rafterydj

Academically, is it a bad thing companies are selling phones preinstalled with grapheneos?

I mean in the long run, it should be a good thing to separate out the hardware phone market from the OS it comes with IMO. And for large scale adoption, it's extremely useful to have the most non-technical people using your OS, because they will complain and bugs will get reported (maybe not through the preferred channels, though).

No notes on the markup though. Infuriating there's no negotiating ability to say "you can't sell this OS on a cheap phone for 600% margins".

Most of the people I've encountered that use Java are working on enterprise codebases that are a couple decades old at this point. And I'm totally unfamiliar, but I thought Kotlin was vaguely "Java for Android" - other than existing packages, are there other reasons to choose languages focused on the JVM?

Interesting! I am curious to ask someone who has been working on no-code tools for so long: I've been reading about no code platforms from the 1990s, and how all of those ended up failing. The reason I've seen cited most is that the tools/platforms did not allow for enough variability to do the jobs that people wanted (without becoming a full programming language themselves). What do you think about that in the context of the past ten years, pre- and post-LLMs?

And what do you think about coding agents in the next few years? Will we see a variation in agent capabilities? E.g. a company makes and distributes a specialized coding agent for CSS, or even serving up a kind of library that's language-agnostic, since they seem to be best at translation rather than creation?

I read that as him beginning the healing stages. Acknowledging his flaws as soon as he could even if he couldn't change what he already said - because that post did blow up, if he had taken the whole thing down it may have just exacerbated things.

I don't understand this, if I'm honest. WebAssembly is the compilation target. It's a Scheme compiler for wasm, right? Why is it pretending to be a way to rewrite websites? Wouldn't that be a job for literally any possible language compiled to WebAssembly?

I read the "Why Scheme?" page and it looked entirely AI generated, inasmuch as the reasoning presented confused me, because it didn't make sense. It references homoiconicity as pretty much the only reason to do this, mentions Lisp once or twice, and then just sort of talks about AI not understanding HTML because it doesn't understand compiling.

But putting it under the prompt of "must pass compiler" makes an AI exactly as capable at the task of making websites as it is capable at the task of making correct programs in any language - which is to say that it can't be guaranteed. Which in turn puts into the question the whole purpose of this project, and particularly, why Scheme chosen at all? Why not Lisp? Why not C? Or Erlang? Or Clojure?

This is frankly one of my worst fears.

Maybe it's because I haven't had my coffee yet, but I cannot understand what you are saying.

What do you mean by "be epistemically sound enough"?

You are using it as if to say "if your code is grounded in sound abstractions, you'll be fine and tests will therefore generate successfully" but preface that claim with "the code provides a baseline truth for the tests". The latter does not follow from the former, and it also does not lift the burden of responsibility away from the programmer - which is where my doubts on test generation stem from in the first place.

Additionally, what is "completely solipsistic value generation"?

You reference it like a perk in a skill tree, but to my ears "generating completely solipsistic values" seems like a way of describing AGI with a philosophical wording instead of just saying AGI.

I see this get mentioned a lot but I still am skeptical that AI can generate tests we can trust more than any other code we know we cannot trust.

Yes tests are conceptually isolated and that helps, but I've personally seen unit tests get generated that are semantically incorrect - that is, they test the structure of the code (e.g. they can check function output types and values), but they can't know _why_ the unit tests need to be there, so the really really helpful tests never get generated. Not to mention the obvious issues with generated tests only testing is x = x, or needless redundant tests for the same thing, or them essentially testing basic features of the language.

is the author of this post in thread? i do not like the AI voice it reads like.

If you know it, and I know it, and everybody knows it, why the hell are we paying huge amounts to mince words over the proof?

If your business plan is selling software to people, 98% is not plenty at all.

If your web app crashes one out of every fifty times I launch it, it's not good. The business side of things is reasonable to prioritize right up until it isn't.

Yeah that raised my eyebrow as well. "Popularized" maybe, but "largely built" I think is a mis-characterization.

Not technology - that's only downstream of politics.

No political administration in my lifetime (!) has made policy decisions against the interests of tech monopolists. The closest we got was Lina Kahn's FTC.

I feel like I'm going nuts.

There are other commenters saying this is a good practice they've also done for other injuries. You are saying you are an actual radiologist and immediately clock the problems with its advice.

I have seen this pattern over and over again. Anytime someone is an actual expert at anything, AI output appears insufficient or incomplete or outright misleading. It is only when you do not know what the AI is being asked to do is it likely you will find the output helpful.

This is itself alarming to me, but no one else seems to find this to be quite damning for the AI services being offered, preferring instanced to be wowed by the convenience and speed at which they can be delivered unreviewed and unproven information.

I don't think it is, to be honest.

Politics - particularly politics relevant to large democracies - appears to be a function of visible truth, and not truth itself. See all the articles about "X slams Y" or the endless "we're launching an investigation into [thing we cannot prove]".

Anecdotally, from one attempt at chatting with it, Grok is far and away the most obviously dishonest and shifts conversations towards right leaning talking points.

Maximally truth seeking indeed.

Oh dear. I've been using Omarchy! Had no idea. Thanks for the info.

Was already kind of annoyed at the "manual" not being very comprehensive - think I'll switch to another distro or fully yank control away from Omarchy and just roll my own Arch, I guess. Depends on how much work it'll take.

Disagree. There's a power imbalance between how easy it is to write something by hand and slap a human label next to AI output. "Let the reader decide" is not fair in a world where the reader then sees >90% AI writing in internet search results.

Personally I think it should be optional, but meaningfully optional in a way that's technically sound and easier than it is now. I kind of feel like long term I'd want "professional/public" code I'd put my name on, and separate code I'd work on under a pseudonym/handle.

Yes but Qt comes with the drawbacks of being tied to Qt.

With Electron + React, you'd be able to rip out any components you need and place them in other web apps. The browser is (psychologically) avoiding vendor dependencies to a greater degree than other options.

Man, I've really been falling into his stuff. So refreshing to hear someone speak from a perspective of care. It's good for my soul in this world of slop.

Not a product manager but I habitually try to play devil's advocate as one. I think it's popularity, full stop. You _could_ vibe code a native app no problem - but then you're targeting one set of hardware. If you're already just vibing it, why not make something that will work cross-platform while you're at it? And if an LLM is prompted with that, they'll usually go with the popular choice: web app on Electron.

I don't think we can stop publishers from rent-seeking behavior, I am only trying to get at the idea that we should clearly communicate to a user when something is truly bought and owned vs rented. If that information is clearly and loudly proclaimed to the customer at purchase time, I have to assume consumer behavior would steer the industry in a more positive direction.

I do as well, but I think it's good practice to put something like in a user preference setting somewhere if you are going to stray from default browser/system behavior.

You're calling for legislating software architecture for a subset of software that is different to how it works everywhere else in the tech industry.

I am not even sure that's true, even in the limited scope of "we've already built this jumble of micro services that our thin client requires to do anything and a rewrite is impossible".

I think the real goal of this would simply be clearer communication with consumers. Therefore if you are selling an inherently temporary access pass to your server, say so. Don't call it the same thing as someone else who is selling a standalone or self-hostable software binary.

I don't see it regulating software architecture so much as it is the beginnings of trying to make legal categories of software, which I'm not opposed to doing.

The classic SKG example is The Crew. Where is the indie recreation of the Continental USA to drive around? Indie games are great, but let's not act like art is fungible.

I don't like the idea of "they will just find loopholes anyway", that seems defeatist. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas."

I wish people started thinking of good regulation as a technical problem as much as it is a social one.

Agreed that thinking about the natural progression of today's circumstances are painful to think about, and about the death of intellectualism.

However, I'd like to play devil's advocate here, and speak to your "without ever stating a position" line. I'd argue that's just careful wording hiding under the mask of intellectualism.

The argument against Israel is, as you say, that it is "essentially" genocide. Speaking as one of the cohort (although slightly older than new grad) of which you're referring, every argument against Israel is to my view quite straightforward. Killing innocent people is bad, doing so for political reasons is worse, and when you do it to an entire city/nation/people you have genocide ipso facto. While it's not a very complex take, it really doesn't need to be when there is a preponderance of evidence.

Contrasted with the defense of Israel's actions, and you have a vast array of whataboutisms, downplaying, justifying by means of referring to authority (in Israel), calling critics anti-Semitic, etc.

In my personal experience I find the majority of pro-Israel arguments to be at heart anti-intellectual.

So when you dress up a complex situation by emphasizing how above and beyond all understanding it is, to me that feels you are intentionally muddying the waters to try to obfuscate the real problem. And that, I would say, is also anti-intellectual.

Just because we have generational problems with anti-intellectualism does not mean this particular circumstance belongs in that category.

You're phrasing of "could have been a good payday" makes me think about why people pay for software at all. The bread and butter "quick job, get paid" gigs in software were always circumstantial and depended on humans understanding customer needs more than anything, and combining it with their own desires to grow in mastery of their work.

I'm reminded of the 'faster horses' remark from Ford - since AI by design produces what it thinks we are asking for, how will anyone know who to pay for true innovation?

I agree with you. I think that if we're talking about actual reliable problem solving, we have to be discussing robotic / drone systems. Software is as complex as you want to make it, and always has been.

If you are trying to say that it's not just Meta but all tech giants, you have an oddly defensive way to make that point.

Just because the entire industry was doing bad things does not absolve the largest members of the industry from doing bad things. They were leading the charge!

Facebook is forcing people to use Facebook. If there were realistic alternative social network systems that allowed account migration with contacts and messages, Facebook would be dead in the water.

You can't seriously argue that everyone can just drop a mainstream communication tool without acknowledging the lack of replacements.