airstrafer

Agree. There's an argument that Contracts reduces the complexity of using the language because it offers a more readable alternative to template metaprogramming (also, it has better error messages). But the argument really falls apart when you review WG21's track record for other features.

Like for example, Coroutines were billed as an easier way to write concurrent code, but personally I think it completely failed and ended up being hopelessly complex and confusing. Modules are the same - superficially they make things simpler, but when people actually go to adopt it, the details are so complex that nobody bothers.

Models are a commodity, but I also think it isn't necessarily over for Anthropic or OpenAI. They have opportunities to find different moats.

No disagreement here lol. E.g. Target knows you are pregnant before you do [1]. That being said I think AIs are a whole new level of invasiveness because people tend to trust them like a human.

Here’s a prediction: the true AI moat will be owning the “AI friends” of the masses: a trusted coworker, therapist, personal music artist, or even just something to talk to. The moat comes from the fact that these “friends” will deeply understand the user and the users will want to “take them along” with their entire life (they’re useful!). So people will get “locked in” to their AI “team” which is only available via one of the major AI labs. And in turn, the AI labs parasitically will understand everything about the way you live and think at a level that traditional ad trackers could only dream of.

Sama has alluded to this in interviews for a long time. He stated a year ago [2]:

> The way that I think of it is that most people will want to have one AI service, and that needs to be useful to them across their whole life. And so you’ll use ChatGPT, but you’ll want it to be integrated with other services and so you need to have other apps inside of ChatGPT. We need to have an API business, because you will want to be able to sign in with OpenAI into some service that someone else has built, and you’ll want the kind of continuity of experience and you’ll want it to still know you and have your stuff and know what to share and what not to share. So we want to build this AI helper for people and that’s going to have to — there’s a few pieces that have to fit into that.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....

[2] https://stratechery.com/2025/an-interview-with-openai-ceo-sa...

I agree with this but also think it is a first order consequence.

This level of unfettered access to your personality, lifestyle, and secrets allows for an unprecedented kind of manipulation and control. You could see it as a new kind of wealth transfer: not only will They sell you things, They will subtly manipulate behaviors of the masses via trusted agents.

Microsoft will be fine -- insufferably boring and non-innovative, but fine. They will be the AI slop middleware for enterprise. Your average enshittified corporate AI integration will go through Office365, Windows, or some other MS product.

What won't happen is on-device models running on consumer windows PCs (the Copilot+ idea).

A very solid release with very nice immediate conveniences/improvements and foundational long term work.

I’m particularly impressed at the team’s continued investment in non-Apple platforms. IMO, true cross platform Swift codebases still seems out of reach for most shops. But if they keep this up for a few more years then Swift could become a very compelling cross platform language — for both systems and application programming.

The big hurdle they need to figure out is the standard library and especially SwiftUI. SwiftUI is the single most important library that essentially all Apple swift codebases use, so until there is a real cross platform SwiftUI then for app programming IMO Swift will remain a novelty.

There are other frameworks, like eg Network.framework, which really should be in the stdlib as well.

I guess I don't. Does post-training from another (larger) model not fall under the umbrella of distillation? I'd imagine it leads to the same spiky-ness issues...?

Yeah, I'd expect model performance to be super spiky on SWE work, at least they admit it with the name of the model. It's distilled from an already-distilled model.

Maybe still worth it if their "64% cheaper" figure holds.

This sentiment is also why Microsoft crushed earnings this quarter. Their AI play is to create corpo-slop AI middleware, which sits between AI models and enterprise applications. Sure, others can go and build harnesses which can generate MS office documents, but MS is already doing it, and conveniently such harnesses will come with everyone's existing Microsoft 365 subscription.

The analogy is IBM. Just like IBM helped every old-money corporation on the planet figure out the whole "computers" thing 50 years ago, MS will help everyone solve the "AI" thing. The software will suck and will not really innovate, but it will make a ton of money

ai slop writing

incredible

He said something similar when he was 28 at a design conference: https://youtu.be/t9HmOz8H0qI?t=2827 at 47:08

> Technology is the active human interface with the material world.

> But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources.

This sentiment reminds me of the email steve jobs sent himself shortly before he died:

> I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.

> I do not make any of my own clothing.

> I speak a language I did not invent or refine.

> I did not discover the mathematics I use.

> I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.

> I am moved by music I did not create myself.

> When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.

> I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.

> I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.

Indeed, it seems to me that true technologists do not take for granted a book of matches, or a simple garment, or music, or law. Innovation is innovation

wow. shamelessly stealing the name of one of the most robust and effective libraries ever, to push some ai bullshit.

what an embarrassment

Are these the sqlite developers..?

The models might be good but the product design, user story, and marketing is so terrible that it’s difficult to see it as more than an also-ran

This site tries to open a script in my terminal as soon as you open it. Luckily safari has good permissions but stay away. Egregious behavior.

Flagged.

I get what you’re saying but phone addiction has absolutely ruined people’s lives.

when the middle management ghouls demand that the codex and chat teams synergize at the expense of the architecture and users. lol

Agreed. I like the framing that there are three kinds of disability: permanent (I lost my arm in a motorcycle crash), temporal (I broke my arm and can’t use it for a while), and situational (I’m walking my dog so I can only use one arm for other things).

Generally we only refer to someone with a permanent disability as “disabled” but in reality we are all disabled in various categories at different times of our lives. Accessibility is important to all three groups (you need to be able to use your phone with one hand), therefore accessibility is important to everyone.