grayhatter

> I’m not exaggerating. And neither is anyone else.

> Stack Overflow, the site that defined a generation of software development, received 3,710 questions last month. That’s barely above the 3,749 it got in its first month of existence. The entire knowledge-sharing infrastructure we built our careers on is collapsing because people don’t need to ask anymore.

"Because people don't need to ask anymore."?!

Yeah, I wouldn't call it exaggerating, I think I would call it a fundamental misunderstanding.

I wanted to comment on the code examples he shared. But they're they're all closed source. Which is a decision given the premise of the whole article, err I mean ad, that implementations are free these days.

I agree with echelon; don't apologize. I'm not objecting to the message, only to the framing.

How to create more code I can enjoy using has been something that I've been thinking about for a long time. I've even advocated for a stance[0], similar to yours. While I don't agree it's correct to conflate the malign intent surrounding the xz takeover, with the banal ignorance as to why so many people don't want to support people creating cool things, (and here I don't just mean financial support.) I do acknowledge there are plenty of things about the current state we could fix with a bit more money.

But I don't want open source software to fall down the rabbit hole of expectations. Just as much as I agree with you, people opting-in to supporting the people they depend on is problematic. Equally I think the idea that OSS should move towards a transactional kind of relationship is just as bad. If too many people start expecting, I gave you money, now you do the thing. I worry that will toxify what is currently, (at least from my opinionated and stubborn POV), a healthier system, where expectations aren't mandatory.

The pocket base FAQ, and your hint towards burnout are two good examples, describing something feel is bad, and would like to avoid. But they are ones I feel are much easier to avoid with the framing of "this work was a gift". I have before, and will again walk away from a project because I was bored of it. I wouldn't be able to do so if I was accepting money for the same. And that's what leads to burn out.

I do want the world your describing (assuming you can account for the risks inherent into creating a system with a financial incentive to try to game/cheat), but I don't want that world to be the default expectation.

[0] https://gr.ht/2023/07/15/donations-accepted.html

> it is not okay to consider that this labor fell from the sky and is a gift, and that the people/person behind are just doing it for their own enjoyments.

I am. I enjoy making things, and it's even better when others enjoy them. Just because you have expectations that you should be compensated for everything line of code you write; doesn't make it ubiquitous, nor should your expectations be considered the default.

I'd argue If you're creating and releasing open source with the expectations of compensation, you're doing it wrong. Equally, if you expect someone creating open source owes you anything, you're also part of the problem, (and part of why people feel they deserve compensation for something that used to be considered a gift).

All that said, you should take care of your people, if you can help others; especially when you depend on them. I think you should try. Or rather, I hope you would.

The point wasn't to level set, or for it to feel like I'm promoting it. Only so that I couldn't back out later, or not have any skin in the game. But if you really couldn't figure out which I meant. It's the one on my github, and also hosting on srctree, which I link to from the site in my profile, and from my github.

All I took from your reply was

> I could if I wanted to, but I just don't feel like it.

What am I missing where I can understand that's not what you meant?

Show me what you've made with AI?

What's the impressive thing that can convince me it's equivalent, or better than anything created before, or without it?

I understand you've produced a lot of things, and that your clout (which depends on the AI ferver) is based largely because of how refined a workflow you've invented. But I want to see the product, rather than the hype.

Make me say; I wish I was good enough to create this!

Without that, all I can see is the cost, or the negative impact.

edit: I've read some of your other posts, and for my question, I'd like to encourage you to pick only one. Don't use the scatter shot approach that LLMs love, giving plenty of examples, hoping I'll ignore the noise for the single that sounds interesting.

Pick only one. What project have you created that you're truly proud of?

I'll go first, (even though it's unfinished): Verse

> it is a totally unnecessary political statement which fragments their userbase and introduces a political dimension to any procurement decision involving Cloudflare.

My take was, If you need help from the current State Department, or the current administration, (and I assume they do) it absolutely is a necessary statement. And then, this is them trying very hard to suck up, as is required, without pissing off everyone.

Perhaps I'm wrong, and this is actually a form of honesty, instead of performative theater. In which case I would probably agree with you. It's unfortunate. But I default to the assumption that people aren't children by choice.

No? In a disagreement with Italy, cloudflare is definitely going to need the intervention of the US administration. This (angry Twitter post) is how you're expected to ask for help in this timeline. I was expecting to annoyed with the faux allegiance. But here, I think they communicated their distain over the behavior as best as they could, while still asking for help.

I might not like it, but I understand it.

Equally, I might be wrong; but this feels to me like the post tries to as subtly as possible communicate that they have problems with the administration (my expectations for anyone who is at all ethical) While still also needing their help. And if I'm wildly incorrect; and cloudflare is actually in love with the administration, then it's still a master class in rhetoric, because they tricked me, which was probably the point?

He replies to an Italian user

> We can’t offer free services in a country that fines us millions unreasonably. Fix your government or lose access to our charity.

On one hand, I agree with you, it's problematic to threaten collective punishment. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to "divest" from a country trying to fine you for behavior outside of said country. It's also important to communicate that clearly, and unfortunately bluntly. Did you have a different expectation or suggestion for what they should do?

I do appreciate reading a PR, from a CEO, that's not unsalvageably tone deaf. At the first half, I was wondering what the point of this was, given if Italy thinks this is something they're allowed to apply across the globe. That instantly makes this a political issue they probably need to be talking to the State Department about. Then I got to the 2nd half, and was impressed that I wasn't immediately annoyed by the ass kissing.

I assume Cloudflare has a great PR team because this feels like a master class in rhetoric. Given how you're expected to solicit help these days.

Rhetoric aside, it'll be interesting to see how the whole thing plays out. Italy seems to have taken out a hammer, and their d.... well, I'm just gonna hope the Internet wins this one.

earlier in the thread I read nhe plan was to release the source "when it has merit" But that instantly left me with the feeling that the authors of the browser, and I have very different opinions on what the word merit means. Such that they would be incompatible, and I'd never want to use it. This is a decision that has lowered my opinion about exactly how much I can trust Kagi.

> Kagi founder here. Orion isn't open source yet primarily because we're a 5-person team that spent 6+ years building this and created significant IP doing so,

But it's possible I haven't considered some detail where I might agree it's reasonable. Can you describe or offer any insight into the "significant IP" that you need to protect and defend? What threats from a larger company are you primarily concerned about?

I think I was speaking equally to anyone else reading the thread, but also I should have pointed out that the longer you watch an ad, the more familiar you will become with accepting and expecting the product being sold. There's no way to get around the time spent. Just because the first 5 seconds have the largest proportional impact, doesn't mean the last 25s won't also have an impact.

But even if everything I said was incorrect, and you actually are immune, just like you describe... everyone else isn't, and they're being targeted as much as you are.

> But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. If you can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds, it's unlikely you can sell me on your product in 15 or 30 seconds.

When talking about how ads "don't work on you"; it's very important to remember that just like every single other human you're not immune to propaganda.

> In some ways it’s no different than working with some interns. You have to prompt them to “did you consider if your code matched all of the requirements?”.

I really hate this description, but I can't quite filly articulate why yet. It's distinctly different because interns can form new observations independently. AIs can not. They can make another guess at the next token, but if it could have predicted it the 2nd time, it must have been able to predict it the first, so it's not a new observation. The way I think through a novel problem results in drastically different paths and outputs from an LLM. They guess and check repeatedly, they don't converge on an answer. Which you've already identified

> LLMs are different in that they’re sorta lobotomized. They won’t learn from tutoring “did you consider” which needs to essentially be encoded manually still.

This isn't how you work with an intern (unless the intern is unable to learn).

> Is this what people are referring to when they say AI writes their tests?

yes

> Any intelligent, reasoning human would immediately see that it's not even close to enough. You barely even need a coding background to see the issues.

[nods]

> This kind of thing happens over and over again. I look at the stuff it outputs and it's clear to me that no reasoning thing would act this way

and yet there're so many people who are convinced it's fantastic. Oh, I made myself sad.

The larger observation about it being statistical inference, rather than reason... but looks to so many to be reason is quite an interesting test case for the "fuzzing" of humans. In line with why do so many engineers store passwords in clear text? Why do so many people believe AI can reason?

> have develop a bad habit of giving software away for free.

Thankfully, it's still early in the year, so this doesn't mean much yet but at least I can say it with complete certainty; so congratulations, you have said the dumbest thing I've heard all year!

> Does anyone get that feeling?

No, I don't feel bad about giving gifts. I don't feel bad about trying hard to make the world I'm forced to exist within a bit better even if that "better" is inconsequential. No I don't feel bad about not making the effort I'm able to produce, predicated on some sort of compensation. Neither compassion, nor the desire to try to help others is a bad thing! Why would I want to demand payment from people who I want to help?

I don't regret playing a positive sum game.

Especially when everyone around me is determined to play negative sum games, or force others into the same. Or in case of this question; have been gaslit so traumatically, that they feel they are wrong for trying to help other people without demanding compensation.

You're allowed to do nice things for others, without expecting anything from them in return.

Don't confuse gifts, with the effort required to exist in a "user hostile" universe. You might need to trade effort for compensation to 'survive'. But that doesn't devalue the positive improvement you're capable of, regardless of that reality. And it doesn't make it wrong to do so.

> Current employer actually prohibits this due to frequent outages in the git plant.

Even without knowing what you mean by git plant. I can tell you you're holding it wrong.

I'd like to help, but I can't offer useful suggestions if I have no idea what you're even doing, or prohibiting.

Has the world moved on from copyright? Or expecting other people to behave ethically and fairly?

No, and god I hope not.

But it's a real dick move to set up your CI the way you have. Zig explicitly requests using one of the many mirrors for CI instead of hammering the main ziglang.org site itself. Perhaps you've moved on from trying to be ethical?

> The value of that level of abstraction is less clear though. Maybe better testability?

You wouldn't do it to make it easier to test; you would do it to make it easier to reason about. E.g. There's some bug where some users aren't getting charged. You already know where the bug is, or rather, you know it's not in the code that calculates what the price would be. But now, as a bonus, you also can freely modify the code that collects the people to charge, and don't have to worry if modifying that code will change how much other people get charged, (because these two code blocks can't interact with each other).

You know the joke/meme, 99 bugs in the code, take one down, patch it around, 104 bugs in the code? Yeah, that's talking about code like you're describing where everything is in one function, and everything depends on everything else as an intractable web somehow.

> But it's hard to justify what would essentially be tripling the lines of code (one function to pull the data, one pure function to compute actions, one function to execute actions).

This sounds like you're charging per line of source code. Not all code is equal. If you have 3x the amount of code, but it's written in a way that turns something difficult, or complex to understand and reason about, into something trivial to reason about, what you have is strictly better code.

The other examples or counter points you mention are merely implementation details, that only make sense in the context of your specific example/code base that I haven't read. So I'm gonna skip trying to reasoning about the solutions to them given the point of the style recommendations is to write code in a way that is 1) easier to reason about, or 2) impossible to get wrong ...but those really are the same thing

> there's no way to "fetch all the data" up front.

this is incorrect

I assume there's more nuance and complexity as for why it feels like there's no way. Probably involving larger design decisions that feel difficult to unwind. But data collection, decisions, and actions can all be separated without much difficulty with some intent to do so.

I would suggest caution, before implementating this directly: but imagine a subroutine that all it did was lock some database table, read the current list of pending top up charges required, issue the charge, update the row, and unlock the table. An entirely different subroutine wouldn't need to concern itself with anything other than data collection, and calculating deltas, it has no idea if a customer will be charged, all it does is calculate a reasonable amount. Something smart wouldn't run for deactivated/expiring accounts, but why does this need to be smart? It's not going to charge anything, it's just updating the price, that hypothetically might be used later based on data/logic that's irrelevant to the price calculation.

Once any complexity got involved, this is closer to how I would want to implement it, because this also gives you a clear transcript about which actions happened why. I would want to be able to inspect the metadata around each decision to make a charge.

> That's very useful feedback

it's also nonsense, so be careful how you try to apply said feedback

it's not, but stupid people assume they own the copyright to ai induced code. So it still has to be said so the people who don't understand have a chance.

> You would have done it better if the company hadn't forced you to cut corners.

I assume (hope to god) you're being hyperbolic, but I feel it important to point out to everyone who doesn't get it. This is just the CS version of "just following orders". And deserves the exact same amount of respect and fairness.

> You're mischaracterizing what I'm saying.

"I'm saying"? Why are you posting from multiple nonsense account names?

> For one thing you're talking about "someone" when I'm taking about "someone with power".

Are you sure you it's a mischaracterization? Or is it a disagreement over what are the important parts?

> Copyleft isn't about two people, one gaining power over the other. It's about lots of people with no power protecting themselves again one entity with a lot of power to impose themselves.

That's sounds like two parties, who disagree about what they should be allowed to do with the work of others. One side thinks they should be able to control the behavior and actions of the other, and the other disagrees they should have any say over how they act. In that example which side is the GPL, and which side do you think I believe is more free?

> Are you new to HN?

Brand new!

> Every month there's news of projects trying to arrest power contributors using various shenanigans. Copyleft protects against a class of such attacks.

Then you should have specific examples you can describe and or cite?

> Eg Oracle and open office, red hat and centos.

those are names of companies, not examples of embrace, extend, extinguish... which is the FUD you started with?

the reddit post isn't linux losing control, is it? They made an insulin pump, and used linux... did linux lose control over anything? Is the best version of Linux on that insulin pump? Given it appears to be killing patients, I'm gonna guess it's not the best version, and the best version is still what I'm gonna call "mainline".

I restrict myself to foss software as much as I can. Because I want to be able to modify, and hack on the stuff I use. I also strongly support right to repair laws. But I'm unwilling to force my opinions on others. If you want to make something, and keep it secret, and set rules about how I'm allowed to use it, that's reasonable. I'm gonna tell you no, and suggest you piss off. Then I'll find or make something to replace it. I've never seen other person doing things, as preventing me from doing it myself or my way. And haven't found an example of it happening, other than people saying, I should be able to take what you made, and use it how I want without asking you for permission.

Either you believe 1) others should be able to set rules related to how they are allowed to use your work, or 2) you don't support the GPL

I guess there is a secret third option where you believe that you should be able to make up rules, but no one else should.

> This is what happened e.g. with chrome. There's chromium, anyone can build it. But that's not chrome. And chrome is what everybody uses because google has lock-in power.

Because Google has their attention. You can use chromium, but most people don't and pick the first thing they see. Also, Chrome is a much better name, err, not better but easier to say.

> Then google says "oh I'm going to disallow you running the extensions you like, so we can show you more ads". Then they make tweaks to chrome so that websites only get rendered well if they use certain APIs, so now competitors to Chrome are forced to implement those APIs, but those aren't public.

You and I have a different definition of "forced". But, are you speculating this might happen, or do you have an example of it happening?

> And all of this was initially build by free labour, which google took, by people who thought they were contributing to some commons in a sense.

Do you have an example of a site that works better in chrome, than it does in chromium? I'll even take an example of a site that works worse in the version of chromium before manifest v2 was disabled, compared to whatever version of chrome you choose?

> Copyleft licenses protect against this. Part of the license says: if you use these licenses, and you make changes to the software, you have to share the changes as well, you can't keep them for yourself".

Is chromium not still foss? Other than branding, what APIs or features are missing from the FOSS version? You mentioned manifest v3, but I'm using firefox because of it, so I don't find that argument too compelling. I don't think FOSS is worse, I think google is making a bad bet.

> Is anyone else worried that [...] the Rust world [...] slap on it MIT license because it's [reason you don't like]?

No... I don't think that's how software works. Do you have an example of that happening? Has any foss project lost control of the "best" version of some software?

> Not everything in software is about features.

I mean, I would happily make the argument that the ability to use code however I want without needing to give you, (the people,) permission to use my work without following my rules a feature. But then, stopping someone from using something in a way you don't like, is just another feature of GPL software too, is it not?

He links to both HN and lobsters which already contained this information, from before he did any research, so "has been lost" is certainly a take...

But if that's value added, why frame it under the heading of popular drama/rage farming? To capture more attention? Do you believe the pop culture news sites would be interested if it discussed the idea and "experiment" without mentioning the rage bait?

You and I disagree on what engagement farming means.

What value do you think this post adds to the conversation?

> Want a button? Here's all you need:

> <button class="bg-sky-500 hover:bg-sky-600 active:bg-sky-700 text-white px-4 py-2 rounded-lg">Click me</button>

So, I avoid modern webdev, because... reasons.... but is the argument here, really, that this is better than. <button>click me</button> with the default styling applied to button { ... } in style.css?

Follow up question, wasn't the point of css so that you didn't have to write excessive html like this?

> Battlefield 6 is a big one recently that if I had a gaming PC set-up I'd probably want to play.

We definitely play very different games, I wouldn't touch it if you paid me. So I'm sure we both have a bit of sample bias in our expected rates of linux compatibility. Especially since EA is another company like Adobe. Also, the internet seems to think they have a cheating problem. I wonder how bad it really is, and if it's worth the cost of the anti-cheat.

They're industry standard because they were first. Not necessarily because they were better. They do have a feature set that's near impossible to beat, not even I can pretend like they don't. I'm just saying, respect and fairness is more important to me, than content aware fill ever will be.

Also, doesn't the Adobe suite work on Linux?