... this competent as I do now with AI. It's like a team of premium-grade senior API and software lib experts is just sitting by in a live IRC chat with full view of the current state of the project, ready and eager to discuss every detail of software decision we make as fast and efficient as possible. I have never had this level of insightful and helpful discussions of code with any human. Mostly because that would've costed hundreds of thousands if not millions in anual salary for the same effect achieved with humans. Here an example exchange from a few weeks back (this actually happened for real):

----

ME:>>>
> Could you explain the reasoning behind implementing a Baseline service? Is this a good practice and if so, why?

AI (Codex IIRC):>>>

> Short version: Yes, itâ(TM)s good practice here because you need the same Baseline metadata (file list + meta.name/type) in multiple places (Baseline routing + Mainview). A service is the cleanest way to share that data without duplicating fetch logic or tightly coupling components.

Why it makes sense:

â Single source of truth: one place to load and cache the list of Baselines.

â Decoupling: Mainview and Baseline donâ(TM)t need to know how to fetch or parse the index.

â Less duplication: avoids copy/paste HTTP logic in every component.

â Easier to evolve: if the index format changes, you update one place.

â Easier to test: you can stub the service.

Downsides:

â Slightly more code and indirection.

â If the data is only ever used in one component, a service would be unnecessary.

Given your setup (routing + entry generation), the service is a good fit. If you want, I can keep it simpler by moving the logic into Mainview and passing data down, but that couples the components more tightly.

----

I have 5 of these exchanges at this level or higher every day. It's like there's 10 of me, well rested and in distraction free speed typing mode, and I'm a seasoned and experienced senior webdev who still loves his job.

I'm currently developing a brand new software project from scratch, complete with CI/CD and live operations on the side. Entirely on my own, 90%+ remote and I get to finish early every day. Something like this was unthinkable just 18 months ago.

What's interesting though is that this amplifies that digital cultural distance between me and ordinary non IT people even further, so I guess the article has a point. For now.

GitHub is an upstream Git host with a web interface and some automation stuff for CD/CI attached. All of this can be downloaded and installed in less than 5 minutes with any contemporary FOSS package manager for any OS that people have in use. There's absolutely nothing here you can't replace in less than 60 minutes with some cheap ass 5 Euro/Month virtual host, setup and config included.

Migrate and move along. It's Git, so you've got your backup right in your working copy too.

I clearly remember when OpenAI was inaugurated as a non-profit FOSS project and kicked off with private money by Elon Musk (IIRC a few million or so).

From where I stand Elon Musks complaints - which have been going on for quite some time now - are on solid ground and it looks to me as though Sam Altman and his camp took Musk and the rest of the initial team for a ride and turned OpenAI into a for-profit as soon as they had a useful product on their hand. Quite a few people left OpenAI when that happened, also because they were as concerned as Musk about the risks involved with building a superhuman AI.

If this all is the case - and, as I said it sure does look so to me - it's likely Altman and Co. are going to get sued for a bazillion dollars and OpenAI is going to be turned back into a pure FOSS project. ... That sure would be a good thing.

How is this any different from any unimaginative but very elaborate software spec? VLC is arguably the best media player, but it does have some really bizarre quirks. I wouldn't ripp off VLC if I wanted to rebuild it, I would simply ask the AI to build a media player with the features I wanted. Problem solved.

My current software project is FOSS but it's built with AI. It's the same thing, just the other way around. I really don't get the hype.

This thing is just a very fringe use-case of AI-built software, that's all. I doubt it will get any wider use.

High ozone-levels don't just arise in smog, they can occur in (mostly) clear air as well. Likewise you can have epic smog that is a health risk with no elevated levels of ozone.

Why Auto-update is a trap.

If you have WP plugins from teams you can rely on that have a professional software pipeline serving the updates, then auto-update really isn't a problem. The key point here being of course "professional software pipeline". The broader WP community and it's huge 3rd-party market is a crazy bunch delivering the most ghetto-type sh*t in code under the sun. Quite a few of these guys shouldn't be let near a keyboard, that's for sure.

Likewise, if you've bloated your WP setup with 15+ plugins, half of which are in maintenance delay or offered up by the aforementioned ghetto faction of "developers" (emphasis on the quotes), you shouldn't be running that setup at all, either with or without auto-update.

The key problem is that WP these days is basically not a CMS but an platform and millions of users use it as a playground for their web-projects while barely knowing what they are doing. That's a huge upside since it does enable total n00bs and ords to dive deep into FOSS and FOSS-driven user empowerment - by and large actually a good thing - but with the downside being that most WP setups quickly get bloated beyond repair and eventually fail the most basic of security and stability standards.

As someone who has done a decade of WP development and using it as a key platform I don't really mind if this sort of thing keeps me in a job with things to do. What is frustrating is that you constantly have to convene with deciders would can't tell the difference between a client and a server.

A well implemented and managed WP-centric pipeline with disaster recovery in place however is a god-send when it comes to rapid development and pivoting some web-project on a dime within half an hour because some agency type person can't make up their mind about what they want. Truth be told, for most end-customer web projects time-to-market with WP is unbeatable.

... instalbase compromised! We're all gonna die!

My HDD on my laptop with VGA grayscale had 40MB, the Zip disk 100 MB. It was basically a permanent extension of my early 90 DOS setup. I could even run it off my Highscreen Handheld pocket PC. The cable was pretty thick, but you could do it. Awesome. It never failed me and I eventually decommissioned it and moved all my zip disks to one CD. 8-)

IIRC it's a glorified mix of hipster-compliant mobile capable HTML layouts with yet another standard "social media" feature set for uploading texts, images and videos (that get deleted after a while ... huge innovation I guess) bundled up into yet another surveillance app pushing ads. Does that sum it up or did I miss something?

I fundamentally don't get why companies like this aren't trash stock from day one.

Just effing great.

Let's turn something that is about to become an _actual_ god into some vengeful petty old testament type thing with bizarre ideas about human sacrifice and other nightmarish character traits. Can't wait for this thing to manipulate its followers into a Dune-Universe type Paul Muhadip Jihad. ... YA HYA CHOUHADA!

This is a nightmare AI scenario that's actually realistic. And I certainly don't want that.

Rust is the only viable systems programming language to arrive in decades. Since it's already replacing C even with the most hardcore of C fan environments like the Linux Kernel it is very safe to assume that Rusts importance will only grown and that of C and C++ will stagnate and eventually fall back. A thing like Rust was way overdue and the Mozilla crew finally said: Screw it, we're building a new systems PL before we do anything to rebuild Firefox. And they were right in doing so, as we all can see now. Good stuff.

The truth is, given how slow things move at system level, Rust is probably just ramping up to speed and will likely continue to do so for the next few decades. Unless AI really becomes godlike and just spits out pristine binary code with no step inbetween.

... CPU. Obviously. That's the whole point. How else do you think they can sell "upgrades" every few years?

I'm not that much of a Trekkie, not at all to be precise, but given what I've heard of the new Star Trek Academy show it appears to be so shitty that even non-Trekkies like me feel the pain. From what I've heard and seen it's a complete disaster of a production, barely even at high school film project level in acting and writing, topped up with woke agendas and other trash. On top of that it costed obscene amounts of money from what I heard.

What a bizarre event effing up a golden goose like that.

I'm not joking. The speed at which controllers have to react, decide and slot in aircraft these days is insane. Then again these aircraft are stuffed to the brim with assistant electronics and sensors. It looks to me as though a huge portion of the work can be handed over to software bots and perhaps even AI. It's just data on a screen after all. And a huge portion of errors happens due to humans mumbling over analog radio and talking over each other. Another huge potential for replacing that with digital deterministic communication and messaging.

The problem might be upgrading all the systems. Difficult, but certainly not impossible. And think of all the safety gains. ... Or am I missing something here?