Racism is a social bias that isn't "hardwired". It does not trigger the "fight or flight" response like was described in the earlier tale. Anxiety, of course, describes a "fight or flight" system that is malfunctioning. It is the most likely explanation because that is what was originally described. Mind you, the story could have been misrepresented. We do have to put our faith into what was written.
Another comment suggested that Altman was once beat up by a black man. If true, it is possible Sam has come to subconsciously associate black men with danger and his reaction stemmed from that. However, that isn't the same thing as racism and to try and categorize it as such would be quite disingenuous.
> I don't know why manual work has been so denigrated over the last century.
As a farmer, it is funny to see how people react to you based on the current profitability winds. When farming is a money maker, everyone acts envious and treats you like a king. When times are tough, they think you're a slack-jawed yokel.
I expect in that lies the answer to your question: We denigrate anything that isn't, as a rule, making a lot of money. Manual jobs generally haven't made much money in the last century, and humorously the exceptions, like professional athlete, get exempted from being considered manual work.
> Go unwillingness to add even the most simple enum kind of type.
Go has enums, under the iota keyword. But I imagine you are really thinking of sum types. Technically Go has those too, but must always have a nil case, which violates what one really wants out of sum types in practice.
Trouble is that nobody has figured out how to implement sum types without a nil/zero case. That is why you haven't seen a more well-rounded construct for the feature yet. This is not an unwillingness from the Go team, it is more of a lack of expertise. Granted, it is an unwillingness from those like yourself who do have the expertise. What stops you from contributing?
> It just takes away so, so many bugs you would normally see in production code.
What bugs do you imagine are making it to production? Each pattern matched case has a behaviour that needs to be tested anyway, so if you missed a case your tests are going to blow up. The construct is useful enough that you don't need to oversell it on imagined hypotheticals.
> I can't think of any other case pre-smartphone, where I'd be denied the ability to buy a product simply because I didn't want to have to buy another totally unrelated product as a condition.
Then you must not have been around pre-smartphone? Those of us who were will remember having to buy either banknotes or checks. Later, some would accept a certain type of card that you could buy. If you weren't willing to buy any of those things there was little chance of a deal taking place. Showing up with your goat to offer in exchange would get you laughed out of the room, even though there was an even earlier time where bringing a goat would have been considered quite reasonable. Realistically, the most desperate vendors will still accept your goat as payment if that is what's on the table, but, as I am sure you can imagine, it isn't worth the effort for those who have the luxury of choice. Where technology makes a seller's life simpler, they will demand it. Why wouldn't they?
None of this is comparable lock-in. You could buy checks from hundreds of different vendors and none had any lock-in on you. You could use a different vendor each time if you wanted. By certain type of card I assume credit cards, which can also be had from thousands of different banks.
Also, credit cards are free to get and checks cost a few pennies.
Not remotely comparable to being forced to buy a phone to get to a game.
While acknowledging the frustration of someone who can't (always support cash, the ultimate zero-lock-in solution!), it is disingenious to call them comparable.
Bank accounts and credit cards can be had for free, and if you can't get one from one place there are literally thousands of other places to try.
(Also I'm not sure how one can't get some bank account? I grew up very poor and still had a bank account in my teens. Credit cards, indeed, can be much more difficult. But these days pre-paid cards exist which is a way in.)
In contrast, there are only two choices for phone platforms and neither is cheap and both require a recurring nontrivial monthly expense. So no, not at all comparable.
> You could buy checks from hundreds of different vendors
Likewise, last time I was at the mall there were dozens of smartphone vendors in that one place alone.
> Also, credit cards are free to get and checks cost a few pennies.
There are plenty of zero-down smartphones available too. Nothing is free, of course.
> Not remotely comparable to being forced to buy a phone to get to a game.
Nobody was talking about comparisons, but if you really find it necessary to take us off-topic, Ferrari has long required you to first buy lower-end Ferraris if you want to buy higher-end Ferraris. That predates smartphones as well. Rolex, Hermès, etc. have all done similar things. Needing to buy things in order to buy other things is nothing usual in the world of luxury items.
It is not required to watch a game. At least not unless you are not using it as some kind of vision aid — although even then there are likely reasonable alternatives.
It is required to satisfy the desires of a vendor wanting to sell something. They make a smartphone a part of satisfying their desires because it makes their life a whole lot simpler. Same reason they won't give you season tickets in exchange for 12,000 bushels of wheat. They could, but why would they? If you don't want to play ball, so to speak, they are happy to sell their product to someone else who will.
> If this guy has the money for a season pass (!) he has the money for a smartphone.
Right, but he is wanting to choose the season pass over the smartphone. If he buys a smartphone then he won't have the money for a season pass anymore. It turns out you only get to spend x units of currency once.
Amazon also only sells digitally. So now he has to buy a smartphone in order to get a smartphone from Amazon in order to get tickets? The guy doesn't even want one smartphone let alone two.
I am suggesting that if you have enough money to buy a ticket, but then take some portion of that amount away to buy a smartphone, you will no longer have enough to buy said ticket.
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume the ticket is exactly $2500. It was earlier given that he has enough to buy it. But if he buys the $40 smartphone first, then he only has $2460, which is less than $2500. Now he no longer has enough to buy the ticket. He can afford the ticket, or the smartphone, but not both. If not debt, where do you imagine the shortfall is going to be made up in order to buy both? Theft? Donation from you?
The link has no such implication. It just says he doesn’t have a smart phone. Even if he survives solely off of social security, his COLA adjustment will be more than $40 a year
It says he cannot get tickets because, as we established, he needs to spend $40 more over the price of the ticket in order to facilitate the transaction.
So, either:
1. He cannot get tickets because the cost of the ticket plus $40 exceeds his budget.
2. He can get tickets because $40 more is no big deal.
The link asserting that he cannot get tickets implies #1. If he can get tickets then what are we even talking about?
> The main goal of business is to generate the most income with the least expense
That's the goal of small business. It is the only way to stay afloat and try to grow while allowing the stakeholders enough to survive. Large business starts to generate so much income that it could never possibly spend it all anyway, so minimizing expenses doesn't really matter. What does matter, to the people running the show, is ensuring that they gain social status.
And for that you need visibility and connections. The way you get connections and visibility is to build impressive offices and fill them with notable people. The work might be technically pointless, but it generates a network of friends in high places and that is what provides social status. A trillion dollar business that is one guy in his parents' basement might sound appealing to the average software developer, but not to those who actually run these large companies.
I can't agree here. https://pelorus-nav.com/ (one of my side projects) is 95-98% written by Claude Opus 4.6, all in very nice typescript which I carefully review and correct, and use good prompting and context hygiene to ensure it doesn't take shortcuts. It's taken a month or so but so worth it. And my packing list app packzen.org is also pretty decent typescript all through.
So you do agree? If you are having to review and correct then it's not really the LLM writing it anymore. I have little doubt that you can write good Typescript, but that's not what I said. I said LLMs cannot write good Typescript and it seems you agree given your purported actions towards it. Which is quite unlike some other languages where LLMs write good code all the time — no hand holding necessary.
I find correction is rarely necessary with Opus 4.6. Definitely not so much that "it's not really the LLM writing it anymore." More like it's the author and I'm the editor (in this limited case -- of course architecturally the ideas are all mine.)
But I totally respect that my prompt style, the type of app I'm writing, and other factors could be influencing my success vs. others' lack of success.
> of course architecturally the ideas are all mine.
What else would you need to correct? I've never had trouble with LLMs generating basic syntax in any language. Architecture is exactly the aspect of language where LLMs seem to like to go to crazytown when in Typescript. It seems you've noticed too if the ideas in that area have had to come all from you.
I think it can write working TypeScript code, and it can write good TypeScript code if it is guided by a knowledgable programmer. It requires actually reviewing all the code and giving pointed feedback though (which at that point is only slightly more efficient than just writing it yourself).
> It requires actually reviewing all the code and giving pointed feedback though
Exactly. You can write good Typescript, no doubt, but LLMs cannot. This is not like some other languages where LLM generated code is actually consistently good without needing to become the author.
Another comment suggested that Altman was once beat up by a black man. If true, it is possible Sam has come to subconsciously associate black men with danger and his reaction stemmed from that. However, that isn't the same thing as racism and to try and categorize it as such would be quite disingenuous.
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