So you have a very high paying and glamorous job and you don't like it because boo hoo, the military may use it? I am not upset at these folks. I'm jealous. I wish I had so few responsibilities in life that I could just fuck with my livelihood around over something soo stupid. You're just going to go to another AI company. But they totally pinky swear never to contract to the DoD???

Finally, what are they using AI for? I'll wager it's just for mundane, boring shit. It's not designing super bombs to destroy orphanages. They probably are just using it to go through old records....probably trying to ensure the things they are already doing regarding intelligence assessment are more accurate. A goal we can all agree on is military accuracy. The heinous thing about military action is collateral damage, not the concept of war. I think what asshole hippies forget is that better military intelligence and handling would have prevented 9/11. Better military intelligence ensures they capture the right people, not the innocent.

Finally, remember that the US military is a giant logistics company that dabbles in warfare. Approx 10% of solider experience combat in a fucking war. Only 35% of US soliders saw combat in WW2. More servicepeople are doing DHL/UPS stuff than aiming weapons, even in a hot war. I'd imagine the first use of AI is to ensure smoother operations of getting servicepeople paid, getting soldiers fed, ensuring military sites have proper upkeep. The military hires more active duty troops as cooks, dentists, medics, truck drivers, vehicle repair specialists, trainers, fucking projectionists at the base movie theater. Most soldiers do not kill and are not killers. Most are just doing the best they can to ensure safe and smooth operations for the military goals.

Similarly, I think AI will be less about killing foreigners and more about automating performance reviews, digitizing archives, more efficient warehousing, ensuring less payroll and contracting mistakes, etc...the dull, mundane things every large business does....probably a huge portion of it will go to analyzing soldier health data to take care of the veterans who risked their safety and lives to do things you find abhorrent...which most of the rest of the world would do to you without any hesitation...if only they could. I'm massive liberal...but I never forget. The only reason I can think about the bigger picture and higher ideals is because a fuckton of US soldiers convinced the rest of the world's armies that if they harm Americans, we will make sure it's a painful and costly mistake. Ukraine is a constantly reminder. The only reason no one has invaded us like Russia invaded the Ukraine is because they lack the ability, not the desire. And the US Military is the reason why I can be who I am and every entitled spoiled child working for Google can whine like a little bitch about this. I know they'd change their tune if they were living in Ukraine, hearing air raid sirens constantly, and haunted by the ghosts of friends, neighbors, and loved ones who died at the hands of another military.

You're really reaching there and I know you know this. You're correct that the private sector is a check on big government. However, unregulated and ruthless capitalism is a destructive force for everyone but the 1%. You talk about your retirement/college fund?....OK...what the fuck is your kid going to do? How are they going to make a living? The end result of what this guy bemoans is that every worker is paid the ABSOLUTE minimum they can get by with. Every corner is cut. Every means of exploiting the customer is used. Their only option is either be an investor or MAYBE a medical career...or one of those unique jobs where you're special to the 1%: performer/musician/yacht-designer...IDK...high class butler?

Tech jobs?...nope...replaced by AI...which did an inferior job, but hey, cut another corner. The Republicans passed legislation limiting your liability for data theft. Business management? accounting?...same fate. Lawyer?...same. Will EVERY job be replaced?...of course not, but if the jobs are 10% of what they were, how's your kid going to compete against the ENTIRE globe!?!?!

OK...so maybe it's your retirement fund?...well private equity and MBA CEOs cut every corner and exploited. you every way they can find. Your favorite fast food chain?...cut the quality by half and increased the price by 2x....same for every food product you buy!!! corners cut, more profits to the shareholders, right? OK, you're not into fast food...did you know EVERY local restaurant in the USA relies on 2 suppliers? Sysco and US Foods control nearly the entire market and have been exploiting their customers, your favorite restaurants. The same will apply to literally every product you buy, so all these returns? eaten up VERY quickly for you....Zuckerberg/Musk?...well...they're sitting on a ton of cash, so it doesn't matter. Their children will earn so much, it will easily outpace the cost gains and general enshitffication of the world...will you account??

I believe in UX/UI principles: if your audience can't figure out your UI...then you failed, not them. If a motivated reader can't follow what you're saying, then 90+% of the time, it's your failing, not their stupidity. I know many advanced and technical things, including a lot of deep dive software details. If I can't explain the topic to a motivated audience, then it's a sign I don't understand it well enough to not rely on crutches. I used to ask as an interview question "Explain $theFirstFrameworkOnYourResume to your mom." So if you can't explain Spring/JPA, without relying on buzzwords, then you don't really know what the framework is, what you're doing, and thus you won't think critically or use good judgement as to whether you should use IOC vs simple constructors/constants or functional programming vs OOP, or ORM vs other frameworks. Buzzwords can be be timesavers in expressing ideas, but can also mask deep ignorance.

This was a simple relevant story and easy to make into a compelling narrative. It wasn't advanced. It was common sense stuff for anyone remotely interested in tech.

The irony of open source is it's problematic because no one can tell you no! Hard work and determination can overcome anything, including common sense! I love open source, am a contributor myself to a very major project, but it's been a mixed bag for the industry. So many good project have been written in shit technologies, like JavaScript and Python when there were far superior options. Hell, many say that about my favorite languages (Java and Rust). Node.js was always a solution looking for a problem. Eventually, it got some decent ideas a bit sooner than the competition, but fuck...it would have been just so much nicer if they did all that non-blocking stuff in Java or a strongly typed language. Pre-open-source, someone would have shot down the idea. Today, Java has caught up, so server-side JS is still pretty pointless. It's a slower, less-reliable, more error-prone technology whose only real benefit is you never have to crack open a book and learn a language that...if you do it correctly, you barely use...and is quite easy to learn if you're familiar with JavaScript. Really, with modern frameworks, you're just chaining method calls...writing very little original code. Pre-2000, I can't see any major company investing in it and would say it's a bad idea. However, that no longer matters in the era of open source. No one says no to bad ideas and they can live forever because they can't go out of business.

The key problem with JavaScript and Python and any other language without strong typing is the original author typically does a great job. The project is a soaring success and becomes a valued app at the company. To thank that engineer or team, they get promoted. Now they're in management or leave for another job or get assigned to another important task...now the B-team gets to do maintenance. But hey, I'm sure the original pioneering guys hustling against deadlines made PERFECT documentation, right? I bet they wrote PERFECT unit tests!!! All developers write great unit tests and understandable and thorough documentation, right???? :)

So yeah, 5 years down the road, you need to update the libs. I inherited a node.js crapplication. It worked fine for 3 years and Google updated one of the JS libs. We needed to patch it because it was flagged as having a security violation. OK...nice and easy, only Google decided to change every function's signature and behavior, so it breaks instantly. Now Spring, a popular Java framework, way older than node, deno, or even most major JS libs, does this every major version release for reasons unknown to me...and it's fine...a PITA, but the compiler catches the signature mismatches and I lose a day, tops (pre-AI). Nothing makes it past the unit tests. The node.js application? OK, I find/replaced everything I could find, kept finding more instances. I thought I did everything correct. The unit tests pass. I manually test every flow I know of and our QA dept does the same. We ship the update....it breaks on day 1 because there was an undocumented flow. We figure it out, fix it within an hour, apologize profusely. Repeat 2 more times over the next week....the customer found our error....whereas a compiler would have easily found it. Again, why?...well...because the original author simply didn't like using superior technologies. Rather than cracking open a book and learning Java, like every other app in the company...nope...needs to be in JavaScript? Is it better?...no...is it faster?...no...did they complete it faster?...definitely not...but hey, it's in JavaScript!!!!

I still love JavaScript and it changed the world for the better...but yeah, has this one specific downside...hard work and determination can overcome common sense.

That is horrible, poorly written summary. I love learning about economics and even know exactly what they are saying and mean, but it's just SHITTY writing. It's like it was written by a 19yo college student looking to use as many fancy words she just learned her ECON 201 class in sentences. It's closer to cryptography than journalism. You know impressive words...good for you...can you make your writing less obtuse and painful to read?

Isn't that the job of Congress? Precisely what power does the White House have to mandate what Anthropic does?

A contractor is an MS employee without benefits, managed by MS. Outsourcing is hiring a contracting firm, like Tata, to manage the employees at a much higher cost. Everyone uses contractors. None of the serious players use outsourcing firms for core work.

MS is using H1Bs to keep development at their main sites, like Seattle. The commenter stated that they could just contract it through an outsourcing firm, like Tata.

Ironically the H1Bs are helping the locals more than hurting as it makes you valuable to be in the area. When you force a company to go distributed, you reduce the incentive for them to not hire from wherever they want, especially outside the USA. I've seen it happen many times.

As someone already stated, Europe is huge. Not everything is London or Zurich. They have backwater villages and cousin-fucker countries, like most regions. Many companies open offices in Eastern Europe to tap into the talent pool. Also a highly skilled Polish engineer is cheaper than a shitty one from anywhere else in the word, no matter their wage. The cost of an engineer is a factor of productivity and salary, not just salary. Everyone who outsourced to India discovered this. Anyone in India with any talent was getting Western wages to work for MS and others...all that remained for the outsourcing companies, like Tata, were the ones they were turned down or never should have been engineers and it took them 10x as long to get anything done.

If you're using their product, it's done in-house. The only software firms that outsource core development probably shouldn't be called software firms. You know I meant good in the sense of engineering, not virtues. Cool quip, though.

OK, you don't work in software. Good tech companies don't outsource core development. They hire in house. They also have a huge presence in every country they'd hire from. Microsoft can just as easily open an office in India, Poland, or anywhere else. All the major players are the same. They outsource things like cleaning the office, sometimes some shitty work they don't want to do, like content moderation, they might outsource printer maintenance or helpdesk operations. However, the H1Bs are usually for valuable work and they keep that in house.

If Microsoft wants cheap, shitty labor, they can open an office anywhere it's cheap. They already have offices all throughout Asia and Europe to tap into cheap labor. If they're hiring H1Bs to work in Seattle, they typically want them for good work and are willing to pay a premium for them. MS won't outsource core Azure, XBox, Office, or Windows development. Non-tech companies may outsource core functions, but software companies never do (at least any I've seen...certainly not all major players).

Look, if your concern is American tech workers, the answer is simple, make H1Bs more expensive. The intent is to snag the best and brightest from around the world, so ensure the company has to pay them above the 75th percentile of wages for that job plus an additional sliding scale fee. If you're MS, pay $40,000 per VISA, for example. If you're a hospital needing to hire a pediatric surgeon in an underserved rural community? Make the fee $0.

H1Bs do more good for American tech workers than harm. Your employer can pay for H1Bs to bring all the labor to headquarters...and thus you have value by being local and a huge advantage. If they can't find the talent they need...and there's a HUGE shortage of talented engineers, even today, but especially 4 years ago....then they have no choice but to adopt a distributed model and then you're screwed. They need the talent and will hire someone overseas to do it if they can't bring them locally. If an MS employee in India is willing to do the job for half the wages on an American schedule, what hope does a Seattle-based employee have? Ironically H1Bs are quite often keeping your job from going away completely if you live in the developed world. If MS is used to distributed development, then you're competing with THE BEST IN THE WORLD that are willing to work for MS in their hometown....not just the best in Seattle. Trust me. I've worked in distributed teams for decades. It is a lot more competitive in terms what they expect from you and what they can get by with paying you.

They're just different. That's the way it should be. If my kids were begging me to play Nine Inch Nails in the car, I'd be disappointed in them :) Frankly, I like the music the kids are into lately...for some reason, there's a whole batch of young people who listened to all the good stuff from the past and did their best to learn from it and improve...certainly on the techno scene. I like new stuff from young artists more than my favorite tunes from my youth. But....regardless....Roblox isn't Alice Cooper...Alice Cooper was not Beatles...who were no Elvis...and the cycle goes on and on

What you mean to say is "I'm old and I don't like Roblox because it's not what I am used to." Roblox has 80 million active daily users and 5 billion in revenue annually. Not only that, if you talk to anyone under 18, the IS THE BIGGEST GAME by a long shot. It's bigger than minecraft and fortnite combined. It's bigger than any mobile game. Trust me, the kids feel the same way about the games I love to play, INCLUDING Fortnite. It is a cultural phenomena bigger than any boy band, Pokemon, even most consoles. My kids' friends? They don't want a PS5 filled with AAA hits. They just want to play Roblox with their friends.

You understand you're the villain in this story right? You're the preacher in footloose. You're Tipper Gore banning 2 Live Crew. You're those frigid church ladies saying Heavy Metal and Dungeons and Dragons will turn your children into satanists, while their husbands sneak off from their suburban homes, pretending to work late, but actually fucking their sidepieces. You're that old man complaining about whatever you listened to in High School saying "that's not REAL music." You're that dick who was telling teenage me Rage Against the Machine was garbage because it wasn't Led Zepplin and how my music isn't "cool" like your classic rock.

I don't get Roblox either. A few of the games are actually fun, like 99 Nights in the Forest. My kids and I have parties where we all play that. Most are weird and pointless to me, but I'm fucking old with grey chest hairs. I'm not supposed to get what the kids are into. It would be weird if my dad was begging to go to a Nine Inch Nails concert with me when I was in high school. This is their Sex Pistols, Alice Cooper, rap-music, hair-metal, New Kids on the Block, N'Sync, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, or whatever confused, scared, or annoyed your parents.

My kids and all their friends have distinct taste in Roblox games. It's a MASSIVE phenomena among all their classmates. There are endless youtubers making content about it. Again...boring to me...but I have no hair, am on blood pressure medicine and have a solid retirement plan. I'm OLD. And clearly you are too if you're confident about making a statement that out of touch.

...whoever wins, we lose! (from the movie poster)

You sound like a badass...are you proud of yourself? That was really macho, bro, yet dumber than shit. It's always been a stupid comment made by people who live in comfort and security. Without life, there is no freedom. If someone is trying to murder you, then your liberty is not a concern. You can talk about "deserving" until you're blue in the face. When I had a gun pointed at me, I wasn't too concerned about civil liberties. You're living in the burbs or a small town if you can utter such stupid things with a straight face. It's like the situation in Gaza or Ukraine, I can comfortably opine all I want from the safety of the USA. To the people facing constant threat of death, they don't really care about your opinions of what they deserve.

Chicago and Oakland have approx the same murder rate, but Chicago is a HUGE city geographically, including northern parts which are affluent suburbs. I lived on the South Side of Chicago, which has twice the population of Oakland and over 4x the murder rate. I heard gunfire nightly during the summer. Everyone in a high crime neighborhood wants BETTER police. And any sharp tool can be abused in the wrong hands, but I will wager if you polled Oakland residents, a majority would want ALPR technology if you could demonstrate it made their streets tangibly safer. White middle class liberals wring their hands about overstepping civil liberties. Those of us who worry about our safety are less concerned. You're sound like someone saying the homeless shelter is a terrible idea because they're not serving organically sourced food.

There's no simple answer. Stepping on Civil Liberties is bad....getting murdered is worse. You're clearly comfortable enough to view the police as the enemy. The people who lived in my old neighborhood were more scared of the local gangs than the police.