Not wrong, but don't forget there are many militias with itchy trigger fingers all over the political spectrum here, though admittedly some parties have more affiliated with them than others. It's not a stretch to assume should fighting in the streets escalate beyond ICE shenanigans that larger armies would not quickly congeal from the pocket groups and individuals.
> there are many militias with itchy trigger fingers all over the political spectrum here
That’s still not a civil war in the conventional sense. If it gets entrenched and coördinated it could be come something we’ll debate, e.g. the Troubles. But insurgency != civil war.
Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Civil wars are large-scale mobilizations. That’s what makes them uniquely destructive. Insurgencies are also destructive, but in a categorically-different way.
I am, under the right circumstance. I'm not a pacificist, at least not historically. Although, we can banter all day with tough words, but the reality is that none of us can really predict how we will react to a situation until we are in it.
But we won't, because those are hard to maintain versus the convenience of letting providers do it for us, hence why we keep getting suckered into handing over control to these centralized powers.
I am farsighted, which worsens with each passing year. While I get around this online by making full use of browser options to enlarge text for me, etc, because everyone uses different fonts anyway, I can also kinda see the perspective shift to someone looking at this font switch as being just one of many parts of "an attack" on accessibility by the current administration. Their general attitude seems to be that if the change was made in the past to accommodate a particular group of people, in this case, those with poorer eyesight/trouble reading things on screens which were starting to inundate our lives at the time, then it's got to go because it somehow disrupts their status quo.
It's a silly stance for insecure men, which is why the brief uproar this change caused is so wildly ridiculous and adds to the pile of evidence illustrating that they are not serious leaders.
God, how ridiculously hyperbolic. But we're in the midst of a debate about the origins of a deep fried candy bar with strangers on HN and just supposed to believe that you live in Scotland and have seen every possible offering in every possible shop.
Sounds stupid to decry something that people can verify to some extent then proceed to offer information that nobody can verify, doesn't it? This tired drum of Wikipedia being able to be edited by any wad off the street needs to be laid to rest, especially now in an age where misinformation is insanely prevalent in our general media and trusted sources who get paid to spread it.
Living in the US, what I find even more wild is just how many people purchase them here who have zero need to own a truck that size. It's got to be the most absurd parts of our modern cultural identity.
Even if the owner is using it as a rugged machine for hauling tools and supplies back and forth, they make for terrible work vehicles. A bed that's advertised as 6 foot actually measures about 5' 7" if you're lucky and the wheel wells eat into it so much that loading anything wider than maybe 4' just feels stupid. Nothing about it feels convenient or helpful when compared to a proper work van or a small flatbed. It's basically just a comfy exoskeleton for the driver to pickup groceries.
Meanwhile, I'm driving from site to site with a 4-cylinder hatchback full of tools in custom boxes I made getting twice the gas mileage. It gets some funny looks, but it gets the job done, which is more than I can say for most of the not-a-scratch-on-them trucks I see on the road, here.
I do empathize with those picking the vehicle not on practicality but cool factor - considering how common and accepted gadget cravings are in other areas, I would find it unfair to attack that aspect. I'm currently using ~5GB out of my laptops 64GB of RAM, pretty sure I could start a small fire with my flashlight, and my motorcycle has off-road suspension in a country where the most demanding obstacle is a curb. Other things would objectively fit my needs better while costing less, but be less fun - and fun can be hard to find these days.
As you say, they are absolutely terrible for work use as well - Japanese kei trucks famously have larger beds than some common US pickup trucks, and the size of the custom beds we use in the EU makes the US ones look like absolute kids toys - but that too I wouldn't mind too much if they were just forced to be safe and with decent emissions so the idiocy mainly affected the driver and their wallets.
I'm not too impressed with your vehicle only getting twice the gas mileage though. I'd expect more than that. :P
> I'm not too impressed with your vehicle only getting twice the gas mileage though. I'd expect more than that. :P
I'm going to blame the ham radio antennas and bike rack ;)
But in all seriousness, I was getting slightly better mileage when the car was new 6 years ago. It has declined a bit, despite my regular maintenance, but I'm still very pleased with it. It might be more than twice the mileage of the average truck on the road, to be honest, but I find it hard to get a clear number. I think some truck owners embellish the mileage they actually get, as does the dealer sticker on the new vehicles for sale since those numbers assume perfect terrain with no traffic, last I checked. Then I hop into a co-worker's 2020 truck and realize he's getting 12mpg on a good day and nearly have a heart attack.
My vehicle gets between 45 and 55mpg on average, depending if I'm on the highway a lot or more urban environments.
American pickups are very practical for what they are designed for. Your 4 cylinder hatchback is not going to pull a 20,000lb trailer up a steep grade, or haul enough lumber to frame in a house, or a 7,000lb bed full of gravel. While there are very visible idiots in the USA that drive big trucks for aesthetic reasons, there are also plenty of farmers, contractors, etc. that need them as a practical tool to haul heavy loads. For them, it’s not an oversized car but a smaller and more economical alternative to a large commercial truck.
> American pickups are very practical for what they are designed for. Your 4 cylinder hatchback is not going to pull a 20,000lb trailer up a steep grade or haul enough lumber to frame in a house, or a 7,000lb bed full of gravel.
An f150 can do none of these things.
> While there are very visible idiots in the USA that drive big trucks for aesthetic reasons
That is 95% of the market.
> there are also plenty of farmers, contractors, etc. that need them as a practical tool to haul heavy loads.
For the average contractor a panel van would be more capable and useful. You can put 3 metric tonnes in a man tge (and actually have the space for it) and tow a 3.5 tonnes trailer. And it’s available bare if you need an open bed, or a custom rear (e.g. for a lift).
So? I gave specs for a typical 1 ton truck. A 1/2 ton F150 is smaller, cheaper, and more efficient. It depends on what you need.
A panel van is more useful for some things, a truck for others- it depends on what you’re doing. You’re not going to fill your panel van with manure or gravel and then transport it across a muddy field without getting stuck. I grew up in a rural area of the USA where everyone owned trucks they needed and used for work, most were old and rusty and they all also owned a regular passenger car they used when they weren’t hauling something heavy… people were poor and did not waste fuel driving a truck except when it was essential- not a fashion statement, just a tool.
My family owned a 3/4 ton truck that we needed for hauling our boat and livestock, but we drove an old Volvo at other times. My dad built the home I grew up in, and he had to transport all of the materials to build it himself.
I think the hate on here is coming mostly from a place of ignorance about what life in rural America is like, which is what full sized American trucks are engineered and perfectly suited for. Where transporting thousands of pounds of materials across a muddy field in 4WD isn’t something you do once a year but often twice a day just to survive.
So that's a small fraction of the market, and literally none of what's already landed in europe.
> I grew up in a rural area of the USA where everyone owned trucks they needed and used for work, most were old and rusty and they all also owned a regular passenger car they used when they weren’t hauling something heavy… people were poor and did not waste fuel driving a truck except when it was essential- not a fashion statement, just a tool.
OK. Apparently you're waking up from a coma and missed the last 20 year of US car trends?
> My dad built the home I grew up in, and he had to transport all of the materials to build it himself.
Cool. My grandfather did the same for his family, using an R4. And the odd rental when that wasn't enough.
> I think the hate on here is coming mostly from a place of ignorance about what life in rural America is like
Or you could just read what people actually write, and see that your "thinking" could not be more wrong.
There's never been less farmers in the US, or more trucks sold. And full-size trucks are nowhere near sales leaders.
My point is that full sized American trucks are uniquely effective at what they are actually engineered for, and plenty of people do need and use them for that. The fact that they are even more popular with people that have no practical need for them doesn’t invalidate my point in any way, despite your rude and dismissive tone. If you dislike people misusing a tool for something other than it’s practical purpose, that’s fine, but why project that onto me, or the tool itself?
I very much appreciate the capabilities and utility of American pickup trucks, despite not owning one because I don’t need one. I also find it distasteful when people use them as urban passenger cars to project some sort of “personal brand” without having an actual need, but that in no way diminishes my appreciation for their practicality when used appropriately.
I suspect people are in part so aggressively hateful of American pickup trucks because they see it as a symbol for an opposing side in a culture war. However that perspective seems really silly to anyone that uses them properly to meet a practical need.
The only culture war is between your ears, people are “hateful of American pickups” because as I already wrote multiple times and you refuse to read the overwhelming majority of their uses and users are what you claim to find distasteful. When “used appropriately” is closing on nonexistent and the misuses cause massive harm it’s a reasonable response. Even more so when per TFA your leaders are aiming to spread that plague by (economic) force.
> my appreciation for their practicality when used appropriately.
You can do that and still acknowledge that pickups are a massive problem. These are not exclusive thoughts despite your refusal to see it. It might be easier if you substitute pickups for mine trucks, excavators, or rollers, which I assume you don’t have the same emotional attachment towards.
> You can do that and still acknowledge that pickups are a massive problem
I never said they aren't, you seem to be trying to have an argument against a position that I have never stated or held. I was explaining how these vehicles can be practical when used for their intended and engineered purpose, and your rebuttals are targeted as some other assumed perspective or position that I simply don't have. Please drop the insults- that isn't how we discuss things on HN.
My acknowledgement of the practical utility of American pickups for their engineered purpose doesn't come from any kind of emotional attachment, or affinity for them, nor any delusion that most of their owners actually need or use them properly- that's all coming from you. I'm a European car nerd/snob and wouldn't personally be caught dead driving any American vehicle, I just really don't like them. I own a fuel efficient diesel German SUV that I tow a flatbed utility trailer behind, so I can do some of the things one would usually do with a pickup, without having to own one.
(In the context of the discussion about these vehicles in the EU)
In the EU, neither would any American pickup truck: If registered as a normal class B vehicle, the total gross vehicle weight would be limited to 3500 kg (7700 lbs), and it would at most be permitted to tow 3500 kg (7700 lbs) with full independent trailer brakes, 750 kg (1650 lbs) without. You can add roughly 1000 kg if you tow a semitrailer, but getting the vehicle certified with a fifth wheel would probably be infeasible.
It doesn't make sense as a class C truck here (special driver's license, tachograph requirements for commercial use). It's way less nimble than our Scania/Volvo trucks (their turning radii are way tighter, and and have much smaller footprint for a given capacity), and is obviously a lot less capable than a vehicle that can be build from small utility up to the ~100k lbs range.
At the same time, if a farmer is outside the scope of a regular personal vehicle, they're most likely going to use their go-to tractor (e.g., Lamborghini, John Deere) which can haul anything anywhere, otherwise if they really need to haul they'll be reaching for a Scania/Volvo.
(It is common to register smaller, 7500 kg class C vehicles, but that's usually stuff like large Mercedes Sprinter vans, often built up as specialized service vehicles - think sewer inspection and repair.)
In the context of the US: It might seem like the best choice given the common options there, but I think the issue is with the options and perceived utility. It's the same with large trucks: The common ones in the EU are much more powerful, rated to haul more, are more comfortable, safer, have much smaller footprint for the given load and turns on a dime compared to US options.
It's almost impossible to navigate parking garages if two such trucks park opposite each other. Or if one parks on an end that people need to navigate around.
People spend insane amounts of money buying these monstrosities too. It seems as a society we've normalized spending a year's salary on a vehicle, or rather getting a 7-year loan and making crazy monthly payments. I don't understand it. My then normal-sized, now smallish, 13-year old car, that I paid off 11 years ago, still runs great and I can park it easily.
> People spend insane amounts of money buying these monstrosities too
This is also another part of the whole truck-craze in the US that I do not understand. An F150, for example, starts around $40,000 USD for base models, not including taxes and hidden fees. I purchased my car (an HEV, mind you) back in 2019 for just over half that price, spend about $500 annually on regular maintenance that I'm not able to do myself to keep things tip top, and spend about half as much in fuel as my coworkers who travel about the same amount as me for our jobs. Accounting regularly double-checks that I turned in all my fuel receipts because they still don't quite grasp that my car gets far, far better gas mileage.
All that said, these guys make about the same money I do, some a little less since they're newbies, which is to say we are all very underpaid for what we do, wealthy by no standards. And yet, they made these massive purchases while struggling to pay bills or complaining that fuel is too expensive at the pump, etc. These are the same people who buy two paychecks worth of fireworks every July 4th just to watch it all burn in 15 minutes.
Makes me think part of our cultural identity includes regularly acting against our own interests.
Running unlicensed versions of Windows has historically been pretty easy. Am I missing something with Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021?
With Windows 7, once the evaluation period ran out, you just had to deal with an annoying notification about your copy not being genuine, but it never stopped me from doing whatever I needed to do after installing it on dozens of machines over the years, at this point.
2) It’s not legal, obviously. I’d always have a tinge of worry that if I join a Teams call or something then my employer is on the hook for me doing something naughty.
(given how Microsoft has decided to “upgrade” my local account to a Microsoft account before when logging in to outlook)
> 2) It’s not legal, obviously. I’d always have a tinge of worry that if I join a Teams call or something then my employer is on the hook for me doing something naughty.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I assume most people here are talking about their personal computers unless self employed.
The company IT department isn't going to be deploying oddball versions of Windows 10, unless you're shady small business.
Interesting. And worrying. I see a good number of those Kamrui (and competitor) Mini PCs from Amazon replacing a lot of the far more expensive and lower-powered industrial PCs for various uses in smaller machine shops. I was not surprised since they're inexpensive and have a decent kick to the hardware, but I've noted that the version of Windows they ship with is fairly free of a lot of the usual bloat, so I assumed they were just using one of the available scripts to remove it...which likely included the KMS38 work-around? And I can tell you first-hand that most of the smaller shops are far too busy penny-pinching to spend even a few hundred dollars a year on licensing one or two of those machines properly.
I never looked that deep into it since nobody came to me with any issues about it, but you have me wondering. I don't personally use Windows, either, despite my HN handle (it's just a reference I thought was funny), and I am finding myself more and more ignorant to what Microsoft is actually pushing. Thanks for the heads up. Will spend some time looking at this deeper.
Yep, last couple of Windows versions I used as desktop OSs likely 7 and 8) were unlicensed and, other than making the desktop background black (sometimes) and an occasional watermark reminder that it's not legit, nothing stopped working.
And using Windows for free still didn't stop me from migrating to Linux exclusively (desktop and laptops and servers), and it's a decision I'm increasingly happy with.
I haven't really used Windows much for years, but doesn't it start shutting down once evaluation period is up? 'Windows will shutdown in 30 minutes unless licence key is added' etc., and the desktop background goes blue with some text about being unlicensed?
Consumer versions of Windows just put a watermark on your screen and disable changing your wallpaper and the like. You can use it indefinitely beyond that. And if you want the watermark gone, then Massgrave is your friend.
I have not experienced that, which is why I questioned the difficulty. I've installed Windows 10 on a good amount of machines at this point, bypassing the NRO during the install process, and have not had any issues that prevented me from installing software/games or just using it like a normal PC, even after connecting it to the Internet.
However, my experience may be dated. It's been awhile since I've had to freshly install Windows. Perhaps things have changed.
Yes, I believe LTSC does have a harsher shutdown setting if you're out of the 90 day "evaluation" window. Standard Windows keeps working just disabling the wallpaper and showing a watermark which you might be able to ignore.
I'd push even further and say it encroaches, if not outright invades the conversation about who owns what data. Both are terribly muddy waters, to be sure, but something worth hashing out since we live in an age of information that is both accessible and under threat, so the real question is where do we want to collectively steer this ship?
Comparing previous years, they're exactly what I'd expect, to be honest. Only people serious about completion will...well...complete it. Even if they do not know any code, if you pick something well-documented like Python or whatever, it should not be a tremendous challenge so long as you have the drive to finish the event. Code isn't exactly magic, though it does require some problem-solving and dedication. Since this is a self-paced event that does not offer any sort of immediate reward for completion, most people will drop out due to limited bandwidth needing to be devoted to everything else in their lives. That versus, say, a college course where you paid to be there and the grade counts toward your degree; there's simply more at stake when it comes to completing the course.
But, speaking to the original question as to the number of newbies that go all the way, I'd say one cannot expect to increase their skills in anything if one sticks in their comfort zone. It should be hard, and as a newbie who participated in previous years, I can confirm it often is. But I learned new things every time I did it, even if I did not finish.
I have to say, I've read many out-of-touch comments on HN over the years but this is definitely among the most out there, borderline delusional comments I've ever seen!
The idea that anyone who doesn't know any code would:
1) Complete in Advent of Code at all.
2) Complete a single part of a single problem.
let alone, complete the whole thing without it being a "tremendous challenge"...
is so completely laughable it makes me question whether you live on the same planet as the rest of us here.
Getting a person who has never coded to write a basic sort algorithm (i.e. bubble sort) is already basically impossible. I work with highly talented non coder co-workers who all attended tier-1 universities (e.g. Oxford, Harvard, Stanford) but for finance/business related degrees, I cannot get them to write while/foreach loops in Python, and simply using Claude Code is way too much for them.
If you are even fully completing one Advent of Code problem, you are in the top 0.1% of coders, completing all of them puts you in the top 0.001%.
I can't begin to describe how valuable your input has been through this whole thread about something you're quite possessive and passionate about, which surely places you in a position to aggressively dismiss any other possible way of looking at it! Wow, love learning about new perspectives on HN!
Wishing you best of luck in AoC, Life and Love but I imagine someone like you doesn't need it, being a complete toolbox and all.
P.S.: Tell your coworkers I'm sorry they have to put up with you.
You're the person saying Advent of Code is "so easy" that anyone even people with no coding ability at all should find it do-able, which is totally diminishing the difficulty of the problems, and asserting your own genius, i.e. that you found it totally trivial.
I am the person saying that actually, stuff like Advent of Code is incredibly difficult and 99% of active programmers aren't able to complete it, let alone people who don't code.
I am not an elitist at all, unlike yourself, I don't find completing "Advent of Code" easy, in fact, it would take me a long time to complete it, more time than I have available in my busy life in the average December. And I doubt I would be able to complete it 100% without looking up help, getting hints, or using LLMs to help.
You clearly didn't read my whole original comment before mouthing off. Go back and do that, you'll find that I pointed out most do not complete it, that it is supposed to be challenging and I never called it "easy" as you imply ("not tremendously difficult" =/= "easy")
Heck, I even talked about having to be serious about completion, and you could not bother to read the whole comment, then proceed to call me delusional? FFS, I am now praying for your co-workers and I'm not even religious.
Did YOU even read your original comment? You asserted that people who have never coded could complete the event!
Did you realize only roughly 500 people of the > 1M who are registered for advent of code even complete it?
You said "it should not be a tremendous challenge", i.e. not that big of a deal even if you don't know how to code. Which is absolutely diminishing the difficulty of the event, I mean, come on man...
This is why I'm asserting you are quietly oblivious to the abilities of most people. I am asserting that most people who CAN code, cannot complete the event, yet alone non-coders. I am a very active coder (for fun mostly these days, but also sometimes for work), but I could not complete Advent of Code. Maybe if I took all of December off work to dedicate serious time, but even then I wonder if it's possible without looking at hints/LLM-help etc.
I often try and help my co-workers who are working on AI based side-projects for fun, so I have a strong insight into the abilities of non-coding smart people, and the reality is that yes, they get very turned off as soon as you get anything more complex than for-loops and if-statements. This isn't me being mean to co-workers, this is the reality of things I have experienced. It's not a brains thing, they can understand more complex stuff, but they don't want to, they find it annoying, boring, not worth the time/effort etc. So the idea of them learning dynamic programming, DFS/BFS, more complex data structures etc, is well, just not going to happen.
My point is that you are effectively saying, "oh just about anyone can do Advent of Code if they want to", is totally not grounded in any sort of reality.
The amount of injected implication you are imposing on everything I said...this is some seriously unhinged gaslighting in effort to obfuscate the fact that you came out of the gate calling someone delusional over a comment you barely understood. We're wasting each other's time, so I'm out.
I was once in your camp, thinking there was some sort of middle-ground to be had with the emergence of Generative AI and it's potential as a useful tool to help me do more work in less time, but I suppose the folks who opposed automated industrial machinery back in the day did the same.
The problem is that, historically speaking, you have two choices;
1. Resist as long as you can, risking being labeled a Luddite or whatever.
2. Acquiesce.
Choice 1 is fraught with difficulty, like a dinosaur struggling to breathe as an asteroid came and changed the atmosphere it had developed lungs to use. Choice 2 is a relinquishment of agency, handing over control of the future to the ones pulling the levers on the machine. I suppose there is a rare Choice 3 that only the elite few are able to pick, which is to accelerate the change.
My increased cynicism about technology was not something that I started out with. Growing up as a teen in the late-80's/early-90's, computers were hotly debated as being either a fad that would die out in a few years or something that was going to revolutionize the way we worked and give us more free time to enjoy life. That never happened, obviously. Sure, we get more work done in less time, but most of us still work until we are too broken to continue and we didn't really gain anything by acquiescing. We could have lived just fine without smartphones or laptops (we did, I remember) and all the invasive things that brought with it such as surveillance, brain-hacking advertising and dopamine burnout. The massive structures that came out of all the money and genius that went into our tech became megacorporations that people like William Gibson and others warned us of, exerting a level of control over us that turned us all into batteries for their toys, discarded and replaced as we are used up. It's a little frightening to me, knowing how hyperbolic that used to sound 30 years ago, and yet, here we stand.
Generative AI threatens so much more than just altering the way we work, though. In some cases, its use in tasks might even be welcomed. I've played with Claude Code, every generative model that Poe.com has access to, DeepSeek, ChatGPT, etc...they're all quite fascinating, especially when viewed as I view them; a dark mirror reflecting our own vastly misunderstood minds back to us. But it's a weird place to be in when you start seeing them replace musicians, artists, writers...all things that humanity has developed over many thousands of years as forms of existential expression, individuality, and humanness because there is no question that we feel quite alone in our experience of consciousness. Perhaps that is why we are trying to build a companion.
To me, the dangers are far too clear and present to take any sort of moderate position, which is why I decided to stop participating in its proliferation. We risk losing something that makes us us by handing off our creativity and thinking to this thing that has no cognizance or comprehension of its own existence. We are not ready for AI, and AI is not ready for us, but as the Accelerationists and Broligarchs continue to inject it into literally every bit of tech they can, we have to make a choice; resist or capitulate.
At my age, I'm a bit tired of capitulating, because it seems every time we hand the reigns over to someone who says they know what they are doing, they fuck it up royally for the rest of us.
Maybe the dilemma isn’t whether to “resist” or “acquiesce”, but rather whether to frame technological change as an inherently adversarial and zero sum struggle, versus looking for opportunities to leverage those technologies for greater productivity, comfort, prosperity, etc. Stop pushing against the idea of change. It’s going to happen, and keep happening, forever. Work with it.
And by any metric, the average citizen of a developed country is wildly better off than a century or two ago. All those moments of change in the past that people wrung their hands over ultimately improved our lives, and this probably won’t be any different.
It's just exhausting to read the 1000th post of people saying "If we replace jobs with AI, we will all be having happy times instead of doing boring work." It's like reading a Kindergartner's idea of how the world works.
People need to pay for food. If they are replaced, companies are not going to make up jobs just so they can hire people. They are under no responsibility or incentive to do that.
It's useless explaining that here because half of the shills likely have ulterior reasons to be obtuse about that. On top of that, many software developers are so outside the working class that they don't really have a concept of financial obligation, some refusing to have friends that aren't "high IQ", which is their shorthand for not poor or "losers".
Your profile: Former staff software engineer at big tech co, now focused on my SaaS app, which is solo, bootstrapped, and profitable.
Yep. Makes sense.
> And by any metric
Can you cite one? Just curious. I enjoy when people challenge the idea that the advancement of tech doesn't always result in a better world for all because I grew up in Detroit, where a bunch of car companies decided that automation was better than paying people, moved out and left the city a hollowed out version of itself. Manufacturing has returned, more or less, but now Worker X is responsible for producing Nx10 Widgets in the same amount of time Worker Y had to produce 75 years ago, but still gets paid a barely livable wage because the unchecked force of greed has made it so whatever meager amount of money Worker X makes is siphoned right back out of their hands as soon as the check clears. So, from where I'm standing, your version of "improvement" is a scam, something sold to us with marketing woo and snake oil labels, promising improvement if we just buy in.
The thing is, I don't hate making money. I also don't hate change. Quite the opposite, as I generally encourage it, especially when it means we grow as humans...but that's generally not the focus of what you call "change," is it? Be honest with yourself.
What I hate is the argument that the only way to make it happen is by exploiting people. I have a deep love technology and repair it in my spare time for people to help keep things like computers or dishwashers out of landfills, saving people from having to buy new things in a world that treats technology as increasingly disposable, as though the resources used to create are unlimited. I know quite a bit about what makes it tick, as a result, and I can tell you first hand that there's no reason to have a microphone on a refrigerator, or a mobile app for an oven. But you and people like you will call that change, selling it as somehow making things more convenient while our data is collected, sorted and we spend our days fending of spam phone calls or contemplating if what we said today is tomorrow's thought crime. Heck, I'm old enough to remember when phone line tapping was a big deal that everyone was paranoid about, and three decades later we were convinced to buy listening devices that could track our movements. None of this was necessary for the advancement of humanity, just the engorgement of profits.
So what good came of it all? That you and I can argue on the Internet?
Metrics: life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, extreme poverty, access to clean water, access to adequate calories, medical care, literacy, education, likelihood of being murdered, disposable income, on and on. Take your pick.
The fact that you’d even ask me to share a metric of how someone from a century or two is worse off tells me all I need to know about whether you’re able to engage in good faith here. Ditto for the low effort ad hominem attack you opened with.
But by all means, carry on with your tilting at the windmills of change.
Maybe its just me, but i often feel that the issue in these debates is not that we give up creativity but people unwillingness to change their creativity.
When PCs came around, people looked down on the idea of painting on a screen. Some stubborn held on to their easel, while the often younger generation embraced the new tech, and made their carriers.
LLMs are the same ... We have people who are stubborn and still want to do everything on their easel and good for them. But those that adapted, will turn out more work and eventually replace most of the die hards in the workplace. Sure, there will be people who are needed, just like we had Fortran programmers 50 years later making bank, or painters who make bank.
But the idea that it makes us less creative is stupid. Did PCs make us less creative in painting? No, we got a ton of new media and changes. We adapted to the tools and possibilities.
O, PCs came on the market, well, no way somebody is going to use that to make ... MUSIC ... you only do that with real instruments. Que entire generation of techno, movie music etc all made digitally. You did not need to be a directory, know how to play dozens of different instruments to make insane pieces of music. You used your creativity to use the tools at your disposal !
The fact that you can now do the work in a few weeks, that will have taken you a year as a programmer, that opens up the doors for more creativity. Prototyping a idea does not take months, but days. It changes the industry...
Why do i need to pay license cost for a piece of software that is "enterprise", when i can now make the same level of software in a few weeks. It actually take the power away from big corporations, sure, you rely on the tool, and whoever is behind the tool for now (like anthropic etc) but as time moves forwards, more hardware will become more powerful, and LLMs will be more in the open source, ...
Remember what i said about music ... hey, maybe creative people will be able to make music that is different thanks to AI. Hey, you wanted to make a Magic The Gathering game but the art was a delima, ... LLMs suddenly open the door to make new products, and change the industry away from large corporation where the entry fee is high.
We are on a threshold of change, those that stay behind and think it kills creativity, never really used the new tools.
I am writing software right now, that will have took me a year to write. It duplicates the function of some enterprise software that will have cost me insane money. BUTTTTTT, because i now control this software, i can add features that i always found lacking or missing, because that enterprise software only looked at the companies, now what somebody like me may need.
All for the low low price of barely $40, what is probably 70~100k in developer cost. That is still being creative, i made something new using a existing idea, with my own touches to it. But i used a tool for it... Eventually, my code if open source, may be used in other LLMs to improve them. What in turn makes them smarter and maybe some of my idea get used by others.
This is frankly how we as the human race advanced, not by stagnating and not embracing change, but by often copying, improving, using our creativity. Does that mean i need to know how a LLM works? No, just like do not need to know how a bread slicer works, ...
Anyway, ... this discussion is never going to end, because there is always resistance to change. I remember my parents about smartphones, ... guess who uses them, even at their old age. Eventually some power always get consolidated but for now, with the progress i am seeing in the open source/open weights LLM progress, there will been a escape hatch for those that do not want to be linked to specific corporations, just like Linux etc exists.
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