Astra, Fable, Opus 5.5 are drastically beyond the capabilities of the median software developer. It's not remotely close.
The bottom 2/3 of the human market is entirely dead. Their jobs are gone (AI-shored) they just haven't all gotten the forced retirement or pink slips yet, while they click a few more prompts for a few more pay checks. The frontier pushing forward will knock out most of the remaining top 1/3 without breaking a sweat over the next few years. The really good developers will graduate into babysitting AI as managers.
It is legitimately sad, it's millions of high paying jobs just in the US alone. It's going to be brutal on the housing market. Automation came for another field.
Software engineering isn't unique, if this is true then it's 99% of all white collar work. Those same software engineers are going to help automate every other job on their way out.
Correct. Everything will disappear, even hardware jobs and the trades but the people responsible with the automation jobs (software developers) will be the last to go.
My income is not dependent on LLMs not taking all the software etc jobs from humans.
My suggestion to anybody staring this down is: do something for yourself while you can, while we're in the early going. Most people still have no understanding of AI, most tech employees are doing absolutely nothing interesting with it other than prompt prompt prompt prompt while at work and effectively doodling at home.
Go high value and go for the users. Do things that don't scale, that actually rings more true now than ever. Focus on areas of tech where it's really hard to get the users, where you have to practically hand acquire them to get started. Users are the moat.
It's not build the software and they will come. That's what nearly everybody has wrong about what is going on right now. The value is not in the software. Users, users, users, users - they should be your primary focus.
Also consider looking at software more as a layer related to something else you do, not as The Thing you do. Related to another service you offer, improving that service.
Let's say you started consolidating in the physical self-storage space ten years ago. You read that it was a very wide open field, where the market was not yet highly concentrated, 3/4 of the market was mom & pop operators. Over the next ten years you built up a lot of storage locations. LLMs can amplify your business, they can help you automate, layer better software on top of your physical business. You know what LLMs can't do? They can't build storage units, and humans love their storage space. That's just one example out of a zillion out there.
I am improving my Spanish and staring at the massive savings that I have built up from my SV job. When my job goes and the industry is in flames, I am moving to Bolivia.
If you have a big mortgage and no savings, it’s going to be tough. Stop taking the Waymo now.
So if I found a company and it becomes worth a billion dollars, thereby making me a billionaire, I get the guillotine or what? Where is the cutoff for me losing the fruits of my labors?
I don't see why that would happen. The money is being spent whether it's distributed to the masses and spent on food, or spent on a yacht. If anything it should be deflationary because the rich mostly don't spend their money, else they wouldn't be rich.
It's not about buying the thing or not but about inserting oneself as an unnecessary middleman who just raises the price, which only works due to the customer's ignorance. It's essentially deceiving someone into paying more than they had to. I don't see how it could be considered positive.
I see, that makes a little more sense if you start from the assumption it isnt adding value and also raising prices, then of course it isnt positive.
I think this underappreciates that value added by having multiple sellers/retailers competing and advertising. I dont think the world where everything must be bought from a manufacturer or small set of retailers is better.
If the majority of citizens want a thing but somehow the few elites ban that thing, it can, often does, and probably should result in a violent uprising. Every time this happens in history we praise the rebels. So I have to say that if AfD gets banned I will not be surprised or upset if politicians end up murdered over it.
Mine is also pretty good. It's a beautiful place with a guard gate. I don't even like hoas, it kind of pisses me off that I can't do ugly customizations, but it's not really a big issue. The neighborhood was nice enough that I chose to buy there. If there were no HOA it would look like the rest of town which is shoddy.
If my neighbor decides to start blasting music at 3am for some reason, I don't have to suck it up for the next decade, I can just get the HOA to deal with it. Very peaceful.
I feel like if you need a guard gate then whatever city you live in is basically a failed state.
If there is blasting music at 3am the police in my area would deal with that and every city I have lived in deals with those type of nuance issues quickly.
HOAs are not common where I live and they just sound like people privatizing what your local government should be doing.
> they just sound like people privatizing what your local government should be doing.
Yes, that is what they are. It's easier to agree to a covenant to follow some rules and do things than it is to change laws and then get them enforced. You can't think of one thing you wish would be enforced that isn't a law? "I wish my neighbor didn't paint his house an ugly hot pink and park a rusted tractor on the lawn." Well with a hoa you can all agree to not do that.
American cities are largely failed states where police would not respond to anything short of murder, so yeah be grateful for your place of living
American cities are not largely failed states and no I can’t think of anything like what you are suggesting. The laws we have in my very average city cover the issues I would have with my neighbors. Personally I appreciate people being creative and have housing designs I might not choose. People storing things on their property is fine as long as it isn’t a health and safety issue.
Also since my city is a democracy with vibrant civic engagement, if I thought a law needed changing I am pretty sure it would be fully debated and considered. What I have heard from friends who have lived in HOAs would suggest that I could not be confident the HOA board would give a crap.
I don't personally think that the existence of an HOA implies a failed city. But perhaps the utility of an HOA is even higher in such a city. I also will grant that bad HOAs can and do exist.
HoA is not meant for access to a park. HoA is supposed to be for maintaining public spaces inside a community - a pool, community center, landscaping around common areas, enforce basic rules so people can coexist in tight spaces.
HoA might be pointless if everyone lives on 5 acre lots where the stuff your neighbor does won’t really affect you but if you have homes squeezed into tiny 8k sq ft lots, we absolutely need some basic rules to live together in such close proximity. The rules can just be common sense rules that everyone can agree on but something needs to exist so one person can’t ruin it for everyone else. In a condo, you can’t just blast music during the quiet hours so others can sleep and go to work. In a neighborhood street, you don’t get to permanently park your giant RV and a boat and inconvenience others because you bought too large of an RV to fit in your own lot or are too cheap to pay for storage somewhere else and so now you have decided it to make it be everyone’s problem. This is just common sense which a typical considerate person would follow even without rules on the books but there are always a few that think they can just do whatever they want.
That's what national laws and the city government do in Germany, and I presume a lot of the rest of the world. I live in a neighborhood where the average lot size is something around 250 square meters (2800 sq ft) for the single-family houses, and we're fine.
Someone is making racket after 10pm or before 7am, or at all on Sunday? If they won't quiet down after being asked nicely, or you can't reach them, call the city - that's against national law. Someone decides to park something too wide for the street or over a certain size and weight? Call the non-emergency number, and a very eager tow-truck driver will show up with a quickness you wish ADAC (German AAA) would. Something has been parked on the street and not moved within a certain period (that I don't know off the top of my head) - tell the city that there's an abandoned vehicle and they'll put a sticker on it alerting the owner that they have 48 hours to move it. If parking is really tight in a neighborhood, the city will create a parking permit zone if you and your neighbors campaign for it. Someone doesn't mow their yard by July (before that, it's for the sake of wildlife) or won't get their tree that is growing over your fence trimmed? The city will make them if social pressure doesn't do it first.
Don’t confuse yourself. HOAs are in addition to state/county/city regulations. A lot of local governments allow HOAs to enforce additional quiet hours or other things.
I’ve never lived in a HOA that had to maintain roads, sewers, or street lights. All the infrastructure is covered by the county or city. Neighborhood pools, playgrounds, and common areas are HOA. That’s in addition to local parks, aquatic centers, and all the other local public service stuff the county and cities provide.
I am president of our HOA board here in so cal and our biggest line item to maintain is our asphalt roads. They are technically private streets so we can set whatever rules we want (within the bounds of the law and needing a board approval) but we are definitely owners of the streets and have to pay to maintain them (which is absurdly expensive if you weren't aware how much asphalt work costs).
If HOAs stopped there, these points could be reasonably argued. But those I’ve worked with are as much, or more preoccupied with enforcing petty aesthetic consistency standards and pursuing perceived deviations with a zeal that would make one believe that the issues actually mattered.
I am conflating HOA with condo maintenance, but to add an anecdote re: Florida - my dad's condo was reassessed twice over the last 3 years. The first time, the balcony was cordoned off for about 5 months. This time, his balcony has been inaccessible for 4 months and ongoing. His maintenance fees jumped 80% to almost $2K for over this period. This is on top of mortgage. He paid for the view which he gets no access to. Somebody on that management board is laughing hard on their way to the bank.
Beware anybody who claims property-law is naturally simple. Triply-so so if they believe other laws should be "simplified" so that every problem is though the lens of ownership rights.
That's how you get Mr. Burns blocking out Springfield's sun.
City services are not as good as the private services I pay for though. The area behind my gate is a lush oasis; the surrounding area is bare minimum. My parks are pristine and have no dog poop. The public parks are not that. My life will not be subject to a large number of neighbor inconveniences; police would not do something about a dog waking me at nights or littering or speeding past my road where my kids play at 50mph. I get no solicitors ever because of the gate. The guards at the gate require salaries that someone has to pay for.
I did state as a fact that they are not required for park management. They're also less common than in the US and, so far at least, far less draconian (seemingly) in comparison to nightmare USofA HOA stories.
Deadlifts helped my chronic congenital back pain that is probably some combination of DDD and scoliosis and multiple herniations. Yes sometimes it pisses off the disks and I'm pretty useless for a day or two. And yes it has added some other problems. But overall I went from constant sharp pain nearly unable to remain seated, to occasional dull pain I can ignore, and rarely some really bad pain. Overall it's much better of a life.
Same here, really life changing for me with a back injury. I recommend hex bar deadlifts as they put much less pressure on the lower back than conventional ones. And front squats for the same reason.
Have to disagree there as it doesn't make much sense. The point is to strengthen the muscles of the back. Keeping a more vertical back angle directly reduces force on those muscles while keeping the same spinal compression. You want the opposite, to have maximal muscle involvement with minimal compression. Back extensions progressing to normal deadlifts are indicated.
I have done both extensively and heavy, and like you said yourself, with the barbell deadlift you will sometimes trash your back. Yes it does work the back muscles a little harder, but for me the extra risk isn't worth it. Also with the trap bar you can lift more weight so it balances out.
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