Huly is worth checking out. We’ve been on it for about a year. They’re in super active developments so features are coming rapidly, sometimes breaking or requiring migrations.

They have both a SaaS version and self-hosted version.

I’d love to see all kinds of resistance to this.

If an armed militia shows up on the same street as ICE, but in greater numbers, there’s a pretty good chance these imposters leave.

I hope somebody’s working on building an app for recording everything possible and centralizing that information - license plates, photos, videos.

Perhaps homemade stingray devices that grab IMEI/IMSI numbers from agent’s phones, so that it’s easier to identify and link these agents between locations.

More people following them around to report on location and activities. Report on where they stay so that protests and obnoxious deterrence can be set up so that fewer businesses are willing to service these people.

There are so many more citizens than there are ICE agents. Doesn’t seem like it takes much to overwhelm them and push them out, so long as it’s coordinated.

If the country has another federal election, heck… if the country survives past this at all, I think there’s going to be a major conversation about states rights versus federal rights. What we’re seeing in Minnesota is wild, bordering on something that could spark a localized civil war if people start violently standing up against this. The states should be able to come together and defeat the federal government at any point.

The Constitution grants the federal government the right to exist, and it belongs to the people. Not any one leader. Evidently some of that power needs to be pulled back.

I wonder if I’ll soon be able to just lean back and bark orders at my PC.

I’m no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.

Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don’t play well with others.

But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.

While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.

A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it’s the right one, amazing things can happen.

No conversation about UBI is complete without also discussing the source of the funds and how other government programs might be effected.

I think UBI sounds great on the surface but I worry that it could alter our basic survival incentives which may have unintended consequences for the group of people who aren’t needing UBI.

Should UBI replace existing food and housing programs? Should UBI replace other things that are designed to mold the economy such as subsidized public transportation or small business loan guarantees? What about income tax incentives designed to encourage saving and growing money carefully versus consumption (capital gains versus income tax, tax-deferred retirement savings accounts).

I suspect there’s a fairly significant carry-on effect from shifting resources away from these types of programs to a UBI program. But what I’m not clear on is how that might impact other behaviors from well resourced people who may start to play the game, so to speak, by a new set of rules.

For example, do we see inflation around inelastic needs such as rent prices and grocery bills? If we did, UBI is not much more than a grocery store/landlord stimulus program. It’s hard to imagine that we wouldn’t see this unless controls are placed on those businesses which in turn, removes incentives to own and grow businesses.

It seems like a UBI program would promote an economy based on consumption and not on savings and investment. Why save your money if you’ll get topped up again next month, and every month for the rest of your life? By investment I’m not talking about Wall Street, I’m talking about finishing college degrees, investing in new ideas, chasing startup ideas, those people who stay up late at night working on inventions that they think could bring them rewards.

Perhaps the most fundamental question to be answered is this:

To what degree do we, as the human race, find benefit in helping the less capable of our species survive. Potentially at a cost - not to the strongest and most capable - but instead placed mostly on the shoulders of the slightly-more-capable.

After shovels were invented, we decided to dig more holes.

After hammers were invented, we needed to drive more nails.

Now that vibe coding has been invented, we are going to write more software.

No shit

I was born at the tail end of Gen X but we were definitely getting up to some crazy stuff.

It was a normal afternoon to take our bikes off the highest jumps we could build in the middle of the road, constructed from the neighborhood wood pile. When a car came speeding through we’d yell out “car” and quickly move our stuff to the side. We used skateboards on vertical ramps built from whatever, and roller skates on shoddy pavement. Our playgrounds were made of reflective metal hotter than lava attached to towers that seemed to reach 20 ft above the ground.

We built dangerous tree houses with rusty scrap in the ravine behind the neighborhood, next to place where the neighborhood’s older kids were surely taking all the drugs and hiding from their D.A.R.E. officers.

I used to load my sisters in the back of a red radio flyer wagon and we’d all ride down the neighborhood’s steepest hill, occasionally tipping at high speed and then sliding the rest of the way down likely removing several layers of skin and rolls of gauze from my mom’s medical kit in the process.

In primary school, I don’t think there was ever a moment without at least one kid on crutches or with a limb in a cast.

While it did harden us up, and provided some amazing memories, just about everyone I know who was a kid at that time knows of some kid who died while digging a tunnel, or got hit by a car, or spent half of his early teenage years in a cast, or who always seemed to have a finger splint.

Somehow through all of this we moved from thinking this is normal childhood stuff to blaming anyone and everyone by way of lawsuits.

There was nothing “safe” about that time. The debate seems to hinge on whether a dangerous childhood results in better adapted adults, perhaps by culling a few unlucky kids who hadn’t learned their own limits, and who know how to be creative in the absence of almost any artificial or algorithmic stimuli.

A lot of FOSS projects are freemium based which seems viable for larger more complex projects.

In these projects it’s common to see the developer get paid for adding features on top of the core version, for a SaaS version, for custom development, or for offering support.

Other projects with a lot of community interest - and a good “community manager” style organizer can attract contributors in the form of pulls, bug testing and reports, and widespread use which generates valuable marketing. These projects only exist because of the labor of love from the whole community.

I agree with your points. AI is a tool just like hammers and word processors. It shows a lot of promise because people can solve problems in ways that other tools cannot.

Efficiencies come later, and hating on the tool because it’s immature just means you’re probably further out on the technology adoption curve or have different use cases.

I’m not against ads in principle. The advertisers are paying the bill for stuff I consume. Great.

For that effort, they get a chance at my wallet. And to be honest, making me aware of a business or product is indeed a way to get me interested in what they sell. I do prefer the ads to be relevant instead of always useless.

That being said, it’s currently preferable to use a blocker and let the people who don’t know how to use blockers subsidize my ad-free ways.

A lot of terms are starting to blend… Now anything that does work a human could also do is AI / robots / automation / machine learning.

Not long until the boats start shooting back

AI companies believe the market will give the best rewards for a winner-take-all strategy.

They believe now is the time to accumulate customers.

Their future financing rounds very likely depend on being able to show growth.

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors all know it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be (yet). They hope another few billion in cash will get it there. And hope you don’t notice until they already won the market.

Thank you

I was ready gawk at what ads on my fridge would look like, and then this. I don’t know what I expected.

How to write such laws?

Billionaires don’t receive much income through W2 payrolls. They receive it as capital gains and loans against assets. The first is easy to manipulate and the latter isn’t counted as income.

They can stretch rules about business expenses vs income, using their businesses to buy things for them.

They physically move between several homes, ensuring to never meet tax residency status anywhere expensive.

They are playing a game with a lot of complicated rules but can hire pros who know how to exploit them.

Regular people can hardly afford this, let alone hire anybody to tell them how.

I was at the Canton Fair last week which is a trade show in China where manufacturers display some of their latest technology.

There was a robotics display all where they are showing off how lots of factories, kitchens, another labor-based jobs can be automated with technology.

This doesn’t really have a lot to do with AI or LLMs, but the field of robotics is advancing fast and a lot of basic work that humans had to do in the past won’t be needed as much in the future.

If your argument attacks my credibility, that’s fine, you don’t know me. We can find cases where developers use the technology and cases where they refuse.

Do you have anything substantive to add to the discussion about whether AI LLMs are anything more than just a tool that allows workers to further abstract, advancing all of the professions it can touch towards any of: better / faster / cheaper / easier?

From the article:

“The thing about that farmer,” Altman said, is not only that they wouldn’t believe you, but “they very likely would look at what you do and I do and say, ‘that’s not real work.'”

I think he pretty much agrees with you.