rglover

This is mostly a complaint about bad copy/explainers in Google's UI. Passkeys, properly implemented, can be perfectly consumer friendly (e.g., Apple Touch ID is delightful).

That's how I fed myself for the last 15 years (freelance, products/services, and the occasional contract). For the better part of that I was completely alone so I filled the time by working a lot. There's also the whole never ending anxiety produced by online hustle culture that makes you think you're falling behind (far worse to deal with when you're indie/solo and not working a job).

I could have, but my lifestyle at the time didn't demand it and I could get away with working long hours, most days of the week. Now I'm married and yeah, AI has basically kept me at my original pace (hand coding) while taking time off. I can't quantify the delta there but my body sure as hell feels the difference.

Just the building process. I maintain my own full-stack JS framework and build apps on top of it. LLMs have significantly sped up my ability to take an idea and ship it (I do turn-based work via Cline + Claude).

Case in point: I was able to ship this [1] in one month flat at a quality level that doesn't make me squirm to release. That same product would have easily been 60-90 days (if not longer) purely by hand for me in the past.

[1] https://fortivibe.com

Technology was supposed to make room for life but instead for more and more people life is slowly being rearranged around AI.

It's been downright spooky to watch people I know personally or been familiar with totally fall down the rabbit hole.

That said, like with everything, it depends on the person. Some people are taking the Jack Nicholson route, others are finally taking time off and enjoying their life (I'm taking off nights and weekends for the first time in a decade, solely because of the speed up of LLMs).

My wife and I routinely re-enact this in the kitchen when we've both hit our "holy shit what the fuck" maximum.

This is about porn's cousin, money.

Convenience. Most companies aren't software companies and know this intimately. Even if they can build a prototype using LLMs, they now have to at a bare minimum hire someone who can maintain it (additional cost). Not to mention compliance with regulations. Far easier (and cheaper) to just pay someone else to make all of that their problem and extract the value from the product (even if it's not a perfect fit for their business).

I used to "get high" as a kid on the spiral illusion thing he built :)

the paradox is that once you're advanced enough to know what security concerns are worth your time, you probably have already internalized this.

Absolutely. I wrote this because I realized the antirez tweet could easily be misread/misinterpreted by newer developers or vibe coders as an established pro giving them license to just not care at all.

Does every circle in the world look like an asshole?

One man's trash...

It is, in some ways, but no matter your opinion, AI in engineering will continue unabated.

Wrote about this recently (from a vibe coding perspective) [1]. This applies to corporations, too, as they're betting their futures on fewer engineers, more AI.

[1] https://graybearding.bearblog.dev/they-got-something-on-the-...

Where the heck are the reasonable people who use AI for what it is: a tool that can be extremely helpful at times and extremely sucky at other times but that is still, on average, a time saver?

They're unlikely to be vocal because they've already evaluated and decided the role AI will play in their work/life and just moved on/kept working. That's also likely to be a small pool of people relative to the number of people interacting with AI (either by force or choice).

Consolidation (move toward making Stripe the only game in town).

Because it's a dead end now. It used to be tons of fun, people were generally happy/positive, and you met a ton of cool people from all over the world.

Now, it's just a weird performative stage. Even worse, the people who are awarded with attention often prove themselves to be utterly clueless and nothing more than a modern day cabaret performer.

When you see it all lined up, it's pretty clear. It does make sense though. Computers were first viewed as utilities, but now they're more entertainment machines. Makes sense that the UI would degrade away from utility towards pure style.

May be true because humans, especially in the West, are big on performative humanitarianism but not actually considering the well-being of others (or changing their behavior solely for the benefit of others).

May not be true because it's a blind spot to assume that purely by being a player in the AI game (with no real attention paid to quality of result), you have increased odds of winning the game. That's true in the abstract, but practically, it requires a competent player to become true in reality.

Really well done. Love how much care went into this.

This is heartbreaking to see (from the doc about this guy, he seemed to genuinely believe this was a good idea). A good warning about the limits of control humans have over things (and why brute-forcing it can often lead to bad outcomes).

Have you ever smoked/ingested cannabis before?

"That’s my only real motivation: not to be hassled. That, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."

Drink Coke

Tooling instability creates the demand for more tooling.

The churn is the product.

Location: USA

Remote: Only

Willing to relocate: No

Résumé/CV: https://ryanglover.net/resume

Email: me@ryanglover.net

I design (UI/UX) and build software that works. I don't waste time and I don't waste money.

That's why I made the point about consistency mattering more than taste/style here. My personal preference is toward snake_case, but if your own preference is kebab-case, as long as you're consistent, great.

So I’ve drawn a line. I only discuss pros and cons with smart people; I don’t argue right and wrong with ego-driven ones. With the first kind, a disagreement is a joint search for the better answer, and both of us walk away sharper. With the second, there is no answer being sought, only a self to be defended. Knowing which conversation you’re in is half the battle. The other half is having the discipline to walk away from the second one.

This is something I've learned over the last year and it's made life a lot better.

Once you detect that you're having a battle of egos (not minds/ideas), cut and run is the next best step. I've internalized a little mantra I start saying to myself as soon as I catch it: "they want the fight, you don't." Repeating that internally made it very easy to move away from arguing with others all of the time and knowing when to move away from people who just want to fight to fight.

"Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it."

People tend to get excited when they can't eat and despite its timidity America is exceptionally well-armed. That sounds cute in a post drone strike world, but if the government attacks its own citizens like that, they'll have a hell of a time defending that position to the rest of the world. Humanity is usually slow on the uptake but eventually settles on "how about you just go fuck yourself" even if the party takes a sec to get going.

Who knows. I think it's better to err on the side of optimism despite the grim outlook.

It transitions back to a more feudalist state. The series finale to "you will own nothing and be happy."

That is, if they're successful.

I honestly forgot icons used to be a lot of different shapes. Used Panic Coda way back in the day and that leaf icon from this post is unmistakable.