Ask HN: What has been bothering you lately?

Wealth concentration beyond a point which would have resulted in widespread revolution 150 years ago, but that is now being tolerated because we've grown accustomed to a level of comfort we don't want to risk losing.

What bothers me is that this post is now flagged. Whatever happened to this place? I blame it on Reddit shitting the bed, and its milquetoast demographic invaded this space.

My parents are getting old (I see it when I look at them), and I feel like I'm running out of time to be financially successful so they can enjoy my success while we are all still alive. Yes, I know we can enjoy each other's company without much money, but it sucks seeing those you love struggling with something and being unable to help them financially.

Whats bothering me lately? Anxiety about my future. Not being where I want to be. Fearful that I might not get to where I want to be. But I take daily steps to ensure I come out alright since hope is not a strategy.

All I can do is be consistent and hopeful.

My life is completely meaningless, I am now 30, I lost my job, nobody is hiring (only ghost jobs), I could be deported at any moment because my visa is linked to my employment, also I am 30 and I have never had a girlfriend or sex, so is it just a slow decline from here until death or what? Also everything fun is illegal, people who make cool software inconvenient to the government (like anonymous social media) seem to always be a hair's breadth away from prison time. Cool stuff is always punished and never rewarded.

Edit: an example of everything worth doing being illegal, from another comment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayTV

Aside from politics, the current state of corporate paralysis is killing me.

I make my living by building solutions. Companies usually are chock full of problems that need solutions. Companies are still full of problems that need solutions but they are completely paralyzed because they think if they wait a quarter or two, a model will come along and solve all their problems.

I will be on the job market soon

I will change decade this year

I still have not found my passion nor encountered the big project if my life. I am interested by too many things and have too little agency or perseverance.

I'm trying to figure out exactly how to best use AI, but not just as a chatbot user.

How to integrate it to solve useful problems. Make delightful products.

So many things that used to be intractable now are probabilistically solvable and that needs some things to be changed fundamentally and a lot of assumptions dropped.

The randomness that AI introduces poses a plethora of challenges.

I think local models will be a big thing eventually, not everything needs a frontier model and a lot of useful work can be done with surprisingly little hardware.

I also want to get back to non-LLM models.

It's shocking to me no one is talking about how Claude Fable is essentially a confirmation of the death of intellectual capital, and that it's happening now. Not 10 years from now, not 5 years from now, but literally right now. We used to romanticize stories of people born into lower socioeconomic conditions (say in the third world) and rising out of it through their intellect. That story, that ladder of social mobility, is completely dead now.

The role AIs may play in censorship in future - simply by 'not knowing' or refusing to speak of something - bothers me a lot. That aligns with your worry.

I used to think their main risk was spam or propaganda. Now I think it's curation of knowledge, history, and thought.

(Beyond the socioeconomic topics already covered):

Why aren’t eink displays more useful? They seem like they should be. More than e-readers or a calendar.

The death of HTTP/1.1.

I posted a link to an article on an HTTP-only website a few days ago, and it was flagged within half an hour because browsers want HTTPS.

I know all about JS injection into unencrypted HTTP trafic, but this is beyond the point.

The point is, I can not just spawn a website and make it available to the world from anywhere having only a network connection.

- General lack of integrity at higher spheres (and where this can lead the world to)

- The current situation where distribution matters way more than product quality

- Lack of clear personal goals

The fact that anything I post online will now get slurped up by a machine and regurgitated for people who have no idea it was my work that made their prompt come to life.

Assuming your two uses of "model" have the same meaning, I'm mad that people are seriously suggesting we scrap representative democracy in favour of government by LLM output.

Brazil's national team performance not only in this World Cup, but the last 20 years. I don't even care about football, but as a kid who saw Brazil win the 2002 World Cup, it's hard to see it do so badly since.

And the future seems gloom overall. Not looking forward to it. I used to.

The state of "Scientific AI". I know LLMs are accelerating at doing computer work, and I've experienced the acceleration of using LLMs to do science, but it's more along the lines of debugging and stitching together pipelines of classical in silico tools. I see a ton of value here along that entire pathway for LLMs, it's basically digital process development: take each step, make it better, repeat, repeat, repeat. But the ceiling are the unit operations themselves, which sure LLMs can improve the code of those tools next. But if science was held back by simply people not doing the same things faster, maybe this will really push us forward, but I have a nagging feeling of "is this it?".

I think what I'm really looking for is a model like GPT Rosalind, which has been steeped in "science" post-training, but with more randomness. Like, I think I'm looking for a GPT Mullis--Rosalind Franklin was careful, deliberate, and serious; Kary Mullis ate a bunch of acid, drove on the PCH, and invented PCR. Like, we need to invent psychedelics for LLMs. Some way to let them relax their weights, explore new pathways, and come up with some absurd ideas by connecting random ass dots from the natural world. I want the model to say, "hmm, that's weird". This isn't just changing the temperature, we're missing something deeper.

I think frontier science has always come from serendipity: a bright thinker, listening to a presentation after having stared at some small experiment, but having trained for years on "biochemistry" so the foundation and loose guardrails are there.

I don't know, I'm feeling adrift. Does this resonate with anyone else?

Got a referral to work as a Solution Architect at a company from the Senior Sales Person who I will literally be paired up with to talk to customers. Outgoing architect also said I would be perfect for the role. Got on a call with their internal recruiter who cut me off partway through most of my answers about my background and then received and automailer rejection.

That someone who would be bearing the impact of a bad hire recommended me and some recruiter who openly admitted she didn't know much about that side of the business made the call to drop me left a pretty bad taste in my mouth about the company

Hello fellow French, I understood a decade ago our country had turned into a gerontocracy, it's just how it is and it's mechanical, nothing you can do. I left the country and never looked back, I go there on vacations to see friends and family, but there are just better options to work and make a life, I suggest you relax and do the same.

The combination of outsourcing to India and AI and how it's destroying western job markets to squeeze out more profits to a few on top.

Profit margin of authentication providers.

They must be ridiculously high

I am worried that we only have censored AI models so far. Where is the model that I can chat about sexual fantasies, life, death, drugs and pistols?

The feeling that it is theoretically impossible to give everyone equal opportunity. The more I study about this topic, the more convinced I am getting about it.

sound. my neighbour has some kind of AC or the like that is constantly humming around 30db in my room. there is no way I can sleep with this, even with earplugs. talked to him but he does not care, so I'm reporting him... and that takes time, with no guarantee that that will fix it.

maybe this sound much smaller than economic policies in France but for me this sucks big time

AI

i live in the US and cant get something sent here to save my life

i used to get weekly packages from indie european stores and samples from asia

since tarrifs, that has dropped to zero, with 90% of my shipments being returned for cryptic reasons (like 'incomplete address' when the full address is correct and visible) or outright 'No' from sellers

its starting to feel less like random failure and more like "system working as designed" :(

Finding a job in tech that would genuinely excite me.

Unemployment and forced downshifting. From 200k programmer to McDonald's worker and call centre worker in just 4 years...

Its brutal. Once you are out at 35+ for an even year or two - it's impossible to go back.

AI takes jobs faster than creating new ones.

ps. Just got laid off from the Temu call(chat) centre. AI IS taking our jobs.

completely devastated

(A)Social Media and the destructive power it has on society.

I'm tired of people not taking responsibility for things they do and not being held accountable for their actions - politicians mostly; for example - currently in Poland there's a controversy around Zondacrypto (read here: https://www.politico.eu/article/a-missing-investor-millions-...); I'm so disillusioned that I believe nothing will come out of it - it will again be a case of "nobody did it, it just a thing that happened". Or our politicians escaping to Hungary (and USA) to avoid prosecution (and still being paid out money even though they're not in Poland and cannot possibly attend parlamentary sessions) where they'll live to spew hatred and how they were wronged. Sure, you did nothing wrong and these are just repressions, nevermind the millions that you stole during political campaign.

And generally people thinking about themselves and not considering that we're living in society: "let me blast music so that walls shake and fuck neighbours", "let me just leave my mattress here on the curb blocking the path, somebody will pick it up", "let me not clean after my dog shitting on the sidewalk", "I'm seeing people queuing to get on a train, let me just not notice the queue", "let me just walk down the street with my eyes on the phone, surely other people will accomodate me and get out of my way". This is the variation of the above, but to the civic level; just don't make lives of others harder.

Overuse of the AI agents as a concept and the mental burnout it creates.

This whole "UFO dump" from the US Government.

This topic deserves some scrutiny and open minds from the general public. Alas, we've been propagandized to the point where we don't think for ourselves. Heh, maybe that second point is really whats bothering me?

Age, death.

The consolidation of wealth and power to an inflection point whereafter it seems the rest of us, the majority of humans, will be left to live in some kind of post-apocalyptic feudalism. The declining standard of living, the authoritarianism, even the naked stupidity are all endurable... but that lack of hope burns like Merbromin.

Talking to toxic people.

Its so exhausting walking on eggshells, and engineering discussions to avoid conflicts.

Performative work. People doing things because other people do or because “that’s the way it’s done”, even when that approach is clearly fucking wrong.

- My country's descent into fascism.

- The rights of my children being legislated away.

- The people that could do something about it have chosen not to.

- Any time I talk about the above, I feel like I'm shouting into the void and no one cares, either in-person or on the internet.

- I still have to go to work tomorrow.

The infinite growth of capitalism is bringing us to the edge of climate collapse, a real existential danger and nobody seems to care

Martin Fowler

Interesting to see the posts almost exclusively macro here. What about the micro. While I benefit from an urban environment in which raising a family is easier I don't even have to get into a car there's still so many daily challenges and unglamorous moments I have so much sympathy for everyone else who's raising kids... it still feels invisible to many.

I have been working for 10 years and unable to afford a home to start a family.

I have about 350k USD and live in New Delhi.

Trump's extreme corruption.

fascism

Elon Musk has directly caused the deaths hundreds of thousands of impoverished people due to his reckless dismantling of USAID (https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-elon-musk-killed-hun...). He's also an open white supremacist most recently responsible for instigating race riots in Belfast (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/06/13/m...). Read his social media feeds: they are literally Stormfront rhetoric at this point. But people don't want to hear these things. They just want to cheer for the trillionaire rocketman. It's sick and infuriating.

[flagged]