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In my experience, managers don't have to be hands-on, but they need to be able to recognize people with talent and unblock them do their jobs, to be able to spot process improvements, including channelling the AI hype to productive outcomes, and to be a steadying influence in a crisis (without adding noise). If a manager doesn't have technical ability, its impossible for them to do those things.

I think they simply just haven't figured out that the barrier to entry is so low, that no one really cares what their app can do, even if does something genuinely useful.

I've done a ton of low-effort vibe-coded projects that suit my exact use cases. In many cases, I might do a quick Google search, not find an exact match, or find some bloated adware or subscription-ware and not bother going any further.

Claude Code can produce exactly what I want, quickly.

The difference is that I don't really share my projects. People who share them probably haven't realized that code has become cheap, and no one really needs/wants to see them since they can just roll their own.

I caught myself structuring a comment like an LLM on another site. It's expected that people who chat heavily to LLMs will start to mirror their styles.

I'm surprised how many of my technical team use free ChatGPT in their personal lives. The rest have Claude subscriptions. I'm the only one with ChatGPT and Claude subs and I'll be switching from Claude Pro to Ckaude Max and cancelling ChatGPT, since I only use it when I hit my Claude quota.

I'd used both CC and Copilot Agent Mode in VSCode, but not the combination of CC + Opus 4.5, and I agree, I was happy enough with Copilot.

The gap didn't seem big, but in November (which admittedly was when Opus 4.5 was in preview on Copilot) Opus 4.5 with Copilot was awful.

I have been out of the loop for a couple of months (vacation). I tried Claude Opus 4.5 at the end of November 2025 with the corporate Github Copilot subscription in Agent mode and it was awful: basically ignoring code and hallucinating.

My team is using it with Claude Code and say it works brilliantly, so I'll be giving it another go.

How much of the value comes from Opus 4.5, how much comes from Claude Code, and how much comes from the combination?

I firmly believe that the heuristics that teachers/lecturers/instructors worldwide use to avoid engaging with reams of mundane text have been successfully by LLMs, and that's why they were so hostile to them initially.

They have to actually read material, and not just use the structure as a proxy for ability.

The relief second officer basically pulled up when the stall protection had been disabled and by the time the other pilot and captain realized what was happening it was too late to save the plane.

There is a design flaw though: the sidesticks in modern Airbus planes are independent, so the other pilot didn’t get any tactile feedback when the second officer was pulling back.

By "publicize" I meant making sure the consequences were well known within the fighter pilot community.

Making sure that the consequences are well-publicized also has the useful side-effect of making sure that ejection is regarded as a last resort.

This is the exact sort of performative garbage that LLMs are great for. I had to do an electrical install, but the installer felt that the code required additional work (I don't think he was trying to rip us off, he sincerely believed it, since it's a volume business model).

I got ChatGPT to come up with some plausible interpretations of the electrical code that allowed the install to continue, including citations. I don't know how accurate it all was, but I sent the argument off to the installer, and he came back and did the work the next day. Even if it gets audited, the chances of the auditor picking apart the arguments are probably slim to none. He has plausible deniability.

This is also why schools and colleges are struggling. No one expected superficially "high quality" work from average and poor students, and now that they have to carefully evaluate everyone's work, they've been caught with their pants down.

Someday superficial AIs will talk to other superficial AIs and they'll deadlock, requiring humans back into the mix. Until then, it's a useful way to do bureaucratic judo.

I get a feeling that there are a lot of people trying to minimize this incident for some reason.

This “manager” vs “leader” thing is slightly overdone in general.

A manager who doesn’t lead will end up the issues raised in the article.

A leader who can’t manage will face administrative chaos.

Angular was bigger than react until 2018/19-ish in the enterprisey places I worked at.

Maybe I'm stupid, but as I recall, React hooks were quite complicated. It's been a few years since I wrote production front-end code, but it felt like some kind of high IQ/elitist barrier.

I've seen clips on Reddit where animals are harmed for engagement. Usually "nature is brutal" type clips, where one animal kills another.

I mean nature is brutal, but typing down an animal to be consumed by another isn't natural.

Anyway, I don't think movies and TV are the main source of animal cruelty anymore.

I have 4 cameras, a home security system, a remotely monitored smoke detector, a smart plug, 4 leak sensors, smart bulbs, a car whose location and state of charge I can track remotely, a smart garage door opener, a smart doorbell, and 7 smart speakers.

I think IoT was more than just hype.

I don't know how the social engineering happened, beyond what's mentioned in the article as a possibility (calling helpdesks). But there's a ton of corporate information that's widely available for exploitation.

LinkedIn, for example is a goldmine for social engineering, and there's no way to secure a profile from being viewed by logged-in users, even if they are unconnected.

I'm surprised more employers don't closely audit their employees profiles.

I think that's because it's been heavily monetized (YouTube, social media in general, books, products).

I liked Claude Code when I used it initially to document a legacy codebase. The developer who maintains the system reviewed the documentation, and said it was spot-on.

But the other day I asked it to help add boundary logging to another legacy codebase and it produced some horrible, duplicated and redundant code. I see these huge Claude instruction files people share on social media, and I have to wonder...

Not sure if they're rationing "the smarts" or performance is highly variable.

I think lead is nasty stuff, but if it was the single cause of high crime, surely we'd see a similar effect in other domains, like a rebound effect on IQs (another thing lead was blamed for)?

Instead the Flynn Effect seems to have been strongest during the era of high lead, and it's tailing-off now.

Good one....I put it into Claude with a prompt to not change the meaning but make it more normal

Frameworks can help in many cases, especially for complex or high-scale apps. But in simple CRUD apps, particularly in consulting environments, they often add more complexity than value.

I've seen this play out repeatedly. A company needs a basic CRUD system. Consultancy A brings in designers who produce “wireframes” (usually full-featured eye candy) and UX-centric “journeys.” To justify its bloated fees, the consultancy builds something super-slick using frameworks to match the designs. But once the budget runs out, the customer struggles to maintain it. Eventually, the app becomes unmanageable.

So the consultancy sends in a designer again to produce new mockups and “journeys.” The cycle repeats, this time with another framework.

I agree. Having seem enormous amounts of effort wasted on implementing fancy web apps by Digital-first consultancies (they reject BAs, but substitute designers) in the B2B space, I think there does need to be more education for the people who procure this stuff (especially in government) who get ripped off routinely.

Australia effectively scrapped this sort of visa in 2024 because it wasn't bringing the expected benefits. The UK did a similar thing because of it being exploited by oligarchs. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-68052626)

If decent water testing kits were widely available...or even water analyzers on the outlets, more people might be more confident drinking tap water. But I suppose there isn't much incentive to push people in that direction.

I suspect it's that they build excellent ICE vehicles, and were quick to go to hybrids but missed the rise of EVs. Everything we're seeing is a rearguard action to protect their ICE business.

The use of latin doesn't help either. "Cytoplasmic net" (or better yet "plasma net") is a lot easier to understand, visualise and remember than "endplasmic reticulum".

Absolutely, I do appreciate that addition — I definitely had teachers like that.

It’s probably why, when I got to university and tackled subjects like probability theory, discrete math, and theoretical CS, I did extremely well — they weren’t reliant on the shaky algebra and trig foundation I had from school. Once the focus shifted to logic and conceptual thinking, without the baggage of poorly taught fundamentals, everything clicked