Focusing on completely optional and often imagined "externalities" just reveals a certain mindset (one could find some for cases like Amazon, but bezos became a billionaire in 1998 so whatever Amazon does after that doesn't directly apply, unless the goalposts are moved).

An example I love is hollowing out of this or that. The fact that people wanted to shop at Amazon (especially in 1998) and not a local bookstore, like the fact that people want to go to a Taylor Swift concert and not your indie band's is not an externality, it's a skill issue.

Let individuals decide (including in the court of law like in those copyright lawsuits by those few that actually produce valuable content) how theirs is to be used.

I trust Anthropic, heck even Musk, more than I would trust some apparatchik legally empowered to decide for the "people".

There are, roughly, 3 tiers of developers with regard to any such labor saving tech (js libraries etc.)

People who could do a good job low level and can do it faster with libraries. People who couldn't, or couldn't be bothered, before the libraries, but can now accomplish things. That is the good part. And then there are the unwashed masses, who couldn't dream of accomplishing anything on low level but now can, and who at least in case of JavaScript far outnumber the previous category. Like when I messaged a webmaster whose side would download an uncached 3mb script blob on every page load (it was their script, not ads), to render few paragraphs of text, and they responded that it was by design and the script couldn't be cashed because some variables in it changed based on time, and that is so large because it contains features necessary for other pages that have more than text. I think we'd all be better served if these people pursued a more appropriate career, for example in the roadside trash pickup.

It remains to be seen how it goes with llms, but personally I'm not optimistic.

First, the gp comment says the data center is not good for existing residents - obviously true for housing too, which you didn't refute.

Then it assumes statewide ban should be based on personal preference of local residents. That is just a definition of nimbyism. While in reality I am a YIMBY and the end was part sarcasm, I would genuinely prefer living next to a data center, rather than next to non immigrant poor in the US. I grew up lower middle class or poor by US standards, and also live in Seattle, lots of experience. So I say along with data centers we have a statewide ban on anyone who is lifetime net consumer of tax money anywhere near my backyard.

Nearly everyone I know with kids is more similar to this story than yours.. to each their own but it's certainly not for me:)

There's suddenly much more interest in refactoring, test coverage, etc. and more space for this work, both because it enables more AI work and because AI on clunky code makes it even clunkier much faster than human developers (who are not data scientists ;))

In addition AI makes it easier. Tell me which ones of the 70 fields in this monster class are not used for anything of consequence anymore, this kind of stuff .

Interestingly googling my numbers now and some echo "forums" I was part of I cannot find much... if the Russian segment was archived it's sure not indexed very well.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47291661

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Now, the reason the admin can do that is because every district in the country is yoked to federal funds. This gives them a massive power lever. As far as massive power goes, it's strange that HN understands this well with surveillance but not with anything else. Surveillance is really great, if you could magically make it only usable by people you agree with, say to find lost pets or catch armed robbers and nothing else.

However if you create a power, it will also be used by people you disagree with, for the purposes you abhor. The only solution is to remove the power.

If not, what is your other solution, never allow people who disagree with you to win elections?

The approach that most people in the US seem to favor is "this is totally fine that the right-thinking government can do this, the problem is that the other guys occasionally get to rule".

The real solution is to remove the levers, or the federal spending, so that neither side can do it.

And since learning I shifted firmly into car dependent camp and regret that we bought a house with 60 walkscore and not say 20.

First of all convenience is overblown for everything except drinking and children (paradoxically - people go to the burbs for kids but it must be pretty bad for those who can't drive). Shopping for groceries on foot every other day is a waste of time. Local stores for hardware, clothes etc. are typically more expensive with worse quality and selection. Anything remotely specialized like a climbing gym or a bar that is a good place for dancing is unlikely to be walking distance unless you optimize for it, so you need a car or transit - slow and inconvenient. Restaurants in the US are expensive.. sure if I had a Tokyo style joint nearby maybe, otherwise going out is not a daily thing and if prefer variety, so the walking options quickly lose appeal. The only thing it's unquestionably better for is going to a local bar to drink a beer or eight. I lived blocks from Granville st in Vancouver when I was 25, that was great. Maybe a local park would be nice too, but suburbs do have those. Driving everywhere, as I found out, is just better for everything else.

The second, in the US it filters out the wrong kind of people to a large degree. Given non-existent law enforcement for property crime and disorder in many cities, this is why I suspect people protect their low density. Places where people have to drive, and places without services, will have many fewer people of the kind that cause crime and disorder. The economic lower middle gets caught in the crossfire - I have lived next to affordable housing and I believe 95% of the people there are probably great, but they didn't enforce the law on the other 5%, so if they tried to build anything affordable next to me i would fight it tooth and nail.

We live in the age of unparalleled prosperity, as displayed in part on one of the first slides, human vs wild biomass. Just like with their forebears, framing it as a bad thing in the very beginning really betrays the fundamentally anti-human nature of the modern environmentalists.

"Corporate capitalism" is part of the package that delivered said prosperity; "social media", "surveillance" is just people making choices that old man yelling at cloud disagrees with - like, I am totally with him on privacy, but most people don't care about privacy, and unlike him I do not think I have the right to decide for them.

Just like Paul Ehrlich et al, these people are delusional and truly evil.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/ipcc-scenarios