Just think about consequences of that. Soon all public institutions (in addition to private companies such as Amazon) will be swamped with agents requesting them to act (refund packages, parking tickets etc.) and won't be able to keep up. It means, after a while they will stop reacting completely.
This is already happening. I've heard from people working in customer support that when in the past someone would call or send a short mail with a minor complaint they'd just find a solution quickly. Now they will send huge generated requests containing all kinds of legal trigger words that have mandatory processes following, e.g. personal data requests where all kinds of departments have to be queried first. Everything over some minor or non-existing issue.
These companies have goosed their profits via slippage and friction for customer support because they built the systems. Humans don’t have the time nor energy to fight Byzantine systems. Personal agents help me buy what I want without the upsells, cancel when I want without forgetting. They are a balancing power in the future but upsetting the corporate owned control. Therefore they will try to ban them.
We underestimate how much can change in 10 years, is all I can say. Maybe it’s fantasy land, I guess I am just currently living in a fantasy land because that’s my primary use case and it’s pretty effective now.
That could change but it could also get better. Meta announced today that shopping is the top use case for Muse, for items over $200 (more than anticipated). There is a ton of money for retailers who can make their numbers just by being a great agent experience. This honestly could become the primary UX to buy things online, just because current margins require user hostile behavior doesn’t mean they always will.
Have some optimism, it helps activate and create a better future rather than ceding it to the megacorps.
AI service from government doesn't sound all that much better.
Authentication is happening where I live via electronic ID, but once you authenticate you could still use agents on your behalf to compare messages / request public services.
I still envision a deterioration of quality of responses we will be getting. At least in cases where we really need help not something that should have been a button in the first place.
There has already been govt arms outsourcing the agent part to a vendor and it reduced hold times significantly without reducing quality (i.e. its possible)
I recently had to fight slop responses for months to get a simple bug report through on a public services website. Couple of years ago, I'd have received a "thank you" mail after a day, and the bug would've been fixed by the end of the week.
I am the opposite. I have CommitMono, Iosevka, Source Code Pro installed, but I always come back to Fira Code/Mono. At the same overall density of text, I find that I can skim through the text faster when the font is wider.
It's interesting how personal font choice (among many other things) is!
I'd like a reliable and inexpensive router with OpenWrt.
It's a difficult market though:
- Vast majority people use router provided by ISP.
- Some unhappy with ISP hardware quality buy whatever they find online (in my country usually TP-Link devices)
- Enthusiasts flash OpenWrt on cheap devices, home servers or buy MikroTik devices (or similar).
- Non enthusiasts, but caring about quality and support still have some good (but more expensive) devices to pick from like Fritz!Box in Europe
People wanting pre-flashed OpenWrt will be fraction of a fraction of overall market, so you'd need to charge a lot, which puts you in direct competition with options above.
I have followed that up with removing all algorithmical feeds from my life (I recommend News Feed Eradicator extension for that) and then setting phone to Focused mode from 9am till 2pm. It's been life changing.
I thought people at work would be mad, but everybody adjusted instantly.
Next up I'd like to pre-plan blocks of focused work - an idea I got from the Deep Work book.
I'd never go x86 again after owning an m1. I'd have replaced an x86 laptop 2 or 3 times by now (2020 m1). My last $3500 dell xps 13z before buying the m1 was absolutely horrible.
Very bad battery life. Maybe 8hrs of reading with wifi off, BT off and only low screen backlight. I need to charge it daily or every other day at best.
Physical buttons are comically bad and often don't register presses.
Built-in book reading app is slow, lacks some critical features and hangs in many epub books. I replaced it with KOreader which finally made the device usable.
It's a great screen size though (9" would be even better).
I got about the same - then I got a power-cover and it lasts far longer, it was a worthwhile investment. Although after about 2-years, the pogo-pins are wearing out and sometimes it doesn't connect/charge.
The physical buttons were also great - for the first year, then they started wearing out.
> Very bad battery life. Maybe 8hrs of reading with wifi off, BT off and only low screen backlight. I need to charge it daily or every other day at best.
This seems like a wildly different experience than I have with it. I don't read 8 hours per day, but typically 1-2 hours per day, and charge it every 2-3 weeks.
Yeah, I mean I'd be interested... but you've got wifi/BT off, so I don't even know what would be taking up much battery otherwise.
My light levels are probably 50/50 6% (at night in bed) and ~33% (other times). I did briefly buy a Kobo remote and found that having bluetooth on for that was very bad for my battery life.
I can't and don't want to maintain all software I use. I need to be picky.
There's a big difference between putting money or time into a community of builders and learning in the process (myself or growing others) and maintaining a vibe coded project. That's why I want to know right away which projects are vibe coded so that I don't put any effort into them.
You're free to apply different criteria to software you use, but we're talking about having information to make an informed decision here.
I am actually hoping this is a future where it does become possible. At least on top of what is generally more-than-good-enough (Linux kernel, base GNU system with the compiler toolchain, basic desktop environment...).
So I'd like to have fully reproducible builts for a dozen or two apps I use seemlessly integrated into my laptop and phone update mechanisms. And yes, my smart TV, router, ereader and note-taking apps...
However, infinite forking also means harder to benefit from others' improvements.
I'd definitely be interested in moving towards such setup if I could reliably and easily accomplish it. There are already people who vibe code all the tools they need.
Personally, so far I got best results by carefully selecting a small number of apps and devices with good track record and community around them (think Emacs that's been around for decades, but also KOReader, Linux, AntennaPod on Android and many others) and supporting those in various ways. I might vibe code an extension or config for the apps, but then I still understand what it does and why.
AI is yet to change that. I use LLMs daily at work, but software maintenance remains problematic. Producing stable software in unstable times is actually what pays my bills.
Edit: And yes - if you fork, upstreaming is a problem. It's unfair for original software maintainer to need to review, test and integrate vibe coded code.
> They claim first tap to pay will happen later this year.
Big if true. I guess the main problem is, would the banks from all over the world join in?
Fidesmo (https://fidesmo.com/consumer/fidesmo-pay/) has managed to sidestep this by integrating with Curve (https://www.curve.com/), which issues their own card and then charges your bank’s card from their end when you pay with theirs (tokenized and emulated by Fidesmo).
(Fidesmo also integrates with a whole bunch of banks directly, though mainly EU.)
Unfortunately NFC payments via bank app is not a thing in the US to my knowledge, and I've not heard of any plans to start doing it, but good for Europe.
It looks like a pretty bleak future to me ...