all around me in the northeast are decaying little towns and attractions that used to be vacation getaways for the first half of the twentieth century.
they say that airtravel killed the catskills resorts (ala dirty dancing) because why spend a few hours in teh car when you could go someplace so much more exotic with a few hours on the plane? and now there's a second-wave killing it with social media travel photos. everybody feels like they need to travel to the same handful of farflung locales that have been deemed 'the best'. basically, people with the means to travel have decided that regional travel isn't cool enough to impress their friends, so they let it die.
i think that's a terrible mistake for everybody. people dont have a fun, affordable place to go on a little weekend jaunt. towns that could scrape by on their natrual beauty have been left to decay (and once there's no way to monetize the natural beauty, local development sees no reason to preserve it).
i've seen a number of articles claiming things like "devs self report they'er +x% more productive with AI, but actually they're -y% LESS efficient!". and i think that this is explanation for why.
as a boss (or researcher) i'm going to measure productivity based on amount of output per hour that i'm paying you; as a workers, i'm going to measure productivity based on amount of output relative to the amount of effort i'm putting in.
so what may be happening is that bosses see that output is at 80% (productivity down!) but workers see that they can give that 80% output with 40% effort (productivity up!).
Not sure among devs, but I do know that in other positions in typical corporate bureaucracy, people have a propensity to not report their own automations or productivity gains upward, because the reward structure isn't there.
Early on in my days as a sysadmin, I automated a ton of my role when the rest of the team was still doing ClickOps. The reward for doing so was more work and expectations without the additional pay increase to justify my new found productivity. That happens all over the workforce, and so people will just keep it to themselves. I learned my lesson at that first job real fast that if I'm able to have the same, or greater output, for half the time, I keep that to myself so I can use the automation to free up my own time instead of have it filled by the company.
I wonder how much of that is happening now with AI in non-technical roles.
> so what may be happening is that bosses see that output is at 80% (productivity down!)
If an initiative produces only 80% of the previous results and you’re paying large token bills on top of the same wages, the AI is going to get cut off.
> i've seen a number of articles claiming things like "devs self report they'er +x% more productive with AI, but actually they're -y% LESS efficient!".
Are you thinking of the old METR evals? Their more recent evals showed an actual performance improvement.
The old report is still circulated as bait for AI skeptics.
I think the old report you're referencing is this [1] from July 2025, but I can't find a new report. This [2] links to a new dataset at the bottom (that maybe shows improvements?) but it seems like they chose not to write it up because of perceived flaws in their study. Is there a more relevant report I'm missing?
> so what may be happening is that bosses see that output is at 80% (productivity down!) but workers see that they can give that 80% output with 40% effort (productivity up!).
So why is it that the bosses are the ones that are so enthusiastic about adoption?
Well the obvious is that, monkey-see-monkey-do, and they don't want to miss out. But the insidious externality is that they are the most likely ones (and higher ups) to be invested in nvidia and others, so when they push you to use, it creates a viscous cycle.
i know series hybrids aren't as efficient as parallel hybrids (thanks technology connections!), but i wonder if they'd be a good candidate for fun restomods.
drop in a tiny, powerful electric motor and a small battery (crammed in whatever location is best for weight distribution), and then wire up a little genny powered off your existing fuel tank that can jump in as a range extender
Series hybrids can compete with parallel hybrids, because the full decoupling of the engine from the wheels claws back some of the efficiency you lose through the energy conversion. It's series-parallel hybrids they can't really compete with, because those are able to do the same trick, but they also lose less energy in conversion, because the engine does some of the heavy lifting.
Series hybrids are great for packaging, though. Parallel and series-parallel commit to certain packaging decisions like having a transmission, or a long, monolithic unit, because it's the mechanical coupling that buys them smaller motors and potentially better efficiency. Series hybrids don't care about any of that, so even though you have bigger motors and potentially higher losses, you have more freedom over where things go.
Personally, I think there's a massive untapped market in converting old cars to hybrid engines. You wouldn't try to upgrade the old engine, you'd design a smaller and more power dense package and rip all of the original gear out. Because electrification lets you cut the size of the engine down so aggressively, this is probably a feasible strategy. As you pointed out, series hybrids are probably best suited to this because of their packaging flexibility. As others have pointed out, there's tremendous potential there for replicating original driving characteristics using software and the electric motor. And if we're being honest, off-road vehicles probably should get rid of the transmission and low range, because electric motor torque is just better. As is, the potential for cars is enormous, but we're getting the worst possible outcomes thanks to legislation.
i dont think jira (or linear or any other ticketing platform) is about saving anybody time. they know on some level that they are all a burden.
but they will gladly take the productivity hit from that time sink because it gives them teh ability to track employees. they'd rather know that everybody is working at 80% productivity than release that burden and just trust them. it's either this or filling out frustrating timesheets.
The previous place I worked had the Head of Product become VP of Engineering after the CTO left (don't ask, it's a long story).
They literally implemented the most orthodox scrum you can imagine, with the one exception that they could sit on the sprint planning meetings and override the teams pulling tickets off the backlog into sprints (technical debt of course started to pile up).
The kicker is that after a few months of this, productivity slowed to a crawl. The retrospectives showed that the planning wasn't working because the planned work rarely got done - because we were always fighting fires. Work also slowed due to all the overhead that was added to implement scrum (I also had to participate, despite being in an DevOps role - that at the best of times is inherently interrupt driven and I'm servicing the work of developers). Despite the fact that the powers that be knew things were not working as well as they used to, no amount of feedback could loosen the reigns - probably because it inherently meant losing some control. We had to try everything else to get back to where we were, when empowered developers could make decisions. Things got worse of course as within 6 months we lost half our most experienced talent that wasn't going to put up with it (this was the peak 2022 tech hiring levels).
Eventually there was some mild "improvement" as we were allowed a "15% time" to work on what we thought was best, which still had to be justified and it was still the lowest priority during any given sprint. I still shake my head at the whole situation.
i'm not sure if it's an issue of the educational system, but for at least several decades there has been a societal push to correct historical gender imbalances by encouraging girls to do well in school, go to college (especially STEM), get a career.
This has resulted in kids seeing a lot of messaging along the lines of "Girl Power! Girls can do anything!". Which to an adult looks like a shift in the tides of history, but for one of the kids that's all they've ever seen and i think that has an effect.
> This has resulted in kids seeing a lot of messaging along the lines of "Girl Power! Girls can do anything!". Which to an adult looks like a shift in the tides of history, but for one of the kids that's all they've ever seen
This feels too vibes-based. I never saw messaging like this when I was a teacher, nor when I visited the schools my mom taught at, nor when I visited schools to help with kid hackathons. This would be in California, Texas, the PRC, Japan, and Taiwan. Mostly I saw little nonsense alphabet stickers, famous buildings, chemical symbols, or like, comically diverse but in the end harmless bits of bric a brac like an astronaut in a wheelchair.
What specifically have you been seeing that would lead you to think boys in schools are being held back by messaging?
It turns out that when you level the playing field, girls do better than boys. I don't think it's about the "girl power" nonsense, it's about the ability to sit down, focus on something, and produce work that meets a certain standard of achievement.
I would say the more harmful slogan has been "you're okay just the way you are." I'm not saying we go back to harsh discipline and abuse, but there has to be a middle ground where we hold children, especially boys, to a higher standard.
> It turns out that when you level the playing field, girls do better than boys.
Why is it that when boys/men where outperforming and out-earning women, people were willing to move heaven and earth to correct this terrible injustice, but now when outcomes have reversed (for years at this point) it's considered acceptable to say "Welp, that's just how it goes. Boys just aren't good enough."
Hmmm...almost like, it's not a level playing field??
This is true and interesting but it's also incomplete. Men still dominate most STEM degrees, and unlike law or business it doesn't seem to be evening out over time. I'm not sure what conclusions we can draw from this.
> We do know boys mature later which may be reason to not level the field completely, but we should still not allow that as an excuse.
I am quite a long ways from right-leaning but this sure does lend credence to their claims of discrimination. If it weren't boys, we'd say that a biological disadvantage is absolutely acceptable as an excuse, and we should try to correct for it.
Structural misandry. I'm telling you the Zoomer/Alpha boys have taken notice and are checking out of the system. Chickens coming home to roost in a few more decades as the West goes longhouse and gets economically pounded by the East. I was an early bird in MGTOW, but now it's common knowledge and operating strategy for most young men.
Boys don't owe society squat, and now they know it!
I disagree. There's cases where girls do better and cases where boys do better. This blanket statement is just as bad as saying that all men/boys are smarter than girls.
Exactly, girls and women can do astonishing work in fields that favour more or less their mutual traits and vice versa, no need for "hehe we are better because GPA said so".
Boys have been sitting down, focusing, and producing work that meets a certain standard for most of recorded history. That ability is really not a uniquely feminine trait, and suggesting it is is honestly bizarre.
Boys have also been doing more destructive things, but that's a different issue.
Boys and girls do struggle with different issues socially and culturally, which is upstream of struggling with them academically.
What's consistently missed that education is downstream of socialisation. The experience of learning as a first introduction to culture shapes consequences more than individual techniques do.
Part of that is challenging all gender stereotypes. The traditional stereotype was that girls were frankly rather stupid and couldn't handle anything rigorous and challenging.
Now the stereotype is that men lack focus, are disorganised, and have poor communication skills.
One stereotype has been challenged, the other seems to have replaced it, and younger men have almost been encouraged to live down to it.
I don't think as a culture we're emotionally mature enough yet to handle these issues in an effective way, and both education and socialisation will remain problematic until we do.
re: not teaching math to kids is a pet peeve of mine.
the number of adults i've met who cannot add two fractions together is depressing.
at some point each of them had decided "i'm just bad with numbers, hahaha" and they gave themselves permission to stop trying math. worse, society gives you a pass at not knowing math. we need to apply the same constant social pressure to mathematics skills that we do for learning to read.
When young people ask me why they should learn math, I point out that managing your money requires math, and there are plenty of people who will steal from you if you are unable to recognize it.
An inability to understand compound interest is classic.
But that's basic arithmetic, and we have calculators to do that. Totally agree that understanding the problem and being able to frame a solution are also needed, but again, that's not hard maths.
I think we're more talking about algebra or, really, anything "higher" in maths than arithmetic. Does a solid knowledge of, e,g, Set Theory, give any benefit later in life?
And also, if we think that basic financial management is a good thing for kids to learn, why don't we teach that?
No, we don't have calculators to do that. AI, maybe. But a calculator cannot form an equation out of a social context and solve the equation.
If you bought 6 liters of soda for £3/2-liter bottle with 8% consumption tax, how much should it cost?
You have to shape that all into a series of operations for your calculator. The calculator can't do it by itself. Even basic arithmetic takes some education before the calculator can be useful.
> But that's basic arithmetic, and we have calculators to do that.
I would disagree. How to minimize a function, how to calculate interest, first derrivative are all pretty useful in finance, and a bit beyond basic arithmatic.
> I think we're more talking about algebra
"Algebra" as a term covers a lot. Being able to solve for x is a very useful skill and often what people mean by algebra.
If you mean understanding groups, rings, fields, or whatever, then sure that is probably not very useful to the average person's day to day. However i dont think that is usually tought in high school.
> Does a solid knowledge of, e,g, Set Theory, give any benefit later in life?
Pretty sure nobody in high school is getting a solid understanding of set theory. That is more university level.
> And also, if we think that basic financial management is a good thing for kids to learn, why don't we teach that?
I guess it depends on where you live, but i had to take a class on that in high school.
> Does a solid knowledge of, e,g, Set Theory, give any benefit later in life?
Is there any benefit to being able to distinguish logical entailments from non sequiturs?
The things that are taught under the label "set theory" are taught elsewhere under the label "basic logic". The most primitive symbols are intentionally matched: in logic, "and" is ∧ and "or" is ∨, while in set theory, "and" is ⋂ and "or" is ⋃.
The symbols stop matching quite that well after that - compare logical ⟶ and ¬ to set-theoretic ⊆ and ᶜ - but they continue to consist of the same material.
Set theory is actually the basis for all of math. This includes basic counting of the number of things in, ehm, sets. Cant be nore practical than this.
A calculator won't help at all if you don't have a grasp on what compound interest is. I've seen many laments on X from graduates who could not understand why they've paid more money to their student loan lender than the amount of the loan, and still have a balance that was more than the loan amount.
These are college graduates.
> Does a solid knowledge of, e,g, Set Theory, give any benefit later in life?
Knowledge of statistics will help a person a lot.
Another example. I wanted to put an elliptical brick patio in my yard. The contractor gave a square footage and I signed a deal with the charge per square foot. He staked it out.
It looked a bit peculiar to me. So I measured the major and minor axes and computed the area of the ellipse. It was 1/3 smaller than the contracted amount. The pallet of bricks was sitting in the driveway. I multiplied xyz to get the square footage of the bricks, and walla, it matched the area staked out.
I.e. I was being cheated. The contractor evidently was used to math challenged customers, and discovered how much he could cheat before being noticed. I pointed out the "error" (hahahaha) and the contractor reduced the bill by a third.
An excellent example that shows the value of understanding very basic geometry.
I'll add that math isn't really just about that sort of practicality though. It's also about a fundamental understanding of numbers and what they mean.
For example, inflation is in the news a lot. It's high, or low. Most people (the US president included) think that if inflation was 0% prices would come down. But that'd be a profound misunderstanding of the topic.
A grounding in numbers, in this case percentages, makes for a better understanding.
Any business owner needs to know fundamental truths to survive. Cost price, markup, margin, selling price, fixed expenses versus variable expenses and so on. All are grounded in basic math. Without that you can't do basic accounting. Without that you can't effectively run a business.
Anti-vax arguments are built on very bad math, and people bad at math fall for it.
We all use math all the time. People bad at math are at a major disadvantage. Populations bad at math are easily manipulated.
They're even proud of it, heaven help us. How many posts on HN by SWEs have we seen saying that people didn't lose any skills of importance when calculators became widespread?
> we need to apply the same constant social pressure to mathematics skills that we do for learning to read.
Ha Ha Ha! Cute you think society cares about reading abilities!
I mean, OK, you are expected to be able to do basic level reading. But, say, reading something independently to learn something? Even when I was in university 20 years ago it was a struggle to get people to read.
i'm waiting for the AI giants to realize that they are burning cash to run their consumer-facing chatbots and that they should kill those products to focus on their enterprise tools.
free chatgpt doesn't need to exist anymore. its job was to build hype/interest and it did.
but take it away and you solve many social problems and annoyances caused by AI with no loss to the upside of AI. no more cheating students in school. no more shitty linkedin posts. no more dangerous "therapy sessions" that give bad advice.
i'm curious what will happen to online ads as more and more internet traffic is done by bots. eventually, advertisers will catch on that humans are driving their impressions and will pull back, right?
as soon as people realize the diminishing value of buying ads on random internet platforms... what next? ads have subsidized almost everything online. will we start paying for basic services, or will there be some other new mechanism for us to sell our attention in exchange for somebody else's web hosting?
as somebody with attention difficulties... every college/gradschool lecture i've ever attended has been:
1. pay attention for the first 5-10 minutes. I'm really going to try this time!
2. hear something interesting, and your mind starts wandering
3. uhoh, i have no idea what the lecture is talking about now. i'll just keep daydreaming. don't even think about raisigin your hand to ask a question because it'll reveal that you haven't been listening.
4. go home and read the textbook to figure learn the content
they say that airtravel killed the catskills resorts (ala dirty dancing) because why spend a few hours in teh car when you could go someplace so much more exotic with a few hours on the plane? and now there's a second-wave killing it with social media travel photos. everybody feels like they need to travel to the same handful of farflung locales that have been deemed 'the best'. basically, people with the means to travel have decided that regional travel isn't cool enough to impress their friends, so they let it die.
i think that's a terrible mistake for everybody. people dont have a fun, affordable place to go on a little weekend jaunt. towns that could scrape by on their natrual beauty have been left to decay (and once there's no way to monetize the natural beauty, local development sees no reason to preserve it).
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