jongjong

They could drag it out by telling stories of situations they faced but information density would be low and repetitive. As someone who cleaned boats professionally for a year in my early days, I'm pretty sure I could convey all I know about cleaning in under an hour. That's very different from one year of back-to-back lectures.

Cleaning boats, the learning tapered off after a few weeks. With software, I'm 15 years in and it barely tapered at all and it's much more intense. I've been pulling nights and weekends too.

With software knowledge, it would be high information density with little to no repetition. Every piece would provide useful concrete knowledge which would serve to increase technical capabilities and/or security.

> Cache, stack, heap, process, thread, socket, file, tcp, http, tls, websocks, socks, soc2???, deadlock, stack, queue, race, atomic, event loop, coroutine, async, database, transaction, index, replication, sharding, consistency, serialization, DNS, load balancer, container, namespace, and so on.

... communication protocol, method signatures, web components, ssh, CSS media queries, HTTP headers, WebSockets, timeouts, ETag, iterables, async iterables, middleware, CI/CD, build, consistent hashing, signatures, JWT, SSO, OAuth, SAML, XML, YAML, JSON, block cipher, ETL pipeline, SQL, SQL transactions (atomic), relational databases, foreign keys, schema normalization, referential integrity, 1-to-1, 1-to-n, n-to-n, document databases, compound indexes, idempotency, offset-based pagination, cursor-based pagination, P2P, Kademlia, structured vs unstructured network topology, message routing, frontend router, message storm, reconnect storm, locality, encapsulation, cohesion, coupling, design patterns, modularity, Big O notation, raytracing, shaders, VPN, VPC, data schema, schema validation, CORS, preflight-requests, CSRF, ASCII, UFT8, CSP, CPU context-switching, BIOS, bootloader, interrupt controller, ports, BIND protocol, BGP protocol, assembly language, big endian, little endian, register, signals, embarrassingly parallel, serial processing, event loop, binary trees, tree rebalancing, graph traversal algorithms, sorting algorithms, string character escaping and encoding, blob, base64, UUID, timestamp, CLI, Bash, unit tests, integration tests, e2e tests, TDD, stateful, stateless, proxy, nginx, haproxy, config, helm file, k8s, staging, git, push, commit, merge, rebase, cherry-pick, pub/sub, diff, honeypot, buffer overflow, pointer, file descriptor, authentication, certificates, TLS certificates, DNS Zone files, A record, CNAME, TXT record, SMTP, POP3, SOCKS5, Sha256, HMAC, Merkle trees, Merkle Signature Trees, Lamport OTS, Winternitz OTS, SPHINCS, lattice-based cryptography, pg-vector, vector embeddings, API, rate limiting, cookies, sameSite, httpOnly, localStorage, XSS attack, SQL injection, fetch API, module preloading, bundling...

Barely scratching the surface. I think I could probably keep typing all the technical terms I know for at least 24 hours straight. For most of the topics above, I could probably give a 1 or 2 hour lecture on each one from memory. Some I could give a day-long lecture each.

To explain all the terms I know to a basic degree, I would probably need to give a whole year of lectures back-to-back from 9am to 5pm. And I'm just a rank-and-file senior engineer with 15 years of experience.

It's also why the vast majority of software systems are insecure. The average senior software engineer doesn't know everything that they need to know to build secure software. Last time I poked around Coinbase APIs on HackerOne, I found a DoS vulnerability in less than 30 minutes. That's Coinbase, not some startup built by a bunch of recent graduates.

AI cannot avoid vulnerabilities either since it is trained on average engineer code. There's not enough high quality code available on the entire internet to train AI to implement secure code IMO. As impressive as Mythos may be, it's not enough. I don't even think formal verification would provide protection since sometimes issues with the spec itself can provide an opening for a vulnerability.

I don't know about other people but certainly not for me. I was actually earning crypto passive income for 3 years not working and I was very happy. Now that income is gone, through no fault of my own (literally this was the best case scenario how it could have played out), and I now have to work for money again and I'm very unhappy.

I'm even more unhappy now because my life expectations are higher and I can't get to that level again until I'm 65...

Hearing people tell me this nonsense about money and happiness makes me even more miserable because my conclusion is "They don't appreciate money, yet they are given money... I very much appreciate money, yet I'm not given money..."

From my perspective, it seems almost like the system is only giving money to people who are incapable of appreciating it... Meanwhile I know from past evidence how I felt when I had money + time and that feeling was happiness. I knew it then, I know it now.

Money definitely buys happiness for me. But I resent the amount of competition and how much bs I have to put up with to get it. It's definitely eroding the happiness. Especially when you engage in all the bs for years and still don't get much more money.

For most people, freedom is the only missing piece holding them back from being happy so that distinction melts away for them.

Unfortunately, AI doesn't just automate what we don't want to do. It also automates many of the things which we very much want to do and sometimes pride ourselves on...

And TBH it seems to be automating more of the things we want to do than those we don't... Hence the reason why AI is seen more as additional competition than as additional help.

LLMs are not SaaS. Some LLM are delivered as SaaS. Anyone who has a machine big enough to run a frontier model can launch their own LLM SaaS tomorrow and it would be functionality indistinguishable from any other which is running a similar model...

Also, big companies can choose to run their own models on their own hardware and get better security and privacy as the data doesn't need to leave their own premises.

I want to see it that way too but it seems they've been winning for a very long time with this approach. So is it short-sighted?

The way I see it there is a deep systemic issue beneath this which makes this profitable. That's the flaw which has to be solved.

Private entities should not be able to profit from taxpayer money on such vast scales. Military contacts are massive, foreign aid is massive. It takes from a large number of public hands and gives to a small number of private hands. Diffuse harms, concentrated gains.

I hope you're right though and those issues will be fixed.

The goal is to sell weapons during the war; then afterwards, sell loans to rebuild what the weapons have destroyed... And sometimes it's also to control access to natural resources or trading routes. They don't care who it is who facilitates them on the other side of the ocean; be it a dictator or an 'elected' official.

The lobbyists running the show in the background make money from both the destruction as well as the reconstruction. What is stupid about that?

The politicians later get appointed to lucrative executive roles at the companies which they helped enrich on taxpayer dollars (from both countries). Not stupid either. It's smart retirement planning.

The government is a lot of things but absolutely not stupid; fooling people into thinking it is incompetence is likely part of the ruse... It's a lot easier for people to sit back quietly and watch incompetence unfold, then it is to sit back and watch evil unfold. "It's incompetence" is also a nice easy answer which prevents people from having to look deeper as I have done here.

Julian Assange said about the war in Afghanistan: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war."

If you look at any war, you will realize that the same principles are at play. Our current global monetary order has a built-in mechanism for monetizing destruction, unfortunately. It's architected that way, intentionally or not.

I've dedicated much of my life so far to try to convey this simple message.

Not to mention that they're now competing with fake AI slop videos. People don't have so much interest to record their sporting achievements anymore since the video no longer serves as social proof.

That loss is real and it's worth naming

Yep classic Claude-ism.

The fact that this article was likely AI generated is the real load-bearing factor in this discussion. Or, as previous versions of Claude would say; it cuts through the heart of the issue.

The creative part was only the subject matter. The idea of making a video around "the 3 gifts" is itself kind of creative but fine-grained creativity has been lost.

It reminds me of the meme which shows a before and after of different company logos from like 15 years ago vs now... And now all the company logos look essentially the same; very similar fonts and colors.

People are afraid of creative designs because they are terrified of being judged. People don't want to step out of line.

It's like in a company environment; there are often many unspoken rules and taboos; if someone breaks them, they fall from grace rapidly.

These rules and taboos exist to preserve the structural integrity of the organization. A fragile organization needs lots of rules and taboos to be in place in order to remain cohesive. The people who lead these organizations create the rules and taboos which will allow them to stay in charge. People who don't adhere to the unspoken rules are quickly removed, often with the implicit consent of all group members who are themselves captive to the same rules and taboos and who eventually learn to pride themselves on compliance.

Fully agree. Anyone can get the signals wrong. I guess you should watch how other employees (who have been around for longer) interact with the boss. If everyone is always praising the boss and never criticizing, there's a reason it's like this.

I'm kind of glad now that I had some really bad experiences in my career and experienced negative-trust environments.

When I told my parents some of what happened to me in my career, initially, I don't think they fully believed me because people in my stories behaved so differently than they're used to. My parents lived in an environment where they could expect reciprocity and money wasn't so difficult to come by that it would be worth risking prison time.

I kind of believe that a lot of people are essentially forced into fraud. I don't believe that they are necessarily bad people. A lot of people are just trying to get by.

So it's very important to convey to family members what kind of world we live in. I think most of my family members are essentially conspiracy theorists now.

100%, don't argue with your boss. Sometimes, depending on how they phrased a statement or proposal, you can present contradictory facts but never claim to have the answer.

Either the boss wants to hear your opinion or they don't. You need to look at body language, tone and wording to decide. In any case, they must decide.

Disagreeing in front of other employees is especially risky... It can work in your favor sometimes, but only if it serves the boss... For example, you might be providing the boss with an opportunity to demonstrate humility over a topic which they don't pride themselves on. If the boss switches and agrees with you, can improve your image in front of other employees and the boss gets to look like they are a good listener and rational decision maker. Everyone wins.

It also rests heavily on the boss' personality. Some people always have to be right, else they hate you.

Funny.

Older Claude models used to frequently say "I think you've identified something real here" and "This cuts through the heart of..."

Newer models are more negative and say stuff like "where I'm going to push back..." and "however, the real load-bearing..." and "Your point about ... is doing a lot of work here, however..."

> What will be left for us to work on?

Ourselves.

For me, success always matters because achieving success is what I love doing most.

Unfortunately, it's been over 10 years since I last experienced success... And that was minor success. Most people wouldn't even consider it success. I feel like I've had essentially zero control over my career since then.

I agree, a free market would work that way... Yet 'fail upwards' and zombie companies seem to be the default. Personally I don't believe that what we have in the west is a free market. I think these days, it's probably less free than the one in China. The market here is completely smothered by regulations.

For example, about a month ago, I saw a video about people farming frogs in China... To collect secretions for medical use. At first I thought WTF. But then they mentioned how much it sells for and I thought "Wow. We have a lot of cane toads here everywhere, it would be a great business to do here." I actually started thinking of doing this... This is really out there for me because I'm a software engineer; but I started seriously considering this. But guess what? I did my research and turns out it's illegal to do it in my country (Australia) because the frog secretions would be considered an illicit substance and you need to go through some expensive process to obtain a license. Yes, you need a license to farm frogs...

A few weeks back, I read news about someone who got arrested for farming cockroaches (as reptile food for zoos)... It's like all the entry-point business opportunities have become illegal.

Every time I heard of a case like this where some really good niche business opportunity is illegal in Australia, I asked my AI if this practice is legal in China and the answer is almost always yes.

The other day, I was watching a documentary about Philippines and I saw a kind of makeshift resort built literally on top of a coral reef. Really amazing looking. They seemed to be getting good reviews and actually making money... This would NEVER be allowed in my country. At best, you could purchase a ship for millions of dollars then apply for expensive licenses, then you'd have limits on how many people you can take at a time, etc... So many constraints and regulations. Such artificially high capital requirements. It would be a worse experience and less profitable; and you'd have to be filthy rich just to get a chance to engage in that highly constrained, mediocre business activity.

In most of the west, technically talented people are fully subjugated to suits so I'm not surprised.

Sometimes, there are brief moments when technical people are given the control they need to deliver... But after a few years, they are again subjugated to MBAs in suits again and the capacity is lost.

I see this constantly nowadays. As a technical person, there are many companies/roles where the constraints set you up for failure from the beginning. I've delivered some very complex projects but I've also worked at jobs on far simpler projects where I knew since day 1 that the project wouldn't pan out due to counter-productive technical constraints being imposed... but you know the company is well positioned in the financial system and that the outcome won't matter; so you take the job anyway. You still get the high pay and the prestige from the brand name. There are many companies like this where people seem to keep failing upwards and stock price always goes up.

Why do you assume I have access to such opportunities? This whole argument rests on the idea that everyone has equal access to opportunities. Which is incorrect.

Firstly, it's trivial to prove that the hiring process is broken and discriminatory. Secondly, history is not an indication of future performance. Just because it's been working out for big tech over the past few decades, doesn't mean this will continue. Especially when you look at the socio-political environment today, the risk profile is incredibly high... For a vanishing return.

For me to become a millionaire through big tech, starting from today, the previous batch of tech bros would have to be pushed into the billionaire bracket... That's how much the stock would have to go up from where it is now to make me a millionaire. There would be hundreds of thousands of big-tech ex-employee billionaires? Made billionaire purely because they were lucky enough to be offered an opportunity at the right company at the right time. That's just not fair, nor realistic.

So getting access to an opportunity to take a tech test from a big tech company is just the first hurdle. And the tech test isn't even a good measure of skill!

Should a rank-and-file mediocre developer who joined Microsoft 10 years ago who has since been fired due to poor performance become a billionaire passive Microsoft shareholder?

The amount of corruption which would have to take place to make this happen is unfathomable. They'd need to release all the criminals from US prisons and hire them to work as gate keepers for big tech.

This is beyond retarded. It's not a loophole, it's too f stupid to count as a loophole. This interpretation is a violation of the law. They should jail every EU parliamentarian who claims that this is a valid interpretation.

Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

It completely perverts the entire system. With this approach, any law can be passed by a minority; just phrase as a negative.

I propose a new law: "The EU is hereby not not not abolished" ohh look, it failed to gain majority vote! EU is over! Everyone go home! Look at how clever I am finding loopholes!

Maybe. Probably. It's hard for me to perceive sarcasm these days. I'm becoming just like the neoliberals I used to criticize who gets triggered at the slightest thing haha.

That said, I do think a lot of cynical engineers have a "Rat race" worldview and not the "Hamster wheel" one.

From my perspective, it's like if someone made a joke about genocide. My sarcasm detector switches off. This topic and this game is traumatic to me.

Also, the amount of money which is needed to retire in the game is huge! $1.7 million! I'm not even expecting to reach that at retirement. The fact that someone believes they can get this in a few years of grinding reveals a very cushy worldview...

What I would do for that kind of money...

I've been grinding like insane, nights and weekends for almost 15 years and my net worth is like $200k, 30% of it illiquid in a retirement fund. I never got a bonus, in spite of being called "the best engineer at the company" to my face by the company founder. After asking for a raise, they offered a 2% salary increase... This was a cryptocurrency company with a lot of money to spare.

On the end screen, it shows "Shareholder value created" with some huge number.

I find this unsettling because it hints that the people who built this game are more naive than I am. And this is a game about a cynical topic.

It reminds me of the narrative "No matter how bad you think it is, reality is worse."

The idea that the engineer is creating "shareholder value" is part of the conditioning. They're creating complexity and literally running a hamster wheel. Even more so than the game suggests. Lighting fires and putting them out. They are lucky to have this job where you can get away with this kind of pure performative engineering. Seriously, Netflix looks exactly the same as it did years ago. Same with Facebook. The fact that they have so many users and make so much money has nothing to do with engineering and everything to do with attention monopolization and incentive structures among investors to circulate money between companies that they have a stake in.

Working for a bootstrapped startup; that's real value creation because there is enormous risk involved and no engineer wants to take that risk.

Of course the value creation goes away as soon as the startup raises funding because then they become part of the club and the risk is taken out.

Working for FAANG is more like being appointed to the king's court. The king's fool is not creating any economic value for the average working citizen... And the line for that job is long. Being chosen is not based on skill or talent. Talent is abundant. It's a kind of lottery.

In 5 years, every car will need to include a pack of adult diapers.

Absence of problems is definitely a major factor but I like to think of 'maintainability' as being the main marker of quality. Maintainable code has fewer problems because it makes problems easier to solve.

My car would start beeping randomly and one day it wouldn't stop beeping. Turns out it was because we have a baby seat in the back on a window seat but it would slightly touch the edge of the middle seat. The solution was to clip in the seatbelt on the middle seat even through there was nobody sitting there.

It's a matter of time before someone invents sunglasses with eyes painted on the lenses.

The term is not very useful since most humans are stochastic parrots... At least most of the time.

Not suggesting that I don't say stuff on autopilot sometimes but for many people, it's their only mode of operation. They never actually think about anything from first principles. Their whole approach to language is just chaining catchphrases together. It's how a toddler thinks; it seems like many people never moved past that stage of development.

As a developer, when some company says that some platform is end-to-end encrypted, you know that it means "the default client provides encryption, by default" but you know very well that they could selectively turn it off for anyone, at any time and it may be impossible to know that they did this this unless the target was tech savvy and actively monitoring their network packets during the brief period that encryption was turned off... Especially on the web, they could just serve a different JavaScript library with a backdoor to a specific IP address only and the target would have no idea.

Articles like this remind me that non-devs think "end-to-end encrypted" means it's always the case and they can't turn it off at will. This is not the case.