DevDave

I framed the "AI" craze as parallel to self checkout kiosks. They were sold as the future and a way of getting rid of those pesky human workers. Reality is they're an open wound on the company. Unfortunately it will cost more money to get rid of them so they're still there.

That's the difference with AI currently. Cancel your subscription, toggle it to off in your IDE, and its gone. I believe this is why they're trying to push "AI" everywhere, hoping it will stick somewhere.

Otherwise I liked a well manged agile development process. Heck of a lot less stressful than water fall.

edit: fax spalling erwor

It's kinda insane to frame OpenAI as remotely equal to Apple with "two of the world's biggest tech companies".

Apple has multiple profitable revenue streams, hundreds of physical stores, that giant donut super villain headquarters, they basically own multiple factory towns in Asia, and on top of it they have an ocean of capital hidden somewhere for a "rainy century" scenario. I think their only consistent loss leader is AppleTv, right?

OpenAI's business is generating something embarrassing like $100 for every $1000 spent (just random exaggerated numbers as sarcasm).

This outrageously dishonest narrative is being pushed constantly everywhere and I am more than just sick of it.

Adjacent comment: Using the electrician analogy, AI is like one of those really cool gadgets you see on Temu that don't actually do half of what they claim and will probably burn the building down. Another analogy is AI are like Roomba's: they kinda work, take forever to finish, clog up easily, and are guaranteed to miss a lot of stuff.

I was a software consultant with "architect"* experience for the last 10 years of my career or whatever you want to call it. 50~80% of my job was basically saying the same thing their in house developers were saying. Maybe the other half was pushing tech stack upgrades (CVS -> SVN -> Git/Perforce ), (CGI to basically anything else), etc etc. My least favorite role was being a hatchet man, eg one of the Bobs from office space.

Professionally I used a shit ton of analogies and metaphors. Absolute most effective was comparing new feature development to an electrician adding a new light or receptacle. You may find you need to upgrade the service panel (database or other services), it can take time to pull new lines and doing so can interfere with existing equipment. Finally you can only pull so many new cables through an existing building before you need to do necessary cleanups and rearrangements (eg refactoring). Failing to do so may lead to brown outs (crashes) or the entire building catching on fire (eg Microsoft Dumpster Fire 11). Last bit is you can help explain the complexity of a feature as top floor, mid level, or basement (eg "soonish").

* Architect title/role was something I would try my best to bury. The companies that needed an Architect only figure that out when they discover MS Access DB isn't going to work /s but only a little bit. Also what the fuck is an "Architect", its not like any of our titles have any national standards.

This video is kind of triggering my deep seated hatred of MBA's but if you ever want to explain to the normies what your job is like, "The Expert" https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg is perfect.

The people actively using AI are not an issue of lacking education on how bad it is. Just a quick example is of an upper management asshole who absolutely "loves" AI. Reality is they shit out slop but their direct reports undo the damage to protect their jobs. I know of more than a few developers in a tough spot where they are credit card slaves so work invisible overtime to compensate. They did this to themselves and are trapped in AI hell.

Someone I know just entered protected status (12 months to retirement) after two years of their employer threatening to replace them with AI. Originally they thought about giving a fuck but are now just watching the clock. They're a senior accountant that among other super powers has memorized massive sections of the US tax code. According them, when their employer switches over to AI, its is going to be an incomprehensible disaster while being equally hilarious to have a front row seat to watch as it plays.

I am not sure it's that easy.

Me too

Anyone know of a jail break for Tesla's PowerWall?

My understanding is the battery/inverter will go into something like safe mode after a certain number of days of not being able to call home. I haven't been able to confirm or deny this but I do know Tesla doesn't like you interacting with the battery directly.

... with a flannel like that, the first guy could be Canadian for all we know though the symbols in the back ground make we wonder if perhaps Pakistani-Canadian?

There is a premade meal delivery service with possibly the best product right now on the market. Unfortunately after I did a deep dive on them to figure out why their customer service sucked so much, I found the head of their "customer experience" had liked/heart emoji'd these two AI companies.

After telling my experience to another dev, they noticed an advert by an AI company boasting how they provided an service for them.

For tech savy people, the heart of the problem is because they used the user email address as the primary key in multiple places. So not only a varchar primary key but a natural one to boot! Not even a drop in the bucket but they lost ~10K USD of revenue for what should have been a 1 minute begin; update... SQL command by the DBA. Though the large amounts of AI makes me think they fucked themselves on that too. Another reason I suspect that; they had a data breach at the start of the month but haven't made a public statement or warned their customers. Might not even know, might not know how it happened, and how much was stolen.

Near the bottom of the list of the saddest things I saw last year was a video clip of an "every day" major Musk fanboy coming to terms that their hero was a wackjob drug addict. It looked like Musk had taken a bit too much MDMA, Ketamine, or some amount of both as he was having these spastic episodes of body shakes and eye rolls during the middle of the interview. Mysteriously difficult to find the video clip now.