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Getting really sick and tired of the AI doomerism.

I’m sick and tired of people forgetting that with every field, the first 95% is easy, the last 5% is almost insurmountably hard and what people get paid for.

Yelling “it’s 95% there, we’re so cooked” when anyone can be 95% there for any field since Google was invented doesn’t show much.


That may be true, but it can mean layoffs of 95% of the employees.

You completely missed the point.

Technology, Google, all of it, makes it easy enough to learn how to do 95% of many common roles and fields. However, you will never be hired, or replaced, until you master that last 5%. Every role, even some of the lowest ranking, has its own insurmountable 5%. How well has fully replacing cashiers with self checkout gone, after… two decades… of trying?

If we can’t fully replace a cashier yet, the most automatable role in existence, politely stuff your pie hole when saying AI will replace skilled roles.


Historically speaking, you don’t get kicked out of the communist club, they just kill you.

FAA restrictions aren’t applied in a hand wavy fashion.

This story would suggest otherwise.

In what way?

3 more years til the next dog and pony show but different colors.


The midterms this year can already seriously throw wrenches into the Project 2025 plans. Trump's failure to address the economy situation, the constant and ongoing wars, ICE seriously disrupting agriculture and construction sites, ICE executing white people in front of cameras [1] and now the latest Epstein crap... Democrats are flipping what used to be solid-red seats these days.

People are fed up. Assuming there will be free elections - as absurd as it is to even write this sentence referring to the US, but here we are [2] - it most probably will end in an utter wipeout for MAGA. They'll have the President, of course, but assuming the Democrat leadership finds some spine - again, an assumption, given Schumer - stuff has the potential to change.

On top of that are state and local level elections that are all the time. Stuff like school boards, sheriffs, whatever that is where MAGA and the Evangelicals built out their initial networks. All of that can be flipped around as well, if people actually bother to show up and vote.

[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shootings_by_U.S._immi... - it is notable that widespread outrage only followed after the execution of Renee Good and Alex Pretti

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/georgia-fult...


I can’t believe I’m going to type this, but I miss the Ballmer days. Current leadership has somehow made this company even worse.


Ballmer was kinda the best Microsoft CEO for Windows, IMO. He didn't get the Justice department's attention in either the states or Europe, and he started building alternate revenue streams (XBOX, Windows Phone) without destroying the core product. Sure, MetroUI had no place in Server2012, but that was less egregious than the AI-everything and multiple settings menus

Nadella is a marvelous Microsoft CEO for Linux though. Credit where it's due


It's a bit like Bush. Sure, what happened back then was indeed stupid, but we didn't know how bad it was going to get.


Not only did we know, but the "stupid" part is one of the major causes of how bad it's getting, so in retrospect the "stupid" looks even worse.


For both cases, the previous bad management was calculatingly evil but there was reason.

Now it's pure emotional response and acting like rabid animals that lost every single notion but attacking and harming anything they see as a target.


If you haven't seen it before, I'd recommend Dan Luu's blog post about Ballmer:

https://danluu.com/ballmer/


Ballmer's biggest mistake was staying on during the worst financial crisis and also fumbling the phone business. I know some of the bad decisions can all be traced back to start of Win8 design language which happened under him.


I miss the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs days. At least there were positive improvements to Windows and Mac in those days.


I miss him as well in regards to Windows development tooling and roadmap.


wel, I was fired (after multiple rounds of downsizing our team from ~200 people to 20 people) by the new guy Satya back in the day, so yeah, I prefer Ballmer's approach as well


Eh, I am pretty sure that if Ballmer was at the wheel today we would see AI literally everywhere in Windows.


What we’re seeing today with Windows is more representative of the times we’re living in rather than because of who’s the CEO.

I don’t doubt for a second Ballmer would also be jumping onto the AI hype train if he was still running the show.


I remember when this was dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory.


The Big Bang theory was created by a Catholic priest. So yes.


And the Big Bang was created by the priest's God.


Yes but the alarming thing here is the damaged PCU...


Sure. but that's just like, OK, that by itself means very little.

It could mean the standby PCU somehow activated by itself, maybe damage causing a un-commanded activation, maybe software bug, maybe God said fuck this plane in particular.

The point is we have no idea since there are not enough details to know. But of course, on HN we have a army of people who think they know stuff because Wikipedia.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dutch%20roll&date...

Yep, exactly what I suspected.


Yes. More people should take note that there's always unintended consequences with price controls. It usually makes things much worse.

Reminds me of: https://www.lenconnect.com/story/opinion/columns/2013/09/23/...


Over the past decade the Class 1's have been working towards doing 1 man crew's. But they're still 2 man at minimum. This bill achieves nothing. This is a "hey we did something about it! (please don't read what's in the bill and catch us bullshitting)."

What they should be doing is looking at the absurd increase in length of these trains to increase profits for the sake of safety, and the shortcutting of car maintenance. The latter which would've caught this issue to begin with.


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