aerhardt

Hi author here. I've bought a probability textbook from Lulu and it was fine. I don't blame POD but rather misinformation and poor quality. Almost all the POD books I've received from Amazon are very distinguishable from real books.

I also buy used, nothing against it, but it’s not easy to find the books that one has in mind.

Many people are mentioning bookshop.org and I would be happy to try it out but I want to note that they don’t ship outside the US and UK.

But I don’t think Amazon could “pirate” a Penguin edition like that without their consent. Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy is like you say, but they stripped it out of all mentions of a publishing house. I didn’t mind that one in fact

Yes, as I mention in the article, that has happened to me to me a few times as well.

There may be something about the products being custom-made that causes this. I’ve had it happen with one that had a noticeable print defect (On Writing Well) but also to a few where I simply didn’t want a print-on-demand.

I tend to buy hardcovers but sometimes it’s not possible. I agree it’s a sure-fire way to avoid print-on-demand.

Like I say in the article, I don’t mind about print-on-demand as such - it’s the fact that these books are not particularly rare, they often come with bad defects, and they are pretty pricey.

I haven't found one, like I mention in the article; I'll edit it if someone proves me wrong.

I'm starting to get a feel for a pattern - the books tend to be more expensive, and also take longer on average to deliver (a few weeks, instead of a few days). The latter would be normal for rare editions and some third-party sellers, but if I'm ordering a popular book and it takes longer than usual to deliver I can kinda smell the dead rat. But the only way to know for sure is to open the box in disappointment.

I had a friend over and we talked about the subject. She owns a Penguin stock copy of Martin Eden and upon checking my print-on-demand copy her first reaction was: "Yea, this looks like crap, but above all, the type is making me dizzy".

I only mention it in passing the article but I'm regretting not showing pictures of how bad the page typesetting can get - perhaps I'll revise it this week. There's a substantial qualitative jump from "this book looks like a cheap knock-off" to "reading this is giving me a headache".

And yes, while I don't have a clue about the printing process, the image of an inkjet printer has also come to mind on occasion!

The irony of starting to claim that someone doesn’t engage with an “argument” (put forth by three quotes, and nothing else), and then ending up with this absolute word salad and an irrelevant metaphysical quip on the categories.

I feel that two things are true at the same time:

1) Something happened during 2025 that made the models (or crucially, the wrapping terminal-based apps like Claude Code or Codex) much better. I only type in the terminal anymore.

2) The quality of the code is still quite often terrible. Quadruple-nested control flow abounds. Software architecture in rather small scopes is unsound. People say AI is “good at front end” but I see the worst kind of atrocities there (a few days ago Codex 5.3 tried to inject a massive HTML element with a CSS before hack, rather than proprerly refactoring markup)

Two forces feel true simultaneously but in permanent tension. I still cannot make out my mind and see the synthesis in the dialectic, where this is truly going, if we’re meaningfully moving forward or mostly moving in circles.

The original poster “expresses a shared sentiment” by posting three quotes, but the poster you replied to, who offers a fairly detailed account of the value LLMs bring to their daily work life, and how they feel about it, does not. OK.

Did you read the post yourself? It doesn’t sound like it. It is composed of the title and three mystical-sounding quotes. How is one supposed to engage with this? Doing literary critique? A counter point to the statement “I don’t use LLMs” would probably count as valid engagement in any circumstance but especially in this one.

I build tech for Executive Search (headhunting) and I’ve recently written about this on my website.

Luckily in my niche the pressure to do this is not so high. Execs often have enough leverage to not have to put up with this kind of thing.

As others have commented, I am skeptical that this is any better than a form or similar. This could be a solution looking for a problem, or rather, relatedly, poorly allocated VC money looking to impress investors. Massive new entrants in the space like Jack and Jill are pushing this.

I guess there’s a vision where these interviewing agents truly become reactive and intelligent, so that they can both extract meaningful, deep insights about the candidate, while providing equally meaningful answers about the company and position. Color me skeptical, but not an outright denialist.

Regardless of the effectiveness for hiring companies, I think we will be seeing it for a long time. Even if it doesn’t produce meaningful improvements they will keep using it as long as it’s not too expensive, because the supplier and VC pipeline will press to keep using it.

I see some people are already doing OSS projects in this direction. I could be interested in exploring this and making a bot that really works on behalf of the interviewee. Agent-to-Agent communications may well be the future we are heading to regardless of our sensitivities to it, and I think the interviewee side of the market should and can get meaningful representation in this new world. Get in touch if you’d like to join forces.

I’ve been unfollowing people for a while and the issue is rarely from within my network anymore… the feed shows a lot of posts from AI foisters who I don’t even follow.

I have to use LinkedIn to sell. I only occasionally look at the feed but I am ruthlessly muting or blocking anyone who is blatantly foisting their AI drivel on other humans. I’ve had enough of this shit.

The LLM that wrote this simply couldn’t help itself.

Exactly the same on the other side though. If we believed that Dario Amodei or Sam Altman really knew how The Economy in its entirety worked, which is what they’re constantly pretending to do, then we should give them the central planning keys to the kingdom and declare communism tomorrow. I’m not being entirely facetious.

I know they are because they called me for service at the 10k km mark, but at least they’re not charging me for the pleasure.

The thing stopped being so needy when I neutered its internet access. Maybe it’s still exfiltrating data but at least it has stopped making me anxious that I may need to consult a civil rights lawyer every time I saw their EULA.

Business idea: a signal-jamming cover for your 65-inch TV.

It looks like shit, is difficult to install, and costs an arm and a leg, but at least it prevents egregious privacy violations from your average chaebol or CCP-intervened corporation!

I drive a Cupra (a Spanish brand, a spinoff of SEAT, owned by Volkswagen) and when I was driving my car out of the dealership I had to tell the salesman I was not interested in signing up for the free app they were trying to foist me. He was dumbfounded. The model was selling like hotcakes yet I was the first customer that had outright refused to sign up for their shitty app. They pulled off the inevitable switcheroo, it now costs a monthly fee and I don’t want to think about what insidious things they can do with it.

I also had to take this approach with my LG TV. The OS actually had its use for a while but Apple TV has become my driver. I no longer wish to consent to LG’s EULAs which are starting to look like the legal corpus of a small nation. I’m also not interested in their software updates. Internet privileges: revoked.

It’s concerning nonetheless as others are pointing out that in the current trajectory the TVs may soon refuse to display any content unless connected.

I guess more than a tautology it is an inversion of observed causes and effects?

Untrained people are producing utter garbage. I am 100% in on AI coding and haven’t typed into the IDE in months but the craft remains pretty much as challenging as ever.

Everyone is starting to make AI a moral question one way or another. So your moral view is progress must march on unimpeded by private actors?

I find that pretty original. I think progress will march largely unimpeded. I would be wary of unhinged government intervention, but I wouldn’t begrudge private actors for not getting on with the ticket.

At least there’s a paragraph. I’m starting to see people use them to write two-line comments on LinkedIn. I am not exaggerating.

I’m also dumbfounded by this rise of the AI foister. I can understand a scammer, but a normal person using it to produce a paragraph?

In Spain EULAs cannot infringe upon the law either.

Maybe both, and possibly other causes too, but allow us a moment to revel in the schadenfreude of AI code slop at hyperscale, will you?

In Spain books include a copyright notice explicitly prohibiting reproduction and digitalization and alluding to article 270 of the Spanish criminal code.

Holy emdash, you real?