25+ yr Java/JS dev
Linux novice - running Ubuntu (no windows/mac)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 14th, 2024

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  • Enshittification is about making money. The fact that AI is now faster and more capable of sifting through the garbage that is Google search than a human is a side effect, not a plan.

    Also, your plot really only works if everyone tells AI about their every weakness, and if AI could be relied upon to answer factually. The person who relies on AI to destroy their opponent is inevitable going to run into a case where AI is completely wrong, and they are going to destroy themselves.

    This might be an interesting story to tell in fiction, but I think trying to bring this about in real life would be self-sabotaging.

    You could save a lot of water and anxiety with shorter showers.


  • you’re really nitpicking my English

    Mate, the hardest part of software development is communication and autism is ubiquitous — got a touch myself. So I over explain and I’m very specific. But let me make one thing abundantly clear: I don’t have time to spend this many words trying to be a pedantic asshole. I have much better things to do with my time. If you don’t like my approach, feel free not to engage, but I’m here trying to distill some value for you out of my experience.

    Now, I don’t put too much stock in up and down votes (and to be clear none of your downvotes is from me — I don’t waste time responding to stuff I downvote), but the pattern suggests that what I’ve said resonates with other developers.

    So of course I’m more curious to understand how to solve situations when you do have conflict, if you don’t it’s easy.

    So here’s the disconnect: you’re worrying about shifting burdens like it’s a huge weight, but conflict is exceedingly rare — too rare to worry about. It’s a non-consideration.

    I’m going to leave it there because I think anything else would just be repeating myself.



  • If a story gets created, the code will be merged… when it’s right. If you’re talking OSS, then I am out of my element, but I’ll wager there’s no universal answer because each code owner sets their own standards.

    you have to appoint a person that have the final say on what to merge right?

    If there is work that needs to be done, and you are asked to do it, the code will be merged when it’s right. I don’t decide what to merge, I decide when something is ready to merge.

    The problem of deciding what should be merged or blocked

    If you want to merge something and I read it over and reject the PR because you forgot about concurrency, that doesn’t mean you don’t get to merge, it means that it’s not finished baking. And assuming you give a shit about the code your response should be “oh shit, lemme fix that and resubmit” OR “actually this code will never have concurrent access, and here’s why.”

    You’re making this process sound adversarial when it isn’t. It’s a group effort. Everyone wins or loses together.


  • Everything gets reviewed. If you have a constructive comment you put it in the review.

    I note when I think I have a better way of doing something but the existing way works fine, and I leave that fix up to the submitter. But sometimes I just say no this is wrong. And then whether it gets merged anyway depends on my role. I’m a tech lead now so that’s basically the end although if they want to argue their case I’ll hear them out.

    The devs I work with are all seniors and have all been working in the system longer than me, so I respect them and listen when they disagree. Generally when that happens I’m right in principle and they agree with me, but the code is a fucking mess and we can’t do A right without having to change the rest of the alphabet, and we have bigger fish to fry.

    In other positions I made my comments and whoever was in charge got to decide whether to accept the change or send it back. I try to always make at least one constructive comment even if it’s just like: I really like how you did this.

    I’m not sure what problem you think is being moved to the reviewer. It’s a team and everyone has the same end goal. I appreciate when my code is reviewed because any of us can make a mistake or forget to consider some outside factor. Code review is where assumptions are tested and discussed and hopefully everyone comes away knowing more and agreeing on a path forward.







  • A less obvious problem with AIGen CSAM is that the sheer volume of it could make it nearly impossible to track down actual cases of abused children. I am not particularly morally concerned with someone generating it — I don’t think it directly harms any child and I’m not entirely convinced it harms the consumer. And if those were the only considerations, I’d say have at it (subject to further research because I don’t think it is conclusive that it is harmless to the consumer, either).

    But if it means law enforcement agencies have to give up prosecuting pedo rings of actual abusers because they can’t tell which images among the thousands are real, well that is real harm to real victims and that is enough to ban it.


  • It’s all kinda weird to me but once someone goes the route of sex dolls I’m not sure why what it looks like matters. It’s all just rubber holes to put your dick in. What if it looks like a horse? Or has a dildo shaped like a dog penis? Bestiality is just as illegal and non-consensual.

    I just don’t know where or why I should draw a line. I don’t support it. I don’t defend it. I just slowly back out of the room shaking my head.

    I guess I will say this, though — I’ve engaged in a lot of kink and done a lot of things in play I would never do in real life. I’ve done rape play, strangulation, and cutting among other things… none of those are things I have a secret desire to do for real. But I do enjoy them in the context of play. I enjoy novel forms of intimacy with a consenting partner.

    If I can do those things without harboring a secret desire to rape and murder, it stands to reason people could fuck a rubber hole that looks like a child for reasons other wanting to do it for real.





  • To each their own I suppose. By which I mean maybe the author enjoys different parts of coding than you do. Trying to wrangle AI into writing something decent is generally an exercise in frustration for me. But I enjoy architecting and figuring out how to define units of work that are small and self-contained enough to get AI to understand.

    I’ve been mulling over what kinds of architectural changes might make it easier for AI to be able to contribute. That’s a puzzle I find interesting in the same way I enjoy other programming problems.


  • Yes. This agrees with my personal thesis: AI is a tool experts can use to do work more efficiently, not a product to replace experts.

    I might even conceive of it as a bell curve. It allows novices to accomplish novice-level tasks they never could on their own. It allows experts to work more efficiently. But it doesn’t help mid-tier users to produce expert results and their AI assisted efforts still need to be vetted by experts.

    And expertise needs to be qualified. I’ve been developing software for thirty years, but I’ve never done video game work. I can validate such code is well structured, but I couldn’t say whether it’s doing the right things or put together in the right way.

    We are also probably going to have to think about how software is currently architected. Rich classes might have to give way to separating structure from functions. This allows an expert human to go from a more wholistic approach to thinking about composing functions and overall code structure.

    AI is pretty good if you can limit the scope and context of a given prompt. With the benefit that if AI just can’t get it, a mid-level practitioner can step in.



  • I wish you could just buy a fucking tv. I don’t want your shitty-ass proprietary version of YouTube or Netflix. I don’t even want WiFi or an Ethernet port. I’ll buy a fucking Roku or Apple TV or whatever. Or just watch Blu-rays.

    I tried blocking so off those ports from one of my Samsungs. Eventually YouTube couldn’t work. You’d have to jump through massive hoops including unblocking their servers and hard power cycle — I can’t even remember. I thought they legit bricked it because I didn’t want any updates or spying or ads forced on me.

    TVs are just awful. Monitors are way better, but I have yet to find 85" monitors.