Hacker News: thewillowcat

New comment by thewillowcat in "Data centers trigger voter backlash"

thewillowcat — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 22:42:13 +0000

These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating.

I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.

New comment by thewillowcat in "Data centers trigger voter backlash"

thewillowcat — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:36:24 +0000

I can tell you, based on local examples, that politicians are setting up deals to bring in data centers without trying to build community support first. Not only that, they are often signing NDAs that prohibit them from telling voters what they have agreed to. It's no way to operate in a democracy, and voters are right to be angry.

New comment by thewillowcat in "The Doorman's Fallacy in action"

thewillowcat — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 21:28:24 +0000

I would love to pay and manage parking from my phone if the apps actually worked intuitively, but they rarely do. It was easier when all I had to do was have a roll of quarters in my car.

New comment by thewillowcat in "Where is the AI jobs crisis?"

thewillowcat — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:53:58 +0000

C-level does not seem uniformly convinced, and they have a lot of reasons to tell that story, even if it isn't really true.

New comment by thewillowcat in "Where is the AI jobs crisis?"

thewillowcat — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:50:19 +0000

I don't see an uptick. Demand has been steady for the past two years after falling from the post-pandemic frenzy. That fits with my personal experience of the tech industry over the past several years.

People are right to point out that hiring is nothing like the post-pandemic years, but it's not clear that it's any tougher out there than, say, 2018. This is from the perspective of someone with a lot of industry experience, though. I can't speak directly to the experience of junior engineers.

New comment by thewillowcat in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

thewillowcat — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:35:59 +0000

I think the pandemic broke the feeling most Americans had that we were all in the same boat and we could work together to solve our problems. Liberals stopped seeing Trump's election as a fluke but an indication that conservatives were living by a fundamentally different set of values. Conservatives started to see liberal policies as a threat to the basic fabric of American life.

When I was younger, it was unusual for people to think they couldn't have friends with different politics, but now it's almost taken for granted in some circles. The current political environment is absolutely corrosive.

New comment by thewillowcat in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

thewillowcat — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:30:00 +0000

Even though I am personally agnostic, I do structure my life around the traditionally meaningful things you're talking about, and I do see the cultural mood a kind of spiritual crisis.

What's less clear to me is why the actual fall in happiness happened so rapidly with the pandemic. People were living spiritually vacant lives well before that!

New comment by thewillowcat in "If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?"

thewillowcat — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:23:28 +0000

This is mostly true, but things were almost universally worse in the mid-to-late 1970s. There was a similar feeling of anomie, stagflation, and a sense that the country was on the wrong track. But people still reported themselves as happier than now.

New comment by thewillowcat in "Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs"

thewillowcat — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:24:52 +0000

Engineers, I am so sorry. They are still going to be your bosses.

New comment by thewillowcat in "MIT Living Wage Calculator"

thewillowcat — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:52:34 +0000

Just because the wider society encourages it, your family doesn't have to lean into individualism, and many don't. We got by when I was a kid with a lot of help from friends and family, when I am absolutely sure we didn't have a living wage under this definition.

New comment by thewillowcat in "MIT Living Wage Calculator"

thewillowcat — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:47:32 +0000

This calculator says that the median household in my county is not making a living wage, which is ridiculous on its face.

New comment by thewillowcat in "Self Driving Car Insurance"

thewillowcat — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 22:10:46 +0000

You're telling me this car insurance drives itself?

New comment by thewillowcat in "I hate GitHub Actions with passion"

thewillowcat — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 14:24:14 +0000

I was so lonely in this opinion for so long, and it is great to see it becoming mainstream. GHA is terrible.

New comment by thewillowcat in "Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far"

thewillowcat — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:19:48 +0000

The vast majority of engineers aren't refusing to use AI until it can do 100% of their job. They are just sick of being told it already can, when their direct experience contradicts that claim.

New comment by thewillowcat in "Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far"

thewillowcat — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:12:20 +0000

These posts are never, never made by someone who is responsible for shipping production code in a large, heavily used application. It's always someone at a director+ level who stopped production coding years ago, if they ever did, and is tired of their engineers trying to explain why something will take more than an hour.