cdata

For the last year or so I have used Niri window manager exclusively. It's out there, even by Linux tiling window manager standards, and it's the most delightful window management experience I've ever had. I'm guessing there isn't anything remotely like it on Windows or MacOS.

As you say, there is incredible variety and innovation to be found in Linux desktops. The post would make more sense if it mainly concerned itself with the UX stagnation on MacOS IMO.

I can't speak for all, but many mature open source communities have explicit or ad-hoc reputation schemes that are used to triage contributions. A fresh account means starting over with zero reputation, which in turn means your contributions wait at the back of the line.

I strongly prefer a world where open models "win," that said...

I don't understand how we will sustain an ecosystem of open models like the one that exists today. My thoughts go down this path every time I try to put the pieces together:

- Many open models depend on high quality frontier models as a distillation input

- US closed frontier models drive China's open model strategy despite the business model for open models being somewhat fuzzy

- What is the business model that benefits from open weights, exactly? How do their vendors recoup infrastructure and training costs?

I would be grateful to be enlightened on this topic.

I'm all for framing the spirit this way, so long as we recognize that it was rather difficult to come up with the sum total of human creative output (noting also that approximately zero of the cost to produce it has been born by frontier labs so far).

That's very cool, although AFAICT my hacked-together non-product shares most of the same virtues. Can you upsell it to me a little?

If you are a Nix flake enjoyer, I whipped up something similar to this (Claude Code-only right now) based on microvm.nix: https://github.com/cdata/katsuobushi/tree/main/lib/sandbox

Some highlights:

- Drives Claude Code as a quasi-subagent via "Channels," which supports multi-turn interaction with the host and suspend / resume

- Declarative configuration in the flake of exactly what is copied into the VM (besides the local project), what DNS origins are allowed, etc.

- Shared access to host Nix store / object DB via overlay FS

- Syncs code with the host over a shared (local) Git remote (no worktree mess to manage)

- Devshell commands for quickly dropping into the guest and viewing status of all VMs etc.

- VMs start in a couple of seconds

Google contains multitudes. I don't doubt that your personal experience was the opposite end of the spectrum from mine.

I maintain that firing is an extreme resolution here (taking the claims at face value of course). Surely this employee has demonstrated the capacity to deliver impact and could be redirected if properly incentivized.

When I was there, there was no universal process; different teams had different processes based on their focus. There was a launch process for Google products and there was the open source office for approving open source code (which amounted to a rubber stamp in my experience; they mainly checked for boilerplate issues). As I said above, my team and others were allowed to publish at our discretion.

Even if this person violated that process, it is an extreme consequence to fire them for that infraction.

Simply put: all work published to Google repos is implicitly affiliated with Google.

In my team's case we would include expectation-setting language in the README.md so that it was clear that the project was not an officially-supported Google product.

As far as I know, no-one ever lost their job for failing to set that expectation. A gentle correction from legal was sufficient to set the world right.

I'm noticing a few commenters who work (worked?) at Google (inferred from comment history) who are critical of this person's actions.

First: you ought to disclose that information when commenting on a topic that relates in some way to your financial incentives.

Second: when I worked at Google under Chrome it was very common for individuals and teams to publish projects to open source repositories under Google-managed Github orgs. In fact, for most of my tenure ('15-'21) my team had license to publish to Github unilaterally (no approval from the open source office required). Great power comes with great responsibility, but also I would put to you that publishing an open source project like this one is part of Google's culture.

Firing seems an extreme consequence for the perceived damage of a long-tenured employee's behavior in this case.

I think the author is referring to enterprise customers. You aren't the "customer" in this case; you're the bait.

How do you know that the other models you are referring to aren't subsidized?

If our strategy to avoid "slavery" involves "normal people" taking the local-vs-managed choice seriously, we have already lost.

This choice is made for us. The deciding factors will be convenience and economics.

My sense is that just like Web 2.0 SaaS we are destined for servitude.

A better strategy is to play an assymetrical game IMO. Don't let your would-be master write the rules by which you play.

We are living in a ZIRP-like era where builders at the fastest pace layer have misattributed their velocity to exponential gains in model capability. In fact, they are surfing on decades of careful effort to build a robust foundation of highly reusable software libraries.

This strategy will seem to work really well until the economy that enabled that foundation to form is hollowed out. Then, there will be a reckoning (but we will have no choice but to march forth from there).

For everyone claiming that this is a trope of LLM text because it is a trope in the training data: how do you know this trope doesn't emerge during RLHF?

> What is reality? Obviously, no one can say, because it isn’t words. It isn’t material—that’s just an idea. It isn’t spiritual—that’s also an idea; a symbol. Reality is this: [GONG]. You see? We all know what reality is, but we can’t describe it. Just as we all know how to beat our hearts and shape our bones, but cannot say how it is done. - Alan Watts

https://organism.earth/library/document/art-of-meditation

> There's enough evidence for the counter argument that this is essentially misinformation.

> No evidence is shared

Help an open-minded critic out.

With respect, you were manipulated (either by founders or by investors). Startups leverage employees' pro-social leanings to make them feel good about a fundamentally anti-social enterprise.

> Man, I really feel like they want us to hate them

Man, I feel old.

The influence of cartoon foxes on business strategies in tech has a long history and cannot be overstated.

https://poignant.guide/book/chapter-3.html

This appears to be dated 2016. Did the preliminary results amount to anything?

I read a lot of AI generated code these days. It makes really bad mistakes (even when the nature of the change is a refactor). I've tried out a few different tools and methodologies, but I haven't escaped the need to babysit the "agent." If I stepped aside, it would create more work for me and others on the backend of our workflow.

I read anecdotes of teams that push through AI-driven changes as fast as possible with awe. Surely their AIs are no more capable than the ones I'm familiar with.

AI has pushed me to arrive at an epiphany: new technology is good if it helps me spend more time doing things that I enjoy doing; it's bad if it doesn't; it's worse if I end up spending more time doing things that I don't enjoy.

AI has increased the sheer volume of code we are producing per hour (and probably also the amount of energy spent per unit of code). But, it hasn't spared me or anyone I know the cost of testing, reviewing or refining that code.

Speaking for myself, writing code was always the most fun part of the job. I get a dopamine hit when CI is green, sure, but my heart sinks a bit every time I'm assigned to review a 5K+ loc mountain of AI slop (and it has been happening a lot lately).

Arguably the ad business is to blame. It created a perverse incentive. They maximized pay-to-play. The losers were authors that previously published on a passion budget (and would/could never pay for ads). AI is just the last nail in the coffin.

The foresters refusing to plant vast tracts of Norway Spruce aren't protecting themselves; quite the opposite, they’re falling behind. The gap is widening between states who've replaced mixed forests with a flawless mono-crop and those who haven't. The first states are growing forests faster, and harvesting a more desirable wood. The second group is... not.

Very cool. I'm always on the lookout for languages - especially beginner-friendly ones - that are good candidates for building Wasm Components (my use case is a fantasy console with Wasm game cartridges).

Have you given any thought to supporting Wasm Components as a build target?

Don't sleep on the Rust toolchain for this! You can have DOM-via-Wasm today, the tools generate all the glue for you and the overhead isn't that bad, either.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mikeal on a few occasions, but mainly I've benefited from his work over the years (initially via the JavaScript ecosystem, and later through the Protocol Labs community).

PouchDB was way ahead of its time, and I'm just now coming around to how crazy cool it was and is compared to most other tech in its space.

He made a great deal of positive impact on technical areas I care about. Rest in peace.

I entered the workforce in 08/09. At that time things seemed really dire. It felt to me like the whole house of cards was coming down, and I told myself that I would take any job that I could get.

I ultimately landed a job with an odd startup, eccentric founders, working out of an attic. In hindsight I couldn't have asked for a better start to my career. But, my expectations were rock bottom at the time.

Anyway, keep your mind open to all possibilities. You never know where an unlikely choice may take you. And, good luck!

I wonder if you could pair this with nix e.g.,:

    - shell: nix develop --command {0}
      run: ...

This is so close to validating my expectations that I'm almost skeptical of its veracity. I'm a regular Quest player, but I couldn't tell you how to launch Horizons if you held a gun to my head.

The leaders of corporate initiatives like this often tell themselves that they are building an ecosystem. They also seem convinced that an ecosystem will manifest from a highly curated, centrally developed silo that they have total control over. I guess it sort of worked for Facebook back in the day, but they were surfing on a lot of good will when it happened (and look at it now).

Things that are much closer to a metaverse than Horizons will ever be:

- Minecraft (Bedrock)

- VRChat

- Any popular multiplayer game that includes a free level editor

- The open web