won't sell. Maybe for 3x-5x the market value, some might be tempted. Which suddenly raises my non-liquidation value of the land to about how much it values in Texas.

Do I read this right that the owner of that building would be owing 2.875% tax per year on the market value of the building?

Because that would be in line with what I hear about US property tax and seems insane to me. At that rate you're not owning anything, you're renting. At that rate that's not the land of the free, that's a lifetime of indentured servitude.

Second problem was using a credit card. I know what that is but definitely don't have one, nor has anyone I know around me. Debit card only. You have money, you pay. Don't have money, tough luck. Learn to save.

It's comical how these people claim first person: "I built". Look: having a LLM shit you some code is in no way different than paying some third world country dude on Upwork 5 bucks to build you "a Facebook clone" or whatever preposterous claim of grand software. In fact at this point it's cheaper to pay that third world country team than a LLM.

And yet before the advent of LLMs noone ordering a job on Upwork was delusional enough to claim "I built it". Although it's the same magical process, like the magic ring in fairy stories. You put the ring on your finger, rotate it and make a wish and the ring makes it appear. Well, for 5 bucks or something.

But nowadays every half witted retard with 50 bucks to spend goes to a LLM and has some "Facebook clone" spitted out and claims "I BUILT THIS!". You haven't built shit, and you know nothing!

Fortunately, reality strikes sooner or later but boy am I tired of Lord of The rings claims.

Will post an update after I get back to my parent's home, where I have these beauties that launched me into computer science: https://imgur.com/a/GKrA0vX