Hacker News: bwhiting2356

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection"

bwhiting2356 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:19:43 +0000

Maybe my comment came off wrong. This wiki article made me like him a lot more, it was relatable.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "The AI Layoff Trap"

bwhiting2356 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:18:10 +0000

Fair point

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "The AI Layoff Trap"

bwhiting2356 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:24:58 +0000

Safety and quality have increased.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "The AI Layoff Trap"

bwhiting2356 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:23:31 +0000

I currently work as a software engineer, but I've worked in the past in restaurants (dishwasher/prep cook), doordashing, as a musician, as moving help. If AI automates software I'll just do something else.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "The AI Layoff Trap"

bwhiting2356 — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 06:49:56 +0000

If robotics progress starts to pick up, I'll take this more seriously. Right now, there's practically infinite demand for labor in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and many other industries. All kinds us good projects that could be happening, if you dig into why, labor intensive work is a factor. Why didn't the hydroponics project take off? Why is that still an empty lot instead of a new home? Why isn't there live theatre in this small city? Why is there a pot hole in the bike lane?

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection"

bwhiting2356 — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:41:50 +0000

I was reading Martin Luther's wiki article the other day:

"Johann von Staupitz, his superior and frustrated confessor, concluded that Luther needed more work to distract him from excessive introspection and ordered him to pursue an academic career" [1]

basically he was a moody college student

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "AI Isn't Lightening Workloads. It's Making Them More Intense"

bwhiting2356 — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 23:12:42 +0000

The amount of work left to do is massive if you stack up all the unsolved problems and potential R&D, like diseases with no cure of that we don't even begin to understand. We could choose to simply stop new R&D, but as long as there continues to be suffering from those unsolved problems it's in our nature to continue to try and solve them. And it's in our nature to prevent the free rider problem, where people expect to benefit from the solutions without contributing.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "US Job Market Visualizer"

bwhiting2356 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:12:29 +0000

Are childcare and kindergarten teachers really exposed to AI? In theory, we could put a class of 30 children in front of chatbots with one supervisor. But I doubt we would chose to do this as a society. If office work becomes more automated, early childhood education is actually one area I'd expect to take up the Slack. I can't imagine a situation where we have millions of unemployed former office workers but we leave them idle and let our children waste away in front of screens.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?"

bwhiting2356 — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:26:01 +0000

> Pushing code that fails pytest is unacceptable and embarrassing.

CI is for preventing regressions. Agents.md is for avoiding wasted CI cycles.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday"

bwhiting2356 — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:30:15 +0000

We need contingency plans. Most waves of automation have come in S-curves, where they eventually hit diminishing returns. This time might be different, and we should be prepared for it to happen. But we should also be prepared for it not to happen.

No one has figured out a way to run a society where able bodied adults don't have to work, whether capitalist, socialist, or any variation. I look around and there seems to still be plenty of work to do that we either cannot or should not automate, in education, healthcare, arts (should not) or trades, R&D for the remaining unsolved problems (cannot yet). Many people seem to want to live as though we already live in a post scarcity world when we don't yet.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Social Dynamics at Arm's Length"

bwhiting2356 — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 19:00:00 +0000

ever played 'spin the bottle'?

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]"

bwhiting2356 — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 01:47:40 +0000

If someone actually is the target of a conspiracy, how do we expect the model to respond?

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "AI is forcing us to write good code"

bwhiting2356 — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 05:51:00 +0000

I agree with this. 100% test coverage for front end is harder, I don't know if I'm going to reach for that yet. So far I've been making my linting rules stricter.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Toll roads are spreading in America"

bwhiting2356 — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 21:03:34 +0000

Adding lanes may not cut congestion in the long term, but it can increase throughput and overall utility by moving more people and goods.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "AI World Clocks"

bwhiting2356 — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 04:10:46 +0000

You should render it, show an image to the model and allow it to iterate. No person has to one-shot code without seeing what it looks like.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Being poor vs. being broke"

bwhiting2356 — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 22:54:02 +0000

am i misreading the article?

> I have a van that is falling apart. It needs a lot of work that we cannot afford to do. In the mindset that poor people are unskilled, it appears that I should watch some YouTube videos, get the parts, and do it myself

I’m not saying running a small business is easy. But they previously worked a corporate job and chose to start a landscaping business partly for lifestyle reasons.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Being poor vs. being broke"

bwhiting2356 — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:03:10 +0000

> But, I absolutely hated working in an office. I also hated what digital marketing has done to people’s privacy. I had to get out. So, after 10 years I left and went back to my roots. I founded a sprinkler contracting business with my brother and work outside all day, every day. And I love it.

I don't think this person should be putting themselves in the same category as people who are stuck in poverty with no options.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "AGI fantasy is a blocker to actual engineering"

bwhiting2356 — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 17:38:51 +0000

Water location matters. Is the data center in a desert with scarce potable water for locals? Or is next to a large Canadian lake, plenty of potable water, with people who want to trade something for currency so they can put avocados in their salad?

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break"

bwhiting2356 — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 03:49:46 +0000

> “I am not the person in the VR rig or in the forklift chair. My world is the white collar side of this,”

Society should not be engineered to make sure members of the professional class don’t have to enter the working class. To do so would be unfair to the working class, not to mention bad for competition and productivity. Demand is high for a variety of trades and healthcare jobs.

New comment by bwhiting2356 in "The Bitter Lesson Is Misunderstood"

bwhiting2356 — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 23:19:59 +0000

Audio and video data can be collected from the real world. It won't be immediate and won't be cheap.