Where I work in software development, we were about to undertake writing a pretty large application from scratch. Mostly, the company was a Java plus Spring shop with a few exceptions. One team wrote almost exclusively Python, for instance. But as far as I knew, there wasn’t any specific policy requiring the use of any particular language.

So as a team, we pushed to write our new project in Python. It was originally my idea, but my team got on board with it pretty quickly. Plus there was precedent for Python projects and Python was definitely appropriate for our use case.

The managers took it up the chain. The chain hemmed and hawed for months, but eventually made a more official policy that we had to use Java (and Spring).

“I”

“could”

“stop”

“any”

“time”

“I”

“want.”

Did you really say that with a straight face? I thought that was just what people said to mock people who were clearly addicted.

Cigarettes aren’t good for you and it sounds like you’re not ready to hear this, but you are addicted.

I will admit I’ve never used them. I’m not keen on providing my email address to huxters for purposes of signing up and they won’t accept a disposable email address. At least not one I’ve been able to find.

I’ll be honest, though. Running into someone extolling the benefits of LLM’s, I wonder if they have ulterior motives. A lot of the cryptobros are now jumping ship from the blockchain bandwagon to the AI bandwagon. (Because the blockchain bubble has partially burst now and the AI bubble is still going strong.)

With cryptocurrencies or NFT’s, anyone telling you it was the best thing ever was always misrepresenting their own gains and telling lies about the capabilities of blockchain. Maybe they were themselves deluded, but the ultimate motivation to extoll the benefits of blockchain was not actual benefits, but rather that the extoller was invested. If they could be convinging enough and their audience believed them and invested, the value of the extoller’s investment would go up.

Now, LLM’s are known to hallucinate. And very confidently and convincingly. None of the content of what LLM’s produce can be trusted for factual accuracy. LLM’s as a technology are just not suitable for producing factual output and will always be inferior to platforms like StackOverflow or… what Reddit used to be.

So, what you’ve claimed GhatGPT has helped you with: Software development, language aquisition, and learning how to use software (Excel specifically). I really hope you’re not just copying programs out of ChatGPT and using those programs at work without auditing them first. If you have the skills to vet code, then what do you need ChatGPT for? And would plain-old Google not do a better job? And for learning Excel as well?

And as others have said, I wouldn’t trust any language learning I got from ChatGPT.

Just imagine what it could do in the hands of innumerable virtuous and malicious individuals.

So, when Beanie Babies were at the height of their economic bubble, people were robbing stores and engaging in fist fights to get them. I very much believe that the hype around AI lately is causing a lot of terrible things. Big companies are publicly announcing they’re “replacing jobs” with AI. I think some of those cases are just big corporations finding dumb ways to put positive PR spins on “we’re laying off a lot of people” without actually intending to replace them with AI. I think some big businesses are actually swept up in the hype and think “replacing people with AI” is actually going to work out for them. Maybe some companies are somewhere in the middle: laying people off with the intention of getting them back on a part-time contracting basis for lower pay as “editors” of content output by ChatGPT. But really they’ll be doing the same job, just less efficiently and for lower pay.

Again, look at the effect Beanie Babies had on the world. And that proved to have been a worthless nothing burger all along. The effects the AI hype is having on the world is no proof that it’s anything other than worthless lie-generating machines.

Trusted computing is back in a new form. :\

LLM’s are worthless and I’m skeptical they’ll ever be otherwise. I think for a program that works roughly like ChatGPT from a user’s perspective to ever achieve usefulness would require a whole different algorithm.

I didn’t realize people were advocating philosophies that bowed to the idea that “needs” should take priority over personal possessions.

Yeah, I tend to work Maslow’s work into my take on political systems. Maybe I should call myself an anarcho-Maslowist or something. Heh.

I do really think that society is best that best fulfills people’s needs. And by “needs,” I mean something very like the way Maslow used the term. I’m not sure what higher purpose one could give for a society than the fulfillment of needs, really.

(Mind you, I do know that there have been other psychologists who have built on Maslow’s work as well as some with different models of needs. I don’t necessarily mean to exclude those other definitions of needs. I don’t think it would serve us well to be dogmatic about one person’s take. But even if Maslow can be improved on, I do think the broad strokes of his take are on to something.)

To be fair, just about any purpose a society might have can be shoehorned into the language of “needs” and that paradigm may be better for some things than others.

Also, of course, more basic needs are more important. If you’re trying to improve things and you have one option that will address society’s unfulfilled need for basic sustinence and another option that will improve society’s access to aesthetic fulfillment, let’s fill people’s bellies first and put up murals later.

Now, I do largely believe in “usership,” but the idea can definitely go too far. If in the revolution, Ted takes possession of a mansion and uses it daily for a private indoor jogging track, that’s fine with me so long as others are not deprived of some sufficiently basic need. Under a strict usership system, one could say that Ted uses all of that mansion daily and that there is no “surplus” of space there. And, again if others are not deprived, I have no issue with it. But if homelessness exists in that area, Ted’s claim to that mansion for his comparatively frivolous use of the structure is superceded by other people’s right to not have to live in a tent under a bridge.

But this is all mostly my own take. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else take quite the same stance on things. But then, I haven’t really read that much anarchist theory either. Just Conquest of Bread and /r/Anarchism, pretty much. (Oh, and some random guy on a first person shooter I used to play a lot that was my introduction to anarchism.)

Edit: Oh! Also, there is the whole “to each according to need” thing. Maybe Marx would’ve been a fan of Maslow’s ideas. Who knows.

So, first off, let me say that if it’ll help us move toward something better than we have now, even if in my head I call it anarcho-communism, I’ll happily call it “capitalism.”

For reference, there’s an author named Charles Eisenstein who in his book “Sacred Economics” advocates for taking steps that he intends to move us (the world, I guess) eventually to a gift-based economy without money or barter. And he calls it capitalism. With a straight face. Now, I don’t know if deep down in his heart he believes it actually qualifies as capitalism or if he’s calling it capitalism because he feels like his aims are more likely to be well received by pro-capitalists if he calls it “capitalism.”

One can IMO go too far with that. Case in point: ecofascism. But I digress.

On to the definition of capitalism. At least in my head, capitalism is characterized by:

• The profit motive. The incentive to amass. (Typically money, but a barter-based system could well be the same in every way that matters.)
• Quid pro quo. The whole system is based on it.
• Private property. A particular set of rules for who has ownership rights over what.
• The institution of employment.

My answer didn’t include the word “capital”, so I’ll skip that second question.

As to your third question, let me take exception with the question itself. I don’t believe “control over what you produce” is necesssarily a good thing per se. I believe in having something roughly like ownership rights over what one uses. But if one produce a surplus, I don’t believe they should be able to deprive others in need of said surplus.

I think capitalism coerces people into producing surplus for others to sell for a profit that the producer (employee) doesn’t get a fair share in if that goes more to the spirit of your question.

Bonus questions:

1. I… don’t know or care? “Capitalist” can mean someone who supports the institution of capitalism. Or it can mean something like an owner of a company that employs people. I think plenty of people participate in capitalism (by selling things they make, by accepting an employment position, etc) out of necessity while disapproving of the system as a whole. Hell, I’m one of them. I’m not sure I understand why you ask.
2. If I’m the person who sells things I make? Again, anticapitalists participate in capitalism because capitalism doesn’t give them a choice. Does that answer your question?
3. The word “sell” here has some baggage I don’t like. I’m not for a system in which anybody “sells” anything. But to answer how one might expand an operation that produces things, worker cooperatives are probably the most obvious answer.
4. Anyway, worker cooperatives are owned and run by the workers. Corporations are owned by shareholders and run by boards of directors. Worker cooperatives don’t have incentives and power to fuck their workers over. They do have incentive and power to take care of their workers.

Maybe I should have read the first thread you referenced before answering these. Maybe it would have given more context. But hopefully this response gives you what you were looking for.

This u?

I’m pretty sure latte.isnot.coffe admins are also tankies. Should’ve done my research before I signed up. Maybe some day account migration will be a thing. ('Cuz I’d like to keep my post history if I were to jump to a different instance.)

Vi. Not even Vim. Just whatever vi is preinstalled on Arch Linux.

IDE’s and I… don’t get along.

I had some hands-on computer repair training at a private school once. One old machine wouldn’t boot, complaining that it couldn’t find the keyboard which was plugged into it. I unplugged it while the computer was on. At the time, unplugging a keyboard while the computer was on was… not a good thing. There was a little curl of smoke, a scorch mark on the motherboard, and a sustained tone from the chassis and that computer breathed its last.

Later, in college, I used the “net send” command on random people in open labs just to watch how confused they got.

SwayWM which is basically “i3: Wayland Edition.”

Mindustry. People compare it to Factorio, but Mindustry (which also has an Android version) is open source.

Pros:

Cons: We’re federating with Threads.

Edit: I appreciate the upvotes, but please use your votes to boost @FormlessMartian@lemmy.world’s post with a link to an excellent post enumerating in great detail all the reasons why we should defederate Threads.

Mine was pretty spontaneous. I was studying psychedelics at the time (just because they’re fascinating) but I’ve never done any before or since.

It was… hard to describe. It lasted several days at least, but my sense of time was greatly altered and it’s hard to say how long exactly. I remember feeling like my mind wasn’t fighting against itself the way it usually did. It felt like everything I did, my whole brain was all working/pulling in the same direction. Pretty much all I wanted to do was meditate for hours on end, and doing so was a wild experience with some very interesting visuals. I also came to some revelations about the nature of reality. (Though looking back, those revelations were the logical conclusion of several beliefs I had held before this experience. I think this experience just brought those multiple unrelated beliefs together and crystalized them into one cohesive worldview.) I did experience some synesthesia during the experience as well. The kind wherein seeing somebody else experience something, you feel it in your own body. I was watching a dancer on TV and feeling the proprioceptive feelings I imagined she was feeling.

Edit: I should add that it never really “ended.” It tapered off over time until I was (in some ways) back to normal, but I couldn’t identify really when I was back to normal. It was more like asymptotically approaching normal. And, I’ll also say that in other ways, I’m still changed by that experience. And only for the better.

Meditation has helped me get through a lot. I like Shinzen Young’s methods myself. He’s got a lot of content on YouTube that’s worth a watch if that’s a path you want to try.

Nazis aren’t people who say some anti-semitic stuff sometimes. Nazis hurt and kill people.

Agreed. Wasn’t trying to say otherwise. But I’d think recovering nazis are frequently “people who say some anti-semitic stuff sometimes.” I’ve known people who have deconverted from both mainstream religions and cults who have needed support in the transition out, and those folks were “kindof brainwashed but working on it.” And I don’t think nazi groups are entirely dissimilar from cults.

I don’t remember which episode specifically, but I remember Ian Danskin (“Innuendo Studios” on YouTube and creator of “The Alt-Right Playbook” series) making some points about how it’s good to have spaces meant for people who are “kindof a nazi, but working on it.” (He also said those spaces need to be kept well away from safe spaces for marginalized groups, which of course makes sense.)

These programs you’re referring to are voluntary, right?

So, the folks who would be against such programs on that basis think that if a(n arguably former) nazi enters the group not yet fully free of the bigotry they’ve taken concrete steps to overcome and says something, say, anti-semitic, if the program doesn’t kick them out on a zero-tolerance policy, then the program is supporting (or at least insufficiently condemning) anti-semitism?

Edit: on rereading, I get the feeling you’re saying something more like some people think having anything to do with (even recovering) nazis is tacit complicity or something.

My understanding is that they’re switching to a paid model. As in, you’ll have to pay to continue using it, but if you do start paying, it’ll work indefinitely. (Or at least until the makers of Infinity make the determination that even having users pay won’t be enough to keep Infinity financially sustainable.)

Given that that’s Infinity’s plan, the theory is that probably the makers of Infinity have gone to Reddit and negotiated an extension of the non-paid API plan long enough for Infinity to implement a way for users to pay for it. I don’t think there’s any official word exactly how long that extension will be, but the expectation is that it will run out at some point and when it does, you’ll have to pay to keep using Infinity.

One thing I’m not sure about, though, is how exactly that’ll work given that Infinity is open source. Surely there’s a “shared secret” or something involved. And for that kind of authentication method to work, the secret has to stay… well… secret. So they wouldn’t be able to just commit that secret to the Github repo. Maybe it’ll be some kind of OAuth2 scheme or something where Infinity-owned servers and Reddit servers will communicate behind the scenes to get you logged in.