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chefandyon You can’t build a moat with AI (redux)

Developers expect UI controls to afford fine-grained control over functions as if they’re a thin wrapper for the API. For example, if there’s some condition that prevents something from happening in a program and there are one or two things you can do to mitigate it, most developers would rather know the process failed and be given the choice about how/when to proceed. Our understanding of what controls ‘should’ do based on a sophisticated mental model of software architecture, networking, etc. We don’t have to deliberately reason about what the computer is doing— we just intuit that it’s writing a file, or making a web request, etc etc etc and automatically reason about the appropriate next steps based on what happens during that operation— sort of like writing code. Knowing that the process failed and how gives us valuable information that we can use to troubleshoot the base problem and possibly improve something.

Nontechnical users do not have that mental model: they base their estimation of what a control should do on what problem they believe that control solves. The discrepancy starts with misalignment between the user’s mental model of the problem, and how software solves the problems. In that hypothetical system where some condition is preventing something from happening and there are one or two things you can do to mitigate it, the nontechnical user doesn’t give a fuck if and how something failed if there’s a different possible approach won’t fail. They just want you to solve their problem with the least possible amount of resistance, and don’t have the requisite knowledge to know why the program is telling them, let alone how it relates to the larger problem. That’s why developers often find UIs built for nontechnical users to be frustrating and seem “dumbed down”. For users concerned only with the larger problem and have no understanding of the implementation, giving them a bunch of implementation-specific controls is far dumber than trying to pivot if there’s a stumbling block in the execution and still try to do what needs to be done without user intervention. Moreover, even having that big mess of controls on the screen for more technically-sophisticated users increasing cognitive load and makes it more difficult for nontechnical users to figure out what they need to do.

It’s a frustrating disconnect, but it’s not some big trend to make terrible UIs as developers often assume. Rather, it’s becoming more common because UI and UX designers are increasingly figuring out what the majority of users actually want the software to do, and how to make it easier for them to do it. When developers are left to their own devices with interfaces, the result is frequently something other developers approve of, while nontechnical users find it clunky and counterintuitive. In my experience, that’s why so few nontechnical users adopt independent user-facing FOSS applications instead of their commercial counterparts.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

> There's a bunch of assumptions here.

Undoubtedly. Happy to be disabused of my misgivings.

> The main one i think is probably wrong is that there was 15 lawyers worth of work being done before (when measured by some average lawyer standard). For example, it's possible there was only really 1 lawyer worth of work being split 15 ways, so each lawyer was really only responsible for 1/15th of an average lawyers amount of work :)

> In that scenario, they'd only be responsible for 1 average lawyers worth of mistakes now. Is that realistic? Who knows. I've definitely seen that level of "waste" (for lack of a better term) before in law firms :) Even in the scenario you are positing, it's not obvious it matters as much as you seem to think it does.

> If the per-lawyer mistake rate was low enough, it may be that 15x that rate simply does not matter.

Well having done quite a bit of work with attorneys no longer practicing law, I’m definitely familiar with the gripes about inefficiencies and running up hours— especially during litigation in the larger firms. Even not being as efficient as they could be, assuming 1400% inefficiency or whatever seems much less reasonable than assuming 0% inefficiency. It’s obviously not either of those extremes, but I have a hard time imagining it’s even close to the former.

> These kinds of contracts are fairly standardized, and so they are mostly looking at the differences from last time. Those differences are often not legal as much as factual. IE the table of costs changed, not the legal responsibility. So the main thing mistakes get you is maybe cost (if mistakes matter at all).

> This isn't like they are seeing brand new from scratch contracts constantly that require brand new analysis. Even if they were, like I said, the main issue with a mistake is cost.

> I don’t actually know what kind of contracts they were working on so I’ll have to take your word on that.

> For all we know, the AI company also agreed to indemnify them for a certain rate of mistakes or something (which wouldn't be hard to get insurance for).

I was involved with the AI legal tool scene indirectly for about a decade, but haven’t been for a couple years, and am only getting info indirectly from people I know that still are. (Actually clicking through the top results on Google, I’m actually on a first-name basis with the first founder there was a picture of. I didn’t know he started a new company though so I guess we’re not THAT close!) My knowledge could be out of date, but I’ve not seen one of these services offer indemnity for mistakes and ostensibly for good reason — the latest data I’ve seen shows that attorney-targeted legal tools make more mistakes than people hoped. I also know nothing about legal insurance, but I don’t think it would be smart to insure an organization that just canned 94% of their counsel in favor of tools known to not be particularly reliable when their workload probably has not changed. Whether they did it because either they care more about payroll than reliability, or they had the poor judgement to maintain 1500% staffing levels until then, it still seems like a pretty poor bet.

> I'm not actually a fan of AI taking necessary jobs, but I think the view here that this is sort of life or death is strange.

I certainly don’t think it’s life or death, and of all the places in our society that could use a little more efficiency, legal services is right up there. That said, the fact that it’s not life or death also doesn’t mean that it’s totally fine either.

> I'd be much more worried about AI handling criminal defense in some semi-autonomous fashion than this.

Haha— frankly, I don’t give a damn if the hospital signs a terrible contract that costs them a bazillion dollars as long as they don’t pull a Steward and stop purchasing basic medical supplies.

SURELY public defenders are an attractive target for the outright person-replacing sort of efficiencies, but I have a hard time imagining that would pass muster. I can definitely see some supposedly adversarial plea agreement system being implemented by more authoritarian jurisdictions as an incremental expansion of the NN sentence-recommendation type of tools. My gut says the bigger semi-automation risk there is overworked public defenders’ being lulled into false confidence in legal and general office LLM type tools (messages summaries, auto scheduling appointments, etc) without having the time to give them the scrutiny they need. I’d be shocked if that wasn’t already happening though. Hey maybe with a bunch of attorneys having newfound time on their hands they can bone up on criminal law and provide some relief for the public defender staffing crisis.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

Interesting strategy— I’ll check it out. I get a bit annoyed that I have to essentially trick a tool into giving me useful answers. What’s the chance that a nontechnical user that was just sold a subscription to a Magic answer-generating machine would even realize they needed to figure out how to do things like that? LLM chatbots are amazing but they’re lagging behind the marketing inferences, and that’s a recipe for frustration that providers need to address. I think a lot of these problems need to be fixed with product design and communication.

chefandyon Valve releases Team Fortress 2 code

Makes sense. Definitely something valve would have to deliberately set up and it probably would be more complicated than it seems at the outset.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

Thanks— I’ll play around with that workflow.

chefandyon Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

Additionally, Mr. Beast and other “content creators” are really just the face of small-to-medium-sized companies with brands established in much lower-competition markets with much lower standards and almost certainly could not recreate that success today as indie YouTubers, etc. Beast had over 250 employees as of a 2023 interview with a former employee. At one point I saw more 3D generalist ads for positions in his thumbnails department than from most huge studios, and they’re not looking for one-off work from freelancers— they’ve got an established 3D pipeline set up and they’re looking for full time staff that have experience with it. For THUMBNAILS. So now, when you’re starting out, you’re competing for search results space and recommendations with corporate, or legacy-media-backed marketing agencies presenting themselves as independent creators. Good. Fucking. Luck.

The only naive “Kumbaya, my lord” perspective around here is that the current “creative” tooling the corporate tech sector is building is positive for humanity’s creative landscape, and they didn’t just take what used to be the largest and healthiest independent creative marketplace humanity has ever experienced and hand it directly to corporate entities and low-effort, low-value bullshit “content” hucksters.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

In my cognitive landscape, abstract reasoning is a huge spike for me while linear reasoning is closer to average. I just don’t think I need help with all of that exploratory stuff — I need something that’s going to root me in reality with hard facts, figures, and processes. I can see how folks that don’t exist primarily in “shower thoughts” land, like I do, and have better intuition with the concrete linear stuff might get more use out of it than me. Conversely, perhaps I get a bit more out of traditional search engine workflows than others?

That would definitely account for the difference in my perception of their utility vs other peoples’.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

For what — things that AI wasn’t helpful for when I gave it a shot?

chefandyon Grok3 Launch [video]

It doesn’t explain anything. It asserts a lot. Sorry I took the time to critique and give examples as a freelance business communication designer. Effective business communication requires frank feedback, and mine usually isn’t cheap, but if protecting your ego is the goal here, just keep assuming you’re doing everything right and it’s everybody else’s fault it’s not landing.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

Probably not going to be saying much though. The state of real-time LLM-based conversation aids just isn’t where it needs to be for those folks to function in public effectively. I could foresee there being a heck of a slam broetry event happening at an after party, though.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

Ironically, that was a pretty Reddit-like thing to say.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

Maybe they should have used one of those newfangled AI automatic calendar manager things. Or maybe they were using one and shouldn’t have been.

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

Maybe there’s a particular cognitive profile that benefits most from LLM chat bots? I’ve tried multiple times to realize this force multiplier in my life for everything from day-to-day stuff to picking up new things, using the latest paid bots with the best models, and I’ve persistently found them to be awkward, inaccurate, difficult to pin down into giving useful info rather than a bunch of non-committal pablum without hallucinations, etc etc etc

chefandyon Meta announces LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference on April 29

Your last statement hints at a big consideration: accountability. One lawyer on a formerly 15 lawyer staff is accountable for 15 lawyers worth of potential mistakes, and we know that “but the AI did it!” doesn’t hold water in law.

chefandyon Valve releases Team Fortress 2 code

UE makes their engine source available even if it’s not under a permissive license.

chefandyon Valve releases Team Fortress 2 code

I wonder how UE manages it. It compiles for consoles but you can download and modify the engine source. The license isn’t open but you can still get the source.

chefandyon Grok3 Launch [video]

When they asked for a clear and concise description of your problem and solution, they are probably looking for a problem statement: a focused, 1 or 2 sentence explanation of the problem you intend to solve. You then present your proposed solution in the same form.

Hypothetical example problem statement: We want to promote ycombinator to everyone that could benefit, but banner ads make us look chintzy, directly engaging in the feral discourse on Slashdot would inevitably look unprofessional, and engaging directly through dozens of purpose-built blogs and websites is too onerous.

Hypothetical example solution statement: We should create our own simple, well-designed news site built on user submissions, and include threaded discussion capability with moderation built in at both the community and company level to keep things relatively civil. Then our audience will come looking for us.

What you offered is not a problem statement. It is a sales deck offering a, frankly, convoluted explanation of how starting a currency will solve a largely unrelated problem backed up by an unsupported assertion about the least representative sample in the world— Donald Trump.

chefandyon Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

Reasoning about the universe of commercial art based solely on the tiny consumer-facing facade doesn’t work. It’s even more detached than speaking confidently about restaurant management because you go out to eat a lot. At least 90% of the moving parts are totally invisible to the consumer. The markets for indie bands, fan art commission artists, product photographers, architecture photographers, VFX artists, comedy writers, 2D animators, beachside caricature artists, branding and identity designers, textile designers, industrial designers, technical artists, industrial jewelry designers, independent jewelry artists, live TV producers, motion designers, and fine art painters, just to name a few, share many challenges, but are far too different from each other to fall under your sweeping generalizations based entirely on your assumptions about the tiny slice of it that you see. Like most “common sense” oversimplified understandings of complex problems, the simplicity you see in this topic is rooted in your lack of understanding and knowledge rather than some unique ability to find a simple solutions to complex problems.

chefandyon Reviewing the cryptography used by Signal

Right. A lot of folks sacrifice the good because it’s not unattainably perfect in tech, especially with security. I think the pressure to improve, on a whole, is a positive thing, but it often makes terrible practical advice.

chefandyon My washing machine refreshed my thinking on software estimation

Perhaps a relic of the days of manufactured coal-based gas that they kept because there was already so much infrastructure. Out of curiosity I’ve been trying to see if the local steam utility offers new supply connections but I don’t see anything.

chefandyon Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

You’re conflating “content creators you’re aware of” and the entire collection of industries that comprise commercial art. Indeed, the search engine optimizing celebrity influencer content creation market is booming— a lot of it either being backed by legacy media, re-using other people’s content directly, or being better at marketing AI knockoffs of other people’s content than the original creators. Do you think that any of those content creators hesitate for a second to use copyright protections against someone gaining popularity using their scripts/footage/audio, etc to make the same kind of content? Beyond that, most commercial art isn’t feasible to sell in those mediums. The people benefiting from this is so infinitesimally small compared to and not representative of the many commercial art markets at large— everything from concept artists to graphic designers to dancers— that it’s entirely forgivable to exclude it from analysis altogether, let alone basing your analysis on it. You might as well deem someone with a gunshot wound perfectly healthy based entirely on their hair.

The other direct-sell platforms you referenced have already been flooded by people bulk-creating AI knock-offs. The giant slop hose has already won the race to the bottom making it nearly impossible for people that aren’t already established to get started. It’s most obvious in stock photo markets, but in music, some of the creation tools specifically advertise generating output to avoid triggering copyright scanners.

And no, you can’t just go grab a job at the big studios because a) a lot of them are using, or assuming they’ll soon be able to effectively use, the same AI tools that everyone else is based in other peoples labor and eliminating FTEs, b) since so many commercial artists have been displaced by tech companies essentially selling their work, everybody— including former freelancers and indies— is shooting for the same dwindling set of jobs, and c) nobody in those industries is leaving their jobs because they know it might be the end of their career if they do.

I don’t expect you to understand the markets outside of your area of expertise, but I would appreciate your being less patronizing while you attempt to explain my career to me.

chefandyon Saying goodbye to FFmpegKit

As an artist, this sort of shit makes me apoplectic. I’m frustrated that society has no way to compensate people that do creative work for a living other than the same mechanism that virii like this extract money from other people’s work using a paper turnstile and heavy penalties for violations. And between the two kinds of entities, only one realistically even has the significant resources needed to engage the mechanism. I understand that a lot of folks in tech consider both of these usages to be largely equivalent but that’s a different conversation.

chefandyon Reviewing the cryptography used by Signal

Anybody expecting to get enough privacy to commit crimes using a VPN is definitely naive. I think most people doing important privacy stuff like being whistle blowers in authoritarian regimes knows that well enough. As part of a multi-pronged strategy to reduce the surface area exposed to creepy data brokers, though? Works fine for me.

chefandyon Reviewing the cryptography used by Signal

If you use a VPN provider that only has one set of servers provided by one hosting provider then sure. If you’re connecting to any number of servers then that’s probably less of a problem. I’m much more concerned with Starbucks collecting data on their free WiFi than one of a number of hosting providers or whoever I sometimes exit through. The services you log into selling that data to the same brokers as everyone else is a much bigger vulnerability IMO.

chefandyon My washing machine refreshed my thinking on software estimation

I imagine they’re much more difficult to work with but I don’t think copper meets code for gas in the US for some reason.

chefandyon Tariffs result in 10% laptop price hike in U.S. says Acer CEO

> Your rent could be $1000 instead of $2000 if your landlord's income wasn't taxed so much. Your Chipotle meal could be $6 instead of $12 if the franchise owner and their commercial property landlord weren't taxed so much, let alone the workers.

Trickle-down economics aka Reaganomics. Companies don’t change based on cost, they charge based on what the market will accept. If the market has people willing to pay $12 for a burrito and their costs lower, they’re going to charge $12 for burritos and keep the profits. Fast food restaurants will often have discount meal wars, but notice that it’s only promotional pricing that’s changed — promotions end when they’re not useful anymore and regular menu prices largely move in one direction. If costs and availability are unpredictable, like they were with fresh produce during the pandemic, they’d probably just stop selling the product rather than having to repeatedly raise and lower the cost, which is why McDonald’s got rid of salads.

The rental market in the US is increasingly dominated by larger corporate players that leave units to sit empty rather than lower their prices because lowering a price on one unit lowers the market value overall, which makes other nearby units less valuable. Rent maximizing platforms are even doing this among independent landlords and they’ve been criticized by the FTC for doing so.

Reaganomics is just a plausible ruse to get non-rich people to support policies that largely benefit the rich and large corporations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

chefandyon My washing machine refreshed my thinking on software estimation

You use copper pipes for gas? Interesting. In the US we use iron.

chefandyon My washing machine refreshed my thinking on software estimation

Yeah same. I’ve got an extra drill that was free with any purchase from harbor freight (but normally sells for like $15) that I’ve used with a 2” hole saw several times for cord management. Maybe the poster had a drill-shaped electric screwdriver rather than a drill-driver?

chefandyon Open source projects could sell SBOM fragments

I love how the logo looks like it could be for a powerlifting gym in 1989.

chefandyon Uchū · the color scheme for internet lovers

Maybe a broken cache on an edge network serving up a bad asset to only some geographic areas, or something that was served broken for a moment but got cached.