palmotea (u/palmotea)

palmotea commented on Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse thatjoescott.com/2026/02/... · Posted by u/rolph

unglaublich · 10 hours ago

They were already excellent at survival, and they migrated, and many of them died young. Sure, _humanity_ will survive, but a large part of the population won't.

palmotea · 9 hours ago

> They were already excellent at survival, and they migrated, and many of them died young. Sure, _humanity_ will survive, but a large part of the population won't.

Hence the egregious exaggeration of the title. Even large fractions of the population dying != "Bye Bye Humanity."

palmotea commented on Software factories and the agentic moment factory.strongdm.ai/... · Posted by u/mellosouls

blackqueeriroh · 13 hours ago

Why will you be destitute? Consider this: how do billionaires make most of their money?

I’ll answer you: people buy their stuff.

What happens if nobody has jobs? Oh, that’s right! Nobody’s buying stuff.

Then what happens? Oh yeah! Billionaires get poorer.

There’s a very rational, self-interested reason sama has been running UBI pilots and Elon is also talking about UBI - the only way they keep more money flowing into their pockets is if the largest number of people have disposable income.

palmotea · 9 hours ago

> What happens if nobody has jobs? Oh, that’s right! Nobody’s buying stuff.

> Then what happens? Oh yeah! Billionaires get poorer.

Or they pivot to businesses that don't depend on consumers buying stuff.

Or pivot away from business entirely, into a realm of pure power independent of the market and conventional economics.

> There’s a very rational, self-interested reason sama has been running UBI pilots and Elon is also talking about UBI - the only way they keep more money flowing into their pockets is if the largest number of people have disposable income.

There's another very rational, self-interested reason for those people to pursue UBI: as a temporary sop to the masses, to keep them passive until they lack the power to resist.

palmotea commented on Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse thatjoescott.com/2026/02/... · Posted by u/rolph

palmotea · 10 hours ago

> Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

The title is egregiously exaggerated. It implies humanity will go extinct if this happens, when it obviously won't. The actual article doesn't even come anywhere close to making that claim.

palmotea commented on The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/1vuio0pswjnm7

robotnikman · 20 hours ago

The future is not looking bright at all....

I only have a meme to describe what we are facing https://imgur.com/a/xYbhzTj

palmotea · 18 hours ago

> I only have a meme to describe what we are facing https://imgur.com/a/xYbhzTj

I don't recognize that cartoon and there's no audio. I'm going to need help with that one.

palmotea commented on NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing inpractice.yimbyaction.or... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo

alsetmusic · 2 days ago

> Come on, you know that's not analogous.

Not who you responded to, but I thought it was completely fair. We were a nation filled with Sundown Towns[0,1] very recently. Some probably still exist but are more discrete about it to avoid unwanted attention from those of us who would (loudly) call bullshit on the practice.

> Nowadays, when people bring up examples like you did above, it's usually part of an attempt to shut down democratic decision making, by making false comparisons.

I think you're trying to shutdown someone who has a different opinion from yours by delegitimizing their position. It's not reading the way you thought it would.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

1. https://thenewpress.org/books/sundown-towns/

palmotea · a day ago

> I think you're trying to shutdown someone who has a different opinion from yours by delegitimizing their position.

I'm trying to delegimimize the delegitimization that was being directed at me.

palmotea commented on How to effectively write quality code with AI heidenstedt.org/posts/202... · Posted by u/i5heu

9dev · 2 days ago

> AI just means more output will be expected of you, and they'll keep pushing you to work as hard as you can.

That’s a bit too cynical for me. After all, yes, your boss is not paying you for sipping lattes, but for producing value for the company. If there is a tool that maximises your output, why wouldn’t he want you to use that to great efficiency?

Put differently, would a carpenter shop accept employees rejecting the power saw in favour of a hand saw to retain their artisanal capability?

palmotea · a day ago

> That’s a bit too cynical for me. After all, yes, your boss is not paying you for sipping lattes, but for producing value for the company. If there is a tool that maximises your output, why wouldn’t he want you to use that to great efficiency?

Sitting in a cafe enjoying a latte is not "producing value for the company." If having "5 agents to generate a new SAAS-product" matches your non-AI capacity and gives you enough free time to relax in a cafe, he's going to want to you run 50 agents generating 5 new SAAS products, until you hit your capacity.

If he doesn't need 5 new SAAS products, just one, then he's going to fire you or other members of your team.

Think of it this way: you're a piece of equipment to your boss, and every moment he lets you sit idle (on the clock) is money lost. He wants to run that piece of equipment as hard as he can, to maximize his profit.

That's labor under capitalism.

palmotea commented on NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing inpractice.yimbyaction.or... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo

AnthonyMouse · 2 days ago

> Traffic?

The premise of these places is that it's on your way. That's not any more traffic, it's just the people already passing by stopping there momentarily.

> Parking?

That's this:

> I suppose that wouldn't be so much of an issue if there was a lot more of these shops, but then they might not be economically viable.

This is "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded". You would get as many of them as were viable, which would be enough that none of them were inundated.

You would also get things like part-time shops. You have someone with a work-from-home job and they put out a sign in front of their house saying you can get coffee and food there. They mainly get a few customers during the morning rush and a few more at lunchtime and do the work-from-home job the rest of the day.

Those would be everywhere if it was allowed, and they wouldn't even need parking lots because they wouldn't have enough simultaneous customers to fill one and there would generally be one within walking distance of any given place anyway.

> There's a lot of space between "walkable" and "30-45m drive away."

Except that if you concentrate it all into the same place, that's how you get serious traffic congestion, and then going to that place means you get stuck in traffic. Which means there isn't actually that much space between them, because the middle isn't an option. Either you put shops near where people live and it's walkable or you concentrate them downtown and you're stuck in traffic or circling to find parking to get there.

palmotea · 2 days ago

>> I suppose that wouldn't be so much of an issue if there was a lot more of these shops, but then they might not be economically viable.

> This is "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded". You would get as many of them as were viable, which would be enough that none of them were inundated.

No, I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. What I'm saying is a busy coffee shop has negative externalites on its surrounding neighborhood (traffic, people parking in front of your house all the time). That could be mitigated if you had so many coffee shops that none of them were busy enough for those externalites to matter (e.g. at most a handful of cars out front), but a coffee shop that slow may not make enough money to actually survive.

So you may have a natural and legitimate resistance to more, because of the externalites.

>> There's a lot of space between "walkable" and "30-45m drive away."

> Except that if you concentrate it all into the same place, that's how you get serious traffic congestion, and then going to that place means you get stuck in traffic. Which means there isn't actually that much space between them, because the middle isn't an option. Either you put shops near where people live and it's walkable or you concentrate them downtown and you're stuck in traffic or circling to find parking to get there.

Like have you lived in a suburb? Shops aren't usually walkable, but they're not "concentrated downtown" either. The middle is totally an option, and that's probably the usual situation. I don't know why people are gravitating to this false dichotomy (walkable OR 45min away, NO in-between). Grocery stores and coffee shops are like 10-15 minute drive away from most suburban homes, and there's never a jam.

palmotea commented on How to effectively write quality code with AI heidenstedt.org/posts/202... · Posted by u/i5heu

jeppester · 2 days ago

That's also how I feel.

I think you have every right to doubt those telling us that they run 5 agents to generate a new SAAS-product while they are sipping latté in a bar. To work like that I believe you'll have to let go of really digging into the code, which in my experience is needed if want good quality.

Yet I think coding agents can be quite a useful help for some of the trivial, but time consuming chores.

For instance I find them quite good at writing tests. I still have to tweak the tests and make sure that they do as they say, but overall the process is faster IMO.

They are also quite good at brute-forcing some issue with a certain configuration in a dark corner of your android manifest. Just know that they WILL find a solution even if there is none, so keep them on a leash!

Today I used Claude for bringing a project I abandoned 5 years ago up to speed. It's still at work in progress, but the task seemed insurmountable (in my limited spare time) without AI, now it feels like I'm half-way there in 2-3 hours.

palmotea · 2 days ago

> I think you have every right to doubt those telling us that they run 5 agents to generate a new SAAS-product while they are sipping latté in a bar. To work like that I believe you'll have to let go of really digging into the code, which in my experience is needed if want good quality.

Also we live in a capitalist society. The boss will soon ask: "Why the fuck am I paying you to sip a latte in a bar? While am machine does your work? Use all your time to make money for me, or you're fired."

AI just means more output will be expected of you, and they'll keep pushing you to work as hard as you can.

palmotea commented on NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing inpractice.yimbyaction.or... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo

withinboredom · 2 days ago

Governments should be working on multi-generational scales. Not "fads" of what people want because they saw it in a movie or they grew up with it.

palmotea · 2 days ago

> Governments should be working on multi-generational scales. Not "fads" of what people want because they saw it in a movie or they grew up with it.

If the people disagree with you, then you're not talking about democracy, you're talking about "benevolent" authoritarianism ("we know what's good for you, and that's what you're going to get, like it or not").

Just be clear what you're really advocating for.

palmotea commented on NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing inpractice.yimbyaction.or... · Posted by u/toomuchtodo

goda90 · 2 days ago

If you open up zoning to mixed density with light commercial, get rid of parking minimums, and design infrastructure that's walkable and bikeable, you don't need to intentionally bulldoze and rebuild any city from scratch. Instead people and companies will do it piecemeal because it makes sense to. New coffee shop opens and it's so busy that people who can't walk there can't find parking either? Sounds like demand for more coffee shops closer to those who can't walk to the first one. Someone is going to take that business opportunity.

palmotea · 2 days ago

> If you open up zoning to mixed density with light commercial, get rid of parking minimums, and design infrastructure that's walkable and bikeable, you don't need to intentionally bulldoze and rebuild any city from scratch. Instead people and companies will do it piecemeal because it makes sense to.

You should be smarter than that because...

> New coffee shop opens and it's so busy that people who can't walk there can't find parking either? Sounds like demand for more coffee shops closer to those who can't walk to the first one. Someone is going to take that business opportunity.

...situations like are a nuisance and engender resistance. Because the neighbor's formerly quite street turns into a parking lot before people "can't find parking." The people who have quiet streets will also see that and fight to keep a shop from opening near them.

So I think "get rid of parking minimums" is actually a pretty bad idea. You need parking minimums (but maybe not as large as is typical nowadays), plus zealous parking enforcement, to control the negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood.