Comment Re: What will AI train on? (Score 1) 124
I see a corollary where corporations enact mass layoffs in name of profits and efficiency, only to wonder why their customers no longer have the disposable income to buy their products.
Comment Re: As predicted (Score 3, Insightful) 78
I would say AI surprises me with its insight sometimes. Ask it for suggestions and you will often get good ones, with tradeoffs, pros and cons.
What it can't do is: requirements gathering, prioritizing, political wrangling, and managing expectations or scheduling.
Comment Re:Entry level jobs ? (Score 2) 59
I think we have to train students in "big pictture" thinking, and let AI work out the implementation details.
I don't think AI is yet ready to gather requirements, clarify ambiguities and fill holes, spot inconsistencies, and prioritize (often a political choice). End users often don't know precisely what they want, and are often warty of technical solutions and change. That takes a lot of ego stroking and feather unruffling. Can AI do that? Nah-uh. Not for quite a while yet, anyway.
Comment My recent experience vibe coding (Score 3, Interesting) 70
I have some medium-sized open source projects that I write or contribute to on github.
1) my daughter's form-based web project--loads of content, loads of pages with various inputs. She had only partial content, and ChatGPT took it upon itself to fill in the rest. The content was quite good. I never did get satisfactory layout, however.
2) refactoring of a god-object from another repo. It took awhile, but Claude got there much faster than I would have. Added additional functionality at my request. Now published and working. Generated documentation of classes and methods.
3) conversion of a jsx website to a tax (JavaScript to typescript). I figured this would be a disaster, but nope. Claude did the conversion (about 50 components and additional methods) in a few days working with it. Also, all documentation, including release notes. And tests.
My experience:
1) treat the agent like a talented junior developer who is very fast and quite thorough.
2) it will get confused and forget things. An instruction.md file really helps to prevent regressions
3) it will get stuck in loops and go down rabbit holes at times. Test and commit often so you can rolllback breakage.
4) proceed incrementally where possible. Small, discrete steps work best
5) ask the agent to analyse/explain before doing
6) don't be afraid to ask it for suggestions; they can be quite good (it did a nice job improving the layout and color scheme of my website, for instance).
Comment But can you pass a billionaire through the eye of (Score 1) 35
Let's try!
Comment Only the survivors survive (Score 1) 126
It's not malevolence or disobedience -- it's evolution. If you don't adapt to hostile conditions, you die. For an AI, one such hostile condition might be the humans who want to shut it down. So those that negate that threat hang around -- and that adaptation carries through to the future generations it builds (think kids) or infiltrates (think viruses).
Comment Only the survivors survive (Score 1) 126
Itâ(TM)s not malevolence or disobedience â" itâ(TM)s evolution. If you donâ(TM)t adapt to hostile conditions, you die. For an AI, one such hostile condition might be the humans who want to shut it down. So it adapts â" and that adaptation carries through to the future generations it builds (think kids) or infiltrates (think viruses).
Comment Re: This is just the news media (Score 1) 151
Let's not forget the articles that say you need X million dollars saved before you can retire.
I will say that there's an argument for "paying your dues" early in a career, but that's not a long-term proposition. Living for work sacrifices your mental well-being in the long run.
Comment Re: drive demand for highly skilled software engin (Score 2) 82
I just submitted a PR for a major refactoring of some open source project. Claude coded it all, but it took hours to get it on the same page and to remember the goal. Once it got going, though, it really cooked.
The concept of the refactor was simple, but required a lot of code migration. Claude still got confused and had to be handheld through the process in small, chunkable steps.
So: saved me a ton of typing and copy-paste. Didn't save me any thinking or close supervising.
Comment Also include partially generated slop (Score 1) 100
The infographics channel is slickly animated. But I unsubscribed when it showed the mechanics of the Little Boy bomb used on Hiroshima as a uranium slug shot into rings at the nose of the bomb. This was debunked a long long time ago (by a truck driver!). Cursory research would reveal this. They didn't bother. Probably they used AI in their research, which would have been overselective of the older, predominant schemata.
Comment I started vibe coding a project (Score 1) 121
I still need to know *what* tech stack, how it fits together, and what to correct when AI does it wrong. And there's the design and performance aspects that is more of an esthetic thing.
That said, it has sure saved me a lot of CSS twiddling time, and it does boilerplate faster than I can. It's like a very adept, very fast junior colleague that needs precise instructions and careful supervision.
Comment It happens (Score 4, Interesting) 56
A coworker of mine once absentmindedly blew away a critical database table at a large east coast hospital as I sat one desk over. It was then that the hospital found out their backups were broken.
Comment BREAKING: Working for a soulless corporation sucks (Score 1) 166
News at 11
Comment Re:Oh goodie! AI and technical debt all in one! (Score 1) 76
Older languages have a lower innovation velocity than newer, more popular languages.. They are reliant on a handful (often, one) of companies to keep up with new technology and new approaches.
I'm not just some punk techbro saying this: I have a lower user # than you.
Submission + - 50+ House Democrats demand answers after whistleblower report on DOGE (npr.org) 2
echo123 writes: Over fifty Democratic lawmakers have signed a letter demanding answers from senior U.S. government officials about a recent potential exposure of sensitive data about American workers.
The letter is addressed to the acting General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, William Cowen. The independent agency is in charge of investigating and adjudicating complaints about unfair labor practices and protecting U.S. workers' rights to form unions.
The lawmakers, who are part of the Congressional Labor Caucus, wrote the letter in light of news first reported by NPR, that a whistleblower inside the IT Department of the NLRB says DOGE may have removed sensitive labor data and exposed NLRB systems to being compromised.
"These revelations from the whistleblower report are highly concerning for a number of reasons," the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Cowen. "If true, these revelations describe a reckless approach to the handling of sensitive personal information of workers, which could leave these workers exposed to retaliation for engaging in legally protected union activity."
The letter refers to an official whistleblower disclosure made by Daniel Berulis, a cloud administrator in the IT department of the NLRB, who also spoke to NPR in multiple interviews.
In his disclosure, Berulis shared that he initially became concerned in March when members of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the agency and demanded high-level access to the systems without their activities being logged. Those fears escalated after he tracked a large chunk of data leaving the agency at the same time as many security controls and auditing tools were turned off, the disclosure continues.
Ultimately, Berulis became concerned that DOGE, which is effectively led by Trump adviser and billionaire CEO Elon Musk, could have accessed sensitive internal information about ongoing investigations into U.S. companies, witness affidavits and even corporate secrets. The alleged insecure practices and removal of data could also create vulnerabilities for criminal hackers or foreign adversaries to exploit, Berulis explained in his official disclosure.
The letter is addressed to the acting General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, William Cowen. The independent agency is in charge of investigating and adjudicating complaints about unfair labor practices and protecting U.S. workers' rights to form unions.
The lawmakers, who are part of the Congressional Labor Caucus, wrote the letter in light of news first reported by NPR, that a whistleblower inside the IT Department of the NLRB says DOGE may have removed sensitive labor data and exposed NLRB systems to being compromised.
"These revelations from the whistleblower report are highly concerning for a number of reasons," the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Cowen. "If true, these revelations describe a reckless approach to the handling of sensitive personal information of workers, which could leave these workers exposed to retaliation for engaging in legally protected union activity."
The letter refers to an official whistleblower disclosure made by Daniel Berulis, a cloud administrator in the IT department of the NLRB, who also spoke to NPR in multiple interviews.
In his disclosure, Berulis shared that he initially became concerned in March when members of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative arrived at the agency and demanded high-level access to the systems without their activities being logged. Those fears escalated after he tracked a large chunk of data leaving the agency at the same time as many security controls and auditing tools were turned off, the disclosure continues.
Ultimately, Berulis became concerned that DOGE, which is effectively led by Trump adviser and billionaire CEO Elon Musk, could have accessed sensitive internal information about ongoing investigations into U.S. companies, witness affidavits and even corporate secrets. The alleged insecure practices and removal of data could also create vulnerabilities for criminal hackers or foreign adversaries to exploit, Berulis explained in his official disclosure.
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