Swizec

> Real ones are oncall for the systems they build.

Yes! This is devops, thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Coincidentally I’ve found putting engineers oncall for their stuff really does wonders to ensure they check their AI agents’ code and know how it works.

> 'a glass of wine a day is healthy' because of antioxidants... or something. Except it isn't, at all

Also, in America, the kind of people who have a glass of wine a day (but not more) strongly correlate with those who can afford healthcare.

Similar for mediterranean diets. Turns out it’s the universal healthcare available in all the mediterranean countries both on the european and the african sides.

> But phones still get bigger

Yep I'm sad about this too. Consumers want big screen. Especially when a phone is their primary, often only, computing device

> Well isn't it telling that Apple hasn't focused on thinner and lighter than what is currently available for 5 years now?

Could it be that miniaturization has reached a local maximum of what current technology can support and we simply can't make devices that are thinner and lighter while preserving battery life and computing power?

Or maybe they got thin enough so other factors now outweigh thinness. Notice how laptop batteries used to last 2 hours and now they go 8h and more.

If you can make a device 1cm thinner and keep the same 2 hours of battery life, worth it. But if a 10mm device lasts 2 hours and a 12mm lasts 6 hours, obviously 12mm is the better choice.

Notice that phones continue to get thinner. Except around the camera because better photos outweigh smaller camera.

Slovenian: Dežuje.

One word (rains) is the full sentence. Because nothing else needs to be said.

> So frameworks of the future should be focused on constraining an agent to develop properly, or designing what is and is not permitted.

Frameworks have always done this. Make it easy to do the right thing, add friction to doing the wrong things. Swapping s/programmers/agents/ doesn't make this some brand new earth shattering idea.

If anything agents make the job of designing frameworks or leading architecture easier because they at least have the patience to read the docs even if they don't always have the working memory to follow it all. As opposed to most humans who both don't have the working memory and don't even bother to read.

> Why? If you can live 500 years just focus 20 years on compound interest hard, then retire for 400 years?

The first version of this technology will only be available to billionaires. So if you reach 70 when it’s invented and are not a billionaire, you’ll never get to try the 500 years of compounding trick

We’re likely to see this stuff get invented in our lifetimes (I’m 38), maybe practical, but we’re def all too old to see it become widely available.

Then again, life extension will not be a singular technology. You could argue antibiotics and vaccines were the first big step and those became affordable within a few decades of invention

> has any of that led to an interesting conversation? An exchange of information with other humans? Or at least taken something dull out of the way so the actual interesting conversation can take place?

Yes! Lots.

It’s kinda similar to the concept that money doesn’t buy happiness, it buys time to do the things and see people who make you happy. Offloading drudgery to computers buys time to do the human stuff

For example: you can have a much more invigorating discussion with a coworker if every iteration takes 2 minutes instead of 2 hours. Moves from an async “let’s schedule a followup” to a lively real time collaboration

Or the budgets example, we could have a conversation about values and priorities because chatgpt made me a UI that let us drag sliders around and see the impact of our decisions in real-time.

> Isn't that like saying that guns may be legal but later use of those guns may not be?

Guns are legal but murder is not, so ... yes?

It makes sense to me that recording public activity may be legal but publishing those videos would not be (for example name-and-likeness copyrights).

Or that you'd need a warrant to search those videos and issuing a warrant comes with a one-time key that decrypts the search parameters you specified in advance to get the warrant.

> even if or especially if you've converged on "I don't care much about AI"

I don't care much about AI but hot damn it makes working on the things I do care about easier.

We use it a lot at work (soft eng) and my job has slowly morphed into "Okay how do we continue shipping sane software when we effectively 10x'd our org size in six months as agents became reliable?". That has been pretty fun. I care about creating good software.

And I care about budgeting and finance projections for home finances, especially as a new baby entered the room. But I am very bad at spreadsheet fiddling. AI has been super helpful in doing the fiddling so I can focus on the thinking.

edit to add another example: I really care about managing my team and keeping us effective, but I hate playing ticket monkey. Offloading basic ticket management (agent, make me a ticket; take this thread and create 3 tickets; respond back when tickets are done; etc) to an agent has been great

> Web dev as a career is not dead, or dying, but I predict that A LOT of the people that would make those $0 - $10k sites are going to have a tough time ahead.

Not even the first time this happened. When I was in high school you could make great money building websites for small businesses that nowadays just have an Instagram account and no website. The number of CMSes I've built in my career is too damn high

> Today it would just be screens on a wall, industrial carpet floor, drop-tile ceiling with LED lights, a few Steelcase cubicles for the operators and little else.

Or do we only look at old things that were pretty? I bet in 100 years nobody is going to look at our drab utilitarian offices, they’re gonna share photos of the beautiful offices with great interior design (they exist) and wonder why they don’t build them like that anymore.

> short period from which you matured and and were able to appreciate adulthood

My high school and early college years were pretty rough (depression, suicidal, some substance abuse (couldn't access anything super serious)), but ho boy do I miss having time to casually build a compiler over a week of school holidays, spending all my afternoons fiddling with weird little coding things, and having zero concerns about any of it being fit for purpose or even useful and basicaly never feeling tired.

Being an adult is great but every year brings more accumulated responsibilities and that part kinda sucks. The days where I can get sucked into something interesting and forget time exists are becoming fewer and fewer. And the space of things that feel new and interesting diminishes surprisingly quickly too. The novelty wears off the more things you learn about