Code will never go away. Code was there before computer hardware and it will always be there. Code is (almost?) all of computation theory so unless we throw computers away, we shall always use code.
They're not suggesting that code will go away, but rather that it will be abstracted beneath an LLM interface, so that writing code in the future will be like writing assembly today: some people do it for fun or niche reasons, but otherwise it's not necessary, and most developers can't do it.
Whether that happens or not is a different question, but I believe that's what they're suggesting.
Code is formal and there are basic axioms that grounds its semantic. You can build great constructs on top of those semantics, but you can’t strip away their formality without the whole thing being meaningless. And if you can formalize a statement well enough to remove all ambiguity, then it will turn into code.
Programming is taking ambiguous specs and turning them into formal programs. It’s clerical work, taking each terms of the specs and each statements, ensuring that they have a single definition and then write that definition with a programming language. The hard work here is finding that definition and ensuring that it’s singular across the specs.
Software Engineering is ensuring that programming is sustainable. Specs rarely stay static and are often full of unknowns. So you research those unknowns and try to keep the cost of changing the code (to match the new version of the specs) low. The former is where I spend the majority of my time. The latter is why I write code that not necessary right now or in a way that doesn’t matter to the computer so that I can be flexible in the future.
While both activities are closely related, they’re not the same. Using LLM to formalize statements is gambling. And if your statement is already formal, what you want is a DSL or a library. Using LLM for research can help, but mostly as a stepping stone for the real research (to eliminate hallucinations).
The funny thing is that a lot of Altman's reputation has come from other VCs and Valley-types taking about him in a way they consider positive. Every quote about Altman from another VC is like, "Altman, what a great leader. He's absolutely ruthless, he'll do anything to win: lie, cheat, steal, kill. He has what it takes to succeed in this business."
They say this because in their circles it's a compliment, and nobody ever stopped to consider how the general public might react to it, especially if you claim you'll shortly be the one in charge of world-reshaping technology.
> The funny thing is that a lot of Altman's reputation has come from other VCs and Valley-types taking about him in a way they consider positive. Every quote about Altman from another VC is like, "Altman, what a great leader. He's absolutely ruthless, he'll do anything to win: lie, cheat, steal, kill. He has what it takes to succeed in this business."
That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
To be clear, I don’t think OpenAI could have raised what it raised as quickly as it did without him. But with the benefit of hindsight, Microsoft should have let the safety board fire him.
> That he’s a liability to OpenAI, which is slowly coming around to the realization that it would be worth more without him.
I'm curious what you're basing this on. Are you aware of any grumblings on the inside? From the outside it appears no different than before largely because it seems everybody knew he was a slippery dude anyways, but they tolerated it because he was slippery in ways that were profitable.
I also think he was prescient in his unquenching thirst for compute. Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute.
Like, it's pretty likely that Claude's recent problems are due to insufficient compute. With 9's (and resultant loss in goodwill) comparable to GitHub, I actually have doubts they will be able to hit their projected ARR. OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans.
> Despite Anthropic possibly having a better product I think OpenAI will prevail simply because he's gone to extreme (sometimes diabolical, cf that DRAM deal) extents in ensuring they have enough compute
Anthropic is currently raising tens of billions of dollars at a favourable valuation to fund infrastructure needs. From a shareholder perspective, that beats raising the capital ahead of demand.
> OpenAI could win simply by dint of having capacity, which can be attributed to Altman's shenanigans
If OpenAI is able to deny compute to Anthropic, yes. I'm not seeing any sign that OpenAI will be able to lock Anthropic out of the tech giants' clouds.
True, but all the hyperscalers and neoclouds have been severely capacity crunched for multiple quarters and have a backlog of a trillion+ dollars. So even if Anthropic wants capacity it's going to be a) hard to come by (like Dario said on Dwarkesh, 2 - 3 year lead times) and b) even more expensive because of the scarcity and intense competition. OpenAI won't need to lock Anthropic out if they've already locked in the future capacity (presumably at much more favorable rates) in advance.
(That said, I'm not sure what the Stargate deal falling through means.)
They is doing a lot of work in your sentence. Almost the entire employee population signed a public letter of support with names attached in the middle of the drama.
> the US media incessant coverage of a private company’s business matter of firing someone as if it was an unheard of
A CEO getting fired, not by the for-profit company's Board, but by a board with a public mission, right after said company released a groundbreaking product that captured the popular imagination and then turned that into a multibillion dollar deal with Microsoft (which in turn parlayed into trillions of dollars of wealth across the economy), is absolutely news.
Not one worth 4-5 days of coverage as the news media helps sane wash the situation. Pouring over every development as if the end result mattered. OpenAI was already showing signs of abandoning their mission so the news reports weren’t about that. They were about publicizing the situation and turning the tide against the ousters. It was well done but it was not GOOD reporting or GOOD news coverage or even IMPORTANT to cover. We all agree on this and no other people get’s that kind of treatment unless you are wealthy.
You’re also ignoring the biggest aspect: that these employees would never do that for the actual people doing the real work. The employees got played, the public got played, the media got played.
> which in turn parlayed into trillions of dollars of wealth across the economy
This is a fucking laugh. Where’s my and the rest of the economic workers check? Surely there’s trillions of dollars of wealth for all the economic workers if it was truly beneficial. More like stealing trillions of dollars from the working classes via the economy.
No instead things have sky rocketed in cost due to AI CEOs sucking up all the money investing it in…datacenters and raising energy costs for everyone which has a downstream effect of making plenty more expensive while suppressing wages.
This term has taken the cultural place of FUD. I’m starting to see it as another thought-terminating cliche. Like yes, people should be trying to understand what happened in those days.
> Where’s my and the rest of the economic workers check
I never made any claims around how it’s distributed. The fact that this wealth exists, and is sprouting up in multiple sectors, is indisputable. (Whether it’s paper wealth is another question. But people are cashing in massively and across the economy, albeit outside jobs that code.)
> Like yes, people should be trying to understand what happened in those days.
Not really when the end result is the same in the grander picture. Helping save Altman does ZERO for LLMs. There is always another douche bag rich a-hole that will do what he was doing. That’s why there are multiple federally contracted LLM companies. And Altman’s is often considered worse than the competition. Why is it important to understand what happened during those days? Enlighten me.
The creepy one where they all simultaneously posted the same mantra to Twitter like a cult gathering? Yeah that definitely reassured me of Altman's leadership and good intentions.
I don't know, but I also think people are easy to jump into popular rhetorics about internet personalities in the tech space without due diligence. It used to not be such a problem on hn but it seems like its bled here too. Sam Altman might be a bad guy, might be good, but after everyone misrepresented the military contract argument its tough for me to buy into the hate.
Yeah, probably if you asked me for "Top 3 countries for FOSS in Europe" I'd pretty much say France, Germany and Netherlands, hence me saying "is one of the ones" :) Compared to the rest of the countries, those three probably do way more than all the rest together.
NLnet (the foundation) is Dutch, but as far as I know NLnet Labs (which does the work and spends the money) is at least partially funded by Germany (through the Sovereign Tech Fund).
I don't have the numbers at hand and cannot dig them up right now. If anyone knows the extent of participation of each country that'd be definitely interesting for others too.
I think NLnet Labs is indeed like 50% funded through German Sovereign Tech Fund, but most of NLnet + the rest of NLnet Labs is funded via EU project funds or other public programs. I don't think NLnet receives anything at all from the Dutch government AFAIK, and NLnet Labs gets tiny amount of funds via Dutch SIDN subsidy I guess, but that's pretty much it.
This is all (tried to) rememberings from meetings in 2024 sometime, so could be different today.
Funding for NLnet Labs is largely from paying customers for development of DNS software.
NLnet funds development of the full stack of communication technologies from chip design to office suites. Funding for NLnet comes from public institutions, private companies and citizens.
There's been a spat between some people on X, about how few engineers inside Google want to work with Gemini, given that it apparently is not great with code, and they would rather use Claude.
This same sentiment is there within Deepmind, except they have more power it seems. Perhaps Google is hedging their bet?
Yeah I think so too. I'm just wondering if the people on software are still the right people. Mac OS has quite a few regressions, and seems to just chug along instead of really using the power of the chips, or massively improving file i/o. Apple still has a chance to do some cool stuff with AI integrations, but they have had interesting local models 3 years ago and apparently nowhere, or no vision, to use it. We're all clapping for Craig Federighi's jokes but I have no idea if he is a great manager or a great presenter.
I think Liquid Glass is an abomination and usability nightmare, but they're doubling down on it now, so that's that I guess.
Nahh, they're backing off liquid glass as fast as they can without just rolling back to macOS 15... Tons of people inside apple hate it, and have been very critical of the design leadership. Alan Dye was the design king behind liquid glass, and he was pushed out (or just left, stories vary). His replacement, Stephen Lemay, is widely praised by the folks who hate liquid glass.
iOS 27 and macOS 27 in June will probably have Liquid glass turned back down to 6 or 7, and will at least remove some of the most glaring usability issues.
I think it's fair to say there are plenty of people in Apple's leadership that would have had the authority to tell Alan Dye "no".
They didn't. I think it's fair to say that the company leadership likes liquid glass.
The reaction to it was about as divided when they presented it as it is now. If they thought the backlash warranted a change in direction they could have pulled it before it ever made it to users in the fall, like they did with numerous attempts at shipping AI features.
A major reversal in the next version would make a lot of people look really really bad.
Earlier than I expected. Seeing that Johny Srouji got promoted as well, this reshuffle might have been a way to make sure he stays for a few more years as well?
Yeah, I was tracking this when it was first announced and they were very adamant that there was no longer any excuse for a vendor to not integrate age checks because they had now released this.
It's not "ready for deployment". "the technology is ready and will soon be available for citizens to use"
Member states will either fork or redevelop their own apps around the proof-of-concept app. The app on Github that was "hacked" will never be deployed directly and that was never the plan either.
So far, this whole project has been an excellent way to gauge news outlets on whether they're trying to report the news or are just trying to win clicks through FUD and outrage. Most of them don't seem to know what they're writing about when they report about flaws and problems.
Because so many people are being ground down. You have time to organize something, instead of making rent? Well now you have to fight to even get your voting rights back, that you were silently stripped off because of your skin color and demographic, or social status. Then you need to see if you can ever get the gerrymandered border back to where it should be so the other party will ever have a chance at winning in your area, instead of losing by default. Pretty sure the next election is only about two swing-states again.
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