Hacker News: xantronix

New comment by xantronix in "Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors"

xantronix — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 15:46:18 +0000

I am of a particular disposition that makes it difficult for me to do lie about my work, especially if I were in a firm where people are reading my chat transcripts. As much as I want to stick it to The Man, it feels a lot better for me to just say "no" and burn through my 401k until this blows over.

I'm not too proud to admit that this whole thing scares me though. I fail to see how anything will get better.

New comment by xantronix in "Ford hired AI and sacked humans. It backfired badly"

xantronix — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 05:50:11 +0000

It wasn't meant to be a literal statement, more just a reflection that the situation is so bleak that I cannot imagine a better future; anybody expressing even a little bit of it seems to me like a somebody who has not been crushed into compliance through force.

Quoting the host of the recurring Quiz Broadcast sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look: "Books mention 'hope'. What was 'hope'?"

New comment by xantronix in "Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors"

xantronix — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 04:50:49 +0000

The wisdom to understand that velocity is not equal to value; and the optimism that this will all end at some point.

New comment by xantronix in "Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors"

xantronix — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 04:37:27 +0000

You seem like a person who works at a place that doesn't have an AI mandate. That sounds nice. I miss when we had nice things in the world like that. I will never take that for granted again.

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

xantronix — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:38:26 +0000

I'm happy to endure HN if it means I get to see hopeful, reasonable observations like yours.

New comment by xantronix in ""Fix" MacBook Neo Cursor Lag: Record 1 Pixel of the Screen Every 10 Seconds"

xantronix — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 14:35:52 +0000

It's an old NeXTism!

New comment by xantronix in "Job application asked for my SAT scores"

xantronix — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 23:16:30 +0000

A lot of responses pointing out various flaws with this question, including the fact that it can be used as a proxy for ageism, the fact that the grading scale has not been consistent over time, or that most foreigners will not have gone through the US education system. However, is it really that uncommon for Americans to never have had reason to take the SAT/ACT, such as, simply not going to uni, or going straight to work after graduating high school?

New comment by xantronix in "Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good"

xantronix — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 23:23:38 +0000

Did the entire history of computing prior to 2023 disappear? Are we really that boned?

New comment by xantronix in "I found 10k GitHub repositories distributing Trojan malware"

xantronix — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:07:36 +0000

GitHub is so close to becoming SourceForge. In order to become the scum-infested cesspool it truly longs to be, Microsoft needs to relentlessly serve ads on GitHub. Then, the cycle will once again be complete.

I can't wait to discover the next thing to be disappointed by in a decade's time.

New comment by xantronix in "A 'cold blob' in the Atlantic could be a sign of AMOC shutdown"

xantronix — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 18:31:19 +0000

Would you work in such a facility?

New comment by xantronix in "I am retiring from tech to live offline"

xantronix — Fri, 29 May 2026 19:11:31 +0000

I don't really see the problem of proliferating a message one finds sufficiently important to as many places as one has reach.

New comment by xantronix in "We should be more tired than the model"

xantronix — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:00:48 +0000

One thing I've noticed is that LLMs have allowed middle managers trapped inside the role of a developer to finally self actualise.

New comment by xantronix in "About LLMs at Zig Days"

xantronix — Thu, 28 May 2026 20:17:55 +0000

Generative AI has and their providers have become an implicitly political subject. It shouldn't come as a surprise.

New comment by xantronix in "Leave Me Behind"

xantronix — Mon, 25 May 2026 15:14:22 +0000

What makes an appeal to experience, subjective or otherwise, an expression of Main Character Syndrome? Just because somebody pushes back against the tides doesn't mean they fancy themself more important than others. Further, they're not saying "we should all stop using LLMs". The title of the article is literally "Leave Me Behind", an expressed desire to no longer participate in a system they believe to be harmful.

They explicitly state a position they take for themself, whereas you make an implicit value judgement of all practitioners who feel similarly. This could be read in a way as an assumption that everyone else should be as miserable as you.

New comment by xantronix in "Shunning AI is the human choice"

xantronix — Thu, 21 May 2026 21:08:46 +0000

A lot of this discourse is intended for a wider audience than just us technical folk, and so the vocabulary used mirrors that of news headlines. If I were to guess, I would say it distracts from the discourse of the sociopolitical and socioeconomic impacts of generative AI providers and their products.

It is understood which forms of AI are at play here when the discussion revolves around the massive companies, capital investments, datacenters PR campaigns, and mandates required to create and sustain them and their usage.

New comment by xantronix in "Shunning AI is the human choice"

xantronix — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:54:46 +0000

I think it should be fairly obvious by now which form of AI people refer to when they talk specifically about theft. It gets a bit old and repetitive to expand the shorthand in every conversation possible. If people are genuinely curious about other forms of AI, that information is readily available.

When Tesla FSD was in the zeitgeist, theft never entered the discussion, because it was clear that form of AI was not predicated upon theft.

New comment by xantronix in "Google Declaring War on the Web"

xantronix — Thu, 21 May 2026 03:10:52 +0000

Who would be payrolling this astroturfing in group #1?

New comment by xantronix in "An AI Hate Wave Is Here"

xantronix — Mon, 18 May 2026 03:37:42 +0000

> Anti-AI propaganda is false-flag.

Why would AI providers benefit from anti-AI propaganda?

New comment by xantronix in "OpenClaw Creator Spent $1.3M on OpenAI Tokens in 30 Days"

xantronix — Sat, 16 May 2026 17:08:18 +0000

One could say "that's a great point, we should take more direct ideological action to address this issue!", but expounding upon the finer details would likely get one banned here.

New comment by xantronix in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

xantronix — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:51:28 +0000

Because of the concerns you cite, I think working out the basic economic systems and incentives for paying people is a much more pressing concern than building magnificent machinery that we don't even own. There has been no effort on their end to demonstrate good faith nor to uphold their end of the social contract, which is why it's in our hands to demand the fundamentals to lead a life of dignity.