thunky (u/thunky) - Readit News

thunky commented on JetBlue flight averts mid-air collision with US Air Force jet reuters.com/world/america... · Posted by u/divbzero

estearum · 18 hours ago

Not even 50% of voters voted for Trump

That Trump is even near the reigns of power is obviously an indictment of many facets of American culture and politics, but it doesn't really wash out to every individual American bearing responsibility the way you're suggesting here.

thunky · 17 hours ago

I think you're being too literal. The "you" in "you voted" was the country, not the person.

We're all stuck with some shared ownership for what our country does even if we detest it.

thunky commented on If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? english.elpais.com/techno... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

caconym_ · 2 days ago

> you shouldn't have given away your work for free.

Almost none of the original work I've ever posted online has been "given away for free", because it was protected by copyright law that AI companies are brazenly ignoring, except where they make huge deals with megacorporations (eg openai and disney) because they do in fact know what they're doing is not fair use. That's true whether or not I posted it in a context where I expected compensation.

thunky · a day ago

> Almost none of the original work I've ever posted online has been "given away for free", because it was protected by copyright law that AI companies are brazenly ignoring.

I just don't think the AI is doing anything differently than a human does. It "learns" and then "generates". As long as the "generates" part is actually connecting dots on its own and not just copy & pasting protected material then I don't see why we should consider it any different from when a human does it.

And really, almost nothing is original anyway. You think you wrote an original song? You didn't. You just added a thin layer over top of years of other people's layers. Music has converged over time to all sound very similar (same instruments, same rhythms, same notes, same scales, same chords, same progressions, same vocal techniques, and so on). If you had never heard music before and tried to write a truly original song, you can bet that it would not sound anything like any of the music we listen to today.

Coding, art, writing...really any creative endeavor, for the most part works the same way.

thunky commented on If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes? english.elpais.com/techno... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

slowmovintarget · 2 days ago

The real issue should not be whether they're paying the government. The issue is whether they're paying us for taking the human content of the last two thousand years and baking it into their generators.

How do we get royalties on this, like our share of the oil proceeds if we were citizens of Qatar? How do we trade our share of the contribution? There's twenty years of my posting on Reddit, Slashdot, HN, and other forums, that we know for a fact has been used in these frontier models. Great... where's my royalty check?

Pay us, not the government. We'll have to pay taxes regardless, and yes, close the tax loopholes on security-based capital gains (don't tax me for all the investment in my primary residence, that's a double dip).

I heard this called "Coasian" economics (as in Coase). I'm not sure what that actually means, though.

thunky · 2 days ago

> where's my royalty check?

I support the idea of UBI with zero conditions, but not this. You didn't get royalties before AI when someone was heavily influenced by your work/content and converted that into money. If you expected compensation, then you shouldn't have given away your work for free.

thunky commented on The Gorman Paradox: Where Are All the AI-Generated Apps? codemanship.wordpress.com... · Posted by u/ArmageddonIt

garden_hermit · 3 days ago

I would expect a general rise in productivity across sectors, but with the largest concentrated in the tech sector given the focus on code generation. A proliferation of new apps, new features, and new functionalities at a quicker pace than pre-AI. Given the hype, one would expect an inflection point in the productivity of this sector, but it mostly just appears linear.

I am very willing to believe that there are many obscure and low-quality apps being generated by AI. But this speaks to the fact that mere generation of code is not productive, that generating quality applications requires other forms of labor that is not presently satisfied by generative AI.

thunky · 2 days ago

> A proliferation of new apps, new features, and new functionalities at a quicker pace than pre-AI

IMO you're not seeing this because nobody is coming up with good ideas because we're already saturated with apps. And apps are already releasing features faster than anyone wants them. How many app reviews have you read that say: "Was great before the last update". Development speed and ability isn't the thing holding us back from great software releases.

thunky commented on The Gorman Paradox: Where Are All the AI-Generated Apps? codemanship.wordpress.com... · Posted by u/ArmageddonIt

bccdee · 3 days ago

The article provides a few good signals: (1) an increase in the rate at which apps are added to the app store, and (2) reports of companies forgoing large SaaS dependencies and just building them themselves. If software is truly a commodity, why aren't people making their own Jiras and Figmas and Salesforces? If we can really vibe something production-ready in no time, why aren't industry-standard tools being replaced by custom vibe clones?

thunky · 3 days ago

> If we can really vibe something production-ready in no time, why aren't industry-standard tools being replaced by custom vibe clones?

That's a silly argument. Someone could have made all of those clones before, but didn't. Why didn't they? Hint: it's not because it would have taken them longer without AI.

I feel like these anti-AI arguments are intentially being unrealistic. Just because I can use Nano Banana to create art does not mean I'm going to be the next Monet.

thunky commented on The Gorman Paradox: Where Are All the AI-Generated Apps? codemanship.wordpress.com... · Posted by u/ArmageddonIt

garden_hermit · 3 days ago

This just returns us to the question — if it makes all these things so easy and fast, where are the AI-generated apps? Where is the productivity boost?

thunky · 3 days ago

How do you expect this boost will appear?

People start announcing that they're using AI to do their job for them? Devs put "AI generated" banners all over their apps? No, because people are incentivised to hide their use of AI.

Businesses, on the other hand, announce headcount reductions due to AI and of course nobody believes them.

If you're talking about normal people using AI to build apps those apps are all over the place, but I'm not sure how you would expect to find them unless you're looking. It's not like we really need that many new apps right now, AI or not.

thunky commented on GPT-5.2 openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/atgctg

svara · 5 days ago

That's right - it does seem to have to do with trying to be helpful.

One demo of this that reliably works for me:

Write a draft of something and ask the LLM to find the errors.

Correct the errors, repeat.

It will never stop finding a list of errors!

The first time around and maybe the second it will be helpful, but after you've fixed the obvious things, it will start complaining about things that are perfectly fine, just to satisfy your request of finding errors.

thunky · 4 days ago

> It will never stop finding a list of errors!

Not my experience. I find after a couple of rounds it tells me it's perfect.

thunky commented on If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C? stephenramsay.net/posts/v... · Posted by u/sramsay

RagnarD · 7 days ago

Re: love of programming - those who think an AI should do it all should consider whether they should outsource having sex as well.

thunky · 7 days ago

porn

thunky commented on Removed rust to gain speed prisma.io/blog/announcing... · Posted by u/2233

baranul · 15 days ago

This is a decent example of not buying, getting pulled, or being forced into any corporate pushed hype or eliminating one's options. They re-evaluated and looked at what programming language was best for their situation, which was removing the Rust language and using something else. It then turned out, they actually got gains in greater user contributions, simplicity, efficiency, and even speed.

thunky · 10 days ago

> This is a decent example of not buying, getting pulled, or being forced into any corporate pushed hype

It seems that maybe they did get hyped into Rust, because it's not clear why they believed Rust would make their JavaScript tool easier to develop, simpler, or more efficient in the first place.

thunky commented on Wall Street races to protect itself from AI bubble rollingout.com/2025/12/05... · Posted by u/zerosizedweasle

anonymars · 11 days ago

The bank is essentially converting a short term IOU (liquid deposits) into a longer term IOU (the loan)

It's a function of time (mediated by interest rates, subject to market demand, namely liquidity preferences)

That's not the same as outright "printing money" which is not backed by any deposits (what does the balance sheet look like when "printing money"?)

thunky · 11 days ago

Ok fine I'll agree call it "creating money" rather than "printing money", because it's not the same mechanism the central bank uses to "print" permanent money (technically not printed either but whatever), but money is still created by the bank.