I actually noticed the same. Having it work on Mithril.js instead of React seems (I know it's all just kind of hearsay) to generate a lot cleaner code. Maybe it's just because I know and like Mithril better, but also is likely because of the project ethos and it's being used by people who really want to use Mithril in the wild. I've seen the same for other slightly more exotic stacks like bottle vs flask, and telling it to generate Scala or Erlang.
That makes sense. There's less training data but it is better training data. LLMs were trained on really bad pandas code, so they're really really good at generating bad pandas. Elixer, there's less of it, but what there is, is higher quality, so then what it outputs is off higher quality too.
I see you've never actually owned or worked on a German car, especially in relation to even modest Japanese models. Maybe they were a little nicer inside in the 80s and maybe 90s, but "German car" and frankly "European make" is basically synonymous with "big expensive pile of shit that's an expensive pain in the ass when things start falling apart (which they seem to with increasing rapidity)." It's like the disease that plagued British cars for the longest time got contaminated with the German propensity to build overly complex monstrosities.
I've worked on many German cars and the amount of bullshit repairs (ie. stuff breaking because of obviously poor engineering) I had to do on them was just way lower than on Ford/Chevrolet cars that are supposedly less over-engineered. French cars, on the other hand, are somehow even worse.
I mean if it were anyone else, yeah I might agree, but I think Salvatore is being genuine here (and have seen Claude do a similarly surprising job fixing ops issues).
I don't think so. I think he's clearly abusing language (saying "Claude Code migrated the stufff", rather than "I migrated the stuff after using Claude to help write boilerplate, then I went on double-checking it, testing it, and then running it")
I don't think you've nailed it either. He SHOULD be saying "54 days ago, I powered on my computer and opened a terminal. From my editor I reviewed my code files and realized I had quite a mess on my hands. Realizing it was the year A.D. 2026, I decided to fire up a modern tool. I typed "claude" into my terminal. As it launched I told it I wanted helping taking my running programs and moving them from the virtual private servers I was running in Linode (inc) and Digital Ocean (co) to Hetzner (LLC). As Claude used it's tool use abilities it read the files and made suggestions on how to do the migrations, it indicated that it could go ahead and copy the files and run the needed commands but I would need to give it permission first. I granted it permission. Once it said the services were running, I instructed it to test that they were accessible and reliable while I reviewed the glowing new code it had written. In summary, with the help of Claude Code I was able to redeploy 37 services in Hetzner."
I think the parent has a point. For how many other accomplishments is the tool framed as the responsible party? We don't say "cranes built the skyscraper", people did. Why do we shift accountability when it comes to AI?
On Monday a crane company announces it’s pivoting to AI, followed by a quick 600% boost to its stock price. I wouldn’t even be surprised at this point.
Go to any mechanic thats been doing cars, especially if it's a focused subset of cars, for more than a few year and I guarantee they'll either have some modified HF sockets or wrenches or some home made tools. Probably don't want to cut up your SnapOff debt peonage tools, but a lot of the time they alone don't cut it.
Maybe we'll wake up and realize that putting WiFi and stupid "cloud enabled" Internet of Shit hardware into everything was an absolutely terrible idea.
What exactly does "produced" mean in this context? That the final assembly was done here, software was written here, PCB was assembled here, SoCs and ICs wwre manufactured here, or something else? Regardless, while consumer routers are 9 of 10 times insecure garbage, it's hard to think of any that aren't manufactured outside the US.
RockAuto also has what some might consider a "dated" interface, but honestly it's light years better than trying to use NAPA's or CarQuest's website or god forbid looking through dealership parts counter websites. I honestly wish regular retailers would have stuck more closely with what worked for more B2B focused ecommerce, i.e. I wish shopping Best Buy or Home Depot was more akin to McMaster, Fastenall or some of the nicer supply house web portals.
Even the navigation part, I'm not so sure. I remember Dad would bring a laptop when we would drive new places and it would be running Microsoft Streets and Trips with a GPS dongle, and I think that have been late 90s or early 00s. I remember seeing other people do that and by the time I was driving a lot in 07 I remember having a dash mounted GPS, maybe a Magellan or Garmin, that didn't cost that much and again I remember a lot of people doing it. The smartphone definitely displaced it, but it wasn't a complete novelty even for the general public.
I think you lived in a strange bubble when you were a kid. When I was a teenager in the 90s, we'd have paper maps that we'd bring with us. We had no GPS. I don't think we knew what GPS was.
In the late 90s we'd print out directions from MapQuest. That was a game-changer. Still no GPS, though.
As an adult in the early 00s, I was still printing out MapQuest maps. In 2004 I got a car with a built-in navigation system! (Complete with a DVD drive in the trunk with a disc holding the maps.) It was still incredibly uncommon; I was one of the few people I knew who had one. I did know a few people who had Garmin GPS devices that they'd suction-cup to their windshield, but not many.
By 2007 most people were aware of GPS devices with little screens that you could bring into the car, though I'd guess maybe 25% of the drivers I knew then had one.
If your dad was bringing a laptop with a GPS dongle in the car in the 90s, I think you were very unusual. Hell, I didn't even have a laptop until 2004, and even then it was a hand-me-down from my dad's work. And I was in my 20s by then!
I remember GPS being something mountaineers had. People who would take their jeeps up to the glacier had them. Boats also had them. Coincidentally I was a fisherman back then and did observe my captain using a super fancy navigation device with an interactive map (and yes the map did come on a DVD); I also knew a couple of jeep men (or jeppakarlar as we call them in Icelandic) who had something similar (though more compact) in their jeeps; and to top it of, I would spend hours on google earth, just having fun looking at the map on my desktop.
I however did not see this technology coming to our phones, and becoming this commonplace.
It has been a day since I wrote the upthread post, and navigation is still the only novel capability of smartphones, which I think would have been a hard sell in 2007. I really can‘t think of another example.
> I however did not see this technology coming to our phones, and becoming this commonplace.
I didn't see a lot of things coming to phones. I never expected that I'd pay for things by hovering my phone over a payment terminal. Didn't think it would replace my iPod (or MP3 CD player, or Discman, or Walkman). Absolutely had no idea it would replace my camera.
And on the other side of the coin... my "phone" is barely a phone. The phone features are probably what I like least about it.
Booking, boarding, change/gate notifications, rebooking options, customs and immigration is done via phone.
Transit to/from the airport via Uber or a transit pass stored in your smartphone wallet.
Baggage tracking via airtags
Yeah, there's vague precedents for this stuff from the desktop computer era, but it only _really_ works when you've got an internet-connected device in your pocket.
Ahhh, payment via phones is also a new thing that I think very few people saw coming (including me). However it is also a very recent development and not really a part of the supposed smartphone revolution. In 2007 we did not have touchless payments (except in some public transit systems; gyms; etc. but it was limited to a special cards you couldn’t use for anything else) so this is definitely a new capability which was probably hard to sell in 2007.
The others you mentions, I would argue against. Yes it is convenient to order a taxi via an app on your phone, but in 2007 you could do so via SMS or a phone call, so not much has change really other then we now have one more interface to pick from.
I don’t see how smartphones have changed rebooking, nor customs, and especially not immigration which has become 100x more of a headache then it was in 2007. And finally, airtags are a separate technology from smartphones.
Hand-waving away ride-sharing as not much of a change makes me wonder what you would actually consider to be significant. It completely upended the taxi business.
2007: arrive in a new city, figure out who to call (or maybe text) for that particular city, wait, hope someone will pick you up and understand enough of your language and the local geography to get you where you want to go, possibly some unpleasant haggling over the fare
2026: arrive in a new city/country, open Uber, specify in the app precisely where you want to go, choose a vehicle, when to get picked up, etc, track vehicle progress in real-time, up-front pricing
And that's the consumer side. The provider side was even more radically changed.
If you don't see how smartphones changed the experience of flying... maybe you don't fly anywhere?
Airtags are entirely dependent on the ubiquity of smartphones.
I have already said navigation and tuchless payments are worthy examples of smartphones providing new and unpredictable innovations.
Your ride sharing experience sound more like you would expect from any consumer product gaining a global market share (or even monopoly). 1980 - Arrive in a new city and not knowing how to get a hamburger. 2000 - Arrive in a new city, find the nearest McDonalds and get your usual BigMac.
> arrive in a new city/country, open Uber, specify in the app precisely where you want to go, choose a vehicle, when to get picked up, etc, track vehicle progress in real-time, up-front pricing
This is actually something we should be a little uncomfortable about. It's a fine example of monopolists at work. The convenience does come with downsides.
I do like it, though, for exactly the reasons you state. If I end up in a country with cabbies who generally have good English skills and aren't out to rip me off, it's fine, and often easier to take a taxi. But you never know until you get there, and that can be stressful. The consistent Uber/Lyft experience is a breath of fresh air after a long flight when you just want to get to your lodging and pass out.
> If you don't see how smartphones changed the experience of flying... maybe you don't fly anywhere?
Eh, I'm not convinced. Sure, it's changed, but the general paradigm is the same. The main big change is the mobile boarding pass, seamlessly delivered after checking in on your phone, which is a genuine improvement. (But so many airlines still require you to check in with a human at the airport for international travel.) Print-at-home does come close enough, though, and still means you avoid lines at kiosks or (gasp) waiting for a real person to print you a boarding pass. Some airlines now charge you to print out your boarding pass (because of the availability of mobile passes), and that's disgusting. (I know people who still insist on printing at home, because they've had bad experiences around their boarding passes refusing to load, app crashing at exactly the wrong time, etc.)
Yes, all the airlines have apps, though after traveling a bit in Central America and in the Balkans recently, I've found that some airline apps are absolute trash, worse than having to wait in line for an hour to talk to a person. Most of my digital interaction with the airline is done on my laptop before the trip anyway. Notifications about gate information or delays are useful, but a push notification from an app is not markedly better than an SMS, and either way I always feel like I need to verify on a physical departures board, especially if connection timing is tight.
In instances where my flight has been delayed or cancelled, it's definitely an improvement to be able to rebook in the app, instead of waiting in line to talk to someone, or getting on the phone with the airline (or both, as I'd usually do, to find out which would resolve the problem faster).
I've never used airtags (don't have an iPhone anyway); I've checked bags at most twice in the past 20 years when I had no other choice (my mantra: checked luggage is lost luggage). But even considering that, I feel like all the fuss people make about airtagging their luggage is overblown.
Some airlines have eliminated seat-back entertainment and expect you to use your phone. That's crap.
Meanwhile, as GP has pointed out, security, customs, immigration have all gotten worse. Boarding processes have not improved, food hasn't gotten better, and airplane seat comfort has gone down. I say this not to blame smartphones, but to suggest that there are other, more important problems with air travel that have nothing to do with phones.
Who stops and looks for a physical departures board in 2026? I already know the gate I'm going to because I've had ample time to check my smartphone while I'm waiting for all the carry-on maximalists to get their oversized roller AND stuffed "personal item" backpack from the overhead bins. ;)
I think you've understated/missed some of the aspects of flying itself, but probably not necessary to litigate it further. There's also all the stuff at the destination that the smartphone has enabled, eg
- rental cars with carplay
- walking directions on a paired smartwatch
- transit pass via NFC (and transit-specific directions)
- checking into accomodations (airbnb-type places especially)
- authenticating Netflix, etc on tv at your airbnb/hotel
- bike-sharing apps
- activity passes in your digital wallet
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