I mean that it's allowed more bad apps to be created. It hasn't lowered the quality of apps necessarily but the low barrier to entry means things can be created that don't need to exist
I've used AI for building a hobbyist note app myself. It's also a mixed bag but a lot of that comes down to how I've changed.
Before AI dev was expensive so I'd spend hours planning features. I filled 5 notebooks with UI sketches and data schemas and lists of names of what to call things. Building was more or less final as I only had 5-10 hrs a week max and wanted to move on.
Now I type directly into the Claude Code chat box and it writes it in front of me. I haven't planned a thing in months. As a result the app swings wildly around based on my whims and feelings. I can rewrite the whole thing based on something I thought of in the shower. Then days later I realize it isn't right and I rebuild it again. All of the rewrites have done a number on the code and I see dead patterns everywhere from stuff long since deleted.
In a professional app I'd have others to hold me accountable so it's not exactly the same but AI has made it very easy to make a lot of bad apps quickly. If you know exactly what you want though it can feel like magic.
I just hope it's still respecting the data loading and caching algorithms I designed so carefully cause I wouldn't know if it wasn't anymore.
I feel like I'm crazy here but isn't China just sitting there doing nothing?
On one hand there's the relentless barage of American propaganda. I get that a militaristic society needs an enemy to fight against lest they turn on each other. I get that if you tell people a bad guy is coming for your jobs or your lives then you can maybe get your workers to accept worse conditions and living standards which increases profits. It's ghoulish but there's some logic.
On the other hand I can't see China doing anything except minding its own business. No tariffs. No bullying other nations. No wars started. No threatening allies. They don't let their people waste their lives on brain rot or gambling. They largely align with UN resolutions. They respect international institutions instead of always being the asterisk.
Has American propaganda just failed to work outside it's borders? It's not landing at all
What I like about Hacker News is each day I open it up, scan the first three pages, open 2-5 links to read, then close it again. Those pages make it easy to monitor my usage and set limits. I used to do the same with Reddit before that changed
I'd fully support removing infinite scroll or even just banning it from under 18 year olds
Unless you also believe the neutral view is earth being half flat and half round
I like this analogy. You can't just average two ideas and call it a centrist position. Sometimes one position is right and the people supporting the losing idea should be ignored. Facts are how we decide. People are not logical creatures and will cling to ideas beyond all reason or common sense once they've incorporated it into their identity. There is a reason that right wing appeals to emotion aren't popular with LLMs
Or if you read Sapiens you'll know money is a story we tell each other. You can't literally do much with a coin or bank note or numbers on a screen but as long as we all believe it has value, it does. It becomes part of the culture, as you say.
Crypto also has to tell a story about why it's valuable. There was a lot of anti government rhetoric and fear mongering (from libertarians) but the public never really believed the story was true. It was a lot of FOMO.
NFTs failed completely to sell their story but crypto is still hanging on among its supporters. AI is telling a similar story about the value of tokens which is being well received
Agreed with this. The majority would happily stop working but we never hear that message because a small percentage of nutters have tied their whole identity to their job and how hard they work. These people dominate headlines and shift the Overton window. Elon is the poster boy of this but there are plenty of others pushing extreme habits.
Most people I know just want to hit their escape number then they'll never be seen again.
I just regret the loss of the Renaissance values. They believed people should pursue many things to become broad and well adjusted. Nowadays it's just obsession about a single thing to the detriment of all other aspects of life. We've embraced one dimensional people and given them the world.
How is it legal to have different share classes? You could make 100 shares that can vote and then sell 99.9% of the company while maintaining full control. Seems strongly against the spirit of a publicly traded company
Cowards. I maintain my position that all political polls are either useless or actually detrimental to democracy though - how many didn't vote for Hillary because the polls said she'd win? How many more might have turned out if they hadn't seen that? Only the election matters and the rest is noise
I really don't agree. People behave differently when they know they are being recorded. They are less likely to admit mistakes or ask dumb questions.
There's just this odd formal air about them and I get annoyed when certain people try to record everything. Sometimes people just need to be able to speak freely.
There's a time and place for recording stuff - technical walk throughs, bug reports, demos, meetings where attendees are employed by different companies etc. Having your standup recorded just encourages one sentence answers (and yes, that's a bad thing if you want people to actually tell you if they have a problem)
Skip Crossroads of Twilight. Read the summary on Wikipedia. It's a gimmick that covers the same day and events from lots of different perspectives. None of them are good. That book serves as a slap in the face for the author who made a course correction for book 11 and got it back on track. Then Sanderson naturally has a faster pace than Jordan and brings it home strong. 11-14 are great again for those who survive 7-10.
> Humans need a world where being lazy causes their standard of living to deteriorate in a very noticable way, where working hard causes their standard of living to improve
The opposite of capitalism then? Right now, as soon your absolute asset gains equal your expenses, you can coast along doing nothing forever. You'll probably get richer too if you can live below that level. The whole goal of society is to retire and literally stop working hard (minus a few workaholic CEOs who will die alone at their desks).
Once you learn that online outrage doesn't actually impact your life that much, its easy to ignore. Gone are the days of public apologies and now we just sweep criticism under the rug and carry on.
You joke but the drive to increase profits at any cost is having pretty insidious impacts on the world. Enshittification is everywhere now with companies being forced to degrade customer experience to appease shareholders. Nothing wrong with making a profit but making additional profit every single quarter is making the western world hostile to most people on average wages. It's too expensive to even live here with only a small percentage of people doing well under these circumstances.