This is an interesting crystallization that parallels a lot of thoughts I’ve been having, and it’s particularly hopeful that it seeks to discard the “hacker” moniker and instead specifically describe the subjects as programmers. Looking back, I was only becoming terminally online circa 1997, and back then it seemed like there was an across-the-spectrum effort to reclaim the term “hacker” into a positive connotation after the federal prosecutions of the early 90s. People from aspirant-executive types like Paul Graham to dirty hippies like RMS were insistent that being a “hacker” was a good thing, maybe the best possible thing. This was, of course, a dead letter as soon as Facebook set up at “One Hacker Way” in Menlo Park, but I’d say it’s definitely for the best to finally put a solid tombstone on top of that cultural impulse.

As well, because my understanding of the defining activity of the positive-good “hacker” is that it’s all too close to Zuckerberg’s “move fast and break things,” and I think Jared White would probably agree with me. Paul Graham was willing to embrace the term because he was used to the interactive development style of Lisp environments, but the mainstream tools have only fitfully evolved in that direction at best. When “hacking,” the “hacker” makes a series of short, small iterations with a mostly nebulous goal in mind, and the bulk of the effort may actually be what’s invested in the minimum viable product. The self-conception inherits from geek culture a slumped posture of almost permanent insufficiency, perhaps hiding a Straussian victimhood complex to justify maintaining one’s own otherness.

In mentioning Jobs, the piece gestures towards the important cultural distinction that I still think is underexamined. If we’re going to reclaim and rehabilitate even homeopathic amounts of Jobs’ reputation, the thesis we’re trying to get at is that his conception of computers as human tools is directly at odds with the AI promoters’ (and, more broadly, most cloud vendors’) conception of computers as separate entities. The development of generative AI is only loosely connected with the sanitized smiley-face conception of “hacking.” The sheer amount of resources and time spent on training foreclose the possibility of a rapid development loop, and you’re still not guaranteed viable output at the end. Your “hacks” can devolve into a complete mess, and at eye-watering expense.

I went and skimmed Graham’s Hackers and Painters again to see if I could find any choice quotes along these lines, since he spends that entire essay overdosing on the virtuosity of the “hacker.” And hoo boy:

Measuring what hackers are actually trying to do, designing beautiful software, would be much more difficult. You need a good sense of design to judge good design. And there is no correlation, except possibly a negative one, between people’s ability to recognize good design and their confidence that they can.

You think Graham will ever realize that we’re culminating a generation of his precious “hackers” who ultimately failed at all this?

Also they both seem to agree that a worldwide moratorium on AI research that will give us time to breed/genetically engineer superior brained humans to fix our shit is the way to go.

This century deserves a better class of thought-criminal

Damn, I was hoping someone would finally recognize the true value of the ASCII-art goatse that used to show up on Slashdot all the time, before this inevitably came to pass

Pretty easy to look at actually-existing instances and note just how laughable "traders trusted us enough for the market to be liquid” is.

This is just another data point begging what I believe to be the most important question an American can ask themselves right now: why be a sucker?

oh no, this whole server rack is pentafected with daemons

$14,000 could probably still buy you a lesser Porsche in decent shape, but we should praise this brave pioneer for valuing experiences over things, especially at the all-important boundary of human/machine integration!

(no, I’m not bitter at missing the depreciation nadir for 996-era 911s, what are you talking about)

Top-tier from Willison himself:

The learning isn’t in studying the finished product, it’s in watching how it gets there.

Mate, if that’s true, my years of Gentoo experience watching compiler commands fly past in the terminal means I’m a senior operating system architect.

Oh, it’s a CXL board, Compute Express Link. Basically a way to attach DRAM to PCI Express. I know some people working on this stuff for one of the big vendors, but in that context it was a rack-scale box capable of handling multiple terabytes’ worth of DIMMs. Having this as a desktop expansion card seems like a bit of a marginal application, but Gigabyte’s done weird shit before. For instance, I have an AMD-compatible Thunderbolt 3 card that was only made in limited quantities by them and ASRock.

I’m fighting an uphill battle, but people in general still need to see it

your periodic reminder: don’t listen to Garry Tan, unless maybe he’s doing a tequila review

“Classical liberal” usually registers to me as a libertarian/paleoconservative trying to mainstream themselves.

Only had to scroll about halfway through the replies before I found somebody suggesting an SPAC

Puts their being a Thiel media op in an even more pathetic light.

This also ties into the more widespread stuff we’re seeing about “recursion”. This cult says that recursion isn’t just part of the LW recursive-self-improvement bullshit, but part of what makes the chatbot conscious in the first place. Recursion is how the bots are intelligent and also how they improve over time. More recursion means more intelligence.

Hmm, is it better or worse that they’re now officially treating SICP as a literal holy book?

Automobile advertising

Wronger explaining human sexual attraction

Are we sure this isn’t an SCP entry?

Unironically, this was surely the primary design brief.

TI-89 Unobtanium Sparkle Emoji Edition, featuring a revolutionary 68k core with a fat chunk of matmul units grafted on

What do we imagine that’s going to end up smelling like? Especially if Peter really works up a lather, like he’s done in his last couple of media hits

The requisite refrigeration equipment causes “shrinkage,” just like George suffers in that one Seinfeld episode, bing bong so simple

Now, getting the quantum hardware to the point of service, so to speak, is the obvious challenge, and that’s why I’m seeking funding for multiple container trucks so we can realize Uber for QC