Tariffs create uncertainty and hesitation to invest....especially since they're applied unpredictably. Nearly all programming jobs are investments in future growth. When the economy is in the shitter and the president of the world's largest economy is unreliable and unpredictable, it makes businesses and investors hold off on major investments. Even if you love the guy, if you can't predict the cost of materials for a 2 year project, it makes it very hard to find financing. The same with software...if you need 50 professionals and you don't know if 20 of them are going to get their green card revoked, it makes you nervous. Even without Trump's chaos, we have a LOT of economic headwinds: deglobalization, COVID aftermath, wars in Europe/Middle-East....as well as no real growth opportunity in the tech sector.

We got really lucky in the past. As soon as one technology was introduced, another arrived shortly afterwards to give the illusion that endless growth is possible with innovation. However, we created multiple new markets back-to-back: In the late 90s, everyone had to get connected to the internet. In the early 2000s, all business process had to be moved from client/server to web-based applications. Then the iPhone was introduced and now every business needed a mobile presence. Afterwards, we had economic expansion from the big data craze as well as some crypto jackassery....then we had ML and AI. OK...well now we don't have anything new and exciting for businesses to spend money on beyond LLMs which aren't really providing the return on investment promised. Once we find the next useful business innovation, we'll see more familiar growth patterns. However, now...everything is on the web, architecture is largely web-scale, if a mobile app is needed, it's written already, if ML is useful, it has been applied...big data systems are now in production.

I've said it here many times before, but historically, no business wants to do just do the same amount of volume at slightly less cost. Nearly all of them want to crush their rivals and expand their market share. Wall Street loves growth MUCH more than cost savings. It's just bullshit to say we've stopped hiring because of AI. If AI was really helping, they'd keep the headcount the same and increase workload/volume....and lay everyone off much later after they've grown as much as they can.

Look the economy is shitty, it's harder to predict costs than it has been in modern history.largely due to the stupidity going on in the US gov right now. A CEO can either say "we overestimated our demand and need in previous years and need to correct our headcount"....or "hey, we're going all in on the future...AI, baby!!!!!"

Are the kind of people who are upset that they can't use the n-word in public and who knowingly voted for Trump the rapist because they think it should be legal to fuck kids. So really I don't pay much mind to those people because they're weird little fuckers and best case scenario they will become irrelevant and worst case scenario we're all going to die in a global Firestorm of nuclear fire caused by those idiots handing the launch codes to religious lunatics because they're upset somebody said happy holidays...

It's not a product it's there to replace wages. The potential payoff is in the trillions so a little bit of short-term expenditure is fine, most of which you will pay for it because there are only a handful of companies left after decades of mega mergers and illegal antitrust violations that were not enforced.

The billionaires have had it with capitalism. Mark my words. They are done with capitalism and they are done with consumers and they are done with us.

I get it you want to say the n word and you want to do it without getting banned or modded down. And you know the way things are going if your side wins you'll get the Say the n-word as much as you want.

But they're going to take your house and the pills to keep you alive. They're not just going to let you be a racist piece of shit on the internet they're going to take your property away from you. And they're going to do worse to your kids and your grandkids not that you care...

I'm not telling you this because I think it'll change your mind. You are too poisoned in the brain to do anything but be an asshole anymore.

I'm telling you this because I want to put it in your head like a worm that's going to eat your brain alive like a certain Health and human services head. You know what you're doing and you know it's eventually going to backfire and you know that unless you're at least 65 years old you're not going to drop dead before it does.

So you know damn well that the internet is nothing like a mother fucking newspaper. But your troll and a racist so this is all about you getting to be your worst possible person as much as possible. And I'm telling you you're not going to get away with that. The billionaires will take all your property just to take it. Good luck dying before that happens because that's literally the only thing that can save your fat stinking ass

Also could you please stop putting rapists in the White House? Thanks

And the rest of the world follows. If the United States does the way with free speech on the Internet by killing section 230 then Europe will follow. And it's Europe that you're talking about because China does not have free speech on the internet and in many African countries they will literally kill you if you're gay.. although in their defense Americans went over there and lobbied for the laws that give death penalties for being gay...

The United States falling to fascism is going to take the rest of the world with it. Eventually we will hand nuclear launch codes to the religious lunatics and Chisto fascists and then that's game over for the human race...

It's not a product it's capital. It's not something they sell even to businesses it's something you own and use for your own purposes. AKA capital.

AI exists to solve the problem of paying wages. Because of that it doesn't need to be profitable it just needs to serve the needs of the people who own it, billionaires.

I think this is a difficult idea for people to wrap their heads around because what's happening here is capitalism is going away and since we all grew up being told that capitalism is immutable and the only viable economic system the idea that it would be dismantled and replaced with something else is nonsensical.

25% unemployment got us World War II. AI is going to cause at least that much. If you think there are going to be new jobs sit down and try to list them. You can't. The economy can't adapt this fast.

The reason I bring it up is there is a lot of old people who think they are going to get away from this mess unscathed. So they think they can sit back and watch everything collapse around them.

It's painfully obvious billionaires have had enough of capitalism. But socialism is absolutely not on the table. So with capitalism collapsing and socialism not an option what now?

And we better figure it out fast because the billionaires already have their solution which is techno feudal dystopia.

Good luck getting medical Care in that collapsing economy and civilization. The pills keeping you alive or going to become unavailable. You'll be lucky if you have food and enough heating oil to get through a winter

Because at least they're not directly to blame. What pisses me off are the people who are complicit.

It's mostly people over 50 who have the I got mine fuck you attitude. The kind of people who are angry they can't use the n word in public anymore.

A convicted felon with 28 credible rape accusations couldn't be president without complicity from a large group of people. Without willing participation

The entire point of section 230 is that the internet is not a traditional publishing system and therefore it should not be treated like one.

Section 230 is not common carrier. Anyone telling you that it is is trying to eliminate it.

A whole bunch of trolls and assholes are jonesing for the idea that they can have the internet treated as common carrier and spread their nonsense troll posts without any consequences. That is the only organic support for what you're describing that exists.

Common carrier is for phone lines not for the internet. The entire reason we have a separate law is because the Internet is different. It is an entirely new medium that required entirely new rules without which it doesn't exist.

If we did what you're describing then the internet turns into cable TV.

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that rules do not apply to Trump or the Republican party.

This would only eliminate dissenting opinions from the center and left. The right wing is heavily backed by billionaires and could shrug off any lawsuits or problems.

Watching the ruling class exert their power in such a naked and obvious fashion these last couple of years.

In America the last election cycle I watched as sane washing became a thing and anyone that criticized Donald Trump in the media got fired.

And now with AI over and over again I keep seeing just a giant middle finger from the ruling class and the billionaires that make up the ruling class.

So they take all the electronics from us and all the electricity in the water and they build data centers that cause tons of problems and if we don't like it and tell them no they just have the state government order us to fuck off and build the data centers anyway.

And now I get to watch them basically take over education.

Remember the only problem AI solves is paying wages. It's not a product and it's not a solution to anything you want. We already had machine learning algorithms for the science stuff what we call AI is just there so that the guys at the top don't have to pay you anymore.

Dirty Little secret of the American ruling class is that they hate capitalism. They hate competition and they hate consumers. And remember you're a consumer so that means they hate you

I did your experiment to very simple Java code with Claude 4.5, literally less than 200 lines total, and it made changes that don't compile. It hallucinated an API call that doesn't exist. I even got excited seeing thinking "oh shit, Claude, your way is SOOOO much better than mine...why didn't I notice that API method?"...oh...because it doesn't exist! Friday?...used it like 5x, 2 of the times it inserted commas and semi-colons in the wrong places and didn't compile. It's very clear it has no clue what it's doing and is just guessing.

If it was that easy, we wouldn't have this issue. LLMs don't work. They take smart guesses, but they're only guesses. While banning AI code seems draconian, it reminds me of banning heroin. Some people can shoot up heroin responsibly, like Keith Richards, who is now 81yo and going strong. Al Jourgensen from Ministry is a massive addict and has made it to 67. But enough assholes abuse heroin and kill themselves we had to ban it. Some people can drive perfectly fine with a blood alcohol level of .1...most are a hazard to those around them.

AI abuse is a very serious issue for people having to maintain code. If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be contributing code that someone else will have to maintain years down the road. I've been using Claude for over a year now at work and beyond the stupid mistakes like semi-colons where there should be a period or hallucinated API calls...I can fix those easily....the code it generates in Java usually sucks and is suboptimal.

Claude rarely uses lambdas unless I tell it to. It often does clumsy sloppy iterative loops. It rarely uses the latest Java features. It uses the wrong lambda calls often. I reference Java because it's my job and what I care about...yeah, I know some asshat will chime in "but what about Python?"...I don't give a fuck about Python because no one who pays me does. If anything, the lack of compilation is just masking the issues. You probably have bugs and hallucinated API calls and your users will find them instead of your compiler. Java is one of the top open source languages with a massive amount of training data....and yet it can't figure out the core syntax of commas and semicolons (from 1995) reliably?

Given the state of AI today, I wouldn't want people contributing code they can't maintain either.

Without the ability to protect platforms you will see an immediate chilling effect as hyper aggressive moderation kicks off on the large platforms who can't weather lawsuits.

Billionaires have decided they have had enough of capitalism. They have had enough competition they have had enough of paying wages and they are absolutely sick and fucking tired of consumers.

So there is a huge multi-prong push to break down any system of competition and this is part of it. The billionaire owned platforms of course will be able to navigate and survive in a post section 230 world but any potential competitor of course won't.

So say goodbye to competition and alternatives and say hello to a cable TV style system owned by approximately 6 or 7 billionaires.

All of your information will be vetted by them and they're algorithms.

On the other hand for a brief moment you will be able to say the n word on Reddit so I guess the total collapse of our economic and social systems will be worth it...

Monopolies just Jack up prices and absorb the money back in. If you pay attention to the people pushing it they are monopolists and oligarchs that want to make you feel that there is a solution besides taking their money and power away. It's the recycling of economics. Something the industry thought of to make you feel like there is something being done when nothing is really being done.

What I have learned in the last few years is that people who call themselves capitalists ain't. Bill gates, Elon musk, George Soros take your pic of your favorite billionaire none of them like capitalism and all of them are in the process of dismantling capitalism so that they can have more money and power.

With capitalism dying socialism isn't on the table because it causes deep resentment among voters.

Somebody needs to figure out a third way but damned if I can.

Are a bunch of businessmen who are jacking up the price of RAM and storage fivefold while sucking down all the water and electricity in the country and driving us towards a job apocalypse.

And of course the article is about the skeezy businessman looking forward to eliminating wages and not the actual mathematicians that made this all possible because of course it is. And because fuck actual science and math.

Now if you'll excuse me it's time for my ivermectom and colloidal silver milkshake. Raw milk of course.