I wanted to fact check this, but I guess Meta doesn’t have a tool for that, anymore. I’ll have to accept it at face value.

As a developer, we use AI “extensively” because it’s currently practically free and we rarely say no to free stuff.

It is, indeed, slightly better than last year’s autocomplete.

AI is also amazing at letting non-developers accomplish routine stuff that isn’t particularly interesting.

If someone is trying to avoid paying for one afternoon of my time, an AI subscription and months of trial and error are a new option for them. So I guess that’s pretty neat.

I’m going to answer some questions I’m hearing in you question:

"I’m interested in X, should I learn X?”

The answer is pretty much always ”yes”, to that question.

"Is Rust a good/terrible fit for my project?”

Rust is a solid tool. It’ll probably do fine.

However, I don’t think punishment is a humane solution. Rehabilitation and integration are always preferred. Though again, some folks integrate best as corpses.

Exactly. They can cooperate for a better world. I think they’ll have to, soon.

Of course, I’m not going to shed any tears for the corpse of someone who prioritized their next super-yacht upgrade over my geandchldren’s clean air and food.

But I’ll keep advocating for everyone to have another chance to cooperate for public social good.

"No good billionaires” means we never stop monitoring (and legally limiting) billionaire’s choices, not that none of them can ever make a right choice.

I was with you until “unrestrained capitalism is neither a cackling villain…”.

Unrestrained anything tends to become a cackling villain.

We probably outlived the neanderthals primarily because of our capacity for advanced social order through rules.

None of us individually care for rules, but rules are our secret to success.

We need to rediscover our passion for nuance and tuning and obeying our rules.

I hope you’ll listen to those who are telling you you’re wrong on this, because the results matter:

Two year old run over in Cul de sac by drunk driver.

The children’s parents were standing in their driveway watching them ride the bikes when they yelled at the driver to slow down, the affidavit states.

The driver failed to slow down and struck their 2-year-old son as he rode his blue tricycle, according to police.

The truck struck the child and appeared to drag the child and bicycle a few feet before the truck came to rest based on the apparent blood marks in the roadway," police said.

They’ll all continue to do their part to defend their (ultra wealthy) side of the class divide.

I don’t want to top that. And I’m so sorry you had to go through that.

Every technology shift creates winners and losers.

There’s already documented harm from algorithms making callous biased decisions that ruin people’s lives - an example is automated insurance claim rejections.

We know that AI is going to bring algorithmic decisions into many new places where it can do harm. AI adoption is currently on track to get to those places well before the most important harm reduction solutions are mature.

We should take care that we do not gaslight people who will be harmed by this trend, by telling them they are better off.

I built an MSI file once.

I love asking,

“What sick fuck thought this was an acceptable solution?”

And a few moments later:

“Oh. It was me.”

Thanks for that mental image… Dancing Bear.

Amazon - the logistics company - is just a front end for (and leech on) various drop shippers, lately, anyway.

Amazon used to carry quality guarantees, and have meaningful reviews, but lately the wild West crapshoot of the rest of the web is just as good.

(And at least on the rest of the web I have some idea who I’m buying from, and can avoid them after a bad experience. On Amazon, it got to where there was no way I could tell.)

Controlling people’s media experience to push political propaganda that helps powerful people and harms individuals - that seems really shitty.

I can’t think of any app developer or political party who would do that.

(This is an attempt at surrealist humor.)

I’m sure they will grow out of it, by the time they turn 21

(This is intended as an amusing reference to DOGE’s habit of hiring surprisingly young professionals.)

Oh, that makes sense. Local multiplayer on SteamDeck can still be pretty rubbish, so I probably just didn’t notice.

I will warn that some of the Lego games are rather buggy on PC.

I had the same issues on my Windows PC. But they run great on my SteamDeck.

Plan to share a link so the hackers can check your work?

I’ve heard good things about vibe coding primary use cases for common problems.

I have experience vibe coding unusual use cases. The AI was worse than useless for those.

So I’m curious how the corner cases and security stuff on common problems turn out. (I always get that kind of thing from a framework, so I have no experience vibe coding those cases.)

(Genuinely curious. And obviously, no worries if you don’t want to risk sharing.)

I would welcome a utility that makes it easy to find donate links for my software packages, based on my Apt, Flatpak, and F-Droid package lists.

I’m a developer, so my chances are pretty good. But I take your point.

Even if I weren’t, there’s enough software options out there that I don’t have to pick between paying for proprietary software and living with abandonware.

So I think the need for this security is exaggerated.

Of course. I used proprietary software for a long time. Having things I relied on get abandoned got old, but it worked.

I just expect more from most of my software, now.