> "The speed of AI development right now is just crazy," Brooks said. "I can't imagine where we're going to be a year from now, three months from now, or even a month from now," he added.
I don't think I'm taking this out of context when I say this is unintentionally correct. Apple still doesn't know what to do about AI.
Luckily, it doesn't matter because it's a solution in search of a problem. Most consumers aren't using AI apart from google search.
Everyone else is using it as a content scraper and praying nobody will step in to end the piracy/fraud.
Manual data entry and other tedious chores are definitely unreliable. However, running a script that a human wrote according to committee specs is the most reliable part. You're conflating the different aspects of human work. We are much better at understanding our needs and arguing about them than doing the manual part.
So, I don't get your argument either. I hear yours often enough and so much louder that I feel it's a deliberate muddying of waters.
What cannot be obsoleted by automation becomes bureaucracy. To my ears, it sounds like you're afraid of ending the tech wild west. That bureaucracy was always the most valuable part, and the demand for experienced programmers over at that table is very high.
What's stopping them from getting a burner device anyway? Imposing too much control can push them away, but a lack of direction can also make them wander.
All you can do is nudge and try not to worry too much. It's certain there are other influences in their life you don't know about.
AI helps automate things that didn't already have rigorous formatting and structures available as input... and that's really all it does (99% of the time).
Doesn't matter how many more nines you add, rigorous formatting is still required. In some cases, it has teeth with compliance standards. Those standards cannot be compromised because there are already a lot of other layers contributing inaccuracy. It all adds up.
In most situations, you could just hire a junior dev (or an intern! remember those?) write some CSV scripts and call it a day. Cheaper and auditable too. Those scripts can't change anyway until standards are revised.
I'm still not seeing the benefit outside of solopreneur efforts and shady businesses wanting to launder blame.
Maybe an optional app? Send the keepalive email and alert the trusted family members when the app stops pinging back.
This would at least indicate that the phone is turned off or lost signal. All of this should be configurable by the user including thresholds before alert, reply timeout, etc.
I think expecting a ping from the app every 24h is a sensible default. Most people already "call to see if their phone is dead". This just automates it.
That still costs less than the revenue brought in from a single bar regular (~$100 a week). It also probably works better and staff are more likely to be familiar with it, etc.
I'm not saying SaaS is always the right answer, but that's probably why it succeeds at that pricing.
How an alternative is pitched really does matter. It's not enough to just point out flaws with the competitor. Open source also requires its own set of incentives to get meaningful contributions. It has to solve a set of problems that are interesting and impactful to the contributors.
I don't know much about running a bar apart from being a regular and sticking around for closing time every now and then.
This looks like an opinionated frontend for a spreadsheet. There are tons of those already. Does this really reduce any of the complexity well enough to be better?
I think people would be more convinced with a demo compared to the existing workflows it's trying to replace.
> Was this LLM-generated? Because the intent is garbled, each sentence going in a different direction from the previous. (So perhaps not LLM after all.)
Quoting the entirety of your comment verbatim in case you edit it. It's poor form to overplay your hand and troll instead of discuss.
I flagged your reply, and I suggest anyone reading these should do the same. HN is really going off the rails allowing this, but I know it's hard to rein it all in. At the risk of becoming even more of a hive mind, I think we need users to pitch in some more.
> is different because it's a consumer-oriented activity whose actual effects are probably impossible to quantify
Your perspective on software is that of a consumer, so you're not necessarily wrong. You're in the majority of people using software along with all those people having their "holy wars".
I'm just saying it's not intrinsic to software. The majority of people who write software for a living are silent about this because it's completely irrelevant to their lives.
It's like this with all other creative work too. As they say "a poor craftsman blames his tools", but more generally improvisation is expected when you're supposed to know what you're doing. Professionals can't afford to be helpless. In fact, that's why we have so many competing standards in technology to begin with. Constant reinvention is the most boneheaded way to progress, but my point is that this is in direct opposition to everything you're saying.
You seem to be insisting that there's ignorance where there is just apathy. For every one person whining, the internet has a chorus of hundreds. On the other side of the fence, there are dozens of people who could fix it in their sleep just ignoring it because it doesn't bother them that bad. That's what makes software so different from manufacturing plastic doodads at scale. You at least don't need a factory, but there are probably countless other reasons.
All culture is shared ignorance. These comparisons to religion are inverted. Religion was born out of cultures needing to herd their people.
You're right that the debate about plastics is mostly meaningless noise by people who don't really care. Taking advantage of uncertainty while it still exists is a lucrative game.
None of this is comparable to software. Writing software is a choice and the users don't have to care beyond the UI. It's apathy, not ignorance, that holds software back. Text editors and programming languages are not usually the highest priority choice to make. The majority of software tends to be specialized one-off solutions. We don't exactly have chemists cooking up their own kitchenware materials on the weekend.
You might want to refine your question. The real problem is the author not having something interesting to say in their own voice. The lack of perspective and insight to share is disrespectful to the reader.
With this broader definition, you'll find there's a ton of other slop we've long since needed to clean up. It's one thing to at least share something mildly interesting, but there's still a lot of points farming and ragebait that has brought down the enjoyability of reading HN.
I guess you missed the part about physical labor in my comment.
You're looking for an answer via a really poor proxy. Lifting weight is lifting weight. Gyms are more popular because of the lack of sensible alternatives for a comprehensive workout. Any data you find about them will also be biased towards the recent decades of office work and working from home. Is there any way to tell if gyms are even picking up the slack? My guess would be overall exercise is down, even for those who go to the gym regularly.
Lift weights. Nobody lifts weights or does labor like they used to.
Endocrine function can still be normal despite obesity. There are plenty of fat guys with solid testosterone levels because they work with their hands all day.
I'm not saying that's all there is to health, far from it, but what kind of bubble does one have to live in to not see this counterexample? Do we just casually ignore them because they fit undesirable stereotypes of "toxic masculinity" or what? You don't have to become that guy just to lift weights.
> Beliefs about quality I want to disprove... (lists 38 bullets)
Sure you didn't miss one? You can't have an exhaustive list because any of those can be just as true as false depending on the situation.
Instead of picking the ones I disagree with most, I'll just say that low quality is miscommunication. The bugs are a snapshot of the organization.
There are multiple facets to hang concern on that the other stakeholders don't know about or ignore. Your ability to discuss them, plan, and execute is the bottleneck. Everyone has to be on the same page.
This cannot be the sole responsibility of the devs or small isolated teams. Scale is necessary for quality to emerge.