If it will help me search (or rather "comb") through rental posts on the trillions Facebook groups (that Facebook spent years making in unsearchable sanely) I have to subscribe to (just for my city) and make it even 10% better for me, I might as well pay a bit for this tool. Why? Because I like it or hate it - that's where the rental posts live (and very little elsewhere - and even those are on Facebook).
This is a bit of tangent and more of a rant. (and please don't suggest intervention of any kind)
> superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity seems to have no flaw
For a section of population who were in a certain age-range when the pandemic hit and that derailed their certain kinds of plans/hopes/dreams in personal life and then this LLM/agentic world moved in, especially if they are in an industry directly and most affected this, this has been a surreal and slow Kafkaesque nightmare for a few years. The thing is with time and age passing hope keeps getting lost inch by inch and every lost bit of hope aids in killing the next bit. Then comes the sense of dread - the unchangeable reality that age passed passing means there are certain experiences and milestones that are essentially out of reach because there's no going back of this clock.
So I feel a strange kind of relief about this possibility of doom. I am just sharing what I feel, and I don't feel good about feeling this sense of relief that after all it might end for us all and not just an unlucky few. This feeling and the calmness about it saddens me.
As an older person, I agree with you and I'm sorry.
I think about the incredible luck I had to start my career in the .com boom, to have lots of hope about technology and to have the economically valuable skills that were desired.
I get angry when I see people my age or older complain about the apathy of young people. I don't like the apathy, but I find it trivially easy to see where it comes from. In many ways we broke the link between hard work and success and then get baffled and finger point when we think young folks are not as motivated as they should be.
Have you considered getting involved in local civics?
I only ask because like you, I felt similar. But I also grew up (I’m 35 now) with a big disconnect from civics life and always felt “someone else would save me”.
Now I see I was the problem all along: I never participated in what was a fragile and very delicate system of governance which requires my participation. Still figuring out what that looks like, but first confronting that my actions “didn’t change anything” (which I’m sure you can admit is a big propagandistic myth to disempower us) let me take my first tiny action locally which is reach out to my civics association for signage repair. I suspect from there I will level up and better understand my government to play a role in shaping it. I’m also building something to solve this problem of low participation which is exciting!
I know where you are coming from. I do engage with the society while not in the way you've mentioned. Very regularly attend plays, meet a few friends (the number has reduced but these few have been regular), play team/group sports every day. There's place I go to teach twice a week. There are few other things. But let's not get into that. It all feels empty now. Motions. The hope of a personal and intimate future is just gone.
See, the personal life is dead to me (I've not given up, no. It's not just there!). At least what and who would have been accessible to me in 2020 and it was. I spent quite some time to bring my physical fitness, health, got back to sports and I was so happy. There was that glimmer. Then a mass layoff and sadly at the same time the burnout meant I was not ready to look again but I kept on rest of the things. And when I tried to get back to things it was evident that the ground beneath shifted entirely. Now, it seems, there's no point. Not in the defeatist way, because I've seen that "there's no point" before, but in the sense that there is really no point. I am about to be 40 in a few months time and almost every venues are closed to me to explore social life in any meaningful way I'd find desirable. In some settings the fact that I have financially independent and have decades of runaway for my currency and lifestyle doesn't matter. Everything gets tied to employment and even then when you look around, whether it's finding a group or exploring looking for a partner (especially this!), it all feels bizarre and completely alien. It's not only the double whammy of two events that wiped out my early and mid 30s, but it also depends on what society and culture I am in at this juncture. And no it's not my fault or anyone's but this happened, and not being alone in it doesn't make it any better.
Do I feel fortunate? Well, that's the wrong question, because when you are unhappy with your pair of shoes, you can always find someone without any shoes and I wish we functioned that way, with that arithmetic rationality, but we don't; at least I don't.
The biggest problem is - the wish to live this life (I don't even have any doubt there, because if I had it would have been simpler) and wish to do something and dreams of a fulfilling, exciting, and passionate personal life hasn't diminished a bit, but, at the same time it is clear that there's no more of that - most of that. That's the gripe - this tug.
(Hey, thank you for engaging with me. This was very kind of you. Even though this is not really hn discussion material so I can't even explain what I am going through. I might even make it look like everything is fine, and even hunky dory for me, and I am just whining. Or maybe I am).
Hey you're welcome. I enjoyed this. The deep, intimate connection with a stranger (or not) is fulfilling for me - and I feel this is hn discussion material. Technology and what being a hacker was about is changing fast, and beyond that, would we be honest if we said hacking and creating with tech it is disconnected from our personal lives?
So what are you looking for? What do you want out of this thing called life? I wonder what advice you would give to yourself now, 20 years from now, and whether you have really lost hope permanently or are just struggling to find it again?
There are vague dreams of some sort of professional fulfilment (call it success as society calls it; monetary gains again ie an income stream; the feeling of making something that is tangible at some level - it might be a software; and definitely not feeling almost obsolete and this time for no fault of mine at all) and all of them get checked by non-vague wish/dream/yearning for personal fulfilment - a partner, a family, possibly a child, a simple house et cetera. The pain is I might already have the money, had I been younger, and if I fight enough might get more. But the rest? Well, the 6-7 years just wiped a lot of things. A lot of these things are not feasible for me now. Not in a setup, or a partner who I'd have wanted to be with - that combo just doesn't exist anymore. That's gone for my existence in this world at this point in time at this age and at this professional and financial status.
This is getting muddled. The pain is the time is lost and there were certain fulfilments I'd have wanted to have in this period and that's gone for me.
Hah. 20 years later? I'd advise myself to try and go back to 25-28 again and think seriously about getting married or actively date while there was still time and work strictly for money because later either that changes or that'd mean remain stuck in same orgs for long and for what - low salaries and a good team/work? See, I right now want satisfaction and bit of money but I want to tell my younger self to just earn filthy amount of money one way or the other. I can see that disconnect. But had I had "that kind of money" and that could just be, let's just talk numbers for a moment, 2-3x of what I've right now and I could have sped up and make better efforts at getting what I want from my personal life.
I am scared I have lost hope for good but if there's something there left I want to try and get that. I am trying everyday. Maybe that's what hope is, or maybe just the meaningless struggle.
You're welcome. Always down to connect and hear the struggles of a fellow hacker/tech worker/internet stranger who was vulnerable enough to share an authentic part of themselves with me. My email is hello@mannan.is should you ever wish to reconnect.
And I feel that in there, there's a kindle of hope, waiting to be rediscovered. I think it'll come by surprise and you'll be wondering where it was all along. Or at least, if you have no hope for your life, I do.
"If a death ray comes from the sky and obliterates the entire planet, at least we all go together." There is something comforting about being together with the human race even in doom. Perhaps especially in doom.
I've been fortunate to not been impacted as severely as others, but yeah, the combo of the first half of my 30s (and everything that should've represented) going up in smoke, career continuity coming into question thanks to AI, and growing sense of overarching geopolitical, financial, and societal unease is really the worst kind of layer cake. I have to make a concerted effort to not get bogged down in it and that's getting harder all the time.
If anybody is hiding a button that'd take us all back to 2012 I wish they'd just hit it already.
> If anybody is hiding a button that'd take us all back to 2012 I wish they'd just hit it already.
Historically, resets have been a global war or economic meltdown, coupled with massive government-driven redistribution supported by popular opinion.
ZIRP post-COVID had a net effect of keeping the wealthy wealthy, without redistributing. For all the hay made about salary support, the Fed had more power in deciding who felt the pain.
I have similar feelings, you’re not alone (nor alone in being saddened by it). Things seem to me to be more or less playing out the way I interpreted existential risk researchers saying it would, so there’s a strange relief in knowing the general shape of what is to come.
The combined intellectual output of the field, across books, lectures, blog posts, verbal discussion in professional and personal capacities (many of them are friends or acquaintances), for about a decade. It’s just not possible to neatly condense that into a book recommendation, unfortunately. I can give you the flavor of it, at least, with this excerpt:
(Please excuse the archaic terminology of “robot” for LLM/agent, this was written in 2014 and LLMs weren’t invented until 3 years later)
In the face of continuing debate about this point, I continue to think it obvious that robots will push humans out of work or at least drive down wages (which, in the existence of a minimum wage, pushes humans out of work).
Once a robot can do everything an IQ 80 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ IQ 80 humans. Once a robot can do everything an IQ 120 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ IQ 120 humans. Once a robot can do everything an IQ 180 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ humans at all, in the unlikely scenario that there are any left by that point.
I mean clearly what you are talking about is a personal feeling here. You mention it saddens you and that is the concerning part imo but you also said no intervention bs so I will just share my counter factual: I am also kind of okay if the world ends tomorrow, to me it never mattered in the first place. But that feeling doesn't sadden me. I feel it frees me because I don't think of life as a very very serious thing and I feel there is a certain kind of lightness you can afford when you fundamentally don't care if you/the entire world ends tomorrow. I still love people and I still love my life and I don't want any harm to anyone. So I do feel the same calmness that you kind of talk about (for life in general aside from just AI killing us all) but my interpretation of it doesn't sadden me. If it did, I would really investigate why I interpret it that way, it might help you discover yourself. There is no shame in being okay with the world ending imo but there is sin in willing it or contributing to it because one thinks its inevitable. Furthermore, I also believe that we only get 1 life which is temporal and fundamentally doesn't have any meaning. How you live every day is how you live every day. We can suffer, we can cry, we can feel sad and for very good reasons but our relationship with ourself shapes our entire lives. If something constantly makes us sad, we should examine it to understand where that really comes from.
> * For a section of population who were in a certain age-range when the pandemic hit and that derailed their certain kinds of plans/hopes/dreams in personal life*
...
> So I feel a strange kind of relief about this possibility of doom.
So let me make sure I understand what you're saying. The pandemic disrupted your life plans for a few years and threw you off the track you planned? (Which does suck.) And now the possibility of actual human extinction makes you feel a strange relief? Am I understanding this correctly?
If so, this is a remarkable level of something. Depression? Nihilism? Jealousy? Something else?
Imagining total human extinction and feeling relief is not a healthy state of mind. And, yeah, you seem to know this. But I kind of wish we could reach some sort of broad public agreement that human extinction would be bad. And if it ever looks like it might happen, we should fight for human survival.
Something something Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. While I don't necessarily endorse the view, it's understandable that one might find it difficult to care much about the bigger picture when it feels like their own life is destined for a doom-spiral.
All problems arise from this statement. It's baked in us and it's why we do in fact survive. But it isn't so neatly righteous. When we struggle to agree on what defines a human, who ought to have rights, and basic equality, it's easy to see how much harm "we should fight for survival" does.
Let me go on the record, then: Given a choice between every living human being becoming absolutely, for-real dead and the human species surviving, then I come down on the side of human survival. There are too many humans that I love personally, and too many innocent people just going about their lives that I would like to protect. Given a choice between the mass death of billions, and their survival, I choose survival.
Human rights are essential. But human rights are difficult to achieve if everyone is dead.
A recruiter in India was talking to me about some roles for some time and then disappeared. After a few weeks, when I was ready for interviews, I reached back. I was informed that those roles didn't exist anymore. I enquired further asking wahether those roles were filled, and the reply was something on the lines that no, they didn't exist anymore. Bit of a bummer because Google was one of the very few companies here that actually interviewed you pretty fairly even after a considerable employment gap. Those were L7 roles (not sure whether those are around TLM).
Does Immich read real file names of photos from iOS Photos metadata? I don't even know whether Apple preserves it and exposes to other apps?
I used Ente and I learned all the files I had "added/uploaded" to iCloud photos had lost their real names (that I had painstakingly given them over the years/decades) when ente exported to those photos back on my laptop via their desktop app and were these long random uuid strings kinda names. That was my yikes moment and I was glad I had still kept my photos outside of iCloud and Ente. And it is not even Ente's fault. Apple does this skullbuggery.
I used immich-go to upload photos from Google Photos and it worked great, I'm not sure how well that works with iCloud but it's at least a supported option (...although with a TODO next to it)
I was really surprised to learn that there aren't right now. It sounds like FUTO, the org behind Immich, is working on something like this but they haven't put out any real details so it's probably far off.
My friend uses a pretty hardened (as per him; I didn't indulge him when he wanted to give me the gory details) Graphene setup on his few years old Pixel.
Bank apps - as per him none work. Uber (no Lyft here; other taxi apps) work flawless. Payment apps, he said is a coin toss. On his phone even WhatsApp doesn't work. He anyway prefers Signal (which prob. nobody else uses in his circle except maybe me who has it installed on a secondary phone) or plain SMS. Basically most of the "normal" apps that add integrity checks don't work but he is fine with that.
Re: the bank apps: that really depends on the bank and the country. I live in a eu-west country and there are afaik no apps that do not run on Graphene (which did suprise me I must admit).
Whatsapp can work if you use sandboxed Google Play (I still use a Google account, I just don't want gplay to have effectively root on my device).
How's migadu's email ip reputation? Also do you have to create these identities in that admin panel to use or you can use it on the go like duck.com or Apple's hide my email?
Not sure on the reputation, but I personally haven't had any issues emailing people using gmail or microsoft. They have a good DNS Diagnostics page that checks all your domains DKIM/SPF/DMARC settings.
I've been using identities created in the admin panel, but they do have subdomain addresses where everything to *@user.domain goes to user@domain, and you can configure a 'Catchall' address (and of course 'plus addresses'). I haven't used either though.
This way - many different providers either lock that username away and throw the key (even you can't get it again; some give you the key instead of throwing away but no space in their home until you pay again) and some just graciously offer a free plan with that address whith little or barely any resources (which is actually great and very generious of them). Which ones? Google around and you shall find.
The trick is in never ever touching the username@paid-main-provider.tld to give out to anyone. It's just for logging in.
My mailbox.org username is literally three random short Engish dict words concatnated by underscores (e.g jet_sit_gill@mailbox.org) just to ensure I'd never share that email with anyone. I only use my domain's email addresses. This way there's ZERO lock, zero fear of them giving my email to someone else and staying with the domain provider for a day longer than I have to.
For email addresses on others' domains here
- icloud.com came with the devices (I honestly have not thought about what happens to these if I have zero Apple device at one point in future :D)
- tutanota(barely ever used; just to support them I paid until they removed the 12/year plan)
- protonmail, and sdf.org (ARPA)
All of these at least let me hold on to the email address even with little resources when I stop paying or have an unpaid a/c. So little risk of email goign to someone else. And I never use these for anything important anyway.
For temp emails - duck.com, HideMyEmail (stopped using this one for new accounts though).
I could never get my domains hosted on sdf.org to work reliably on fastmail. It had briefly worked when MX records were set up but the moment I configured for DKIM and SPF, I haven't been able to get the service back.
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