677: I Accept the Battery Costhttps://atp.fm/677
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm Recommend reading this blog by Mitchell Hashimoto (founder of Hashicorp which makes terraform etc.) on how to get better at using AI agents for coding: https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-ai-adoption-journey. He currently makes Ghostty which is a highly performant Mac native (using SwiftUI) terminal which can run these CLI agents very well. cc @marcoarment @siracusa @caseyliss
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm The bad news about so-called AI (and LLMs aren’t really AI) is already known. From the real bad things like pollution of people’s air, and loss of water, through job loses, stolen data, right down to pure greed causing the RAM apocalypse.
It can write some code or can hallucinate some plausible answers doesn’t counter the damage done.
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm @caseyliss You have to admit that Fahrenheit kind of sucks. Yes, every programmer can understand that water freezes at 2^5 °F but the boiling point? 212 °F 🤯 Come on, that is nowhere near 2^7 or 2^8
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@Colman So will you, and everyone else, eventually—for better AND for worse. (See also: electricity, automobiles, modern agriculture, manufactured goods of all kinds, etc.)
@siracusa radioactive nostrums, cocaine* in your soft drinks, nfts …
(* I’d look up the correct details but I’d have to wade through too much slop.)
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm I've lived in England all my life, and I agree with Casey about temperature units. Growing up in the '70s, Fahrenheit was still in common use. My parents had a new heating system fitted in 1977, and the thermostat used Fahrenheit. It has taken me years to get used to Celsius, and I still think in Fahrenheit.
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@caseyliss @jon I've wondered about this one. It occurred to me that I did not know where Fahrenheit got his scale. It is, in fact, based on human perception of our body temperature (huh! Casey has a point)
@sayrer @caseyliss @jon Obviously you haven’t been in Finland and in Finnish sauna <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna>. If the temperature in the sauna is less than 80°C the sauna is considered to be cold. So the typical temperature range is 80°–100°C and hot sauna is over 100°C.
Lately we have had outside temperatures from -35°C to –10°C in Finland. So, Celsius temperature scale is much better. Q.E.D. -
@Colman So will you, and everyone else, eventually—for better AND for worse. (See also: electricity, automobiles, modern agriculture, manufactured goods of all kinds, etc.)
@siracusa i do not like the comparison with electricity etc i must say.. those provide huge benefits for everyone. AI uses so much power and stolen material to provide benefits for a relatively small group of the population. Electricity made us all beter and more equal, AI is making it worse.
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677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm I'm not sure we are thinking through the long term impacts of "agentic" AI writing software.
None of these tools make money: Claude Code loses money at $20/month and $100/month. What happens when they start charging what it takes to show a profit margin?
I think these tools work when used by otherwise experienced programmers - there's a big risk that it leads to fewer good software engineers and then we have a lot of obtuse machine written code (often written in a language that the writer of claude.md may not know).
it's all fine for a low stakes dashboard, it seems fraught for production.
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@sayrer @caseyliss @jon Obviously you haven’t been in Finland and in Finnish sauna <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna>. If the temperature in the sauna is less than 80°C the sauna is considered to be cold. So the typical temperature range is 80°–100°C and hot sauna is over 100°C.
Lately we have had outside temperatures from -35°C to –10°C in Finland. So, Celsius temperature scale is much better. Q.E.D.@aahonen @caseyliss @jon oh boy, here we go.
Firstly, I have been there / done that, but it's been a while, and only around Helsinki. Celsius is nice for heating up water like that (Casey said for cooking, but same idea). Celsius is not so good for the outside. In Fahrenheit, 0 is about -18. That's where you better be careful. Above that, just wear a coat and gloves. -
677: I Accept the Battery Cost
https://atp.fm/677If you really don’t like AI, we have some bad news for you.
@atpfm Google Maps however is much worse than Waze for incident reports, aka for speed traps, items in the road, etc. Over the years the teams merged, and Google Maps in theory got more of that, but when testing both side by side Waze continues to report drastically more in this has always been the biggest benefit of Waze. Apple Maps interface blows both away for an Apple user, but as you noted lacks the data Google has.
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@atpfm Google Maps however is much worse than Waze for incident reports, aka for speed traps, items in the road, etc. Over the years the teams merged, and Google Maps in theory got more of that, but when testing both side by side Waze continues to report drastically more in this has always been the biggest benefit of Waze. Apple Maps interface blows both away for an Apple user, but as you noted lacks the data Google has.
@atpfm Waze interface while the tiles are dated, as more Applely notably in CarPlay where most will interact with it. Google interface is still very much Android. So I still find myself jumping between the three. Hopefully eventually all traffic incidents from Waze show up in Google, and the UI gets a bit more refined, then could see myself using that fully even if far less enjoyable than Apple Maps, the other benefits would probably make it worth it.
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@atpfm I'm not sure we are thinking through the long term impacts of "agentic" AI writing software.
None of these tools make money: Claude Code loses money at $20/month and $100/month. What happens when they start charging what it takes to show a profit margin?
I think these tools work when used by otherwise experienced programmers - there's a big risk that it leads to fewer good software engineers and then we have a lot of obtuse machine written code (often written in a language that the writer of claude.md may not know).
it's all fine for a low stakes dashboard, it seems fraught for production.
@marcoshuerta I agree with all of this! Uber is a similar recent example: "Lose money until we've destroyed enough of the existing market that we can start charging higher prices and customers have nowhere left to turn."
The relative timing of the bubble-pop (or even more mild "consolidation") vs. the rate at which these tools improve and we learn how to use them well will probably make a big difference in how this goes.
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@siracusa i do not like the comparison with electricity etc i must say.. those provide huge benefits for everyone. AI uses so much power and stolen material to provide benefits for a relatively small group of the population. Electricity made us all beter and more equal, AI is making it worse.
@vmachiel I think your opinion of electricity would have been very similar to your opinion of AI had you lived during its dawn! Electricity initially "provided benefits for a relatively small group of the population" while its generation poisoned the air and polluted the water, all of which affected the masses way more than the elites. Oh, and eventually…climate change.
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@vmachiel I think your opinion of electricity would have been very similar to your opinion of AI had you lived during its dawn! Electricity initially "provided benefits for a relatively small group of the population" while its generation poisoned the air and polluted the water, all of which affected the masses way more than the elites. Oh, and eventually…climate change.
@siracusa but adding AI on top of our current energy needs is just irresponsible. At this point. Even without AI we are damaging the planet beyond repair. We are burning to planet to generate fake narratives.
Plus we didn’t steal everyone’s stuff to make electricity. And electricity doesn’t lie.
AI is a curiousity, not a necessity for a decent life like electricity is. You want to use it, but the whole ethical justification is flimsy. And AI is not inevitable
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@siracusa but adding AI on top of our current energy needs is just irresponsible. At this point. Even without AI we are damaging the planet beyond repair. We are burning to planet to generate fake narratives.
Plus we didn’t steal everyone’s stuff to make electricity. And electricity doesn’t lie.
AI is a curiousity, not a necessity for a decent life like electricity is. You want to use it, but the whole ethical justification is flimsy. And AI is not inevitable
@vmachiel Electricity was also initially seen as "a curiosity, not a necessity." It was also not seen by everyone as "inevitable." Hindsight is 20/20.
As for "stealing," we have many precedents, both good and bad, in this area, from the printing press to player pianos to VCRs to fonts to APIs. Sometimes we come up with a pretty OK system, and sometimes we end up making things worse. But the basic questions of ownership and compensation in the face of new tech is very old and recurring.
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@vmachiel Electricity was also initially seen as "a curiosity, not a necessity." It was also not seen by everyone as "inevitable." Hindsight is 20/20.
As for "stealing," we have many precedents, both good and bad, in this area, from the printing press to player pianos to VCRs to fonts to APIs. Sometimes we come up with a pretty OK system, and sometimes we end up making things worse. But the basic questions of ownership and compensation in the face of new tech is very old and recurring.
@vmachiel And as for the environmental impact of AI's energy usage, despite the fact that it is somewhat overblown as a percentage of total human energy use, it surely will be a short-term problem. And I'd argue that crypto mining (a much more clearcut case of harm with little practical use) shows we are not good at dealing with things like this. But advances in *other* tech (renewable energy) does give me some hope.
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@vmachiel And as for the environmental impact of AI's energy usage, despite the fact that it is somewhat overblown as a percentage of total human energy use, it surely will be a short-term problem. And I'd argue that crypto mining (a much more clearcut case of harm with little practical use) shows we are not good at dealing with things like this. But advances in *other* tech (renewable energy) does give me some hope.
@siracusa I just wish we spend those energy gains on useful stuff, not making fake videos to mislead boomers
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@siracusa I just wish we spend those energy gains on useful stuff, not making fake videos to mislead boomers
@vmachiel Oh, and as for things stolen for electricity specifically, we stole a ton stuff for the resources used to generate power: people’s land, resources, freedom, and lives!
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@vmachiel Oh, and as for things stolen for electricity specifically, we stole a ton stuff for the resources used to generate power: people’s land, resources, freedom, and lives!
@siracusa all this is true.. and it doesn’t excuse anything about AI imo. Just because it was true for electricity, doesn’t mean we should just plow ahead with AI…
