I have no idea, but this type of scenario is just one of many, many reasons giving an LLM free access to a browser on the open internet sounds like a terrible idea.
What I meant was how LangChain dominated the llm frameworks scene because it loaded VC money. It was just at the beginning - now it has normalised - but I believe it did a lot of damage at that early stage by sucking all oxygen.
CEO observes performative work, and his inference will be that means more people need to be fired. Let only the AI native, customer obsessed 10x engineers(/ AI swarm managers) remain.
What would that look like? In my experience, real production codebases tend to have lots of bugs. Most of them never get prioritized, because features matter more than fixing obscure bugs.
Indeed - one of my biggest pet peeves is when organizations chronically avoid budgeting the time and resources to deal with their technical debt. Or when they lack leadership that is confident and bold enough to make the hard decisions to do so (which requires experience and reputation), or suffer a culture that doesn't tolerate some degree of risk-taking, with contingencies (particularly in schedule and blast radius containment) to safely deal with occasional failure on the road to improvement.
I'd love to reinvent computing from the ground up, stripping away the many patchwork layers of complexity we've accreted over time and applying an obsession for making each individual component uncommonly robust and engineered for clarity. I feel that kind of project would be a great candidate for human-written code. I think AI tools would make a great sounding board / linter / reviewer in such a scenario, but since they were trained on existing examples and legacy patterns I'm not convinced they'd be as good as a human at the actual constructing, in terms of what I'm optimizing for.
I personally tend to favor longer lead times and slower public ship pace (but not slower betas or delay in customer feedback) in order to maintain a higher bar of quality. Even if saying so out loud risks branding me heretical by some corners of Silicon Valley!
Are you willing to wake up at 3 AM when that "valuable" AI-written code pages on-call?
I agree there is some value in AI tools, but implementation details do matter. People shouldn't be pushing unread code to prod. That's how you end up with security holes and other bugs. That's how you end up dropping millions of orders on Amazon.com.
I think the last ten+ years has taught us that massive security breaches are more of an insurance claim problem and some $4/mo credit monitoring payouts.
And major corporations certainly don’t seem to care that much about leaving massive amounts of money on the table from jr level tech issues. I see it all the time. I mentioned a few from Walmart, Meta, and Amazon recently.
Everyone talks like these things matter, but the results say everyone is just playing pretend.
Excuse me? Amazon lost more money in one day than most companies have in revenue, from dropped orders. I would say that matters. Believe it or not, the systems we work on do things that matter in the real world.
Seems to be an instance of the prevention paradox: Security (in general) is taken seriously enough that major incidences are low enough that people think that security does not matter that much.
The quality of our work is too subordinated to business leaderships who see the forms of technical insurance we build into software development processes as fat, and are fundamentally opposed to doing things right. Besides solidarity this is the major reason for tech workers to unionize. We won't because we don't have any sense.
I actually considered that, myself. The thing is, California is where the jobs are for me. If I move out of California, I may never be able to come back. That could cost me a lot.
Who cares about California? If you dont have family there, just head to Europe as fast as you can, one way ticket, don't ever pay the IRS to come back.
I don't think anyone mentioned comparing AI error rates to a base rate of zero. What has been mentioned is significant numbers of clinically significant omissions, and outright hallucinations. Blatant fabrications should never happen with a human scribe, and one would expect clinically significant omissions to be rarer, because a human has clinical judgement that an AI can't have.
I'm asking myself the same question for a different reason: nobody will even interview me. I've been out of work for a while. Savings are running out. I apparently don't even know how to look for a job anymore.
Yeah. Got word I was being laid off in November. Officially because of restructuring, but after having had some conversations it's clear I've been replaced by a junior with a Claude subscription.
20 years coding experience. Gone through the sweaty junior years, senior, founding engineer, CTO (and back to software Engineering again because it's my preference) -- and now I can't even get an interview with a human.
Due to unfortunate life events my savings are now all but gone and I don't even know how if I will be able to keep a roof over our heads. It's messed up.
If anyone is hiring send me a message. I'm a .eu citizen but work have residency in and work out of Mexico.
The era of anyone interested in programming for fun being able to make upper 10% incomes is drawing to a close. You'll unfortunately have to join the rest of us who work for money and program for fun. I suggest engineering (the real kind, not software 'engineering')
Unfortunately, I have a visual-spatial processing disability. You don't want me near anything mechanical, and I can't do visualization-based tasks because I literally can't visualize. That eliminates most engineering jobs.
There's also the matter of going back to school, and the associated debt I'd have to take. I'd never be able to pay the loans off if I did that.
Electrical engineering doesn't need much in the way of mechanical aptitude, has a substantial overlap with what you already know depending on specialization, and might not have as much new schooling required as you would think.
Something like industrial controls engineering might be right up your alley.
My response is probably controversial. But I genuinely think it’s generally helpful advice. Ofc I don’t have any other information than the comment about this person.
I have no advice to offer, I only wish you good luck. I am still lucky enough to be employed, but when this whole parade ends, I have no idea what comes next - my only skill is programming and related knowledge work. I think the only path forward is to try to jump ship to another white or blue collar industry…
I thought along those lines as well. The only thing I could come up with that would be semi-viable was medical school, and I"m not sure I'd survive residency. I definitely would never be able to pay back the debt, if I had to take any.
I'm tailoring my resume to individual postings a good portion of the time. My "default" resume is by ChatGPT; it's essentially my human-written resume, jazzed up a bit for ATS-friendliness. There are no hallucinations in it, and I feel it accurately represents my experience.
It happens to many, it's happened to me three times so far - the mods rate limit (only X comments per Y time period) people who have been flagged, judged, and found to be a bit prone to get in rapid back n forth exchanges that have crossed guidelines.
It can generally be reversed on request via hn email, sometimes it's a blessing, sometimes it's not even something that impacts a user very often unless they find themselves in an interesting exchange.
Most of the job openings for humans are remote and not in big tech, but the pay in absolute terms is significantly lower (same wage percentile for the area you live though).
It's important to understand the world beyond your bubble. If those jobs seem unrealistic as an option, you may need to consider if your cost of living is unrealistic.
I'm fine with "not big tech," along with a "not big tech" salary. In fact, I prefer "not big tech." My cost of living is not absurd for the Bay Area. I'd even be willing to take a little less than what I made before. After all, less than before is still better than 0. I'm using AI to tailor my resume to every posting, and still not getting calls.
You’ve got nine years of experience, so work your network and get referrals. It’s very hard to get mid-career jobs through the front door; most people want someone they trust to vouch for you.
Yeah I was implying you might need to move to optimize for cost of living, but I don't know your situation and am not really asking. It's actually surprising sometimes to hear how long this took to affect some tech workers. You're lucky it's now that housing prices have stabilized (everyone else has stopped moving), and not a few years ago.
Remote work doesn't necessarily mean you aren't still tethered to some radius. Otherwise I'd be living in Monaco or something haha.
If he showed up in the Epstein files I'd stop using Brave. Until then, I'll keep on rolling my eyes whenever someone brings up this stuff from... 2008.
Indeed. I wonder if the folks rejecting Brave have also vetted the political beliefs of everyone that delivers their packages, manufactured their phone, and grown their food.
The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Why should they have to vet everyone? If I learn that the people who deliver my packages, manufacture my phones, or grow my food support practices that I deem fundamentally harmful to society, I change my behavior accordingly. Where does this weird idea come from that I have to vet literally everyone for my rejection of Brave to be valid?
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
You're probably going to want to take a look at how your smartphone battery is made. You're taking a principled stand on the basis of not using a browser from a company cofounded by a guy that voted differently than you, but it sounds like you're willfully ignoring the child slave labor used to create the device you're using to type that opinion.
Do as you please, but it makes no sense to me, and doesn't strike me a principled at all: it's basically virtue signaling. But then again, I don't view people that hold different political views as my enemy. They're just people I disagree with, and they can still make a great browser, even though we disagree on some things.
Sorry, but if you think that the issue is that Brendan Eich "voted differently than" me, you're either not understanding or willfully misrepresenting what this discussion is about.
I'm not sure what you're so upset about. He gave a thousand dollars to a political campaign that was in favor of outlawing gay marriage in California. This is standard political stuff that people can agree or disagree on.
First, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm upset about considering your first comment ignored the donation, even though that's the primary critique levied against him.
Second, it's your subjective view that this "is standard political stuff that people can agree or disagree on", and I very much disagree! Tax policy or similar areas, sure, we can agree or disagree. But keeping basic rights (or even taking them away) from a subset of the population is not "standard political stuff" to me.
Would you say the same if, instead of gay marriage, the issue was interracial marriage? I sincerely hope not, even though certain voices on the right are trying to turn this into "standard political stuff" too these days.
I do view interracial marriage the same way. The answer is very clear to me, but I know it's a constant topic of discussion across the world in different societies, religions, and cultures. Right now there's a debate in my country about whether we should post religious texts on the walls of public schools. We've also regressed in our discussion of women's rights and autonomy with their body. The list is basically endless, and amazingly, people really do have different opinions about this stuff. I mean that seriously. It's easy to imagine that there's one right answer and that you have it. But if I look around at the opinions of 300 million people, there's still 37% in the U.S. that think Trump is doing a good job.
I guess I'm just not willing to write off 40% of society because they disagree on a particular issue that may seem clear as day to me. The most important thing I would like to foster is civility in our discourse with our neighbors, and that has been sacrificed on the altar of dogma to a degree that I cannot condone.
But I'm not absolute in my tolerance. Marriage rights don't trigger me much at all, but genuine human rights abuses like we're seeing in the wars going on, and the rise of fascism in the US are both areas where I would boycott a company (like OnlyOffice, for example).
Tax policy is actually a big part of the driver of fascism, since it entrenches oligarchs and allows consolidation of e.g. the media, and therefore the narrative. But I guess I'd call that standard political stuff, too.
So I guess I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line, but donating a thousand dollars to speak out against gay marriage didn't cross it for me. Yes, I disagree with him. And yes, I still like Brave.
What exactly is a "technical difference", and why is only that relevant? I am more than my interactions with software and companies, just like every other human. Why should I focus on an arbitrary subset of factors when making decisions?
And the non-technical factors are what my friends and loved ones have to experience due to Brendan Eich's choices. So again, why should I ignore them? I'm more than a user of software.
Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project. This is a core foundation of the Free Software and Open Source movements. (And it's worrisome to me that it's being eroded.)
My point is that this same setting aside of irrelevant (to the technical aspects) differences should apply to use of software in addition to development of software.
> Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project.
That's a choice you are free to make. Other people can and will make different choices. Many people never shared that principle, and instead happily exercised freedom of association to not support or spend time around awful people.
Projects are not some magic boundary in which everything outside is left outside. You can't dump piles of money into hurting your colleagues and expect them to see that as a neutral choice.
I'm not working on a project together with Brendan Eich, I'm choosing not to use a product from which he directly profits. I sincerely hope that we both agree that this is a completely normal and rational choice.
I think I failed to explain my point: Just like OSS contributors don't have to agree on anything but the goal of the project and how to treat each other while working on it, people shouldn't decide what software to use based on anything but the technical merits of the program.
Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Not that I actually recommend Brave: I have no opinions on it. I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
But why? You haven't given an argument. In our capitalist societies, I have two avenues of influencing public life: my vote and my wallet. Rich people like Brendan Eich have a much more impactful vote due to their capital, so the only real avenue I have left is my wallet.
So please explain: why shouldn't I use my wallet to prevent people like Brendan Eich from shaping society against my friends and loved ones? Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
> Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Or I can use Firefox and strengthen the competition.
Fair enough. My argument is this: as a society we need to live alongside people we disagree with, perhaps even disagree with fundamentally. My ideal is to not judge people's work in one field by their work (or opinions) in another. I think that this way we can get more done in the fields in which we are in agreement. How well do you think the United States would have gone without the Three-fifths Compromise? IMO not well. Do I agree with the slaveholders? No. Do I think the compromise was better than refusing to work with them at all? Yes.
> Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
Thanks, with that argument I can better understand where you're coming from. But I would counter: compromise on a social level doesn't require all individuals to compromise too. Boycotts etc. have always been a tool for individuals to make their voices heard, and to influence the exact compromise that is reached.
Since we're apparently still trying to find a compromise on this topic, it seems imperative to me that I continue my boycott of Brendan Eich's companies, so the eventual compromise will have better terms for my friends and loved ones. Unless I see definitive proof that this approach is worse for the people close to me, I won't give up the only social tool I have to protect them.
> Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
First, Brave has lots more monetization avenues than just the crypto stuff. But even if I turned all of that off, I would increase the usage stats of Brave while decreasing the stats of Firefox. Just because Brendan Eich doesn't profit quite as much off of me doesn't mean he gains no profit.
I'm glad I could make my position clear and I'm sorry it didn't come out coherently the first time. I'm also glad you're willing to look for compromise.
Out of curiosity, where do you draw the line when it comes to boycotting people or companies?
You are literally in a thread where 90% of the discussion is surrounding chromium and you think this isn’t a connected idea?
Edit: also crazy that someone who doesn’t want to support the Brave guy would support the browser using the Brave guy’s stuff, but I guess I see lots of chick-fil-a haters shopping in Amazon these days, so who am I to question what’s in vogue?
> Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
> No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Don't assume the positions of people who disagree with you are not thought out. It is a dangerous line of reasoning to go "if only they thought it through for more than five seconds they'd agree with me".
Right, it still doesn’t make sense. You’re still using a product created by a company run by the guy you supposedly hate, why would you the decide to use a product that came from them if you wouldn’t use their product in a manner that doesn’t enrich them at all?
Remember, this isn’t based on like, logic or functionality or power or visibility or anything related to the product - it’s based on an emotional view of someone related to the product. It actually doesn’t matter if you could theorize a way that he gave away his core tech just to screw his ow company over. It’s arguably irrelevant to the conversation.
Avoiding just about any company for ethical reasons without avoiding the vast majority is performative or something most people can ignore because it’s insanely personal.
I don’t think you spent more than 5 seconds thinking about this if you thought my only POV was “he’d believe me if he thought about this for a few seconds”. I don’t think it’s obvious, I just think it’s significant.
Well the guy running Brave must’ve had absolutely nothing to do with Brave’s Adblock engine going into Firefox, so I can see why you’re acting so smug. After all, why would the guy involved with Brave be involved with Brave’s thing going somewhere other than Brave? Maybe it’s just random evolution! Excellent point, friend. I can tell you thought it out.
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