1. LLM use has made me a more productive programmer, especially when learning new technology. The ability to ask questions about documentation, code, and best practices is nice. It's like Stack Overflow without all the toxicity, outdated answers, and user login antipatterns. Also, one less cookie notification to dismiss.

2. Energy is an important issue. We need a sane energy policy and worldwide cooperation. Corporations should pay the full cost of their energy use, including pollution mitigation and carbon offsets. Pragmatism suggests that this is not likely to happen any time soon. The US will be out of any discussion of sane energy policy for the foreseeable future.

3. The training of many (all?) major LLMs included a step that was criminal. That is, downloading Z-Library or Library Genesis. The issue of Fair Use for training models on copyrighted text is unsettled. The legality of downloading pirated ebooks is well-defined. These books were stripped of their DRM, which itself is illegal under DMCA. It's a crime and CEO's should be held accountable. Training an LLM on copyrighted works might be legal, but stealing those copyrighted works is not. At least buy a copy of the book.

There is more than enough homogeneity of labor in this industry. All workers should organize.

Like all other forums, public and private, HN has an ideological filter. I'm as surprised as the next person that the HN ideological filter turned out not to be permissive enough to discuss the downfall of the free society that fostered its creation.

The oligarchs will not lose their freedom or power and they won't fight (or even inconvenience themselves) to preserve yours. Next time you're reading a blog or a biography of a tech billionaire, remember that they got their wealth from wage theft and they will keep their power by destroying yours.

The only law tech companies -- and the oligarchs that own and control them -- have to obey is allegiance to Trump. No other law will be enforced.

Maybe Paul Graham was simply protecting his station within the oligarchy all along. The turn toward appeasing fascism is nothing more than the path of least resistance. But I'm sure he'll write some blogs warning of complacency and send some tweets on Musk's nazi propaganda site. He's one of the good ones.

The fact that HN is letting political posts stay on the front page after months of suppression shows that we are past the point of denying the authoritarian road we are on.