7 ms·

I’m getting a lot more done. Hobby projects that languished for years are coming along great, at quality and depth I could never have found time for before.

by brookst 2mo ago

xeromal 2mo ago
Same. Helping family out when I generally was too tired to do it earlier. They're all very happy too
- croes 2mo ago
  Are they happy about the circumstances of AI too? Higher resource consumption and the set back in CO2 reduction?
  - CrimsonRain 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - nullsanity 2mo ago
      [dead]
  - bdlowery 2mo ago
    you seem to be uninformed. This should help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
    - throwawayqqq11 2mo ago
      GP wasnt mentioning water consumption.
    - bch 2mo ago
      > raised heat is a kind of pollution > water is not unlimited > you don't want to release a bunch of acid into a river > I know next to nothing about this > I know basically nothing > corn is one of the thirstiest major crops grown in the US What is this rant supposed to inform? Whats wrong with OP being concerned about the costs of operating a DC?
      - user43928 2mo ago
        Nobody is concerned about the costs and environmental impact of data centers. When someone in a discussion about the benefits of AI goes "did you think about the environment?!", it's always performative. The real motivation is disliking AI itself or doubt about the government's ability to offset the labor market impact. Discussions that start with feigned concerns being raised are nearly always going to be unproductive.
        croes 2mo ago
        Wrong. I don’t dislike AI but really of mine are negatively affected by climate change and AI isn’t helping what is easily observed when Google and MS scrapped their CO2 reduction targets. So every time I use AI I think about the necessity and usefulness of what I‘m doing with AI and if the use outweighs the costs. Since the rise of AI the environmental impact doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I guess because it’s the shiny new toy of the hackernews audience. Privacy also lost importance given the fact that the same people who refused to give information like their phone number to companies like Google and Meta now upload their whole life to their AIs to asks what should the eat, hyperbolically speaking
        user43928 2mo ago
        You're not helping your case by questioning the usefulness of software produced with AI in the same comment section, or complaining about other people supposedly compromising their own privacy in overusing AI. The reason it doesn't matter is because the environmental impact is moderate, and the benefit obviously tremendous.
        jangxx 2mo ago
        The environmental impact is anything but moderate and the benefits are not obviously tremendous at all. I'm happy using Claude Code as much as the next guy, but saying that the impact has been "tremendous" is vastly overstating the actual results.
    - croes 2mo ago
      What make you think I‘m talking about water consumption? The construction of data centers needs resources and also creates more the CO2. The energy for these data centers is often created through fossil fuels which also creates additional CO2 What do you think why Google and MS scrapped their CO2 reduction targets
    - eddieh 2mo ago
      A link to a YouTube video without context e.g. summary of findings, primary author/creators, and primary citations, methodology, and so on is a next to useless for making a point. For all we know you’re linking to a crackpot or an industry sock puppet and I don’t care to “watch” any of what can potentially be a dubious video or worse a malicious video. It is your job as the linker to convince me the video is worth even one iota of my time. On the other hand recent papers highlight the validity of concern/suspicion: > This systematic review demonstrates that the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence is a structural and increasingly consequential challenge, shaped by interdependent decisions across algorithms, software pipelines, hardware infrastructures, and deployment contexts. The synthesized evidence shows that energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with AI systems are highly variable, context-dependent, and often underestimated — Beyond Efficiency: A Systematic Review of Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint Across the AI Lifecycle (published in “Sustainability” an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal) https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/18/3/1359 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/18/3/1359
      - bblb 2mo ago
        "I know nothing about the subject, but I would _guess_ that the power consumption is bigger concern than the reported and studied water usage." That's the whole 21 minute 59 second video in a nutshell. A loud and hectic quick cut rambling video essay. Millions of views, naturally.
- zingar 2mo ago
  I’m curious, what was the application of AI that helped the family?
  - xeromal 2mo ago
    Most of my family are small business owners, so I've done a handful of Excel automations that they needed that generally take me a while to figure out. Landing pages and a few 3D designed prototypes that I used the Fusion 360 MCP server for
yread 2mo ago
Other projects get unmaintained with maintainers burnt out by a torrent of vulberability reports
- fsloth 2mo ago
  This I don't understand. If it's not your job, then just ignore the reports. If it's actually critical, someone will put money on the table and then it's a business. And then it's about scheduling and resourcing - also should not burn anyone out. Just because many people have false sense of entitlement as soon as they get a free offering, it does not mean anyone needs to accommodate them.
  - okeuro49 2mo ago
    > If it's not your job, then just ignore the reports. If you have a highly conscientious personality, this is easier said than done.
    - pdimitar 2mo ago
      It's also a great opportunity for character development. Use it for that, and not for trying to overbook yourself to 300%. You don't owe the world anything at all. If you're conscientious, then give a little -- here and there. Don't turn it into an unpaid job.
    - fsloth 2mo ago
      " highly conscientious " Just doing what others wish is not conscientous in itself! It _may_ be depdending on situation but it can be just pathological towards the self. When it's psyhocologically hard to do things you imagine will dissapoint someone that's probably not concientousness. It's more like low self-esteem or codependency. It's very hard for someone to tell these apart themselves. Hence when this topic pops out it's good idea to remind that being super-accomodating may in fact be a personality flaw - that can be healed if acknowledged. There is very large spectrum between "trying not to dissapoint anyone" and doing what you know is the right thing.
  - 2mo ago
fsloth 2mo ago
Same!
sph 2mo ago
It's starting to become a cliché to have people reply "I'm getting a lot more done", but without seeing any evidence of this incredible productivity gains, I'm starting to wonder if y'all are suffering from collective hallucination. If the accepted claims are of "100x productivity" (increasing by the day), and LLMs have gotten very good for the past ~year, for sake of argument, where are the 100 year improvements in the status quo of software? If one claims such extraordinary figures of 100x increased productivity, a step forward never seen in the history of humanity in such short timespans, they must present extraordinary proof or be branded as a complete lunatic. I could have accepted people saying "I'm 20% more productive", which is an incredible achievement by itself, but not the 10x, 20x, 100x I keep hearing about. I think I've read 200x this week.
- agumonkey 2mo ago
  I've heard people use the same word, I was dubious but they did produce some stuff, yet I think that it ends up as an itch-project. You're satisfied you saw the thing emerge into existence but that's about it. No more drive after that. Maybe because LLM don't require you to have a real long term intense need for that thing.
  - zingar 2mo ago
    This is exactly my experience. A month of excitement building something that I wouldn’t have had time to do myself, then something broke in the setup and my motivation didn’t extend to fixing it. I’m only back at it four months later and I don’t really know what happened before, or why it’s working now, I’m just happy that I can scratch that itch again.
- rfgplk 2mo ago
  > I could have accepted people saying "I'm 20% more productive", which is an incredible achievement by itself, but not the 10x, 20x, 100x I keep hearing about. I think I've read 200x this week. The ratios are factual though. Just look at the "Insights" tab of any LLM written project. https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/pulse https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/pulse This kind of velocity is impossible to achieve manually.
vincnetas 2mo ago
Best code is the one that you have not written :) Because the goal is not the code , it is the things that code does, and if it can be done without code, its the best code. Also if you produce lots of code that does not do anything in reality, then its worst code. And yes, we can rebut that with "time you enjoy wasting is not wasted" except of course some externalities, like boiling earths oceans.
- Xunjin 2mo ago
  But what about my pet project? The one that I just do for the fun o seeing AI go brrrr, do you mean now I should care about the Earth? Note: It's sarcasm.

I’m getting a lot more done. Hobby projects that languished for years are coming along great, at quality and depth I could never have found time for before.

by brookst 2mo ago

I’m getting a lot more done. Hobby projects that languished for years are coming along great, at quality and depth I could never have found time for before.

xeromal 2mo ago

Same. Helping family out when I generally was too tired to do it earlier. They're all very happy too

croes 2mo ago
Are they happy about the circumstances of AI too? Higher resource consumption and the set back in CO2 reduction?
- CrimsonRain 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - nullsanity 2mo ago
    [dead]
- bdlowery 2mo ago
  you seem to be uninformed. This should help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_c6MWk7PQc
  - throwawayqqq11 2mo ago
    GP wasnt mentioning water consumption.
  - bch 2mo ago
    > raised heat is a kind of pollution > water is not unlimited > you don't want to release a bunch of acid into a river > I know next to nothing about this > I know basically nothing > corn is one of the thirstiest major crops grown in the US What is this rant supposed to inform? Whats wrong with OP being concerned about the costs of operating a DC?
    - user43928 2mo ago
      Nobody is concerned about the costs and environmental impact of data centers. When someone in a discussion about the benefits of AI goes "did you think about the environment?!", it's always performative. The real motivation is disliking AI itself or doubt about the government's ability to offset the labor market impact. Discussions that start with feigned concerns being raised are nearly always going to be unproductive.
      - croes 2mo ago
        Wrong. I don’t dislike AI but really of mine are negatively affected by climate change and AI isn’t helping what is easily observed when Google and MS scrapped their CO2 reduction targets. So every time I use AI I think about the necessity and usefulness of what I‘m doing with AI and if the use outweighs the costs. Since the rise of AI the environmental impact doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I guess because it’s the shiny new toy of the hackernews audience. Privacy also lost importance given the fact that the same people who refused to give information like their phone number to companies like Google and Meta now upload their whole life to their AIs to asks what should the eat, hyperbolically speaking
        user43928 2mo ago
        You're not helping your case by questioning the usefulness of software produced with AI in the same comment section, or complaining about other people supposedly compromising their own privacy in overusing AI. The reason it doesn't matter is because the environmental impact is moderate, and the benefit obviously tremendous.
        jangxx 2mo ago
        The environmental impact is anything but moderate and the benefits are not obviously tremendous at all. I'm happy using Claude Code as much as the next guy, but saying that the impact has been "tremendous" is vastly overstating the actual results.
  - croes 2mo ago
    What make you think I‘m talking about water consumption? The construction of data centers needs resources and also creates more the CO2. The energy for these data centers is often created through fossil fuels which also creates additional CO2 What do you think why Google and MS scrapped their CO2 reduction targets
  - eddieh 2mo ago
    A link to a YouTube video without context e.g. summary of findings, primary author/creators, and primary citations, methodology, and so on is a next to useless for making a point. For all we know you’re linking to a crackpot or an industry sock puppet and I don’t care to “watch” any of what can potentially be a dubious video or worse a malicious video. It is your job as the linker to convince me the video is worth even one iota of my time. On the other hand recent papers highlight the validity of concern/suspicion: > This systematic review demonstrates that the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence is a structural and increasingly consequential challenge, shaped by interdependent decisions across algorithms, software pipelines, hardware infrastructures, and deployment contexts. The synthesized evidence shows that energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with AI systems are highly variable, context-dependent, and often underestimated — Beyond Efficiency: A Systematic Review of Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint Across the AI Lifecycle (published in “Sustainability” an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal) https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/18/3/1359 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/18/3/1359
    - bblb 2mo ago
      "I know nothing about the subject, but I would _guess_ that the power consumption is bigger concern than the reported and studied water usage." That's the whole 21 minute 59 second video in a nutshell. A loud and hectic quick cut rambling video essay. Millions of views, naturally.
zingar 2mo ago
I’m curious, what was the application of AI that helped the family?
- xeromal 2mo ago
  Most of my family are small business owners, so I've done a handful of Excel automations that they needed that generally take me a while to figure out. Landing pages and a few 3D designed prototypes that I used the Fusion 360 MCP server for

yread 2mo ago

Other projects get unmaintained with maintainers burnt out by a torrent of vulberability reports

fsloth 2mo ago
This I don't understand. If it's not your job, then just ignore the reports. If it's actually critical, someone will put money on the table and then it's a business. And then it's about scheduling and resourcing - also should not burn anyone out. Just because many people have false sense of entitlement as soon as they get a free offering, it does not mean anyone needs to accommodate them.
- okeuro49 2mo ago
  > If it's not your job, then just ignore the reports. If you have a highly conscientious personality, this is easier said than done.
  - pdimitar 2mo ago
    It's also a great opportunity for character development. Use it for that, and not for trying to overbook yourself to 300%. You don't owe the world anything at all. If you're conscientious, then give a little -- here and there. Don't turn it into an unpaid job.
  - fsloth 2mo ago
    " highly conscientious " Just doing what others wish is not conscientous in itself! It _may_ be depdending on situation but it can be just pathological towards the self. When it's psyhocologically hard to do things you imagine will dissapoint someone that's probably not concientousness. It's more like low self-esteem or codependency. It's very hard for someone to tell these apart themselves. Hence when this topic pops out it's good idea to remind that being super-accomodating may in fact be a personality flaw - that can be healed if acknowledged. There is very large spectrum between "trying not to dissapoint anyone" and doing what you know is the right thing.
- 2mo ago

fsloth 2mo ago

Same!

sph 2mo ago

It's starting to become a cliché to have people reply "I'm getting a lot more done", but without seeing any evidence of this incredible productivity gains, I'm starting to wonder if y'all are suffering from collective hallucination. If the accepted claims are of "100x productivity" (increasing by the day), and LLMs have gotten very good for the past ~year, for sake of argument, where are the 100 year improvements in the status quo of software? If one claims such extraordinary figures of 100x increased productivity, a step forward never seen in the history of humanity in such short timespans, they must present extraordinary proof or be branded as a complete lunatic. I could have accepted people saying "I'm 20% more productive", which is an incredible achievement by itself, but not the 10x, 20x, 100x I keep hearing about. I think I've read 200x this week.

agumonkey 2mo ago
I've heard people use the same word, I was dubious but they did produce some stuff, yet I think that it ends up as an itch-project. You're satisfied you saw the thing emerge into existence but that's about it. No more drive after that. Maybe because LLM don't require you to have a real long term intense need for that thing.
- zingar 2mo ago
  This is exactly my experience. A month of excitement building something that I wouldn’t have had time to do myself, then something broke in the setup and my motivation didn’t extend to fixing it. I’m only back at it four months later and I don’t really know what happened before, or why it’s working now, I’m just happy that I can scratch that itch again.
rfgplk 2mo ago
> I could have accepted people saying "I'm 20% more productive", which is an incredible achievement by itself, but not the 10x, 20x, 100x I keep hearing about. I think I've read 200x this week. The ratios are factual though. Just look at the "Insights" tab of any LLM written project. https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/pulse https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/pulse This kind of velocity is impossible to achieve manually.

vincnetas 2mo ago

Best code is the one that you have not written :) Because the goal is not the code , it is the things that code does, and if it can be done without code, its the best code. Also if you produce lots of code that does not do anything in reality, then its worst code. And yes, we can rebut that with "time you enjoy wasting is not wasted" except of course some externalities, like boiling earths oceans.

Xunjin 2mo ago
But what about my pet project? The one that I just do for the fun o seeing AI go brrrr, do you mean now I should care about the Earth? Note: It's sarcasm.