Just reviewing the code

I was warming up to this. It certainly is better than vibe coding, but I’ve started to see libraries [with this ai policy] push out bigger releases faster with bad ergonomics and unnecessary, undocumented breaking changes, because the ai quietly migrated the internal tests/examples.

Clearly, they’re reviewing large amounts with an eye on new features and they’re not thinking through ergonomics: spending time with it, writing it themselves, and seeing where the sticking points are.

Maybe if you’re using ai for the migration, then-- problem avoided, for now. As time goes on I could see it compounding and becoming a tangled mess that’s not only inaccessible to humans, but requires more and more compute to navigate than thoughtful, handcrafted code.

Dang. Their online filter bubble must be strong. Likely the kind of person who also doesn’t care about surveillance capitalism because “it’ll recommend good things to buy.”

You’d be surprised. Data centers seem like a big issue. My boomer parents hate data centers, as do a lot of rural voters who have them nearby or proposals nearby. But to your point, I also see a lot of people who are aware of problems around ai/data centers/billionaires still using ai.

Reminds me of a quote I just read:

The system is responsible in proportion to the degree that the people who make the decisions bear the consequences.

- Charlie Munger summarizing Charlie Frankel summarizing the 2008 financial crisis.

Could be an issue if sleep masks became useless due to glowing eyelids.

I disagree. Anyone working in a skilled profession can attest to the number of people who come to them saying that they have this “great idea” for you to work on, for free. It’s never a great idea. Skilled professional have their own great ideas, and that’s often the motivator for acquiring new skills to make those ideas possible.

Lowering the bar between idea and implementation, in a capitalist, surveillance/attention-based, target-marketed world further incentivizes low-effort, high-engagement practices and likely shrinks the space for high-effort markets.

Meanwhile the tools “lowering the bar” are rent-only or need hardware that is quickly becoming unaffordable. Silicon Valley’s only play is enshittification. If it actually is successful it’s only a matter of time before they switch from growth mode to profit mode and it’s google search all over again but this time you’re paying a monthly fee. If you want to have an idea of how that works out ask an adobe user-- and those were products that were already profitable. There is no way people are willing to pay the actual cost of ai, it will need to be extracted. The rest is externalities.

Generally agree, especially non-spying, but the context here is generative ai. So if I misunderstood the message, I’d be curious to know how.

Seems to imply people don’t use Ai to shortcut their thinking and people don’t think when they work.

RE “If you’re not paying, you’re the product,” also doesn’t always apply when it comes to not paying EG: Linux and other FOSS products.

Not that I know of, unless self-hosting. I’ve gone back to ripping CDs and sometimes buying DRM-free HQ audio. Probably getting my purchases profiled, but at least I can download it and no one else has to know when, what, & how much I’m listening to.

For easier access I have a Jellyfin server on my home network. I plan to switch to navidrome or similar for a better, dedicated music experience as well as setting up secure access over the internet for me and my friends and family.

For those not in NJ trying to avoid this, pay in cash and punch in a random phone number at the register.

You may need to try a few numbers at self-checkout to find a working one, but it’s surprisingly easy. Rotate the numbers to dirty up the data of these parasites.

Can’t help but imagine this would result in having to “read” and sign a 70 page ToS and 30 page Privacy Policy before we can buy groceries.

Beyond the obvious problem of paying but not owning, it’s impossible to watch/listen without that data being stored on a massive corporation’s server and likely sold to hundreds of advertisers. Last I saw Spotify had over 300 venders they share data with. I’ve seen sites with over 1000.

So you’re not only paying for something you don’t own, but you’re also paying to have a larger profile in the surveillance capitalism machine.

I didn’t read the article, so I’m not sure how hung up they are on physical media, but the title is about owning vs renting/subscriptions. There are still places were digital copies can be purchased and downloaded to own, DRM-free. Personally, I prefer to store bits on HDDs and SSDs rather than CDs. Of course, that option is limited. Digital music can still be owned (eg bandcamp,Q-something,etc), same for audiobooks (shout out libro.fm), ebooks less so, but still possible and workarounds exist (deDRM).

Movies and TV are where it really runs dry. There’s a few indie creators you can buy from directly, but for everything else, if you don’t want to have a bunch of dvd/blu-ray cases taking up space your only non-rent/subscription options are borrowing from the library (my jam, but a limited collection), or pirating.

This is “Lines of code = productivity” levels of stupid and lazy. I want to work with people who are well rested, not ones who run themselves ragged and are always on the verge of burnout.

Maybe Meta has to payout unused vacation time and laying off someone who used vacation time is cheaper than someone who has a lot of vacation time? Still be dumb but not surprising if the only measurement they’re going off of is $.

If you’re interested, the linux unplugged podcast had a recent episode on their experiences. I’ve never loved the tone of “hey, look, this is inevitable” when it comes to ai, but I can see its utility when well-scoped with conservative permissions and oversight vs letting it loose or vibe coding. Now if only hardware wasn’t artificially inflated I might think it was worth dabbling locally.

Haven’t read the article and have a limited knowledge of ai, but I wonder if they do this for reinforcement learning: So OSS PR responses can be used to label different weights and models. Using even more free labor to train their models.

Wouldn’t a byte be $2 if a bit was a quarter, or do you mean 2 bits are a quarter? Also i think you were right to use powers of 10 in your estimate. Article says kilobyte, not kibibyte. I really like what your conversion illustrates, I’m just tripping up on the details. I could be wrong-- commenting so someone can correct me if i am-- if a bit is a quarter, 69 Kilobytes would be $138,000

I can’t believe now we (Americans) have to pay for it with our tax dollars.

Windows Recall has re-entered the chat.