As a guy who on numerous occasions has been in favor of raising taxes on the wealthy, why doesn’t he just write a huge check to the IRS and be done with it?
“Donating” to the IRS is an imperfect solution that scales to all billionaires. If he’s only solving for his individual wealth, he can fine tune it to more specific causes.
The key phrase is LIFE Insurance, not HEALTH Insurance!
They are vastly different markets.
You don’t deny claims for life insurance as companies would do for health insurance. It’s a very different set of circumstances to have to deny life insurance.
I think an analogy that is helpful is that of a woodworker. Automation just allowed them to do more things at in less time.
Power saws really reduced time, lathes even more so. Power drills changed drilling immensely, and even nail guns are used on roofing project s because manual is way too slow.
All the jobs still exist, but their tools are way more capable.
Automation allows one worker to do more things in less time, and allows an organization to have fewer workers doing those things. The result, it would seem, is more people out of work and those who do have work having reduced wages, while the owner class accrues all the benefits.
Table saws do not seem to have reduced the demand for good carpenters. Demand is driven by a larger business cycle and comes and goes with the overall housing market.
As best I can tell, LLMs don’t really reduce the demand for software engineers. It’s also driven by a larger business cycle and, outside of certain AI companies, we’re in a bit of a tech down cycle.
In almost every HN article about LLMs and programming there’s this tendency toward nihilism. Maybe this industry is doomed. Or maybe a lot of current software engineers just haven’t lived through a business down cycle until now.
I don’t know the answer but I know this: if your main value is slinging code, you should diversify your skill set. That was true 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and is still true today.
> Table saws do not seem to have reduced the demand for good carpenters. Demand is driven by a larger business cycle and comes and goes with the overall housing market.
They absolutely did. Moreover, they tanked the ability for good carpenters to do work because the market is flooded with cheap products which drives prices down. This has happened across multiple industries resulting in enshittification of products in general.
We're in the jester economy - kids now want to grow up to be influencers on TikTok and not scientists or engineers. Unfortunately, AI is now able to generate those short video clips and voice overs and it's getting harder and harder to tell which is generated and which is an edited recording of actual humans. If influencer is no longer a job, what then is it going to be for kids to aspire to?
We seem to be pretty good at inventing jobs both useful and pointless whenever this happens. We don't need armies of clarks to do basic word processing these days but somehow we still manage to find jobs for most people.
Most of those jobs have terrible pay and conditions, though. Software engineers have experienced a couple of decades of exceptional pay that now seems to be in danger. An argument can be made that they are automating themselves out of a job.
This is how I use LLM’s to code. I am still architecting, and the code it writes I could write given enough time and care, but the speed with which I can try ideas and make changes fundamentally alters what I will even attempt. It is very much a table saw.
I think you’re making a mistake assuming AI is similar to past automation. Sure in the short term, it might be comparable but long term AI is the ultimate automation.
Click "parent" a few times and look at the code example that started this thread. It's using the same function in a way that can't distinguish whether the user intentionally used a string (including an f-string) and a t-string.
Yes, and the parent is misguided. As was pointed out in multiple replies, the library can distinguish whether an ordinary string or a t-string is passed because the t-string is not a string instance, but instead creates a separate library type. A user who mistakenly uses an f prefix instead of a t prefix will, with a properly designed library, encounter a `TypeError` at runtime (or a warning earlier, given type annotations and a checker), not SQL injection.
In this particular instance it can't, because there are 3 ways in question here, and it can't distinguish between correct intentional usage and accidental usage of an f-string instead of a t-string:
db.execute("SELECT foo FROM bar;")
db.execute(f"SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE id = {foo_id};")
db.execute(t"SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE id = {foo_id};")
The first and second look identical to execute() because all it sees is a string. But the second one is wrong, a hard-to-see typo of the third.
If f-strings didn't exist there'd be no issue because it could distinguish by type as you say. But we have an incorrect SQL-injection-prone usage here that can't be distinguished by type from the correct plain string usage.
My (and their) point is that's the already existing API. You're proposing a big breaking change, with how many frameworks and tutorials are built on top of that.
It's not like this is the first time APIs have been improved. There are many tools (e.g. deprecation warnings & hints in editors, linter rules) that can help bridge the gap - even if t-strings are only used for new or refactored code, it's still a big improvement!
There's also simply no hard requirement to overload an `execute` function. We have options beyond "no templates at all" and "execute takes templates and strings", for example by introducing a separate function. Why does perfect have to be the enemy of good here?
Because they're both passed to "execute", which can't tell between the f-string and a non-interpolated query, so it just has to trust you did the right thing. Typoing the "t" as an "f" introduces SQL injection that's hard to spot.
Assuming `execute` takes both. You could have `execute(template)` and `execute_interpolated(str, ...args)` but yeah if it takes both you'll have challenges discouraging plain-text interpolation.
It would have to be the other way around or be a (possibly major) breaking change. Just execute() with strings is already standard python that all the frameworks build on top of, not to mention tutorials:
> It would have to be the other way around or be a (possibly major) breaking change.
If it is going to reject the currently-accepted unsafe usage, its going to be a major breaking change in any case, so I don't see the problem. I mean, if you are lamenting it can't reject the currently-accepted SQL-interpolated-via-f-string because it can't distinguish it by type from plain strings with no interpolation, you are already saying that you want a major breaking change but are upset because the particular implementation you want is not possible. So you can't turn around and dismiss an alternative solution because it would be a major breaking change, that's what was asked for!
How much do you expect to raise taxes to cover that gap? You double my taxes and I’m in the welfare line.
Further, and this is not referenced enough - the US must rollover ~9 trillion in treasuries this year. The lower the interest rate to do that, the better. Otherwise it increase the deficit even more.
The only way this ends is one of two paths - a path similar to what we are on; default.
We may not like this one, but default is world destroying because of the broad use of the Dollar around the globe.
In CBO’s projections, the federal budget deficit in fiscal year 2025 is $1.9 trillion. Adjusted to exclude the effects of shifts in the timing of certain payments, the deficit grows to $2.7 trillion by 2035. It amounts to 6.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2025 and drops to 5.2 percent by 2027 as revenues increase faster than outlays
"The budget projections are based on CBO’s economic forecast, which reflects developments in the economy as of December 4, 2024. They also incorporate legislation enacted through January 6, 2025."
Taxes should be raised on the rich. Elon Musk alone is worth $330 billion. There is plenty of money to pay for what we need. The question is whether we can muster the political will to do it.
Probably it will. Vance even threatened to leave NATO if the EU regulates X. But EU countries are not satellite states of the US. At some point we just have to draw a line in the sand and stand by our own values, even if it comes at an expense. It's not as if tariffs and the retaliatory tariffs it will lead to is good for the US economy either.
a lot of european nations are also discussing on how to create more inhouse and become digitally sovereign from US tech firms. (the dutch government for instance[0])
5 or even 10 years ago this would have been unthinkable in dutch politics, even if this has been called out a lot as a risk in tech circles.
At least that would make him consistent.