fiala__'s comments

fiala__ | 1 month ago | on: We mourn our craft

Also, it’s always six months from now, because otherwise you could just point at the hundred ways they’re wrong right now. It’s nothing but the ol’ dotcom “trust me, bro” kind of marketing.

fiala__ | 1 year ago | on: JavaScript Temporal is coming

> We only have complile to JS languages now. Those that still writes in vanilla JS are like those who still build apps in assembly langauge.

I strongly disagree, it's never been easier and more pleasant to write modern JS without transpilers. I've only rarely had to reach for a framework or transpiler in the last few years.

fiala__ | 1 year ago | on: Ambulance hits cyclist, rushes him to hospital, then sticks him with $1,800 bill

The point is, in most of Europe it’s the richer folks that foot the bill for the poorer ones. That’s a system based on solidarity - you contribute to our collective ability to treat our sick and injured, according to your financial means.

EDIT: at least that’s how it’s supposed to work in theory. Of course the richest people don’t foot the bill for anyone but themselves.

fiala__ | 1 year ago | on: Trump wins presidency for second time

Very well said. I think what you speak of sounds a lot like degrowth and/or idealised socialism. Unfortunately, I don't see either of those ever becoming viable policy in our world. The only times we've managed to even remotely approach such policy is after terrible, long wars. Other than that, the big man promising you shiny stuff has always won.

fiala__ | 1 year ago | on: Building a Game with the Real Engine

this is neat! Diorama-based games are really underrated IMO. I'm currently attempting to do something related, building a game on top of Google Street View, with 3D audio and objects embedded in the panorama.

fiala__ | 1 year ago | on: A Georgist's Guerilla Gardening Guide

Private property is whatever we collectively decide it is. We can only build infrastructure such as railways and highways because we collectively decided those are okay to build on private property. We can do the same with anything we consider essential for the common good.

fiala__ | 2 years ago | on: The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy

> once I made that connection, I started to see summarizing everywhere

One of the most powerful (and dangerous) aspects of dogma is the tendency of its followers to promote it to a universal pattern.

I, for one, am horrified at the prospect of a future where any kind of non-managerial labour is viewed as "summarising" and automated out of our collective skillset. GPT output may often be equivalent to human writing/thinking as a commodity, but human writing & thinking is not a commodity in its essence.

To me this is not the end of knowledge economy. This is a metastasis of the same capitalist disease that attacked the traditional crafts sector more than 100 years ago, attempting to replace it with a mix of industrially exploited labour in the Global North, colonial/slave labour in the Global South, and eventually mechanisation + automation. This brought about fantastic levels of productivity and wealth, along with insane amounts of pollution, the climate crisis and growing inequality. In sectors such as fashion the market is flooded with low-quality goods with a lifetime of a few months, which has led to astronomical amounts of waste.

The difference with AI is, now the Western creative middle class is affected, and due to the shadowy nature of the industry, it is not yet completely clear who is getting exploited (though we are starting to find out[1]). The good thing is, traditional crafts have not disappeared, in fact, their products are increasingly more prized and appreciated. I firmly believe generative AI's onslaught can also be withstood, and a better world is still possible - one where artisan labour, attention and connectedness prevail over whatever hellish future generative AI would create.

(side note: IMO high-quality code is much, much more than a StackOverflow summary)

[1] https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

fiala__ | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2023)

Hey there! I understand it can be frustrating to go through so many interview stages. For us it's important there’s enough time dedicated for both sides to get to know each other. Indeed, the process might be lengthy, but there's always the possibility to combine some of the steps. We're also keen to find folks who would stay long-term, so it matters to us that all the questions and perspectives are covered from both sides.

If you do end up applying, please do let us know you'd prefer to combine some interview steps and we'll see what we can do :)

fiala__ | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2023)

Ecosia | Frontend Engineer | ONSITE (Berlin) and REMOTE | Full-time/Part-time

Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees, is one of the world's largest social businesses and the first B Corporation in Germany. As part of our mission to cultivate a more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable world, we are planting and protecting forests by enabling people to channel their everyday actions into environmental good.

We're looking for a FE-focused engineer for our Core Search team. We love accessibility, performance and clean design. We primarily use Vue and have a solid design system. A search engine is a funky and interesting thing to work on, I've been really enjoying the challenge!

Do get in touch, questions are more than welcome

EDIT: oops, link: https://jobs.lever.co/ecosia/76cd0d2a-f79b-4560-9222-388e20b...

fiala__ | 3 years ago | on: Next, Nest, Nuxt Nust?

thank you, I've recently been searching for an alternative to Nuxt that isn't a heavy black box, so this looks very interesting!

fiala__ | 4 years ago | on: No code reviews by default

It's definitely part of the problem and a big reason why software engineering is in the state it's in. To me it always seemed almost like a religion. I wish we took more from the stereotype of traditional engineering, where standards, thorough testing and reliability trump satisfying some trust fund kid founder's impatient demands.

fiala__ | 4 years ago | on: Brave Search beta

this is to do with the philosophy of Cliqz (who developed what's now Brave Search) - if you can't find the results on the first page, you'll probably be better off changing the search term than paginating. I have no idea how reasonable that is though.

fiala__ | 6 years ago | on: Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs (1985)

Do they really? I'm not sure I agree, these days we have things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi which have been a huge success, and I'd argue they attract a much wider range of children than middle-class white boys who just happened to grow up near innovation centres.

fiala__ | 6 years ago | on: Windows 11 could run on Linux

> a better desktop experience

I think that's debatable at best. Of course the experience is better because you don't get in-system ads, forceful cloud integration, and all the bad stuff that comes with Microsoft.

But my personal experience of Ubuntu is a constant struggle against randomly occurring bugs, inexplicable performance drops, crashes, and bad design. It's still worth it because it's Ubuntu, but I wouldn't celebrate the UX too much.

Out of the box, Windows is orders of magnitude easier to use for non-technical users.

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