I’m not so sure this matters. My team manages a couple pretty new projects and I still see LLM tools doing this. I’m starting to suspect that vendors are building in these behaviors to ensure the output compiles (never throw an exception, null check every variable no matter what, never change a function or method but copy or inline its code and change that, etc.)
I think I would prefer code that is clear, understandable and simple even if it doesn’t compile and needs some straightforward polishing.
I’d be curious to see the financials on the Kindle readers, my suspicion is that they very quickly make the cost back through book sales. If retaining customers was a concern they could simply ship people the cheapest reader before cutting service.
Strong disagreement on this one, I think the coverage has proven that the current crop if anti-LLM sentiment is a much bigger thing then whatever is happening on this website.
In the case of AI generated imagery, maybe it will get to the point where people can't tell just by looking at it. If it does, at what cost? It seems to me that token cost is rising, I can't help but wonder if hiring an illustrator might end up being less expensive in the long run.
I feel that "good" music has some emotional resonance with me, at some level. In my opinion AI won't ever be able generate what I'm looking for, it always strikes me as somewhat bland or seems too much like another track.
Background music in distracting environments, where the listening is maybe the third or fourth thing I'm doing, maybe AI will be acceptable.
> This security update resolves a publicly disclosed vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted document or visits a malicious Web page that embeds TrueType font files.
> This security update is rated Critical for all supported releases of Microsoft Windows. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.
> The security update addresses the vulnerability by modifying the way that a Windows kernel-mode driver handles TrueType font files. For more information about the vulnerability, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information.
Even people who do read the content of every AUR package they install could use a helpful heads up and some detail in the new threat they should be looking for.
If a package is compromised, I think most people would prefer their workflow be broken than risk installing that package.
I think a notice on the front page of the AUR would make sense here. IMHO, a blurb on the Arch homepage with a link to a notice on the AUR page would also help.
If you don't want to list all known effected packages, at least recommend the official position that anyone using a AUR package should be reading every file of every package they use.
> All his numbers about costs, revenues etc are guesses or attempts to work backwards from off the cuff and frequently inconsistent comments by tech executives. They could easily be very far off.
Agreed, but I'd argue that Ed doesn't have much else to work with. I'd like to see journalists take this tack and start asking these executives to either back up their statements or back down from them. They should be held accountable for their statements.
Even if we dial down these numbers by a magnitude they are still insanely large and the AI companies do not seem to be making enough money to balance things out.
> He seems to think that the moment Nvidia release new hardware, all existing hardware becomes worthless. It doesn't and there are plenty of tokens being served by old GPUs. This makes all his calculations about how quickly datacenters have to pay off useless.
I agree that older hardware from Nvidia doesn't become worthless when Nvidia releases new, more powerful hardware. I have to point out that it certainly loses a great deal of value and that's not nothing.
> He doesn't seem to understand that datacenters have never been full of hardware on their opening day. A lot of his attacks revolve around this confusion - he learns that an opened datacenter isn't yet at full load or fully equipped with GPUs and thinks that means it's been delayed. I remember when Google first opened their facility in the Dalles, it took years for it to completely fill with machines.
Is that really the case? I mean, I read about the build out of these data centers being delayed all of the time. I read this last week and it seems roughly in line with Ed's ravings:
> A JPMorgan analysis last month found that more than 60% of data-center capacity planned for completion in 2027 isn’t yet under construction, and another 7% is delayed.[0]
I don't read Ed Zitron, aside from when he appears here on Hacker News, and I also find his tone to be over-the-top. I think we might agree on that much.
These articles are lengthy but, to my understanding, Ed's idea is...
* AI companies have committed to purchasing X amount of compute
* Data centers are being constructed to meet this demand, they'll need to charge amount Y
* AI companies do not have sufficient revenue to pay amount Y
IMHO this isn't surprising, personally the only real use-case for AI that I've seen is code generation or automated sales or scam calls. This doesn't seem like a big enough market for the huge dollar amounts I'm seeing thrown around.
I'm curious why you think Ed is so far off the mark on this. To me, it seems like we are headed for a big correction on the whole AI thing.
I hear what you’re saying, I’ve wondered this myself. My suspicion is that if we let duplicate or very similar code accumulate, eventually we’ll have enough that it will start to slow down or impact the success rate of the AI tooling. It might update two chunks of relevant code but miss the third, leading to a bug. Or it might grow confused over which of three similar chunks of code are providing the “correct” behavior.
I’ve been using Claude Code with Opus 4.7; it’s not that the code it produces is wrong, it simply tends to write too much of it. In my opinion it’s still worth thinking about a particular feature and finding the best way to fit it into your code because Claude will often just pick a layer of the stack (maybe presentation), and jam it in there. A couple weeks later you need this data somewhere else and Claude can’t reuse the code (maybe in the service layer) so it kind of “ports” it over. Unless a person is paying attention we now have the double the amount of code and duplicate logic. I don’t see AI tools like Claude getting better at this anytime soon.
Where I work there’s already pressure to use Opus 4.7 less to save money, someone mentioned using a smaller model for “simple bug fixes”. This might work sometimes but how often do we really know it’s a simple bug fixe ahead of time? I suspect as costs go up we’ll see interest in using these tools to write “all the code” go down. As people migrate to cheaper and less effective models I suspect we’ll see the pressure to skip reviewing that code dissipate as well.
We’ll see where we land, maybe it won’t as dramatically different as the author of this post fears.
I'm only going by the abstract but this bit stuck out to me:
> Regulation of the multiple addictive products that tobacco companies have disseminated to markets globally may be needed to protect public health.
That seems less about logistics and more about manipulating the content of food, perhaps to encourage some low-level of dependence. People eventually came to expect this from tobacco products, I think many would be surprised to see this kind of thing from Oreos or potato chips.
> The people writing the checks are not in the habit of lighting trillions of dollars on fire for a better autocomplete and an endless proliferation of longer and longer memos that nobody reads.
Aren’t they though? What about that whole crypto thing.
I’d take rapid movement, honestly, I simply think it unlikely. In terms of what kind of change, I was speaking of movement toward a rational system with clear goals, with decisions made by knowledgeable people. With that in mind any movement, I think, should be estimated from the present. We can’t change the past!
Agreed, care and thoughtfulness should be the rule, not the exception. Presently we are getting neither. I’m a software developer, I don’t work in policy; but I believe our immigration position should be aligned with policy goals and I’m not sure we have any of those, either.
In any case, re-categorizing so many legal immigrants in order to imprison them strikes me as pointless and fundamentally wrong.
This strikes me as an unreasonable demand on the author of the comment. Part of the point of the current system was (at least at some point) to have knowledgeable people, armed with the available facts, figures and theories make some attempt at balancing the safety of the incoming people against (at the very least) their economic impact on the country. From there some rudimentary guard rails (quotas, visa type, etc.) would be set. I suspect few of us in this forum feel comfortable making these decisions from behind a phone, tablet or laptop.
My understanding is that many of us, perhaps including the author of the comment to which you are responding, would like to see at lease some small, inching movement towards such a system.
Even worse, with changes like this we are taking large swathes of legal immigrants and transforming them into illegal immigrants. It reads to me that a substantial number of green card applicants will now be subject to ICE detention.
I disagree it's a political stance, this reads like a technical decision to me. In my opinion, there is no vibe-coded project that's going to be reliable long term. Eventually there's too much code, too many bugs and the whole things slows to a halt. Or it gets too expensive to continue to be vibe-coded, because token cost.
If they had decided to drop Bun for "AI assisted coding," that might strike me as a political decision.
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