sobchak

@sobchak@programming.dev

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You don’t have to be Marion Delgado to know which way the wind blows.⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of people just want to work on the assembly line, get a paycheck, and go home to their families at night.

  I’m not so sure about that. Having worked on assembly lines, most people I worked with were constantly trying to find a way out :) Perhaps that’s just because me and most of my co-workers were young and not crushed by the world yet. It’s truly mindnumbing and unsatisfying work though.

  Anyways, I don’t mean to be too critical; just kind of thinking out loud. I find your project really interesting, and don’t want to let perfection get in the way of progress.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You don’t have to be Marion Delgado to know which way the wind blows.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Cool, thanks for the explanations.

  I’ve seen some attempts at worker-cooperatives before where workers had to buy-in, and it kinda put me off. Presumably, workers are looking for work because they need income, and such barriers would select for a certain type of well-off individual, harming diversity. I agree there definitely has to be a provisional period; both in ownership and decision making.

  Reading more of the documents, I’m not sure I like that the CEO and President are compensated differently than the rest of the workers. I guess it makes sense from a incentives perspective, but it feels kinda wrong to me. In my mind, the CEO is just another role in a company.

  I’d be interested in hearing what cooperatives you know about, as I’m always looking for success stories.

  Most of the examples of flat orgs that I’ve heard of were not cooperatives. Early Valve, early GitHub, Gore-Tex, Morning Star (I remember reading “First, Let’s Fire All The Managers” in an Organizational Behavior course back when I was in college, and the idea always stuck with me). At Valve, there were leaders, but it was dynamic (if you can get people to follow you/work on your project, you are a leader). In my career as a software engineer, I’ve also worked in agile processes like Scrum. Though, not dynamic, Scrum is less about “hierarchy” and more about collaboration with some special “roles”/not necessarily leaders (Project Owner, Scrum Master, stake holders, etc). Though Scrum is usually collaboration within teams and not necessarily without hierarchy in an organization.

  And lately, I’ve taken in interest in anarchism and alternative ways of organization, such as Boem and Graeber’s works studying the Innuit and pre-history humans; as well as modern anarch-ish communities such as the Zapitistas and Rojava, which were more-or-less successful (aside from dealing with external violence in the case of Rojava) while being radically different. A lot of ways to skin a cat I guess.

  Oh, and I read Richard Wolff’s Democracy at Work a while back, where he proposed “Worker Self-Directed Enterprises,” that focus on workers being in control of the surplus from their labor, rather than having management control it; arguing that’s the most important aspect.

  My worry about having a single person at the top is mostly about corruption I guess. Even if democratically elected, compromised/corrupted union leaders, for example, are not unheard of. I see the Zapatista’s system of “governance”/collaboration/federation as a possible mitigation of this. They go to great lengths to prevent people “getting too big for their britches,” like very frequently (e.g. every 2 weeks) rotating elected representatives. And they have various practices and customs that echo the “reverse dominance hierarchy” that has been observed by anthropologists.

  Having an entire factory is quite a complicated endeavor

  Yeah, I think the biggest hurdle with worker-cooperatives is acquiring capital. Factories and the machines in them are very expensive. I think there are organizations that offer loans to worker-cooperatives, but I doubt on the scale of a factory. I kind of like Argentina’s past “Occupy, Resist, Produce” movement as a solution to this :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You don’t have to be Marion Delgado to know which way the wind blows.⁩ ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Cool project.

  I’m confused about the “shares” though. Workers have to pay to join the company? Different workers have different amounts of ownership?

  I’m not sure I’m convinced that the strict hierarchies you propose are needed. I’m not sure if there needs to be a single person (or 2?) at the top vs a smaller representative board/council. Not sure if democracy is needed vs just randomly rotating people through a council (would prevent popularity contests, cult-like dynamics, corruption). I seem to recall hearing about some successful companies that were pretty flat and non-rigid where workers would dynamically create and dissolve teams around products/initiatives (I think early Valve was kinda like that; but I guess they still had execs).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you think that Trump is the most hated U.S. president?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Some presidents have arguably done worse things than Trump (so far), but I’m not sure if they were more hated at the time. Trump has probably done more damage to the institutions of the US than any other president in history; which will probably result in a new dark era.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨#StopPayingGames⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s how all software, except Free Software, works. Most media as well (except copyleft).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨oh bless yer heart, pepperidge farm 'members!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Unlikely. The US executes people when there’s so much new evidence after sentencing pointing toward them not being guilty that the original prosecutors plead for them to not execute. The Dem establishment’s complaints against ICE are mostly just procedural; they just argue for things like more transparency for these detention centers, not their abolishment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The game still was somewhat a technical marvel, especially for its time. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like the creature editor where it would allow you to create fairly arbitrary creatures, try to automatically detect what was the head, torso, legs; and try to animate them all correctly. Then, entire creature definitions were encoded into small PNG files using stenography, which could be shared with minimal data usage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Damn straight!⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Fast food work is pretty stressful, IMO.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of stories of people getting addicted to the “agentic harnesses” and personally (and happily) blowing through hundreds to thousands of dollars/month. I’ve seen people write articles about how their $200/month subscriptions are such a good deal, lol. Companies are forcing their employees to use AI at insane costs. Nearly every software engineering job posting mentions using AI tools as a requirement. Anthropic’s revenue is set to double this quarter and be its first profitable quarter (likely using a lot of accounting tricks).

  I’m really curious if this AI industry can self-perpetuate itself with stupidity and greed indefinitely as everything becomes shittier and unreliable, and civilization slowly crumbles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We produce more resources than we could ever consume in the least sustainable ways possible.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Replace “sustainable,” and the bit about profit and capitalism, with “efficient” and “corruption and un-free markets,” then this is a common right-wing talking point (back when the right wing tried to engage intellectually, at least).

  In my unscientific opinion, the current population is unsustainable, and there’s no known ways to make it sustainable enough to support the population in the long term (I hope there will be, of course). The most sustainable framing practices are less intensive and result in less output per acre. That’s just about survival, ignoring quality of life. I’ve heard it claimed we’d need 5 Earths for everyone on Earth to live a first-world-like lifestyle. Granted, we should drastically change our lifestyles.

  Climate change will also likely lower the human population the Earth can support, and I think we will likely adopt even less sustainable practices to make up for the loss, accelerating our own demise; kicking and scratching and bringing all the ecosystems of the Earth down with us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just say no⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  People are trying to use it on larger code-bases and that’s where it goes rogue and just creates an unmaintainable mess. It’s decent at writing small scripts that are likely similar to scripts it has been trained on (starts failing when you start trying to get it to do more novel types of things).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just say no⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been messing around with AI a bit. Kimi k2.6 is very close to Claude Sonnet; “thinks” a lot, but that seems to help it. I think it’s something like 1/3 the cost of Sonnet. The newest GLM is supposed to be similar. Minimax, MiMo, Qwen, and Deepseek is a bit of step down. The big step down are the small models like Qwen 35B and 27B, but they’re still “useful,” and I can run them on my 24GB GPU. I’m also now forced to use Sonnet and crank out slop code :( It’s going to end in disaster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Videogame pirates tell other pirates to shut up about it after Subnautica 2 developers are taunted with illicit copies⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  “Society confronts the simple fact that when everyone can possess every intellectual work of beauty and utility—reaping all the human value of every increase of knowledge—at the same cost that any one person can possess them, it is no longer moral to exclude. If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar’s own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon needs a job⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ive been hired at every job ive applied to

  That’s crazy. Straight out of high-school, I spent about six months driving around and applying to a job or 2 every day before I got a job (applying to pretty much every business in the small towns I lived near; McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Walmart, factories, everything). Now, I’m an unemployed software engineer, and I’ve probably applied to > 500 jobs, and still no luck (I think every job posting gets > 1000 applications in this job market). The vast majority of the time, I never actually get a chance to even talk to a person to impress them with my awkwardness and anxiety :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨amazon can afford to treat its workers with dignity⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had jobs with 1 hour lunch breaks before. Well, actually I don’t even think it was in writing, and we could take a break whenever we wanted for however long we wanted. Sometimes I’d go to a restaurant with co-workers, but mostly just brought food from home and took maybe a 30 minute break and go back to working. I’ve also had a job with a 4.5 day work week which was really convenient (it let me get a lot done before stuff like banks closed). I’ve also had a job with unlimited PTO, but that’s kind of a scam (everyone was afraid they’d get fired if they took PTO).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hee Hee Ho Ho Ha Ha⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think he’s a grifter. He stopped running ads as soon as his contract with Twitch was over, doesn’t do sponsorships, doesn’t sell nutritional supplements, lets “fan channels” repost his content, personally donates to candidates and causes, runs donation streams, etc. I guess he does sell merch, made by union shops. I’m pretty sure most his income comes from subscribers. I think he could make much more money doing the things listed above if he wanted to. I don’t particularly like his personality, and he does seem to be fairly consumeristic and vain, but I don’t think he’s a grifter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Perhaps the only appropriate use of AI⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, you could. Just encode 100ms chunks or whatever into tokens then push them through the same model. I’m pretty sure that’s what the claim to do (though with MoE/routing now, maybe).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨North America contains some of the longest continuous decididous forest records on the planet.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think it’s so much “fear” of defying the president as it is they’re getting what they want from him (white christo-fascism), and they’re getting bribed by the same people. Most of the Dems are also dependant on the same interests as well (not necessarily the white Christian-nationalist stuff, but the same money). The concentration of wealth has put far too much power into too few hands. These same people are heavily influencing politics and public opinion worldwide. Idk, how we get out of this mess; have to bring the entire global economic system to its knees; forcibly redistribute their wealth or make it worthless I guess.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Perhaps the only appropriate use of AI⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  According to their tech/marketing papers, it’s supposedly multi-modal, encoding audio to tokens.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am an American. I used to be proud of my country. Now it feels like a turd circling the drain. Is there anything going on behind the scene that America is actually doing good in?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems like more people are getting involved in direct action (against ICE). Starting around the time of Bernie’s primary campaign in 2020, I’ve noticed the amount of people getting involved in mutual-aid-type stuff slowly growing. The US has been “helping” Ukraine with “lethal aid,” though it’s debatable that’s the best way to help, and it’s probably more about enriching arms manufacturers and making sure Ukraine is perpetually indebted to the US.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jensen Huang says gamers are 'completely wrong' about DLSS 5 — Nvidia CEO responds to DLSS 5 backlash⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair enough. I was just trying to point out that the entire hardware industry, and pretty much the entire executive and investor class is doing the same stuff as Nvidia.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jensen Huang says gamers are 'completely wrong' about DLSS 5 — Nvidia CEO responds to DLSS 5 backlash⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The more you buy, the more you save!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jensen Huang says gamers are 'completely wrong' about DLSS 5 — Nvidia CEO responds to DLSS 5 backlash⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Would have to boycott pretty much all hardware. I don’t know of any large hardware manufacturer that’s not chasing the AI investment money and bribing the Trump admin.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nvidia Announces DLSS 5, and it adds... An AI slop filter over your game⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  NNs are deterministic. Chatbot and image generator implementations just purposely add randomization to make them seem more intelligent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is the USA attacking Iran?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  At the most basic level, the Trump admin likely has plans to make bank on it. Perhaps bribes or “deals” with oil companies, Israel, weapons manufacturers, etc.

  Also, a part of the MAGA coalition consists of Zionists (the Evangelical Christians and Zionists Jews [both are death cults, IMO]), which makes it easier for Trump to do these things without too much opposition from MAGA. And, groups like AIPAC have been somewhat successful at tipping the scales of US elections against politicians that don’t support Israel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unlimited Power ⚡⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My grandparents called it that. I guess it comes from a time where lights were the primary consumer of electricity in a household.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Get. Out⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  a robot is still going to be cheaper in the long run

  x

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Get. Out⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m working with people that seem to try to offload a lot of their work to AI, and it’s shit, and making the project take longer and shittier. Then they do things like write documents in AI and expect people to read that nonsense, and even use AI to send long, useless Slack messages. In short, it’s been detrimental to the project.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Get. Out⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t buy that. There’s little reason to automate those jobs because the labor is so cheap. And as someone who has worked most of those jobs in the past, most of those workers could be easily trained for different jobs; most are actively taking it upon themselves to train to get out of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨But bro please⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps. I read it as the “setup” being the emphasized part (i.e. the context set by the first part of the sentence), with the states being a representative of the “people” under the political theory at the time… This was written by the elite more or less fine with slavery and indentured servitude, and only thought that white male landowners really counted. Either way, I think regular citizens should be able own firearms.