bwestergard

6 ms·

31.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
"It will end up a cheap commodity that is basically free to produce." Wouldn't this just mean that hardware manufacturers capture the profits, not hyperscalers?
32.
Where is the AI jobs crisis?(apollo.com)
163 points by bwestergard 4mo ago|269 comments
33.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
This is a really cool idea. I'm trying to envision the attacks and countermeasures for this approach. I suppose what I would do to fake this is write a program that takes text and the desired output histogram of edit timings and random
34.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
In 2024, the Silent Generation and baby boomers represented 25% of the population, but held 65% of all wealth in the US. The healthcare industry will profit a great deal, but there is no way they will capture 65% of all wealth in the countr
35.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
My coworkers and I organized a union five years ago. We're about to enter bargaining for our second contract. https://code-cwa.org/
36.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
Your hypothetical is interesting, but it doesn't accord with the reasons these workers organized. They did not conceive of the issue as primarily about multiplying all worker compensation by some large factor (e.g. 2x). While they were
37.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
I am a unionized software developer in media, not games. I helped the game workers at Blizzard unionize and they all spoke of the "passion tax". One reason the "passion tax" is possible for employers is that there seems
38.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
"The Constitution also overrides any attempt to prevent interstate migration." Sure, but if there is no where you can legally stay, because the sole landowner prohibits it, how do you migrate?
39.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
Yeah, the post you're responding to quotes "The Prize" (an excellent book), but draws a conclusion that the quote doesn't support. Interestingly, the Teamsters (IBT) represents a lot of oil pipeline workers today. https
40.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
Do you have a citation for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (today's "Teamsters") ever trying to ban automobiles? That doesn't really make sense to me chronologically. It is not mentioned in "Fighting Traf
41.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
Lately I've been thinking that what people want out of graph databases is a better query experience for queries that are built around pattern matching and transitive closure. For those cases, datalog is the most expressive language, an
42.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
Thanks for drawing attention to cases of involuntary childlessness. I'm not sure I agree that it is unfair, I'd need to give it more thought. My initial reaction is that there are all sorts of burdens that we want to incentivize p
43.
by bwestergard 4mo ago
"The bill would have contributions from childfree adults increase by 0.7% over a period of years, meaning they would pay 2.5% of their income each month. Their employer will be expected to pay 1.8%. For adults with children the rates w
44.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
This is not what happened historically.
45.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
Right, because to trust that those "formal specifications" are correct, you will have to write them by hand.
46.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
I agree with the sentiment, but I think the conclusion should be altered. When you hit the limit of prompting, you need to move from using LLMs at run time to accomplish a task to using LLMs to write software to accomplish the task. The rol
47.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
No disagreement from me there. I am a stalwart financial and activist supporter of LaborNotes, which organizes across unions to eliminate two-tier contracts. But two-tier contracts are the result of employer power. Employers always portray
48.
Ask HN: Best local agent setup for Markdown notes?
2 points by bwestergard 5mo ago|0 comments
49.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
The only way you could arrive at such a high figure is if you included transfer payments like Social Security and Medicare in "the cost to run the government", which is not how most people understand "the cost to run the gove
50.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
Cool. Sounds like it went well?
51.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
What sort of work were you doing?
52.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
Do you have a particular historic incident in mind? In what national context was this taking place? There have been very few incidents where a union successfully defended its particularistic interest in a way that harmed the interests of wo
53.
by bwestergard 5mo ago
I'm glad to see this. I don't work in games, but I am a software developer and a member of the Communications Workers of America. I've also taken leave to help workers in games organize. I'm seeing a lot of ideological t
54.
by bwestergard 6mo ago
Doesn't this assume that what humans are current doing with LLM agents is working out? Isn't it a bit early to bet on that to this degree?
55.
by bwestergard 6mo ago
This study and the studies it relies on are based on O*NET descriptions of jobs in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Taxonomy. Here is the entry for Software Developers: https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/15-1252
56.
by bwestergard 6mo ago
The "blue-zone" studies are flawed, so we shouldn't infer too much from lifestyle generalizations about people in them. https://www.science.org/content/article/do-blue-zones-suppos...
57.
by bwestergard 6mo ago
Poignantly in this instance, Utopia is from "ou-topos" (coined by Sir Thomas More in the early modern period). It literally means "no place".
58.
by bwestergard 6mo ago
I think these arguments tend to reach impasse because one gravitates to one of two views: 1) My experiences with LLMs are so impressive that I consider their output to generally be better than what the typical developer would produce. Peopl
59.
by bwestergard 6mo ago
To the original poster: I don't know you, but based on your posting history I am worried about your well being. Please talk to someone in person about how you're feeling, even if you feel okay (or better than okay).
60.
by bwestergard 6mo ago
Amazing bit of history, thank you!

More ›