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Anyone else here enjoy living in the future? Look at us, we get AI megacorporations ruling the world and bestowing us with the power to use their servers for ju
by tavavex 4mo ago
Anyone else here enjoy living in the future? Look at us, we get AI megacorporations ruling the world and bestowing us with the power to use their servers for just $20-200/month. It's practically charity, and all we had to give up for it is all consumer hardware, the quality of the internet and our own jobs. I love it here!
- Theodores 4mo agoSometimes I look at dystopian futures from literature and wonder what the problem is. I suspect some might prefer 1984 for the stability, some might prefer Brave New World for the Soma and some might prefer Wall-E because life looks good with B+L.
- throwaway-11-1 4mo agoWish I could shake the hidden hand in gratitude
- maipen 4mo agoThe "worst" part of this comment, is that it's not even exaggeration. In the last 6 months, my competition increased 5x. People that didn't have the skills to compete, now do. My margins will keep shrinking while hardware and servers gets more expensive. It's a fucking miserable future for us software people. Architecting and "good taste" won't be good enough to put food on the table next year...
- sajithdilshan 4mo ago[flagged]
- hijodelsol 4mo agoWhile I understand both of your perspectives, please think about how frustrating it can be to have poured years into building a product genuinely solving a problem and building a relationship with clients only for a dozens AI copy cats to come in. Even if your product is clearly better, the SEO slop alone will raise your marketing cost, price cutting will affect you as not all clients are able to tell quality before purchase or will know of your project, etc. And in the end, everyone is worse of. We get less for the products we build. Customers in many cases get a worse solution. And the AI copy cats multiply until none of them can make a living from it.
- sajithdilshan 4mo agoIf your product is really good, then people will choose it over AI copy cats. If that’s not the case then it’s time to take a really hard look at your product and see if that’s really as good as you think
- satvikpendem 4mo agoExactly. People on a forum dedicated to a VC should know that disruption happens everywhere, AI just makes it easier but it's been happening for a long time, that is the nature of startups in general.
- kelnos 4mo agoThat's a naive view of things. People don't have perfect information about the world around them. They can only go on what limited information filters to them. AI copycats will by their very nature be better at marketing and pushing information into people's faces. It's bad information, but how are customers supposed to know that?
- bigyabai 4mo ago> And in the end, everyone is worse of. I don't know, it really depends on the product. If we were all still paying for proprietary UNIX in the current year, then it's likely that these startups would never exist in the first place. Sometimes a SAAS has to admit that it's not providing real value before actual innovation becomes the status quo. I don't weep many tears for dying businesses because nobody lives forever.
- ComplexSystems 4mo agoThe guy is genuinely worried for his future. I see nothing shameful or narcissistic about that, and I don't think it makes sense for you to wish him any harm.
- sajithdilshan 4mo ago[flagged]
- akudha 4mo agoHe/She is literally talking putting food on the table and yet you are interpreting it as superiority complex. I am not sure if we are even reading the same comment here. Also, competition in itself not bad. It does mess people's livelihoods when competition is sudden and massive - he/she mentioned 5x increase in competition in 6 months. That is too much, too fast, it is not easy navigating/surviving it
- sajithdilshan 4mo ago[flagged]
- viccis 4mo agoMost people work to survive, not for the sheer joy of delivering value to company stakeholders.
- sajithdilshan 4mo agothen work on something else.
- viccis 4mo agoHow about no
- sajithdilshan 4mo ago
- kelnos 4mo agoPerson who lacks empathy accuses another of being a narcissist...
- sajithdilshan 4mo agoI’m not empathising with narcissists
- ChadNauseam 4mo agoIt might be miserable for you, but it sounds great for your customers. I am genuinely sympathetic though.
- downrightmike 4mo agoNow we have 100 fly by night vendors! Awesome!
- devsda 4mo agoA healthy competition is always good for the customer but I have my doubts on the healthy part. A flood of fly by night products with low effort mess is going to lower the trust in genuine indie development products and could drive users towards established names in the industry. In some way it's like the new PR flood on github. On the surface more PRs looks like a positive thing but it had unintended consequences.
- 1123581321 4mo agoNew signals of trustworthiness will emerge (are already emerging.) More shots at the big names is not going to entrench them, even if most of those shots don't go anywhere. The big names also need to stay competitive against internally developed solutions inside what would have been their bread-and-butter enterprise customers, so they have to compete on features and quality like indies.
- 4mo ago
- 2143 4mo ago> People that didn't have the skills to compete, now do. Come on now, you can’t be mad that people acquired the skills. Realize that whatever your frustration is, those people who acquired the skills are probably not the root cause of whatever is currently going on, in the bigger picture sense. Maybe a lot of them can now put food on their table. I sincerely hope things work out for you.
- Traubenfuchs 4mo agoWelcome to the cyberpunk future.
- ChadNauseam 4mo agoI would never want to compel someone else to buy services from me if they had a better option available. My goal is to make money by contributing to society, not force others to pay me for services they don't want from me. If AI makes it so programmers aren't needed anymore, well, I had a good run and made good money while it lasted. I'll find something else productive to do.
- LeBit 4mo agoI Me My Me Me I I
- HDBaseT 4mo agoI know this is a bit off topic, but is anyone excited for the future? I'm only 20, but everyone used to talk about how excited they were for the future. I don't know anyone who is excited for the future. It upsets me I never got to live the "glory days" of cars, technology, outdoor activities, music, entertainment, etc. I only see it getting significantly worse too. It's hard not to fall into the trap of doomerism but what is the point anymore?
- HumblyTossed 4mo agoWe are seeing the effects of the hockey stick curve of wealth inequality. It's only going to accelerate from here.
- flumpcakes 4mo agoI'm a bit older than you, I can remember the late 90s and the early 2000s as a child: the future was so exciting. I now feel the same as you (despite being a bit older), the future looks depressing as hell. It seems to me that things are just progressively getting noticeably worse in the last 10 years or so.
- throwup238 4mo ago[dead]
- danans 4mo ago> It upsets me I never got to live the "glory days" of cars, technology, outdoor activities, music, entertainment, etc. The best is ahead for your generation - you just need to create it from grass roots. I mean actually "Think different" instead of what Apple and the others marketed to you. Take back power and culture from the centralized corporations and taste-makers that feed/market their slop to you. Reclaim tools. Reclaim community. Don't seek salvation in consumerism - it's what got us here.
- HDBaseT 4mo agoWhilst true, its your generation who got us here. I didn't have the choice (or agency) to make decisions and changes to fight back against the silo'ing of all digital spaces, ownership, and freedoms. I think its incredibly easy to say "You just need to do everything yourself" when you put us here. When you lived the free life before, your fulfillment is mostly met, even if it does go down hill from here since you lived through some of the best eras of human history.
- moscoe 4mo agoYou will own nothing and be happy
- Danox 4mo agoFor most that hit the treadmill at 18 that may be true because the rat race starts then, live within your means save and invest start early or else or you will be left standing scratching your head later in life...
- cluckindan 4mo agoWhy is this downvoted? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_happy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_ha... Coincidently, in the Soviet Union, the propaganda had a similar tone about ownership: you’ll drive to the grocery store in a Lada, but can just switch to a limousine to drive back.
- Daz912 4mo ago[dead]
- casualscience 4mo agoHonestly, 60-70% of this feeling is just inflation. If things were still affordable, the doom and gloom would be much less palpable. Inflation will get under control, but we still have other problems with the direction of social cohesion.
- labcomputer 4mo ago> Inflation will get under control I wouldn't be so sure of that. But look at the bright side: By the time this administration's over, we'll all be billionaires!
- chii 4mo agohah, look at this guy with his keeping up with inflation talk...
- iExploder 4mo agoLooking forward to being sent to a foggy planet in foreign start system to collect alien eggs for a daily nutripaste and bunk bed with corporate issuesd blanket.
- teekert 4mo agoIt's always a wave. There will be a backlash.
- AdamN 4mo agoYeah this could end up being a good thing. We need more diversity in the computing space and this might make some space for that.
- teekert 4mo agoNot sure why you're donwvoted. I too see the downsides as well as the upsides. The high prices vs the people that use their excess solar to power a GPU that powers an agent that messed about with an ESP32 and some sensors to build nice Home Automation integrations. Etc. Of course it's hard to be positive when you lost your job, I get that.
- tavavex 4mo agoThe downsides you're listing are real things that are already affecting us. The upsides are imaginary and reliant on a very positive outlook for the future. My view is that we'll be renting someone else's server time because GPUs will all be tailored to datacenters and either too expensive or useless for home computing. Only to generate the ESP32 home automation project that was probably already generated or human-written a thousand times in the past and could be found by a quick Github search. Silver linings or not, this doesn't seem like a deal I would take. Energy will probably get cheaper and cleaner though, can't deny that. I'll just need something to run on that energy.
- teekert 4mo agoAh yes, personal computing was also supposed to come to an end. Yet here I am, on the best Linux ever with the most beautiful desktop being productive with all my favorite tools, not worrying about drivers or compatibility or anything. All for free, freedom included.
- 4mo ago
- abc123abc123 4mo agoSure do! Infant mortality lowest it has ever been in the history of man, we live the longest, our material welfare is the highest it has ever been! I have electricity, I can talk with friends all over the planet for free, instantly, I can get to anywhere on the planet within a day. I could go on and on forever. AI will crash, and once we're through the trough of disillusionment we'll see where it will shine and it will further increase our wealth and enjoyment of life. If anyone feels negative, I recommend seeing a psychologist. There is no reason for anyone not to feel exceptionally optimistic about the future these days!
- pfortuny 4mo agoYou are right. But there is also the stress for the low and middle class and there horrible conditions of the poorest countries. Not so sunshiny when you think about the millions of people struggling to have a meal each day.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- nxm 4mo agoGlobal extreme poverty has fallen dramatically over the past two centuries. The extreme poverty rate, currently defined by the World Bank as living on less than $2.15 per person per day (adjusted for purchasing power), has dropped from around 60% of the world's population in 1950 to under 10% today.
- tavavex 4mo agoThat people should be happy over this may seem obvious to commenters shuffling about charts and research papers. But ordinary people do not look at their living situation and feel overwhelmingly thankful on a daily basis that they're not living in a horrible shack eating nothing, like many people 100 years ago. They're looking at their immediate parents. Neither of them were likely to starve, or die prematurely, or be affected by many of the most horrible things that wiped out people for millions of years. And yet, people are still worried that what was seen decades, not centuries, ago is unattainable. Maybe most people aren't likely to be homeless, but that precarious threshold is getting closer than it used to be. There's less of a safety margin for most things.
- zahlman 4mo agoReading the replies is amazing. OP: a specific manufacturer raised prices on some products. Thread: endless argument about everything that's good or bad about the current living situation, in historical perspective, across the entire world.