kokanee (u/kokanee) - Readit News

kokanee commented on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears telegraph.co.uk/business/... · Posted by u/pera

miki123211 · 3 days ago

I have an overwhelming feeling that what we're trying to do here is "Netflix over DialUp."

We're clearly seeing what AI will eventually be able to do, just like many VOD, smartphone and grocery delivery companies of the 90s did with the internet. The groundwork has been laid, and it's not too hard to see the shape of things to come.

This tech, however, is still far too immature for a lot of use cases. There's enough of it available that things feel like they ought to work, but we aren't quite there yet. It's not quite useless, there's a lot you can do with AI already, but a lot of use cases that are obvious not only in retrospect will only be possible once it matures.

kokanee · 3 days ago

I'm not convinced that the immaturity of the tech is what's holding back the profits. The impact and adoption of the tech are through the roof. It has shaken the job market across sectors like I've never seen before. My thinking is that if the bubble bursts, it won't be because the technology failed to deliver functionally; it will be because the technology simply does not become as profitable to operate as everyone is betting right now.

What will it mean if the cutting edge models are open source, and being OpenAI effectively boils down to running those models in your data center? Your business model is suddenly not that different from any cloud service provider; you might as well be Digital Ocean.

kokanee commented on GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation theverge.com/news/757461/... · Posted by u/Handy-Man

rustystump · 12 days ago

Idk i can think of a long list of awful stuff coming out of ms that is modern. They put fing ads in an os among other atrocities.

I put them behind meta on the evilness meter but i think google is less evil which speaks volumes.

The only side of ms that i have any love for is xbox but that is also waning with all the studio acquisitions.

kokanee · 12 days ago

Your comment warrants a post in its own right: let's rank FAANG/M by evilness. Personally I've always been way more afraid of Google, because Microsoft's evil is just old-school capitalism, which is blatant, brash, and harder to ignore than to identify. Google feels like they are quietly and surreptitiously trying to pull the strings of the online economy in their favor, voraciously consuming the world's data behind the scenes, presenting to consumers a tiny little sliver of this massive digital beast lurking under the hood. They're always 15 years ahead of policy, so they get away with theft, copyright infringement, monopoly, and more, on a scale that I don't think we even fully understand.

My ranking from most evil to least would be:

1. Google

2. Meta

3. Microsoft

4. Amazon

5. Apple

6. Netflix

kokanee commented on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2025) · Posted by u/whoishiring

ajponte · 22 days ago

Location: San Francisco Bay Area

Remote: Yes (or hybrid)

Willing to relocate: Tentatively

Technologies: Python, Flask, FastAPI, Java, Spring MVC, SpringBoot, NodeJs, Postgres, MySql, Redis, Kafka, Kubernetes, Celery, AWS.

  Resume: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12kjtGlJh3JpA8-HtXfBNT7CyZ9pclHfKYHja4eMr4-A/edit?usp=sharing

Email: alanjponte@gmail.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-jason-ponte/

My name is Alan, and I have over a decade of experience building software professionally. Over the past 3 years, I've assumed the role of Tech Lead/Architect for a SaaS startup where I've had the opportunity to lead the technical direction of the team, engage with product design, and mentor junior engineers.

Before working as a Software Engineer, I spent a few years as Computer Systems Engineer for a National Laboratory. I was afforded the opportunity to work on a variety of systems with scientists and engineers of various disciplines.

I'm looking to work on interesting products at any level (IC, Tech Lead, Fractional CTO, Technical Advisor). If you'd like to have a quick chat, feel free to reach out!

kokanee · 22 days ago

You are probably overqualified, but the leveling might be flexible, I'm not sure: https://eh2.com/careers/?gh_jid=4587712005

kokanee commented on Measuring the impact of AI on experienced open-source developer productivity metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-... · Posted by u/dheerajvs

kokanee · a month ago

> developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.

I feel like there are two challenges causing this. One is that it's difficult to get good data on how long the same person in the same context would have taken to do a task without AI vs with. The other is that it's tempting to time an AI with metrics like how long until the PR was opened or merged. But the AI workflow fundamentally shifts engineering hours so that a greater percentage of time is spent on refactoring, testing, and resolving issues later in the process, including after the code was initially approved and merged. I can see how it's easy for a developer to report that AI completed a task quickly because the PR was opened quickly, discounting the amount of future work that the PR created.

kokanee commented on Drinks in glass bottles contain more microplastics than those in other container anses.fr/en/content/drink... · Posted by u/Zealotux

capitainenemo · 2 months ago

I suppose if the paint is the issue, glass bottles using the swing top metal hinge and rubber stopper method are fine?

kokanee · 2 months ago

They said corks are fine. For grolsch tops, the kind of rubber might matter, I'd guess.

kokanee commented on Show HN: SnapQL – Desktop app to query Postgres with AI github.com/NickTikhonov/s... · Posted by u/nicktikhonov

nicktikhonov · 2 months ago

What I meant was that it isn't a web app and I don't store your connection strings or query results. I'll make this more clear

kokanee · 2 months ago

It is a web app, though. You just aren't running the server, OpenAI is. And you're packaging the front end in electron instead of chrome to make it feel as if it all runs locally, even though it doesn't.

Side note: I don't see a license anywhere, so technically it isn't open source.

kokanee commented on Neuromorphic computing lanl.gov/media/publicatio... · Posted by u/LAsteNERD

layer8 · 3 months ago

For most applications, we don’t want “functionally identical”. We do not want it to have its own desires and a will of its own, biological(-analogous) needs, having a circadian rhythm, getting tired and needing sleep, being subject to mood changes and emotional swings, feeling pain, having a sexual drive, needing recognition and validation, and so on. So we don’t want to copy the neural and bodily correlates that give rise to those phenomena, which arguably are not essential to how the human brain manages to have the intelligence it has. That is likely to drastically change the ethics of it. We will have to learn more about how those things work in the brain to avoid the undesirables.

kokanee · 3 months ago

If we back away from philosophy and think like engineers, I think you're entirely right and the question should be moot. I can't help but think, though, that in spite of it all, the Elon Musks and Sam Altmans of the future will not be stopped from attempting to create something indistinguishable from flesh and blood.

kokanee commented on Neuromorphic computing lanl.gov/media/publicatio... · Posted by u/LAsteNERD

kokanee · 3 months ago

Philosophical thought: if the aim of this field is to create an artificial human brain, then it would be fair to say that the more advanced the field becomes, the less difference there is between the artificial brain and a real brain. This begs two questions:

1) Is the ultimate form of this technology ethically distinguishable from a slave?

2) Is there an ethical difference between bioengineering an actual human brain for computing purposes, versus constructing a digital version that is functionally identical?

kokanee commented on A thought on JavaScript "proof of work" anti-scraper systems utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/spa... · Posted by u/zdw

jeroenhd · 3 months ago

This is rather unfortunate, but the way Anubis works, you will only get the PoW test once.

Scrapers, on the other hand, keep throwing out their session cookies (because you could easily limit their access by using cookies if they didn't). They will need to run the PoW workload every page load.

If you're visiting loads of different websites, that does suck, but most people won't be affected all that much in practice.

There are alternatives, of course. Several attempts at standardising remote attestation have been done. Apple has included remote attestation into Safari years ago. Basically, Apple/Google/Cloudflare give each user a limited set of "tokens" after verifying that they're a real person on real hardware (using TPMs and whatnot), and you exchange those tokens for website visits. Every user gets a load of usable tokens, but bots quickly run out and get denied access. For this approach to work, that means locking out Linux users, people with secure boot disabled, and things like outdated or rooted phones, but in return you don't get PoW walls or Cloudflare CAPTCHAs.

In the end, LLM scrapers are why we can't have nice things. The web will only get worse now that these bots are on the loose.

kokanee · 3 months ago

Attestation is a compelling technical idea, but a terrible economic idea. It essentially creates an Internet that is only viewable via Google and Apple consumer products. Scamming and scraping would become more expensive, but wouldn't stop.

It pains me to say this, but I think that differentiating humans from bots on the web is a lost cause. Proof of work is just another way to burn more coal on every web request, and the LLM oligarchs will happily burn more coal if it reduces competition from upstart LLMs.

Sam Altman's goal is to turn the Internet into an unmitigated LLM training network, and to get humans to stop using traditional browsing altogether, interacting solely via the LLM device Jony Ive is making for him.

Based on the current trajectory, I think he might get his way, if only because the web is so enshittified that we eventually won't have another way to reach mainstream media other than via LLMs.

kokanee commented on The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it? garymarcus.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/NotInOurNames

kokanee · 3 months ago

> Everyone else either performs a charade of doing their job—leaders still leading, managers still managing—or relaxes and collects an incredibly luxurious universal basic income.

For me, this was the most difficult part to believe. I don't see any reason to think that the U.S. leadership (public and private) is incentivized to spend resources to placate the masses. They will invest in protecting themselves from the masses, and obstructing levers of power that threaten them, but the idea that economic disparities will shrink under explosive power consolidation is counterintuitive.

I also worry about the economics of UBI in general. If everyone in the economy has the exact same resources, doesn't the value of those resources instantly drop to the lowest common denominator; the minimum required to survive?