I thought bronyism sort of died out and that the furry community sort of subsumed it.

I'd also add that I think the increased self-ID of young people in the LGBTQ community is in and of itself sort of a means to access a sort of alternative lifestyle. Many of these people live somewhat hedonistic, bohemian, artsy lifestyles that disregard traditional notions of success or traditional standards and mores in relationships and love.

Uber used the classic triple-E philosophy of Microsoft and entered a market that was ripe for disruption -- many cities lacked reliable taxi service entirely, others were cartels that fixed prices. They undercut prices to an extreme degree, subsidized fares, and when it either drove local taxi companies out of business and spurred widespread adoption as the default, it had a captive market and duopoly with Lyft which allowed them to raise fares without losing any market share whatsoever.

It's a pretty classic business strategy, and not directly comparable to any of the AI companies. There's a reason people compare the current situation to the dotcom era and not Uber. Also, don't take Uber as an example of a slam-dunk VC success story and leave it at that -- plenty of dumb ideas get pitched and funded and go bankrupt for every Uber.

Yeah, people forget the risk to Uber was real in the early days. If municipalities had enforced their taxi laws, the company would have died and all those millions invested would have been lost (or pivoted into something else).

It was only because Uber successfully bulldozed over all regulations that it was able to succeed ... and that was hard to predict before it happened.

Absolutely. Even these days, Uber really only has one or two viable competitors. With any 3rd one in a far distant 3rd. Meanwhile, swapping which AI I’m using is as easy as clicking a dropdown. Hardly comparable to a physical car ride.

Probably. Although I feel more inclined to forgive Ed in this case because it's sort of fighting fire with fire, the insanely hyperbolic and obscenely misleading drivel that's coming out of the most ardent AI boosters is continually unchallenged in the public eye. In a world where we had a more realistic view of AI/ML/LLMs, the limits to its capabilities, and the negative externalities of its widespread adoption in places where it quite frankly does not belong, then I'd be more critical of the Chicken Little sort of writing style

This has been my issue this whole time. Why isn't it just framed as a useful software tool that helps you automate tasks and write code? Use cases beyond this have exceedingly high social cost and negative externalities, and it's arguable that besides highly specialized local models with very specific training data, AI is not reliable enough nor deterministic enough to truly "replace" humans in the vast majority of roles outside of tech.

Obviously the answer is $$$ and the fact that this admin's economic policy has further encouraged the market to go all-in on AI as it's the only thing that's trending in the black for the economy right now. I don't think you'll find many people on HN who won't readily admit that even if they're anti-AI, LLMs are genuinely amazing pieces of software that can be transformative and useful in many different environments, and it's mindblowing how they work. The issue comes from the very harmful way it's currently being commercialized and marketed.

Thanks for taking feedback into account but $20 per license is still a bit absurd. StartAllBack for Windows does almost everything your product does and costs $5 for a lifetime license.

The reason why no one cares is because most well-adjusted adults have never interacted with the web or its many tendrils as much as the patrons of this website (and others like it) have.

I do find it quite ironic that this piece reeks of LLM-writing while also simultaneously decrying the death of everything that is in antithesis to things like that. Is there a single shred of originality or shame left in the SV-adjacent writing sphere?

"this piece reeks of LLM-writing…"

How so?

It's getting to feel like some weird kind of AI McCarthyism where everything is suspected of being manufactured.

Since I have no idea whether something is LLM-generated or not, I've instead decided to argue things on their merits alone.

Likely because it used common writing techniques, which people have now convinced themselves are a surefire way to identify AI content, because the AI, having been trained on writing that uses common writing techniques, also uses those techniques.

Best to treat it with some emotional distance. It's not like the optimization process feels it.

Whether be it human dullards, scripted botfarms, or even maleficence -- none of them experience shame. If they do see it at all, it would be as one of many factors to boost engagement.

Fuck boosting engagement.

There is an ever-dwindling minority of people who think "fuck boosting engagement" is a valid strategy in this era. Online, engagement is everything. We have all, through social media and feed algorithms, been reduced to acting out the most insipid style of court-jester antics to try and garner attention; the SNR is just too high for good content to thrive.

"The lesson is not just to resist. It is to grow up."

Barf.

AI slop that complains about how AI is ruining the Internet is a trending genre on Hacker News.

Only the T and X series benefit from the Japanese design studios though and have the build quality to match. The E and L series are indistinguishable from a myriad of bargain bin business laptops, including Lenovo's own ideapads.

This comment makes two interesting assumptions:

1) That the entering of LLMs onto the scene of communication implies that real human beings need to change their style as a result.

2) That nobody can make an LLM talk like Cleetus McFarland.

To me, "I know that text is AI-generated" accusation smacks of the "We can always tell" discourse in the transphobia space. It's untrue, distasteful, and rude.

"just develop a personality" sounds like a shallow dismissal. Most comments in most threads could theoretically be autogenerated when given style samples of what fits on HN and what opinion to use

A personality hardly shows through in a handful of sentences, besides which, I'd rather judge comments by merit than by the personality of the poster (hacker ethics, point number 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics)