Not really sure what you mean, I saw people on 10mg THC wring crazy code in a crazy speed. Some of them need it to be able to focus and think clear. Drugs never work "one way" for everybody. And its not only people its many things that affect how they work (setting, culture, education etc.). And if you think man kind does not need any drugs (including alcohol), if you look at it from a historic perspective we might even need it.
I would like to see the "crazy code" in question to take this seriously. Were you high on THC at the time as well? That would be a more plausible explanation of the perspective.
Less mental capacity for structured thoughts during/after getting high is normal, as is massive increase of creativity. Mind wanders a lot. The effect goes away completely in a day or two but there is no end how high can user spiral into anxiety trip from expecting weird stuff and losing some control.
Rather frequent use (as in not every day all the day but lets say couple of times a week) can have some decline but IMHO its still temporary. If the brain is already used to lower learning and complex analysis activity then it will be compounded but otherwise it shouldn't. I sometimes fall here, and I integrate internal banking systems for a living for 2+decades in very competitive place plus raising family and have mortgages, so no shortage of stress. Any miniscule decline is more than compensated by relief of stress and some giggly happiness, plus that massive creativity spike which allows me to catch up with stuff slowly sliding out of focus (and then biting hard like bureaucracy, taxes etc). Literally subconsciousness sliding notes underneath the doors of my mind, topics often pop out of blue, in such frequency that I sometimes struggle to keep up and take notes since next one with higher priority comes and then next one.
Full on stoner - thats a goner, if we talk decades of use, I think. YMMV. But - I've met folks who had periods of life where they smoked all the time every day, for 5-10 years, usually teens (where I would say folks are very vulnerable since brain is still evolving). All are fine now in various roles in their lives.
in the beginning yes, but VCs want to cash out eventually. Look at mongodb, redis and whatnot that did everything to get money at a certain point. For VCs open source is a vehicle to get relevant in a space you would never be relevant if you won't do open source.
Roughly the same is true for sexual interactions. Was posted on HN a while ago. And I think it makes perfect sense, if you look at Japan they have all that development and are like 10+ years ahead.
I disagree with the comparison between LLM behavior and traditional software getting worse. When regular software declines in quality, it’s usually noticeable through UI changes, release notes, or other signals. Companies often don’t bother hiding it, since their users are typically locked into their ecosystem.
LLMs, on the other hand, operate under different incentives. It’s in a company’s best interest to initially release the strongest model, top the benchmarks, and then quietly degrade performance over time. Unlike traditional software, LLMs have low switching costs, users can easily jump to a better alternative. That makes it more tempting for companies to conceal model downgrades to prevent user churn.
> When regular software declines in quality, it’s usually noticeable through UI changes, release notes, or other signals.
Counterexample: 99% of average Joes have no idea how incredibly enshittified Google Maps has become, to just name one app. These companies intentionally boil the frog very slowly, and most people are incredibly bad at noticing gradual changes (see global warming).
Sure, they could know by comparing, but you could also know whether models are changing behind the scenes by having sets of evals.
This is where switching costs matter. Take Google Maps, many people can’t switch to another app. In some areas, it’s the only app with accurate data, so Google can degrade the experience without losing users.
We can tell it’s getting worse because of UI changes, slower load times, and more ads. The signs are visible.
With LLMs, it’s different. There are no clear cues when quality drops. If responses seem off, users often blame their own prompts. That makes it easier for companies to quietly lower performance.
That said, many of us on HN use LLMs mainly for coding, so we can tell when things get worse.
Both cases involve the “boiling frog” effect, but with LLMs, users can easily jump to another pot. With traditional software, switching is much harder.
Do you mind explaining how you see this working as a nefarious plot? I don't see an upside in this case so I'm going with the old "never ascribe to malice" etc
Especially in non common law countries like Germany or France. Not sure about drivers and other vendors but 3rd party ink or even patches to counters, hw modifications to "repair" (better to remove the planned obsolescence) are legal.
That's a bit harsh given all the problems SMTP and IMAP have. They are very dated and have some exotic "features". There is not a single mail client that gets everything right!
In other words, “they don’t sit atop the currently-fashionable implementation techniques that are the only thing webshits happen to know.”
Well, no shit, they were designed before HTML and HTTP, not just JavaScript, and there’s zero need to actually shove them into that mold because they already exist and are fine as they are in terms of protocol-level features. If you can’t deal with that maybe you shouldn’t be trying to do development at that level.
Meanwhile, all that energy spent reinventing the protocol layer to be maximally aesthetic to people for whom all the world is JavaScript running in a browser could have been used to actually improve the applications running over the protocol.
JMAP really solves many problems and allows you to do many things that are just not possible with IMAP. Also, IMAP has many ways to (badly) perform the same task, not all supported by all servers or all clients. MIME parsing is not easy to do and there is not always quality libraries available for your language... JMAP solves all of this.
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