This really gets to my beef with AI, btw.
AI should be fun! New tools should be fun. And can be lots of fun and produce a lot of value, BUT
Two problems:
Theft
and Enshittification
"Providing shareholder value is a capitalist’s euphemism for transferring power from labour to capital."
Anything that contradicts our ideas of ourselves is a real bear to take in
The whole thread is worth reading.
Those of us who were in the trenches at Block in the past 6mo have so, so much to process about what has happened there. A real thing truly hove into view this past year, but it felt like our executive class did not see it with rational clarity.
This is the point. If your vaunted trillion-dollar military can't get through a few days of airstrikes because you've consolidated the industrial base so badly, then you don't have a trillion-dollar military, you just have contractors in No. Virginia getting rich
Jesse Singal: “I don’t understand why all these experts with degrees keep disagreeing with me. So demoralizing. What could the explanation be??”
The truth, it burns
Good thread. OSS at most companies is really just a handful of dedicated individuals that the company loves to advertise but constantly threatens
No idea! Legally, this is the end of the road for this specific case. Not sure what else is going on
Petition for write of certiorari denied in Thaler vs Perlmutter.
This means that AI generated works continue to be ineligible for copyright.
www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docke...
Square literally does not know or care about any of this. No reason to participate.
Many projects are effectively maintained outside the company now, and those engineers may choose to fork simply as a way to indicate that Block is not involved.
coffee tea
My CEO told me efficiency keeps eating his companies so I asked how many companies he has and he said he just goes to the VCs and gets a new company afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just feeding startups to efficiency and then his daughter started crying
Ugh, the truth. It burns
WorkManager does indeed render you vulnerable to these problems. As does any persistent storage
God, I love the wire protocol problem
I'm like a moth flying into that flame
You are such a force of nature. I hope we work together again!
Ugh
You are an excellent colleague
Very sad it had to end like this. The Cash Android team and my design systems team was really special and I'm going to miss everyone.
My big lesson for the week is: don't ask the monkey's paw for a free laptop
You would have to be pretty damned sure that those engineers are incapable of building anything that might steal your business to cut loose that much talent in one go.
Estimates are that 70% of Block engineering was laid off today.
I suspect it will be a different watershed moment: Jack has just torpedoed Square and Cash App, and when real people start losing real money as a result this will become the horror story that people point to when warning of the limits of AI driven coding.
He's been trying to run the company like it's a startup.
It's very much not a startup. And while I could see a case for some fat trimming, he has far more value to lose than he seems to understand. And he is giving his ear to very bad counsel on how much value he will lose with this move.
i dont know if its always been like this but among the elites theres just no sense of responsibility to be good stewards of the society thats given them everything
Truly was the best job for a good long minute there.
Almost all of Cash Mobile Engineering was laid off today.
None of us have any clue what their rubric was for choosing who stayed and who went, but whatever it was, I'm on the job market again!
It does show me a nice dynamic progress display now, which is very useful because I can sit and stare at it, asking myself "What the hell are you doing that is taking so long"
Pleased to report that my vibe coded jujutsu stacked PR github pusher really sucks ass and is slow as balls
I mean it was zac's idea
What is my involvement with Metro?
I advocate vigorously for things like naming the proposal system "MEEPs"
