You must be joking. When I try to log in on Outlook I get redirected to 'microsoftonline.com' (suspicious), when I log in on Wikipedia it sends me to something called 'wikimedia.org' (typo squatter?). How the hell am I supposed to know whether npmjs.help or rustfoundation.dev are _not_ the official domains of those projects?
You must be joking, are you still not using a password manager at all?
When you create the username+password combo you either do it yourself, then put in the password manager the domain, or you use whatever the password manager infers at the registration page, then that's basically it, for most sites. Then 1% of the websites insist to use signin.example.com for login and signup.example.com for signup, so you add both domains to your password manager, or example.com.
Now whenever you login, you either see a list of accounts (means you're on the right domain) or you don't (which means the domain isn't correct). And before people whine about "autofill doesn't always work", it doesn't matter, the list should (also) show up from the extension modal/popup, so even if autofill doesn't work for that website, you'd be protected, since the list of accounts are empty for wrong domains.
It's really easy, and migrating to a password manager just sucks the first couple of days, every day after that you'd be happy you finally did it.
When notpushkin said "the spec is still at XSLT 1.0", I think "the spec" is referring to the WHATWG HTML Living Standard spec, which only refers to XSLT 1.0. (It wouldn't make sense to say "the XSLT spec is at XSLT 1.0".)
Do you think an AI could come up with novel answers that a human wouldn't be able to come up with? I think humans could not just come up with answers to these questions, but some people would be able to greatly outperform AIs by using knowledge that is not widely known.
These models will also have access to what’s not widely known. Imagine running it on everyone’s private email for instance. At the very least, it can currently scale and augment human evil (just like it does with coding). The future will just make that division even wider.
To be frank, if you die, isn't it much more likely your friends and family will just stop using your homelab setup? They'll switch back from Jellyfin to Netflix, replace the smart light bulbs with regular ones, etc.
To give a concrete example, matrix multiplication is not commutative in general (AB ≠ BA), but e.g. multiplication with the identity matrix is (AI = IA). So AIB = ABI ≠ BAI.
Or applied to the programming example, the statements:
"Does my use of AI lead me to neglect my personal hygiene, nutritional needs, or physical health?"
(compare with: "Does my eating of vegetables lead me to neglect my personal hygiene, nutritional needs, or physical health?")
"Have my digital behaviors jeopardized my studies, finances, or career?"
(compare with: "Have my healthy living behaviors jeopardized my studies, finances, or career?")
All questions are about negative impact on your life. To me it doesn't matter whether you label it "addiction". If you answer yes to most of these questions, whatever the subject, it is severely affecting your life.
> Have my healthy living behaviors jeopardized my studies, finances, or career?
I have met people who are so deep into healthy living that it becomes unhealthy, and their hyper focus on what is healthy - often, these days, fed by TikTok influencers, but when I was younger, fed just as much by books - leads to obsessing over what they can eat to the point of malnourishment.
So the answer to this question very much can be "yes". Humans can get addicted to all kinds of things. Healthy eating is only a few steps away from an eating disorder, in the same way that going out for drinks with friends is only a few steps away from alcoholism. Most people will never take those few steps, but for those who do, it can become a serious problem.
I would say all questions except maybe the first one, are about impact on your personal life: "late into the night", "whenever I have a free moment", "personal hygiene", "personal relationships", etc. So if you answer yes to them, I don't think you can use work as excuse; it is affecting your life outside work.
I'm in my 40s and don't have a microwave oven because I don't see the point of it... when I lived in a rented apartment, I got gifted one because how could I not have one? I tried it for a few days and just didn't find it useful. When I bought my own apartment and renovated the kitchen, I didn't bother to install one.
Which can be done in an induction cooker almost as fast, with the result tasting better, and without the need of a specific appliance that takes up considerable space.
I guess, if you have one of those. Vastly more expensive and more involved to install, especially when renting. I’ve never used one because I’ve never been at a place with one.
When I rented I had a standard ceramic hob and still didn't see the point... sure, you gain some time, but it's maybe 5 minutes of unattended time where you can often be doing something else, vs. much worse taste. But I understand that with slow cookers it can make sense for other people. With induction I think it's outright pointless.
As an anecdote, in my country there is a very popular brand of supermarket pizzas, Casa Tarradellas. I never buy them but a friend of mine used to eat them really frequently. So once he shows up at my house with one, and I say OK, I'm going to heat it. I serve it, he tries a bite and is totally blown away. He says "What did you do? I've been eating these pizzas for years and they never taste like this, this is amazing, the best Casa Tarradellas pizza I've ever had".
The answer was that he used the microwave and I had heated it in the regular oven...
I have never had that issue when heating stuff up. Your pizza example is not reheating (and generally you never want to reheat anything that’s supposed to be crispy in the microwave; though not on the stove top either).
Ordinary ovens also do that alright. Takes 20-30 minutes instead of 2-3, but that just trains your delayed reward system a little. Also, don't use a plastic container.
They do a lot more things though, which microwaves don't. Pizza, for example, has to be cooked properly, not with a microwave. If I can only have one, I'll take the mini conventional oven.
The best tasting (and also quickest) corn on the cob is done in microwave. Cook the entire unpeeled ear for 5 minutes on high, cut the butt end about 1 inch in and pull out corn out of the husk. Butter, salt, enjoy!
I don’t own a microwave because I don’t mind the trade offs of other tools that do the same job. But I don’t go around telling people who find microwaves useful that they are bringing about the end of cooking and should feel bad because of it.
Maybe the real question isn’t whether the microwave is useful, but whether she wanted what it offered. That seems to apply to a lot of tech debates today too.
But isn't that the same as saying: what about all the horse carrier drivers who lost their jobs due to cars? What about all the bank tellers we lost after inventing the automated teller machine?
That said, yes, what about them? These are people with real skin the the game - people who spent years learning their craft expecting it will be their life-long career.
Do we simply exclaim "sucks to be you!"?
Do we tell out-of-work coal miners to switch to a career in programming with the promise it will be a lucrative career move? And when employment opportunities in software development collapse, then what?
All while we increasingly gate health care on being employed?
Yeah. If society no longer needs your job then you need to find something else to do. Doesn't have to be software, we mine other things than coal. We need builders, plumbers, electricians, lots of possibilities.
Software dev opportunities won't collapse any time soon, any half decent dev who's tried vibe coding will tell you that much. It's a tool developers can use, it's not a replacement.
"As West Virginians face possible cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, they are also being hit hard in the job market."
"“I’m worried for the people that are laid off, and are they going to be able to find another job? You know, are they my age? How are you going to start over? You’ve got to find a job back in what you know, because you can’t start over at my age,” said Ricky Estes, a former Coal Mining Safety Representative, who was laid off. "
"Even before these possible cuts, affordable healthcare can be hard to find currently in the mountain state"
I wasn't talking about the recent LLM fad, but rather the decades of mass government funding of STEM[1], and programming training in particular (like Joe Manchin's Mined Minds), with the carrot of a high-paying job at the end, leading to a surplus of coders who, as a result, flood the job market and lower salaries and individual employee power.
[1] STEM government funding doesn't seem to end up in, say, marine biology or sociology or the theory of unbounded operators or other fields of science and math that don't make companies a lot of money.
I'd suggest that Mr. Estes find a different mine to work at if he insists on continuing to work in mining. He could also pivot to other industry, safety is a big deal in most industry. I'm sure they would consider him at many locations for similar positions.
I'm not opposed to having programs to help these people, not at all. I'm from Norway where we have free healthcare, education, social security nets etc. I'm all for that stuff, it benefits all of us.
All I'm saying is if new opportunities don't fall into your lap you need to find them yourself.
Since you are from Norway you likely aren't aware that there aren't significant other mining jobs in West Virginia.
Or other jobs in West Virginia, with its long history of coal mining, with profits ending up in the pockets of mine owners, not employees.
Since you think people are only looking for jobs that fall in their lap, I'm certain you have no idea of the issues.
So, now you need find a new job yourself, and it requires a specific training, so you spend your savings on a one year training program, only to find that, once done, the job market has changed and now you also need two years of job experience .. then what?
In the meanwhile, your breathing has gotten more difficult. You think it might be black lung. Your union helped pass the law which helps provide health and financial support to miners who get black lung, and you became a miner expecting this protection, but Trump DOGE'd it so who knows when you'll get your legally required support.
Then move out of West Virginia. Or find something that works in WV. Those are their options.
I also can't say I have much sympathy for people who voted for Trump and then got screwed by Trump. West virginians overwhelmingly voted red. You can't vote against social security nets and then complain that you dont have a social security net.
Pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, red blooded patriots. No one can tread on you.
A lot of people who are passionate about creative fields work jobs that are pretty mundane, e.g. painting drab environmental textures every day for the next iteration of Call of Duty, or cutesy barfy crap for the next Candy Crush Saga. The jobs are very rarely alligned with their own taste and interests, plus they're terribly dull because, as a specialist, you're constantly working only one specific kind of assignments.
I don't think there's a real difference. Thinking a job is "mundane" IMO is mostly a case of not working that job. Many "mundane" jobs have depth and rewards, even if not in every instance.
I've heard people express that they liked working in retail. By extension somebody must have enjoyed being a bank teller. After all, why not? You get to talk to a lot of people, and every time you solve some problem or answer a question and get thanked for it you get a little rush of endorphins.
Many jobs that suck only suck due to external factors like having a terrible boss or terrible customers, or having to enforce some terrible policy.
This sounds like a strawman tbh, I have worked retail for years and I do not know a single person enjoying retail work. Especially not cashiers. I can understand what you are on about, but do you think this is the majority of people? The issue is being able to support yourself which these mundane jobs hardly are able to.
Personally I want these mundane things automated because I don't want to interact with people. I appreciate art though and I want to support human art. I appreciate everything from ancient architecture and stone cutting to renaissance paintings to basement drawings of amateurs. Art used to have character and now its all the same AI slop. Video games will become unplayable for me in the near future. Advertisements will be fully AI slop. Sure there are still artists out there, but they get overshadowed by AI slop.
I mean, retail has many different instances of it. Yes, I can imagine working in a busy supermarket owned by a giant like Walmart would be unpleasant.
But imagine working in a nice cafe in a quiet small town, or a business that's not too frantically paced, like a clothing store. Add some perks like not always doing the same job and a decent boss, and it shouldn't be too bad. Most any job can be drastically improved by decreasing the workload, cutting hours and adding some variety. I don't think being a cashier is inherently miserable. It's just the way we structure things most of the time makes it suck.
Just like you think a human touch makes art special, a human touch can make a mundane job special. A human serving coffee instead of a machine can tell you about what different options are available, recommend things, offer adjustments a machine might not, chat about stuff while it's brewing... You may end up patronizing a particular cafe because you like the person at the counter.
Not exactly. It depends on how many professions get extinct at the same time. If you have ever lived in a place that is in an economic decline because professions have moved abroad and the new professions replacing the old ones just don't provide the scale or only benefit a few in society, you know where things might be headed.
We're talking about places that even after decades haven't recovered. What do you think is happening there right now?
There's a common fallacy that tries to argue that it'll be alright over time, no matter what happens. Given enough time, you can also say that about atomic wars. But that won't help the generations that are affected.
If you live in a dead town with no opportunities then you either make your own opportunities or you move to a place with opportunities.
If you just sit on your hands complaining about the lack of opportunities then you won't get any sympathy from me. People aren't entitled to live wherever they want, humanity's entire thing is adaptability. So adapt. Life is what you make it.
When I say 'place' that includes entire countries. Adapting then depends on the kindness of strangers towards foreign refugees.
I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the near future something like "Adapt. Life is what you make it" could be read in big bold letters above the entrance of a place like Alligator Alcatraz.
I think it's pretty clear that I'm not referring to Palestinians, Ukrainians or Syrians etc here. I support refugee programs but I also acknowledge that we have limited resources. We can't help everyone. We can't just open the borders and let everyone in.
I hadn't heard about alligator Alcatraz until now, I'm not American so I don't keep up with all of Trump's shenanigans. I feel compelled to make it clear that I in no way support Trump. The fact that the US has elected that clown not once but twice is frankly embarrassing.
Humans are entitled to live wherever they want. Capitalists destroying rural regions with false promises (prosperous jobs) is a thing since the industrialization. Should all people move to overrun big cities? Small once established markets are getting destroyed by big discounters or stuff like Amazon. Also adapting is and never was a thing for most people. I dont know where you got that from but this isn't the wild west anymore. People are trying to set up a life for themselves without moving every 2 years. Entitled city person viewpoint.
There's plenty of rural areas with plenty of opportunities. Cities are not the only option. If I lived in a dead mining town I'd move elsewhere.
You can blame corporations or whatever you want, doesn't matter whose fault it is. Complaining and blaming doesn't solve anything. Finding solutions does. Stop complaining, start finding solutions.
I grew up in a beautiful rural place. I'd like to live there, but what I like even more is not having to drive for over an hour to work every day. So I moved. I also went to university in my late 20s and some of my peers were in their 40s and 50s.
People adapt to all kinds of stuff all the time. Saying adapting isn't a thing for most people is ridiculous. Of course it's a thing. It's what you do when your current situation isn't working. You adapt.
And that is extremely difficult at a large scale. Especially when you reduce safety nets and heighten the consequences of failure. A lack of healthcare, poor rural hospitals, extortionate tuition at colleges, high housing costs; these all make it extremely difficult to adapt.
Sure, you can smugly say that the hard-working will survive. But i don't want to imagine what the USA will be like millions of unemployed and under-provisioned Americans. Poverty and the process of falling off the socio economic ladder is ugly for everyone, unless you're wealthy enough to afford to insulate yourself from the consequences.
The fact that this nuance appears to be lost on you makes me suspicious of your motives for posting your opinion.
I'm not talking about large scale. I'm also not talking about politics, which I assume is what you're implying re my motives. I don't have any motives, I'm not even American. I don't really care about all the crazy stuff happening over there. They got what they voted for, meanwhile the world is wondering how they elected that clown not once but twice.
The ironic thing in all this is that these rural people you're talking about are probably the exact people responsible for electing him. Evokes images of leopards eating faces and such.
Agreed. However, according to the author LLM's mostly produce crap, and he doesn't seem to be able to imagine (or want?) that to improve (beyond crap/hallucination and become very useful to many).
Tell me how is it going to be useful to the many? Even better marketing emails? More precise targeted advertising? Even more automated job application rejections? Mass firings due to AI replacing most office jobs?
Whats the benefit of LLMs to the many who barely can operate a search machine?
I am sorry but thinking this will benefit the many is delusional. It's main use is making rich people richer by saving expenses on people's wages. Tell me, how are these people going to get a job once their skills are made useless?
I'm just a regular developer - not rich, not running a company. I used to maintain accessibility apps for blind users (QRead for ebooks, various Twitter clients back when their site was barely screen-reader compatible). Had to abandon them when I got a day job - no energy left for wrestling with deprecated APIs and broken CI pipelines.
Now with Claude Code, I've cleaned up years of technical debt, added proper test coverage, got everything building in CI again with automated release-on-tag. (Yes, CC will literally debug your GitHub Actions yaml.) My blind users are getting updates again after years of nothing.
I'm nobody special. By basic statistics, if LLMs are this useful to one random developer, they're probably useful to millions of others maintaining their own small projects.
Yes, job displacement is a real concern. But the idea that LLMs [only] help the wealthy get wealthier? I'm living proof that's not true. I'm using them to resurrect accessibility tools that the market wouldn't support. That's not exactly a venture capital use case.
I'm not an LLM enthusiast, but I can think of at least one example where these are useful to the many: decent/fast translation from one language to another. It won't be perfect, but it is usually good enough when you are visiting a foreign country for a few weeks and you have no time or interest in learning the language.
Exactly... Why is it that every time a science fiction writer comes up with a new dystopian future to warn humanity about something, there's always a bunch of psychopaths that go "ooh, blueprints for a get-rich-at-the-expense-of-everyone-else scheme!"?
reply