That the community is still such a place that there pretends there is a separation of “politics” from “non-political” or “objective” things, is itself a political ideology.
I have a strong bias towards the scientific method and empirical evidence, as I think many people share. But I don’t have the luxury of being “non-political” - my life itself is a ball being used for political ends, by the very people that run companies that prone here work for. Politics affect my day to day life as a programmer, as a person, as an employee, as a founder.
Events do not take place on a vacuum, and dissociating them in the name of politeness functionally only benefits the people doing the killing, the surveillance, and the oppression. I do want and am glad for this place as one of thoughtful discourse, but I avoid it for real conversations and connections because of how structurally it supports the now long-ascendant investor class - something fundamentally abhorrent to a hacker ethos to me.
The irony is that since this place started, people calling themselves hackers went from outsiders to now in control of the world. They’re the hegemony they once spent time and mental energy fighting against. One only wishes that the moral clarity when disrupting a system could stay alive when you take the crown.
It has a “gen-AI” vibe to it, and it’s meant to be playful in an alt/psypop sort of way but it is from no culture in particular. It trips up my brain as a bubbly ad from the marketing department of a dystopian corporation.
No, we’re Russia now. You go in, soak up the blame and attention for the Principle’s abhorrent and violent actions, grift a few hundred million dollars from contracts that you have sole authority over, and are discarded, now filthy rich.
Much of the tech economy seems to work like this - join or make a company doing morally reprehensible things, get your RSUs, get your house, and retire. I’ve never seen it be so cut and dry how easy it is to trade humanity for money as this age in this country. I hope nobody can sleep at night and I hope they’re miserable forever for the harm they inclict on innocents.
I am inclined to believe Ann Altman, personally - as someone who went through similar experiences the way their family closed ranks to protect the patriarch over the victim is pretty much exactly how child abuse continues unabated.
It’s possible of course that she’s mistaken, but that “Drive” that PG so admires tends to be a trait of sociopathic people - certainly those who are swift and decisive in the boardroom making decisions about the lives of others tend to have the same traits as abusers, and the resources to make problems go away.
> feeling in control of and empowered by your device - a vision that Apple once at least promised
Legitimately, when? I got started on an Apple II, I used the puck mouse without right click, I watched people buy the insanely costly hardware that was always integrated and you couldn’t service yourself. Windows was always more open than Mac - people just didn’t use Linux because it required you to know how things worked under the hood.
Just like the rest of large technology companies, and the economy as a whole, we are all being squeezed for every drop. Eventually the well will run dry, there’s already practically no more data to pull, and the apps will get shittier as revenues need to keep going up, and all the pillars of tech will fall over like a tree hollowed out by pests.
> people just didn’t use Linux because it required you to know how things worked under the hood.
This is how Windows feels to me now. The very first interaction with Windows when I buy a new computer is to do Shift+F10 and type away some magical terminal commands to get it working.
That I have to use the terminal to get Windows operational after unboxing my new device is insanity.
Regardless, I think if you are thinking purely from a ruthless business standpoint then standing up to the DoD was an incredibly ill-advised move. It's basically free financial and technological backing at the cost of ethics. Additionally, basically everyone with functioning eyeballs knows that the current US administration is incredibly vindicative, reckless and short-tempered. I would agree that in a more tame administration, you might do something like this as a publicity stunt. In the Trump administration, and while the AI arms race is still in full force, it feels like there has to be at least somewhat genuine sentiment behind it, otherwise it just doesn't really make sense. Like what do they accomplish from this? You'll get some users who will view you more favourably for it but it probably won't make up for the lost revenue, and no matter how many people like you, if you are first to AGI in this industry you win. The prior sentiment basically won't matter at that point. In the most critical interpretation I guess you could say if the bubble pops it might be more of a matter of sentiment. I don't know, in my mind the math just doesn't work for it to be a business move.
>Regardless, I think if you are thinking purely from a ruthless business standpoint then standing up to the DoD was an incredibly ill-advised move.
It wasn't, there's been non-stop talk here for days about how Anthropic is a step-above, better-than-the-rest, the "only good AI" company. Enough already. It is a marketing tactic they are taking in opposition to OpenAI.
> Who in their right mind would give the benefit of the doubt?
I'm saying that we should give Anthropic the benefit of the doubt that when they say "our deal with Palantir doesn't cross our red line", we should believe Anthropic, that they have gotten an assurance from Palantir that they wouldn't use it domestically. I'm NOT saying we should give Palantir the benefit of the doubt.
I wasn't commenting on "is giving AI to Palantir a good idea" (I don't think it is), I was commenting on "should we conclude that Anthropic is being dishonest because they claimed they have red lines but work with Palantir" (I think it's unclear, but there's a plausible explanation in which they're not being dishonest, but possibly naive, so give them the benefit of the doubt).
There's a layer between your input and the model called an agent harness. It's the bit that guides the model how to traverse the file system, where to search, how the codebase is architected, how to navigate the monorepo.
When you say "Add a default $5 tip to the dialog screen titled 'Tip this waiter?'", what the harness does is supply information on where the strings are, the dialogs, and where the design style containing the PrimaryButton might be.
Cursor is excellent at this and probably pioneered the whole approach. Copilot hasn't really bothered to be more than a wrapper.
The models are the same. The agent implementation is different. I can confirm Claude Code performs much better than GH Copilot with the same Claude models.
They might de facto take them over via the defense production act, board demands, or shut them down, and then put the screws on Google who they can already control via their shareholders.
That the community is still such a place that there pretends there is a separation of “politics” from “non-political” or “objective” things, is itself a political ideology.
I have a strong bias towards the scientific method and empirical evidence, as I think many people share. But I don’t have the luxury of being “non-political” - my life itself is a ball being used for political ends, by the very people that run companies that prone here work for. Politics affect my day to day life as a programmer, as a person, as an employee, as a founder.
Events do not take place on a vacuum, and dissociating them in the name of politeness functionally only benefits the people doing the killing, the surveillance, and the oppression. I do want and am glad for this place as one of thoughtful discourse, but I avoid it for real conversations and connections because of how structurally it supports the now long-ascendant investor class - something fundamentally abhorrent to a hacker ethos to me.
The irony is that since this place started, people calling themselves hackers went from outsiders to now in control of the world. They’re the hegemony they once spent time and mental energy fighting against. One only wishes that the moral clarity when disrupting a system could stay alive when you take the crown.
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