arthurfirst

Is this an article from 1997?

It makes a lot of people dumber -- they doom scroll, gossip, play childrens games, and on the high end post cat memes.

But it's a tool like any other and the results depend on the user.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear it is (was) the Library of Alexandria. The knowledge of the world unfiltered without gate keeper trolls deciding what you can see and learn.

Getting on the internet in 1993 completely changed my life. Linux changed my life and without the internet there is no Linux. Before Linux you could not get a UNIX distro for less than $1000 USD which was a lot of money for me back then.

Before Linux and Internet all that was available to consumers outside of big institutions was Windoze and Apple was already on life support. The internet and Linux opened an entire world to me and I never looked back. Everyone at the time said I was wasting my time and should be doing an MCSE LOL but those are people in the 90%... they will NEVER get it.

Fast forward 4 years later I'm working in startups and leading dev teams and that was almost 30 years ago.

I can imagine what my life would have been without the internet and I prefer how things worked out.

So it did not make me dumber... but the filtered nannied corporate approved internet of 2026 -- that probably just makes anyone dumber.

Imagine thinking there is an option but to kiss the ring and still be allowed to play or that there are even two sides.

Imaging thinking it even matters what Tim cook or Trump do. Imagine thinking Tim Cook is anything but a stand in book keeper and stock promoter. Imagine thinking Trump is anything but a heel turn pro wrestler. Trump is bunkem for the masses and Tim Cook is irrelevant and a follower.

Steve was a an idea guy. Tim was a seeker of efficiencies and consensus -- boring and common.

I didn't buy one apple product during Tim's tenure but I still have my IIe and several old Macs converted to Linux.

Genius is often regarded as brutish or mean by lesser people. Your feelings on it do not matter.

Just like MCP is for Desktop users and useless otherwise -- GUIs are a solution to a created problem.. of users not being able to read and write very well because they don't practice.

Terminal, coding, and even prompt writing skills are language skills.

If you cannot use a terminal properly you are basically an appliance user. Like a toaster operator.

TUIs are not for everyone by design.

If you are using linux and cannot use a console to code...

The original software for the ISS (space station) was stored on a single floppy disk. Not sure about density but one of the engineers told me.

your comment made me smile like a grandpa :)

Also lighten up! oh... damn black hole...

it's already a black hole for funding

Windows 98 did the same for me

In Canada the police are pretty lazy and it's mostly due to who they hire, and also a LOT of political garbage as it's a federal police force throughout the country in most cases -- run from Ottawa.

Not much real police work happening any more unless you criticize the government or do something they can use as a reason to grow their budgets or otherwise further political agendas.

If there is a video of a crime they do like that...easy! Also they can show it to media for props.

Lazy cops just love centralized 'social' media and the fools who post their lives on it for them to snoop through.

Force multiplier and power projector.

Requires ammo (tokens) which can be expensive.

Requires good aim to hit the target.

Requires practice to get good aim.

Dangerous in the hands of the unskilled (like most instruments or tools).

Solution looking for a problem is why. No value is why.

Breaks NAT privacy and the extensions do not do enough.

Top down pushed solution NOBODY WANTS.

I have a claude max subscription and a gemini pro sub and I exclusively use them on the cli. When I run out of claude max each week I switch over to gemini and the results have been pretty impressive -- I did not want to like it but credit where credit is due to google.

Like the OP others I didn't use the API for gemini and it was not obvious how to do that -- that said it's not cost effective to develop without a Sub vs on API pay-as-you-go, so i do no know why you would? Sure you need API for any applications with built-in LLM features, but not for developing in the LLM assisted CLI tools.

I think the issue with cli tools for many is you need to be competent with cli like a an actual nix user not Mac first user etc. Personally I have over 30 years of daily shell use and a sysadmin and developer. I started with korn and csh and then every one you can think of since.

For me any sort of a GUI slows me down so much it's not feasible. To say nothing of the physical aliments associated with excessive mousing.

Having put approaching thousands of hours working with LLM coding tools so far, for me claude-code is the best, gemini is very close and might have a better interface, and codex is unusable and fights me the whole time.

I'll play the devils advocate a bit:

IP is a form of thought control... Is that ethical?

Who holds who accountable? Is the one doing the holding accountable?

Like Stalin said -- it's not the votes that count but who counts the votes.

Bottom line is you are always required to accept someone's version of ethical -- whether it's obvious or not.