I honestly kind of forget the exact annoyances because it has been some time. I want to say I had to reauth every time I wanted to SSO with my google account because it doesn't allow/deletes third party cookies.
I've used Firefox as a daily driver for 20 years now (that's terrifying to say). I have to switch to another browser about once a month (although at a previous job I had to use $INTERNAL_WEBSITE in edge permanently). I have 0 issues with daily sites
I was indoctrinated as a teenager. A friends older brother was using it when he showed me World of Warcraft (not a euphamism) and I went home and downloaded it and never looked back.
I've contributed to a bunch of OSS, but for some reason never firefox.
Haha, this is hardly a daily site, is it? I can't remember the last time I experienced a firefox-specific browser issue before this. 95%+ of my issues usually come from ublock
No doubt, OP’s site is niche (and very cool!), but between weird graphical rendering I’ve experienced in the past with Firefox and WebGL, among a number of just flat out broken forms - I just gave up.
I want Gecko to succeed as Chromium being a bully in the web space has been unfortunate, though I’m even more rooting for Ladybird.
It’s funny to me how many progressive people I know and am friends with who work at these AI companies which are marginalized demographics (Trans, Gay, Latino, Black).
Still have faded Bernie stickers on their cars, No Kings organizers, “fuck SF I’m in the east bay for life fuck tech” - and you all make 7 figures Monday - Friday by supporting the death of society and democracy.
I don’t dare say anything though because “money is money”, the bay is expensive..but I do sure as shit judge every single person I know who joined OAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta.
Preach. The hypocrisy is startling. I think people started at these companies maybe years ago with "good intentions" and are willing to turn a blind eye. But now, given just how glaring clear it is, I don't think it is really excusable anymore. To be clear, people can work wherever they want including these companies but what kills me is the hypocrisy. They are pathological liars to themselves if they somehow think they aren't complicit.
I made another comment above. People contain multitudes. Different contexts, different choices, not everyone is in a box defined by the viewer's world view. You can't really know what's going on with someone else, in their heads, in their context, so give them some grace. Instead, this person's "friends" are "hypocrites" who were "lured" into their choices. It's very condescending. I am suggesting the poster re-examine their own views on other people in light of this.
You're missing the point. They're just lamenting the contrast between what their friends say (fuck tech, no kings) and what they spend their workweek in service of.
It's not complicated: if these friends would take a non-society-destroying job at equal pay (who wouldn't?) then their values aren't driving the decision, money is. Fine, that's a choice adults get to make. But then own it and actually justify it on its merits, don't just retreat to "who are you to judge."
Didn’t say that. The friends in question clearly think it is. My point more generally was about people who publicly talk about $X being society-destroying while materially enabling $X for a paycheck.
It’s really not clear to me that they think that. OP was clearly saying that if you’re progressive, the intellectually honest position is to be anti-AI. I don’t think that necessarily follows.
I mean no harm in saying what I said, I love my friends. I just can’t stomach the hypocrisy, it’s what the companies are preying and feeding off of.
My friends are incredibly bright and good at what they do, it’s why they all have the roles they have. It makes me sad (and frustrated) knowing they are lured in by enough money dangling in front of them that makes them swallow their souls and identity, while fuelling the fire in the same breath.
I have a deep amount of respect and gratitude for my friends (and anyone else) who chooses to work at non-profits, and more ethical - mission based companies for less. I hate how much these AI companies and roles are offering people, it’s completely forced lots of gifted people into a war machine.
Do you suspect there is any chance they are fully independent adult human beings with full agency, who have looked at the pros and cons, and chosen to make the choices they did with clear eyes? Do you think there's any context that might square their choices with their own internal principles that don't make them hypocrites? I mean these as real questions. For "friends you love" you really seem to take a dim view of their intelligence.
One of humanity's greatest weaknesses is cognitive dissonance. People can convince themselves of just about anything. And in some ways intelligence is a burden here. A fool will just do something with a reason of 'f you, that's why.' It's only the clever man that will even bother rationalizing the villain into the hero, and we're great at it. An interesting thought experiment is to ask people if they'd be willing to push a button that would randomly kill a person somewhere in the world for a million dollars. They'd have no direct accountability themselves and their action would be unknown to anybody else.
People will rationalize themselves into declaring this moral even though it is obviously one of the most overtly amoral actions possible. One friend I have, a rather intelligent guy otherwise, was even trying to create a utilitarian argument that he'd donate some percent of his 'earnings' to life saving charities meaning he'd be saving more life on the net. The fact that if everybody thought and behaved the same way, the entirety of humanity would cease to exist, was a consideration he didn't have a response for. Let alone the fact that he just rationalized his way into justifying near to any deed imaginable, so long as you got paid enough for it.
I’ll be honest and say it’s made me question and reposition some of my friendships with a number of these friends. Some joined well before we knew the fallout of how AI has affected and impacted society negatively, some have joined in recent years because they were offered 2x their currently already high comp package, and others will take any job they can get (who, admittedly, I judge far less as I know they are just needing to survive in a HCOL city).
My dim view is more on the AI companies being absurdly overvalued, with too much money to know what to do, which feeds downwards into compensation packages, which lure in “innocent” individuals who can’t say no. It’s not been a healthy market to be vulnerable in, most companies outside AI are just not getting the same funding or can compete at all - and it’s a shit storm.
They love art so much they want to take the humanity out of it. The funny thing is these sociopaths at the AI companies can't even comprehend something that cannot be quantified in a spreadsheet.
I think you missed my point - up until Anthropic decides there's a pressing need to replace them to furnish their wallets, the awesome people who create incredible art using Blender have learned how to use the tool and use it to convert their imagination into something we can all see.
Every sane and persons with a personality/hobby/soul I know who isn’t rotting away at their job, or a career employee at some south bay company they plan to retire from have all left SF for abroad, SoCal, or NYC.
My hunch is the people that are competing for housing are mostly new AI sector transplants, who will do the same thing that has ruined the city to begin with. Do nothing to support the local community, spend all their time in Hayes Valley and Marina, buy a Tesla or Porsche that they can drive on the 280 to San Jose, Monterey, Napa - then return to the city to order doordash before trading crypto until they fall asleep and repeat.
I have a few friends who are still stuck in SF and they say the city feels the most soulless and rude it’s ever felt. It’s actually made one of my friends turn to anti-depressants as he’s really struggling. He vents to me a lot about how he doesn’t feel like he can connect or talk to anyone anymore, not even baristas at a coffee shop, because everyone has become so anemic.
As someone who lives and works in SF, I think it depends quite a bit on your social scene and neighborhood. Where I'm at it's constantly alive with people in the parks, out for running/biking groups, going to farmer's markets, attending art fairs, bars overflowing, etc. I meet lots of interesting people and enjoy the scene quite a bit, but maybe I run in a younger crowd than your friend who complains about the city.
Not here to change your mind, but I'm "defending" SF because I've never experienced such a difference between the lived experience in a city and the online vitriol you see constantly about it. It's a true "don't believe your lying eyes" situation and it's honestly a bit disorienting.
> My hunch is the people are competing for housing are mostly new AI sector transplants...
I've absolutely nothing against transplants [0], but transplants that treat this place as the "mining town" that the major landowners and Supervisors have made it to be definitely suck the life and the weird out of the city.
There may be be a bunch of people driving up rents for the city's criminally-scarce -and frequently substandard- housing, but that doesn't mean that the city's not in deep shit. I roam around the city a whole lot on foot, and I see so, so many shuttered businesses and empty storefronts... even in places that were going gangbusters ten, fifteen years ago. The only places that seem to be doing quite well are the places that serve the poorest in the city -such as much of the Tenderloin-, [1] which are places that these new transplants would probably never, ever set foot in.
[0] I'm sure that you don't, either... not in general, anyway.
[1] I can't explain why these places are still doing great. Perhaps it's because the landowners and business managers understand that there's absolutely no way that they can get anything other than a perfectly normal rate of return from these properties... so the batshit insane stuff we see in the fancier parts of town that keeps commercial spaces in fine locations empty for ten+ years and forces out healthy businesses that have been in their space for decades simply doesn't happen? [2]
[2] For folks who want to retort that I simply don't understand how any of this works: Remember that California has Property Tax Control (by way of the 197X "Proposition 13"), which means that a landowner's property tax increases by a very small percentage of its originally assessed value each year, rather than what would be that property's current assessed value. What this means is that as long as a property does not change hands, the property tax paid by that landowner pretty much never increases... and there are ways to redirect the profits from and effective control of that property to a new human or corporate entity while ensuring that that property fails to legally change hands.
Tacoma, WA is pretty choice. Got a 3k sqft house in the bougie burbs for $500k in 2020 for sub 3% lmao. imagine not pouncing on that as a seattlite. you probably live in a 1920s trap house for $800k BUT you're technically still "in Seattle" (LOL)
I live in Boston and software is dead here. It’s a biotech city but we used to be a player in software. AI missed us, remote work hollowed it out. I would love some AI dollars flowing here but it’s pretty sad. My hope is some defense tech drone stuff blows up but your problems would be welcome on the east coast!
I'm not sure why this got flagged... I wonder if someone misunderstood what "My hope is some defense tech drone stuff blows up..." meant.
As for
> ...remote work hollowed it out...
there's a simple solution: make it so that ordinary folks can actually afford to raise a family in the city. If folks can afford to raise a family in your city, then they're there for more than just the big paycheck, and won't run screaming the moment their well-paying job stops chaining them to an absurdly expensive city.
If only hip cafes that get custom built ones knew how to pull an actual espresso shot.
New rule should be La Marzocco judges every barista on their skills before being able to flip a paddle, which requires a bespoke NFC card linked to their certification.
Yes I’m salty about the amount of aesthetic cafes that have no idea what to do about their coffee program because all they care about is being a hip third space.
One coffee shop near me (since closed) had a Group 3 Slayer paired with a Super Jolly (but they also didn't know how to pull a decent shot).
For those unfamiliar, Slayer is (imo the best) one of the top $$$ machines and pairing it with a budget grinder is a classic sign the owner doesn't know a thing about coffee. Often the grinder is more influential than the espresso machine.
And how I mention "Group 3" that means it has three brewing heads. They were using a ~$20-30k espresso machine paired with a run of the mill budget grinder.
> For those unfamiliar, Slayer is (imo the best) one of the top $$$ machines and pairing it with a budget grinder is a classic sign the owner doesn't know a thing about coffee.
The exception to that rule is Espresso Vivace in Seattle, with (at Capitol Hill location) a couple 3-group La Marzoccos at the bar and a collection of modded Niche Zeros on grinding duty. Nobody can accuse David Schomer[0] of "not knowing a thing about coffee".
Boy different world different meaning of "expensive." I'm opening a cafe in Jakarta and I'm thinking if I should get a used Super Jolly or something _cheaper_.
The Super Jolly is fine, I have a used one at home that I’ve had for 15 years (which I use now with a Linea Mini that I just a couple of months ago) and get really good results.
The point is that investing in such a crazy expensive machine but not a much better grinder is really foolish, because the machine is going to be limited by the grinder so they may as well buy a machine that is 1/3 the price.
But really it sounds like 80% of the problem in the case tow OP is talking about still would have been the poor skills of the baristas, because they should still be able to pull very decent shots even with the mid-range grinder.
I was a bit confused, because I've only known of the old models. Apparently there's been a refresh and they're no longer a few hundred dollars. FWIW they were not using one of the new models, they were using an old model which would have been maybe a few hundred on the used market at the time.
It's kinda wild to look and see even the old models listing for double the price they used to.
> New rule should be La Marzocco judges every barista on their skills before being able to flip a paddle, which requires a bespoke NFC card linked to their certification.
The same La Marzocco that puts fake paddles on their cheaper machines when whats there is really just a button?
In my anecdotal experience of reacting to “wow this espresso is good” it’s often been a Slayer machine. It’s been a rough indicator of where to get good coffee for me.
I tend to look at the grinder and also the choice of the beans (roast level, consistency, chips). As another commenter pointed out you do occasionally get places that will buy a super fancy machine but have no idea what to do with it.
It's rarer to spend loads on a fancy grinder if you don't know what you're doing.
La Marzocco has such brand recognition that a lot of newbie coffee shops would buy one, but people who buy a more niche commercial machine like a Slayer or a Synesso probably know what they are doing. Still, there's nothing wrong with the machine itself and there are plenty of really great coffee shops with a La Marzocco.
Unless your plan is to eliminate La Marzocco machines from the secondary market by rapidly buying up the old machines, at a substantial premium, and leasing all future machines I'm pretty sure you'd run into difficulty implementing any sort of mandatory certification requirement.
As unfeasible as the original post is, I do empathize. There is a trend of expensive coffee places spending all this money on everything but training the actual employees.
Warp launched something similar a week or so ago, but the Zed implementation I find a lot more logical. Will give Zed another try, as I’m overdue for my monthly “maybe I should try this terminal/IDE” itch.
I like Warp but something about it is very opaque and confusing. Maybe it has a learning curve I haven't committed to, or it's just very alpha and evolving often.
Agreed, I exclusively use Warp for server maintenance and ssh'ing into servers, it does that better than Claude itself but the UI is always confusing, especially after their recent changes.
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