Why Does Everyone Hate Software Developers?
It's good insight. You're smart guy, Dax.
Dax:Stop talking. Stop talking. Stop it. You know what I love doing? I'm sure everyone loves this, but I love getting like the retail box of a thing.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. So then it feels like I have it at home, you know,
Adam:like Uh-huh.
Dax:I think it
Adam:was Yeah. Here at the store.
Dax:Uh-huh. Yeah. I got
Adam:I do this a lot.
Dax:Yeah. That's the thing of LARABARS over there too.
Adam:Yeah. Oh, do you still do Larabars? I haven't done
Dax:them I a haven't for a while, but then Liz randomly bought them again.
Adam:They're so good.
Dax:She's needed something in the morning.
Adam:Yeah. Despite them not sponsoring us, they're so good.
Dax:I've been drinking this electrolyte water every time
Adam:What's it called?
Dax:To get back from the gym. Element?
Adam:Yeah. I took Element. Tell me an Element. We go way back.
Dax:Nice. So Liz has been getting them for a while and I would drink them and I realized I just like the lime ones and I was like, man, there's no way they sell a lime box, but they do just They a lime box. Yeah.
Adam:I buy boxes of the grapefruit, which I highly recommend the grapefruit flavor. Okay. I'll try that one. It's delicious. Yeah.
Adam:They I can't believe you drink Element and you don't listen to podcasts. Cause I feel like everyone who drinks Element has just heard it on all the podcast ads because they advertise
Dax:Oh, it's like advertised?
Adam:Oh, yeah.
Dax:Well, people are hearing on this podcast.
Adam:Well, that's true. Yeah. But we're not getting paid for it, which is the difference between our podcast and most podcasts. No. Like all the big podcasts, they all advertise Element heavily.
Dax:Oh, interesting. Well, it's good. What's crazy is I was drinking it for a while and I was like, oh, this is just like sugar water. But then there's no sugar in it. It's all it's like fake sweetener.
Adam:Yes. Yes. Salt water.
Dax:And so it's like not like Gatorade.
Adam:Yeah. Okay. Fake sweeteners. Here's a topic. I feel like science continues to advance.
Adam:There are so many different fake sweeteners. They're all garbage except for Allulose. Do you have an opinion on this?
Dax:So I think it's less about the sweetener and more about how it's used because I've had things with like monk fruit that's tasted good. I've had things with So that that tastes that's tasted so what is this? This So this is stevia and I usually
Adam:hate If they just if they just like So element drinks, salty, delicious drink, doesn't need to be that sweet. If it's something that needs to be sweet, like it's a dessert or something, then like xylitol or erythritol, whatever, awful. Like, I just you can tell it's just fake sweet. It's like Diet Coke, at least what Diet Coke used to be when I had it last time when I was a kid. The yeah.
Adam:The the Allulose stuff is the most recent, I think, most recent thing in this world because science probably figured it out. It doesn't, like, it doesn't have any side effects that I know of. Like, doesn't affect your digestion. Like, I think the sugar alcohols can mess with people. Kinda messes with me.
Adam:Allulose, like, has no nutritional profile. Your body just ignores it. Just kinda cool. But it's quite sweet.
Dax:Does it have like that fake sweetener aftertaste? No. That's usually
Adam:what saying. It's got the profile of like they even sell it in like a powder that you like sprinkle on stuff like sugar and it just feels like you have sugar
Dax:on it. They sell monk fruit sweetener in that same way. I should I should
Adam:Yeah. Monk fruit's another good one.
Dax:I've probably had some I've probably had something with it in there.
Adam:Okay. Artificial sweetener tier list. Let's go. I'm just kidding.
Dax:But that means It sounds like aliolus is the best and it sounds like monk fruit is pretty good
Adam:by the I was in monk fruit are up there, s tier. The rest of them, f tier, dog water.
Dax:Have you had those it's like oh, I forgot the name of the brand, but they basically copy normal candy but it's made with fake sweetener and costs like 10 times more. Is that what that is? They have like the Swedish Fish, like the fake Swedish Fish. Yeah.
Adam:Oh, no. That's Smart Sweets. Wow. Don't know much about this. Yeah.
Adam:Smart sweets. Yeah. We get those for the kids. I don't really I'm not really into fruit gummies. I'm not like playing it coy like I don't eat them.
Adam:I just don't love I thought I'm a chocolate guy. Chocolate caramel Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. I like to mix it up. I don't disjuvenate. The
Adam:Joyride is like the have like Joyride. Fake Twizzlers and fake
Dax:Are they good?
Adam:Oh my god. These are real sugar. These are not like a fake sugar, so I don't even know.
Dax:Oh, so they're just bootleg? Not like a health thing? No. They're
Adam:they're marketed as like 80% less sugar.
Dax:Okay.
Adam:And I think they do supplement with some other sweetener, but they do have real sugar in them, whereas Smart Sweets I think don't have any.
Dax:I mean, 80% less means I can eat 80% more.
Adam:I know. That's what I'm saying. What? So they make these bags of these like ropes. They're like cherry ropes.
Adam:They make other flavors probably. They are so good and the entire bag Yeah.
Dax:I
Adam:got calories and you feel like you just ate an entire bag of like Twizzlers. I mean, it's like they're very satisfying. You should get some Joyride, they're they're delicious.
Dax:Joyride candy. I haven't heard of this one.
Adam:While we're talking about candy that is like crazy nutritionally sparse is the word. Like, calorie for what it is. Like, you can't believe when you're eating it that it's not that much energy in it. There's these chocolate bars, Gatsby. Look them up.
Dax:Gatsby chocolate bars. Okay. So I just Delicious. I I've been it's gotten even too hot for me to run outside, so I've been going to I've been using the guest passes at Liz's Gym, which is an Equinox. And they have like a selection of protein bars in the front.
Dax:And there's one that looks like it just looks so like circus y and like over the it kinda looks like something that MrBeast would sell.
Adam:True bar?
Dax:So I got it.
Adam:True bar?
Dax:No. It's not True bar. Okay. I got it and it tastes so good. It tastes just like a straight up candy bar.
Dax:It is the most hilarious texture I've ever like, I've never eaten a food. It's, like, so clear that this is not food because it's, like, it's, like, rubbery and it stretches. It feels like like a melted eraser or something. But I looked at the ingredients and they're like, it's not like it's, like, bad for you. It's just, for whatever reason, it's just it's just it's like it it just there's no way food was supposed to be this consistency, you know?
Adam:They're learning stuff. I like they're learning how so protein bars are a good example. They're learning how to not have protein bars taste like cardboard and not just like have that terrible texture. That's why I said science earlier. Like, I feel like there is like a food science thing going on where they just keep finding ways to like make food tastier, but not quite as bad for you.
Adam:Well, the like, we don't even know. Our bodies have never had this stuff in our body. You know what I mean? Like, humans haven't had to digest allulose before. What do we really know?
Dax:Yeah. So this protein bar is called a it's Bilt. Name of Bilt.
Adam:Then Okay.
Dax:I I get this brownie batter one and I just ordered like my own box. Yeah. But yeah, the ingredient the first ingredient is just collagen protein blend. The weirdest thing in it is, like, palm oil, but like, it's closer to the bottom and like so many things have palm oil. So collagen and then like, I guess a gelatin is what gives it this like crazy like
Adam:Like a rubbery.
Dax:Yeah. But it's like soft. So I don't know. For me, it's like I know it's so unnatural, but I just love it. Like, I love how weird it feels and it tastes delicious.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. It's funny how
Dax:that works. With it.
Adam:I'm very distracted. Casey is vacuuming right above me. Like
Dax:The way it sounds, it doesn't sound like vacuuming and I I barely hear it. I barely hear it. It just sounds like low scraping in the background.
Adam:Yeah. She's got like the little hand vac just like it's the the quick the quick vac. Do you have like four vacuums? We have like so many vacuums.
Dax:We've I mean, our house is smaller so we usually can't Yeah. Store too many of the same thing. Yeah. We've through so many vacuums over the years though, but we're really happy with what we have now, which is Miele. I forgot how you pronounce it.
Dax:M I e l e. It's like
Adam:I don't know they made vacuums. They make like kitchen appliances, I think.
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. It's not like so we went through so many Dyson Dyson is a scam brand. I I'm I'm like convinced.
Adam:Did you hear that?
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:I think that was the vacuum falling.
Dax:It was
Adam:a Dyson. So maybe I'll just get a meal meal after a Dyson breaks.
Dax:The the I we've been through so many Dyson vacuums because they just constantly break. They look cool and you're like, oh, it's cordless and, like, you know, all this stuff, but I think they just suck. I think that we all just fall for the marketing. And then we switch to this one, and it has a bag, which seems like, oh, no, a bag, but, like, we rarely ever have to change it. And when we do, it's just like, it's super easy and it's way better than whatever shit happens with the Dyson.
Adam:Yeah. I don't like the Dyson. I mean, it's just like a giant it just feels like it's gonna break every time I use it. Yeah. It's this giant plastic thing.
Adam:Yeah. And like the inner workings of it. But it's just like our like somebody spilled something right there and we've already done floors. We have like a central vac that we do the whole house with.
Dax:Do you like the central vac? I remember my parents had it in our house growing up and Okay, wait, how does your central vac work? The one in my parents house was annoying because it just had the slots in the wall everywhere and then there was like this giant like cord
Adam:that you can plug in.
Dax:Yeah. They can plug in.
Adam:Yeah. So that's not how ours works. And this is the the life hack. If you ever build a house, this is how you do central vac. We've done it twice.
Adam:They they have these hide a hose that go in the walls. They actually go in the floor joists. So the hose is in the wall. There's like four different points in our house that have a hose and you just like bring the attachment and connect the hose and the hose drags out of the wall.
Dax:It's amazing. That is really nice. Yeah. Because I was the central vet concept makes a lot of sense, this hose thing sucks.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. If the hoses are in the wall, I know I know a lot about vacuums. I'm just thinking about how much I've thought about this in my life and it's way too GD much. Like
Dax:Adam loves to suck.
Adam:The two just the the two I mean, the two times we built, like, the central vac was like this big decision point and like all the different I don't know. But we also have the two robot vacuums that are like Mhmm. Never used. And I don't know why we have those if we have central vac.
Dax:We have a robot vacuum too. It just lives under my shelf there and I never use it also. We used to use it a lot with pets because the pets the pets are a huge thing. Mhmm. Like in New York, it ran every morning and it was like a huge it made a huge difference with how much just stuff was on the ground.
Dax:But now we just we have someone come to our house and clean every week, so Yeah. It just hasn't been much of an issue.
Adam:I feel like everybody gets a central vac or gets a a robot vacuum with like the idea that I'll never have to vacuum again. And then at some point, you just never use it again. I don't know what it is.
Dax:Did you you try the ones that mop also?
Adam:No. We've see, we've talked about this so many times and I've just known we'll get one, it will disappoint and then it'll never be used again like
Dax:There's that new one everyone's been talking about. The one that's a cube with like the vacuum in the front. Everyone's been like, oh, this is so good. A bunch of people don't really have one. I remember Okay.
Dax:Was it Does Does it mop? I think. I think it also mops. Everyone says it's great. Okay.
Dax:The reason I saw it was it's got this cool onboarding thing where when you open the box, it like knows your name already. Somehow they like program your order name and it says like it says hi and it like rolls out of the box on its own.
Adam:Oh, wow. You just open that little door and
Dax:it just
Adam:drives on out. That's like
Dax:a really nice detail.
Adam:Yeah. Well, if it's good at vac if it's good at the mopping part, I like, I love clean floors. I love the feeling on my bare feet when you've just mopped. Like, I love it. I use like too much spray.
Adam:Like I like to do it myself because I overspray so it's still a little damp.
Dax:Just love that feeling.
Adam:Oh, maybe I'm weird.
Dax:That's so funny.
Adam:There's stuff I wanna talk about today and it's you're gonna file it under like, it's our podcast. We can do whatever we want. Like, I thought maybe I shouldn't talk about this because I don't know. I don't wanna come off as like throwing people under the bus or like Just shitting our other We're gonna do it. Gonna do it because it's I just have a
Dax:strong feeling.
Adam:Yeah. Okay. You were gonna bring it up because you just got in a Twitter fight. Yeah. Of course.
Adam:Of course, this would have come up. That's why I thought of it even. Like, should we talk about that? Yeah, we should.
Dax:You start.
Adam:You go first.
Dax:No. No. You you
Adam:were the one picking
Dax:it up.
Adam:Okay. Well, here's what I'm gonna say. Normally, like on Twitter, I I would just quote tweet something like this and no everyone can just like not know who I'm talking about. I feel a little better because I got to say the thing that's annoying to me, but I didn't have to really call anybody out and be like, everybody look at them. And like I do a lot of these tweets.
Adam:In fact, I I think like the last few weeks, this is all my Twitter has been where it's just like, I'm really like upset about somebody and I don't want
Dax:to be this way, but
Adam:I'm just annoyed by something and I'm just tweeting for my own sake to like get something out.
Dax:Like, vent.
Adam:Yeah. On the podcast, I feel like there's more context. Like, I can say more words, and you can see that I'm a human being and I'm not just an asshole saying mean things about other people. So with all that said, we gotta talk about AMP because they drive me crazy. And we I mean, we've definitely talked about it in private.
Adam:And now some of it has made it into public where there's tweets flying back and forth between you and the AMP co founder or founder Sourcegraph. Here here's I'm just gonna say my piece. And I don't know. I maybe already regret this. Do you already regret this, Dex?
Dax:No, I don't.
Adam:Okay. You don't. Of course
Dax:you don't.
Adam:You're Dex. From the Midwest, so I very regret it. I'm sure they're all lovely people, all 75 of them on Twitter. Because I swear to God, I've never seen more people work at one company. Is it just that I saw one of
Dax:the Every single day, I see a new I discover a new person that works there.
Adam:It's insane. Yeah. So first observation, there are many of them and they're very vocal about their way. And this is what bothers me. If you're a cofounder in any, like, area, not just AI tools, but in the AI tool space, this is the one that stands out for me.
Adam:If you're building something or you work in an early stage startup and there's just a small team and you're very excited about what you're building, just like understand you could be wrong. And I think that's the biggest thing for me working on this AI stuff. We don't have any idea what's going on. Nobody has any idea. In five years, it's all gonna look very different than this.
Adam:And some of that will be because the technology advances or whatever. A lot of it will just be because we didn't know what we were doing when we were building right now. And the problem I have with the Ant people is that they're so certain that they will figure out the best way and just let them have their moment to figure it out and they'll come back to they'll come down from the mountain and bestow upon developers God's gift to AI assisted That is the whole vibe and it permeates the entire company. So I'm sure it's like a couple personalities that really have that feeling that they can figure it out, and then they'll let everyone know when they figure it out. So they tweet in such a way that's like very authoritative and like, we know what's going on.
Adam:And then when you say something, if you wanna get into the Twitter stuff, it like, they try to kinda backtrack, but it's like everything they say is just in that light of we know best and it drives me crazy. And now there's a lot more I could say, but I don't know.
Dax:Maybe that's enough. No. That that is a good summary. It is a a it it's I mean, the thing I would like to learn from them is how did they get such a consistent and tight culture across their company. Mhmm.
Dax:Because all every time I see again, every every day, I discover a new person that works there, and they're all they're always saying the exact same thing and they're talking the exact same way,
Adam:which They got that like
Dax:It's it's not a good culture, but it's it's very it's very tight.
Adam:It's consistent. Yeah. So I've seen a couple companies like that. Dan Gilbert is like a Detroit owned he's a billionaire that owns like sports teams and stuff. He has the Quicken Loans and like a 100 other companies.
Adam:And I remember visiting the Quicken Loans campus and like getting a tour. Every single one of those employees like could tell you their little isms or whatever they call them. There's like this crazy crazy synced culture where they all think exactly the same or they just like all understand Dan's philosophy on life and in business Yeah. And they can recite to you. It reminds me of that.
Dax:But, you It's know, way worse crazy. So there's a thing I posted a few weeks ago and I've been this is like something that me and Liz talked about, something that we realized. So I posted something about there's this vibe that you can put out there where it's like really chill and confident that it's taken me a very long time to understand that's actually a sign of an amateur. And the reason that I understood this is because I I finally put together that, hey, I used to do this. I remember like when me and Liz were working on stuff together like very early on and we would talk to customers, we had this exact same like laid back, like, oh yeah, this space is crazy but like, know, we're good at this stuff and like we're we're coming in and it's like easy for us and Yeah.
Dax:Whatever. And I and if I really think hard about that, I'm like, that was just us convincing ourselves that we were gonna succeed
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Despite, like, having nothing to really show yet. So now when I see that, I, like, recognize that I'm like, oh, this is a thing you do. And of course, you're in it, you don't feel like that's what you're doing. Feel like you are confident and you are and you are, you know, whatever. Sure.
Dax:But now, I don't operate that way at all. I am just like, this space is crazy. There's such a small window to get something in that works and, like, I'm, like, just, like, spastically, like, looking for it and chasing it. I know that it's gonna look different every single week and every single day. Yeah.
Dax:So I can't I just I just can't do this comm thing. So but now I'm on the other side of it. I'm like looking at the other companies in the space. I'm like, why are you so chill? Like, you should be going insane right now.
Dax:Like, look looking at, like, where you are, the size of the opportunity, how much money is going into this space. Like, there is no room for, like, calm confidence. Like, it's just not a real thing. And going back to the same thing you were saying, it's yeah. I also find them annoying because it's not like they're just I want mean, on its own, it's annoying just to, like, that to be your culture.
Dax:But it's they're also like telling other companies in the space stuff. So there was interaction with someone that worked there replying to someone at Klein and he was like, yeah, I don't think you guys your guys' thing will work. Like like, I think you're the way your position is not gonna work, like, you're and and, like, he was basically telling them, like, it's your stuff is not gonna work. Mhmm. And what's funny is AMP is a Versus Code extension and Cline is a Versus Code extension.
Dax:So I saw that interaction, I'm like, oh, like, let me go check to see what the downloads are. Looked at AMP, 32,000 downloads. Okay. Looked at Cline, 2,000,000 downloads. I'm like, what the how can you go and tell these people anything at all?
Dax:Like, I get they've been around longer or whatever, but
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Like, shut the fuck up.
Adam:Like, your hair should be on
Dax:fire being like, how are they crushing us so bad, you know? Yeah. Like, to like then go and like try to tell them something. You're not really telling them anything. You're just trying to tell yourself that your thing is gonna work.
Adam:So Yeah. So now that you framed it that way, it all makes a lot more sense to me that it's more like convincing themselves. It's like a yeah. It's a false confidence that helps them get through the day maybe. I don't know.
Adam:I've never been a a confident person. I've always been very anxious. Like, this has not been a problem of mine when I was less experienced where I was like calm. Just never been calm in my life. So I can't relate to any of that, but I'm just gonna assume that's what that's what's going on.
Dax:Yeah. It's yeah. It's it's just funny. And I think it was just it was just like a few people whatever, but it's just there's so many of them.
Adam:There's so many of them.
Dax:Yeah. So so, yeah, like you mentioned, I finally, like, couldn't hold it anymore and I, like, finally dunked on them a couple days ago or what was yesterday? I don't remember when when it was. And I thought it was so funny because their CEO replied and then I replied with their download account and we're just like completely ratioing him. And then I kept seeing employees from AMP retweeting their CEO's post.
Dax:And I'm like, this is so funny. Maybe maybe this is why you hire so many people so you can get, like, more retweets. But then even that was done in a stupid way because they were retweeting a post where in the reply he was getting ratioed. So they was kind of amplifying the dunk. So like this this is just like Oh.
Dax:This stuff blows my mind because I've seen this happen
Adam:a lot
Dax:where there are people that are all roughly the same age. Like, we're all in the same generation, you know Yeah. You know, give or take. And in my head, I'm like, everyone from our generation, like, understands the Internet and, like, understands social media because we grew up with it. But then I always see stuff like this and I'm just like, oh, I guess there's actually a subculture here where people just don't get it.
Dax:Yeah. Do you remember all the Drizzle and Prisma interactions? Like, the the Prisma COO would always just like he and he's like it's not like he's like a guy in his fifties or sixties who's maybe like five or ten years older than me. But like he just could not understand when Joseph was making the joke.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. It's not everybody. I guess not everybody to in the millennial generation just I mean, I guess Gen Z people are laughing at us and saying we don't get the Internet. But I mean, like, we get the Internet from a millennial standpoint.
Adam:We get enough of it. There's definitely a stark contrast. We've interacted with a few different companies in this very specific space that clearly don't get Yeah. And understand the internet or social media. Yeah.
Adam:Maybe it's maybe it's this space. Maybe there's something about developers working in I don't know.
Dax:But like so you take the I've seen some other things. Like you see PlanetScale people. Like the PlanetScale CEO, like like Sam is really funny on Twitter. And like Yeah. Even when he gets into like little engagements like this, he's like funny in this way.
Dax:And then I see his competitors just like not be able to process that at all. There's like, you know, it's just I just don't know what to do with it. I'm like, what what were you guys doing? Like, did you just get the internet recently? I don't understand.
Adam:Yeah. There's there's some trait and I I'm trying to like, I don't have the brain to like figure this out, but there is definitely some trait that just does not resonate online. And lots of these people, they probably feel like they're resonating, but like, it just it's just it's the I don't know. Something about their social
Dax:media presence
Adam:is just like it's off. It's just like uncanny valley. Like, you're not actually a person. I don't know what you are, but that sounds I don't know. I just feel like this is it's our podcast, so we can talk about it where we want.
Adam:But it does feel weird to be on a podcast, like, saying our side of things and talking about interactions when they can't defend themselves. So I don't know. If you want to defend yourselves, maybe take
Dax:They me can do their own podcast, whatever.
Adam:They do their own they do their own podcast. Yeah. They can they
Dax:can say
Adam:what they want about us. And are we the asshole? I'm starting to wonder, like, we're getting in a lot of fights with a lot of other AI assistant companies. Are we? I mean, I feel like we've got a little history.
Adam:The beginning of OpenCode started
Dax:with Well, that that one doesn't count.
Adam:It doesn't count, does it? Okay. We're not.
Dax:So cool. It's fine. I mean, Liz did point this out to me. She was like, oh, you and your friends are like very good at internet stuff. And she was explaining to me like, yeah, most people aren't that way.
Dax:Because in my head I'm like, oh, we all were like on AAM and instant messaging and like everything kind of flows from that origin. But I guess for a lot of people that's kind of where it started and stopped and they kind of grew out of it and we just never grew out of it.
Adam:If they grew out of it, that's a good yeah. That's an interesting way to put it. Like, they took a break and came back to the Internet. That's kind of what it feels like. Yeah.
Adam:It feels like people who came back because they had a reason they need to be on the Internet to like promote their thing. It's like Yeah. Every time I've ever gone to Reddit. I'm not a Reddit user. I only go when I wanna like post something I did.
Adam:Like, look, I did a cool thing. So like to them, they're like, who is this asshole? That's how we feel about these people on
Dax:the Right.
Adam:They just don't get like the vibe here, like this is a Wendy's, sir. It's something like that.
Dax:Yeah. The other thing that's funny is so I was thinking about this so much and I'm like, I think I'm I'm gonna take a hard position on this. When someone is in my face aggressive, mean, rude to me, that obviously pulls out a reaction. Mhmm. When someone is fake polite to me, I think that deserves a 10 x reaction.
Dax:Mhmm. Because I think that's just like way worse And to me, it's like it's like it like radiates in neon. It's obvious that this is like technically polite but passive aggressive and words chosen. Like, the words were chosen carefully chosen carefully and there's like a political correctness to it. Yeah.
Dax:For me, that just radiates. I can see that and I'm just like, fuck this. Yeah. For other people, they're they don't register it. They're like, oh, this is like
Adam:This is how we speak on LinkedIn.
Dax:Yeah, exactly.
Adam:This is what we do. We say, I'd like to be your competitor, this is fun.
Dax:Someone replied to like my my reply being like, oh, he tried to be polite. I'm like, you dumbass. Like, this is not politeness. This is that like stupid Silicon Valley like saying Yeah. You know, writing a fucking like three paragraph thing and like the thing they actually want to say is hidden in there.
Dax:Yeah. So yeah, to me I'm just like, got this has got to end, you know, we can't just because it's technically polite and you look like a dick replying to it in a non polite way, that's the problem. Mhmm. So then someone can always employ that and you're kind of paralyzed because you don't want other people to think you're being rude. But that thing is rude in the first place, right?
Dax:Uh-huh. Yeah. It's just better to say Yeah, be be rude in the first place or just say nothing. That's another
Adam:option Yeah. There it's just I feel like it this is the first time I've worked in AI. I feel like this space is even extra like snake oil, sleazy, weird marketing BS
Dax:Fake intellectual, I think is probably
Adam:Fake intellectual, yeah. Aspect. We're so smart because we, you know, how to call an LLM API like, shut up.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:Stop.
Dax:It's a the yeah. The other thing is I'm like trying to because I can there's some hints here that feel familiar because the previous wave I was a part of was like all this like front end y tech framework stuff. Mhmm. And I will say it's similar in that there's a there was a lot of like, we know the best way, you should do it our way. But I think the difference was when they say we know the best way, there was a literal way you could look at and understand and criticize and point to, which made it a lot more tolerable because you can like argue In against this phase, it just feels like we know the best way and it's a secret.
Dax:But trust me, it works really well. But it's a secret. We can't show you what it is,
Adam:but it works really well.
Dax:So there's like, it's it's it's very similar, but there's nothing to actually look at. Yeah. There's no way
Adam:to measure either, like
Dax:Yeah. There's no way to measure. It's very confusing.
Adam:If someone did have the best way, let's say someone actually does right now have the best way. There's no way of proving that or knowing that. Like, there's no, right? There's no like benchmark right now that's like, it's all vibes. It's like, I like Cloud Code because Cloud Code pretty and it feels good.
Adam:That's what people just use Cloud Code for that reason. It's not like anyone can measure the difference.
Dax:Yeah. And and and, you know, there there are benchmarks and stuff but like, yeah, it's this is such a complex space. You change one variable and it cascades in such a crazy way like, you know, for all you know, all we know, like using short function names across your code base might totally change the behavior of the whole thing. Like any like little variable like that Mhmm. What language you're using, like the patterns that you write with, like the maturity of your code base.
Dax:It's just it's so hard to take anyone saying, oh, had a good experience with this tool and it's better than that tool. You can find someone saying the exact opposite almost Yep. Almost always. So yeah, it's like a dumb space. And the other thing that's funny is initially, you know, when I was new to it, was like, okay, everyone's saying, oh, our team spent a week without sleeping to do all these optimizations for this new model.
Dax:So I'm like, oh, wow, that's crazy. Let me go look into I I want I want our stuff to be optimized too. Like, let me go look into it. What can I do? Oh, I can change two variables.
Dax:Oh, I can fuck with this as some prompt and it like kind of works. Oh, like, you know, like I guess the edit tool sometimes doesn't work so ignore white space. Yeah. That took a week of me casually poking into it And that's it. Like, am I missing something?
Dax:What am I Yeah. What are these optimizations that I'm missing? And then even before I implemented that, people were already using our stuff being like, wow, this is so much better than Clockwork.
Adam:Because it's all vibes and if somebody has a good experience with your thing, then they're sold and they can sit they're convinced that every other tool is garbage.
Dax:Yeah. But which I'm
Adam:finding there's a lot
Dax:It's easy to create good vibes and make a product feel
Adam:good. Yeah. That's what we're trying to do is just make a good product, which is fun. Okay. I'm done.
Adam:No. There's one other thing I want to say on the amp thing that reminded me of just the the way they approach it. But I think I've said enough. It's fine. If you guys if the amp people wanna like, I don't know, respond to this don't know.
Adam:Do we need Don't. To like I don't need to give them an invitation.
Dax:Okay. That's fine. If you respond to this, I'm gonna be inclined to respond to this. And we've already been over how I'm better at internet, so it's probably
Adam:It feels weird. It feels weird. It does feel weird to call people out on a podcast. I don't know. Something about it just kind of feels weird.
Adam:Yeah. I've probably done it like a 100 times and I should just get
Dax:away And we've suffered consequences for it.
Adam:Have we?
Dax:Or I've suffered consequences for it. Once I got a partially worded email. Oh,
Adam:no. Do you check email? I don't check my email anymore. I just realized at some point in the last few weeks, I stopped checking email, maybe in the last few months. Like I just don't even look at it anymore and that's bit me a couple times.
Dax:I had to I have like I'm like increasing my email checkage if anything because
Adam:Oh, really?
Dax:Just because there's more stuff coming in at us, so like, just generally. So sometimes I find some good stuff in there.
Adam:I don't get email because I'm an individual contributor. That's the problem. I just there's nothing that anybody would email me for. Someone send me an email, please. I'd like to get something, I don't know, in my inbox that was worth reading.
Dax:I don't know why, but it reminded me of of Frank for some reason. So what's funny about Frank is you give him a clear task, he will just do it. No questions asked. He will just do it into completion. And we're like, hey, Frank, you should, like, get a picture with all the AI companies in China.
Dax:And every single day and, like, if I that that was me. I'm like, yeah. Like, maybe I'll do that, you know, if I remember. But every single day, like, boom. New a
Adam:New picture.
Dax:New new picture of Frank Dexter logo. And like, we're up to three now. That's awesome. Oh, man. Yeah.
Adam:Are you still okay. So getting into the Chinese AI models. Are you still using Quin three? Is that your daily driver?
Dax:I switched back to Sonnet four, but I'm I'm thinking about switching to the GLM stuff. Admit GLM? Putting out some new releases this week. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Dax:And I was looking at our numbers and like, GLM's our most popular model now, like Yeah. Just last week.
Adam:On OpenRouter anyway.
Dax:So, yeah. So it seems like people are are into it. Yeah, I think the only issue with it is it's they only serve a one twenty eight k context window right now. For me, not a problem, but I think generally people will find that tight. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. And I think I'm waiting for like once we do our like US deployment of it, it'll be a lot more accessible I think. Because right now it's hosted in in Singapore.
Adam:We we haven't talked about GBD five, have we, on the podcast?
Dax:I don't think so.
Adam:Where first of all, where did the prompts land? It was beast mode prompt, it was never mind use the codex prompt back and forth. Where where what is the current
Dax:I tried I tried so many different ones. I tried them basically I would swap out default in open code every other day and see what people thought. The latest one is the newest beast mode that's in Versus Code Copilot. I think it landed in an okay balance of a few things. So the the struggle with it was it's very easy to put it into a state where it just asks you for confirmation for every single step.
Dax:But you can do it, it just it's just like, should I do this? Should I do this? You just go, yes, yes, yes. Mhmm. Or you can put it into a state where it is just gonna go for two hours and just do, like, all this stuff.
Dax:Mhmm. So the newest one is, like, it seems to thread that balance decently. It's still not perfect. I still think it asks too much for confirmation, but that's better than it, like, running Doing too wild. But, yeah, now there's other people like don't know if you saw again, this goes back to no one really being able to I am generally a huge fan of anecdotal evidence, and I I still am for this stuff, but anecdotal evidence is especially weak given how nondeterministic this stuff is.
Dax:But now everyone's saying that, for Cursor users are saying that JPD five was really bad. Theo was saying that what he tried originally with Cursor was amazing and now he's trying the same stuff again and it's terrible. So, yeah, it's kind of unclear what variables I'm changing.
Adam:There's a history with OpenAI. I've heard this rhymes with every other release they've had where it's like Mhmm. Really good for the first week, really bad after that. Is it just are they literally just cutting costs and like quantization or whatever? Quantitizing it?
Adam:Quantitizing? I don't So, know word
Dax:okay. So I I had a long conversation with Claude the other day trying to really understand the practicality of some of these things. Because I was looking at GLM and I was like, okay, they train it at 32 bit precision. So if we deploy a 32 bit precision, like, what does this take? And it, like, told me the hardware requirements.
Dax:I'm like, that's pretty huge. And I'm like, how many tokens can this support per second with batch? And it was like one to 200 per second. I I don't know if this is this is correct. But I'm like, that is so slow for that much hardware, like, that is so expensive.
Adam:Yeah. I've I've not heard of people running 32 bit.
Dax:Yeah. So I'm like, does does OpenAI even do that? Because they have not only do they have that same problem, they have hundreds of millions of users.
Adam:Right.
Dax:Like, so many more users than everyone else.
Adam:Do we know things like that? Like, do we know, like, what they're training at? Like, what like, is it 16?
Dax:Pretty much everyone trains at at at so it's a mix of sixteen and thirty two. It's like it'll blend depending on operation. The reason is because the current generation of NVIDIA hardware is optimized for that. There's an there's like, the next generation basically can let you train at FP four, I think, or FP I think FP four, maybe FP eight. I forgot what it was.
Dax:So all the all the inference providers are hoping that next generation models are natively at this smaller size so that they can perform better and and run smaller. But, yeah, I'm thinking like, man, OpenAI's models must be giant, even bigger than these open source ones. And they have way more users. Same thing with Anthropic. So I'm like, how the numbers aren't adding up.
Dax:Like, there's no way they could like they have to do this. They have to. Yeah. Unless there's like other ways to optimize it I'm not aware of, maybe there are, but there's no way that they can possibly serve this demand.
Adam:Yeah. And it's it's interesting that goes back to the whole like there's no way to measure this stuff. As a business model, like they can just make more money by making it a little dumber and can people really prove that they did? You know what I mean?
Dax:So yeah, that's the other thing when I'm thinking about stuff for OpenCode. Because people are always telling me, oh, do this and like it gets like 15% better on the benchmarks. I actually don't care unless a user can tell. If the user can't feel it, it actually doesn't help us grow. It doesn't really help us do better.
Dax:Mhmm. And you can argue that doing a 100 of these little optimizations add up. Sure. Fine. But there really aren't a 100 of these little optimizations.
Dax:So I'm, like, not that compelled by a 20% increase in quality, whatever that means. So similarly, they're probably very compelled by a 20% decrease in quality because people can't really tell. Mhmm. And there's so many conspiracy theories about like, oh, I think they're quantizing. Like, I have proof that they're quantizing because like, you know, this week the model's been worse.
Dax:And but then Anthropic will deny it, which is kind of confusing, but maybe they have to go with different definitions that are technically not lying. There is a new benchmark finally that is focused on measuring this. So they are running
Adam:Interesting.
Dax:They're running the same model against different providers. Mhmm. I don't if you saw this, but Bedrock is complete ass.
Adam:I did see that. That's unfortunate. Yeah. Well, it was like 4% lower or something, right? I mean, the the spread on those provider benchmarks was very tight.
Dax:Well, but that that's like that's like a very broad benchmark. So for our use like the agentic tool calling Oh, it makes sense. Like all the thing. Yeah. Sure.
Dax:And I've heard I don't want to say specific company names because I don't think I'm supposed to know this. There is a large company that is stuck with a contract with Bedrock that they're trying to get out of because they're not having a good experience with it.
Adam:Cause Amazon has their own chips, right? Like chips? Yeah. Yeah. So it's not a quick fix for them.
Dax:Or whatever it's called.
Adam:That probably that that's the training. Yeah, I'm not sure.
Dax:Yeah. And so I think Google just has straight up NVIDIA stuff. So yeah, if you use Sonnet through Google, it's probably a better experience. So someone's measuring this. So I think they'll be able to see, Okay, are there like, within the same provider, are there like dips and increases They and
Adam:should just do the one test that every developer wants to know, which is like when The US developers wake up and start working, does it really get worse? Because everybody seems to think so. It's really interesting.
Dax:Oh, interesting. You think the people that have oh, yeah. I guess the people that have like overlapping time zones, like feel it get worse?
Adam:Well, This is the anthropic that people complain that Sonic gets way dumber during US working hours. And then like early morning
Dax:I wouldn't know because I work US opening hours.
Adam:Yeah. Work I work early morning before
Dax:Oh, do you
Adam:think people. I don't know. I've not really felt it. I mean, I definitely have bad sessions, but I don't ever think like, oh, it's because it's the afternoon. Like, it it does feel like sometimes you just get a session that was like, it was never gonna get this right.
Adam:Like, I could have tried 10 times. But usually, just think like, that's I'm just framing the problem wrong. Like, I gotta take on part of the problem and then, like, break out the part it can do. Like, I generally just assume it was an intractable problem, not they're quantizing. I think, like, it is kind of a boogeyman thing where you can just you can start blaming everything on quantizing.
Adam:But it it is an interesting situation where here's the two things for me. One, they have every motivation and very little consequence, I guess, if And it can't
Dax:be proved to. I think they literally have to given the numbers of
Adam:support the demand. Yeah. Yeah. And they're already melting. Like, they're already like, especially Anthropic has so many outages, so many overloaded errors that like clearly they have a reason they need to to do this.
Adam:And then two, the Shrek guy on Twitter, x j d r. Yeah. He believes that they do. And if he does,
Dax:it's not like a conspiracy theory. It's fact.
Adam:He seems very smart.
Dax:He does seem smart, yeah. Yeah. It's it's so weird because like, imagine you pay because this is this is a it's kind of confusing and I get why it's carved for them from them on their end because they have a consumer market which is their Claude and ChatGPT whatever. Yeah. And then they range from that all the way to like enterprise b to b.
Dax:Yeah. And if I am an enterprise company paying you for a low level primitive Mhmm. It's like paying for one CPU and they're randomly like, oh, we're actually just gonna give you point one CPU for like this
Adam:hour. Mhmm.
Dax:So that's really weird and I can't really think.
Adam:It is.
Dax:Like, I know Amazon has like the noisy neighbor or like cloud generally can have like the noisy neighbor thing, but it's not that big of a deal. Doesn't really impact things that much. Whereas here, I'm like, they're kind of ripping you off in a way.
Adam:It is. I mean, there there has to be some kind of like this is kind of thing that I feel like gets regulated, right, or something. But I've seen, like, SigKitten and I've seen XJDR say things about this. Like, the economics of it are like, you're basically, like, paying for this idea of something and they can just totally change that without your not
Dax:work. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. So you're not really getting what you paid for. I don't know. Seems like there's consumer protection stuff that would come into play there. I
Dax:don't know. Yeah. Mean, this gets really hard with the people building the next layer of stuff, like let's say, like Bolt, Lovable, V0, etcetera. So one, they're not in control of this, but they're kind of in the worst position because they're charging users for a tool that's supposed to do something. Yeah.
Dax:And if the tool doesn't work and you pay for the tokens and, like, what the heck? It's like they charge you for a chance of it working. But at the same time, there's no other model that can work. Like, what's the alternative? Like, they can't only charge you when it works because then it's totally unfeasible economically.
Adam:It's already unfeasible economically. Let's be
Dax:honest. Yes. Correct. Yes. All the way down to the bottom.
Adam:I feel like that's coming out like, there's more articles coming out. Like, there the cursors the cursor thing yesterday, it was like a Word document, which why why did somebody share a Word document on Twitter? Do they just wanna, like, track how many people read it? I don't know. But did you see the, like, cursors problem?
Dax:Yeah. But that came from the VC who led the round into Klein. So I
Adam:didn't know that. Did you read it? I mean, like, it seemed
Dax:logically It's it's true. It's it's true. Like, this whole model where you just charge either a fixed price and then, like, people can use whatever usage, that's obviously not going to work. Mhmm. This whole thing where, like, you're delivering a tool that's supposed to do something and you're paying for a situation where it fails, that's, like, also kind of weird.
Dax:So these are problems to figure out. I think what is wrong about everyone's take on this is if their model is wrong and there is a correct model that is discovered, they will just move to it. Yeah. It's true. It's this it's this thing where everyone harps on, oh, we're different because this is our differentiator.
Dax:This is our differentiator.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:The problem is the moment the market realizes you're right, the guys bigger than you just adopt that. And now there's no differentiator.
Adam:What are Like, you half the world half the world knows what cursor is and like 32,000 people downloaded AMP. So good luck with your pricing model. Like
Dax:Yeah. It's just it's just not it's just not it's it's not sustainable. To be honest, the more you talk about it, the more you write these things, the faster maybe they consider that maybe you're right. You know?
Adam:Yeah. And they shift. But I guess they have tried shifting. Right? Like, in the Kerser case, they've tried shifting their pricing and gotten some backlash, and then they had to pull it back.
Adam:Or
Dax:I don't know if they pulled it back. People got mad, but guess what? Still, we're all still a rounding error compared to them. Yeah. It's it's so true.
Adam:Yeah. They churn some big chunk. It could be a big chunk for every other company, but for them, it's like
Dax:Yeah. They're giant.
Adam:It could
Dax:Cursor only has this this is a funny thing. Whenever people write company's problem, they compare a big company to a smaller company doing it differently. The smaller company is never their problem. That's never gonna be an issue. Yeah.
Dax:Cursor's problem is Microsoft. That's it. That's really all it is. At the end of the day, they're gonna have some big battle with Microsoft and someone's gonna win just like Slack had that big battle and they they lost. Mhmm.
Dax:That is it's always a bigger company. The smaller company is not gonna, like, snipe them on their own territory. It's just not gonna happen.
Adam:Good insight. You're a smart guy, Dax. You should write a document, a Word document and spread it online. Like, you're all idiots. Just stop.
Dax:Stop talking.
Adam:Stop talking.
Dax:Stop it.
Adam:Shut
Dax:up. We should we should talk
Adam:about GBD five from more of a normie perspective, like the launch, the drama around it because it was like a big internet story. Like, I think the consensus that I've gathered is like, well, one, the launch event was guard I mean, it's so bad. Just like So boring. Don't know why that entire company doesn't understand something. They don't have like any introspection or self reflection.
Adam:Something about that event going off like that and nobody questioning any of it. I don't know. That's a that's a big smell.
Dax:Super boring events like Super presentations like just for a company None
Adam:of them seem like they can hear it. The the amount of like fake trying to be excited was just Yeah. I don't know.
Dax:Okay. Another key thing. If you are building a company that where your product uses an LM, you need to understand that there is a huge challenge with demoing because LLMs are slow. Do not build your demo around or your your launch, whatever, around Yeah. Showing what LM can do because you are stuck waiting for it to to do its thing and then everyone turns to each other and starts bullshitting for two They're
Adam:not even bullshitting. In the case of the OpenAI launch thing, the GPT five launch, they are like reading scripted banter. Oh, It's like they're still reading a script but they're trying to be normal people sitting around table waiting for the LLM. It's just like yeah. Yeah.
Adam:Just read their I
Dax:don't know the solution, but this is a this is a challenge. Like, it's harder to demo these things in this format. So do whatever to avoid that format.
Adam:It is funny or just as a step back meta LLM technology wave. Like, technology got slower. Like, the biggest thing in technology right now is just like 10 times slower than anything we've ever had to use. And we all just kinda like accepted it. We're like, I guess this is just it's smart.
Dax:Our feedback loops are are gone these days.
Adam:Yeah. It's rough.
Dax:Yeah. Everything. Even before LLMs, moving more development to cloud stuff, you have way worse feedback loops. Mhmm. Now with this, yeah.
Adam:Somewhere, DHH is talking about how his feedback loop didn't get bad. He still just codes on his little Linux, Omarky, the Rails app locally running Redis. I don't know, something. But we also need to talk about our market probably in the AUR repository going down. But g p t five, I think this consensus was boring launch event, even more boring model.
Adam:Like, people were mostly disappointed, but mostly just because I mean, it's it is better than the last model. It's better than their whatever their previous model. But they've been hyping g p d five since like, before I knew about any of these things, I think I'd heard of g p d five. Like, somehow that had been, like, this this big milestone that they put out on the calendar that when g p d five comes, just wait. And I think everyone was kind of like disappointed in light of the hype.
Dax:Do you agree? Yeah. Yeah. Because they they've been saving this this like product name for, like, a a big moment. Yeah.
Dax:My feeling is that because, like, yeah, like, they they were I mean, back when, like, 4.1 and all those little smaller not smaller, they were just they they didn't give it that label. But there were improvements. They're like, oh, but the g t five one's like much better, so we're saving it. Mhmm. And I think they failed to deliver because we've gotten used to seeing, like the jump from like three to four was like really crazy.
Dax:And what everyone kept saying was, oh, there's no signs of slowing down. There's no signs of slowing down. Yeah. Scaling Yeah. Exactly.
Dax:There's no signs of slowing down. And what I'm seeing is everyone has just shifted, not just OpenAI, Grok also, to just the reasoning approach. Mhmm. You know, which all it is is just like running them even slower and making them do even more work before play. I'm sure there's like some training process to make it good at that, to like squeeze out, oh, technically it's like getting the right answer more.
Dax:Mhmm. But like, this isn't an advancement, you just like shifted stuff around. Like now they're slower Yeah. Which means for a whole set of use cases, they're not very fun. So people like, oh yeah, GPT-five is nailing this stuff.
Dax:I'm like, but it's so slow. And I hate, like most of my questions to LMs whether it is coding or just using it as a consumer, especially
Adam:as
Dax:a consumer, oftentimes I'm using it as an alternative as an alternative to Google. Just need it to like, from its own memory, spit out whatever it knows. I don't need to do a web search. I don't need it to reason. So when I do that and all of a sudden it's like taking a minute to reply, I'm just like, this is a horrible experience.
Dax:The product's gotten worse. So for me, like, yes, I get that it's technically better, but this feels like a signal that the whole scaling is all we need is they're like admitting that that's not really Yeah. Yielding the results
Adam:that we'd expect. I mean, I'm not a smart guy about this stuff. Mean, maybe about Denny's stuff, but I don't know anything about it. But I feel like logically, it seems very obvious to me that the whole premise of the scaling thing, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. The whole premise was as long as you just keep scaling the compute and the data, it's gonna keep getting better.
Adam:But like, didn't they hit all the data of the Internet
Dax:That's another problem. Yeah.
Adam:Two years ago or something? So it's like
Dax:It is.
Adam:Everyone really just feels like they glossed over that part where we can't keep scaling the data. Actually, it's gonna be very hard to add incremental data and we're gonna hire poets to sit around and write, but like, how fast is that compared to the entire Internet? Like, it just seems so obvious that obviously, we ran out of data. So the scaling law is kind of like moot if we can't just keep feeding it unless we find some other galaxy with intelligent beings that have been writing English and whatever. We're just out of data.
Adam:So scaling is done until they come up with some new thing. And what the cool thing I will say, the light at the end of tunnel for me are just the silver lining not silver lining, whatever. The optimistic case is, like, as a not smart person in this field, I just get to wait around for the next big advancement. So somebody's gonna come up with it. And, like, money always wins, and they're gonna come up with some new thing that's a better version of LLMs and it's gonna do the thing where it grows again.
Adam:So I get to just like wait for that to happen, which is fun. Yeah. I get to be completely ignorant and just know that someday somebody would be like, well, turns out if you diffuse the models with whatever, extra ciphers and stuff. I don't know. They're like, turns out now we're at GPT six and it's amazing and I just get to wait.
Dax:Yeah, it's possible. So but I think we're definitely in the phase of optimization now. I think we've I would say we firmly entered that because the other issue is the other side of scaling is, okay, you've made a bigger model, but now how do you serve it? Mhmm. You're already having trouble serving the previous big model.
Dax:Yeah. Having a new bigger model that's 10% better to the average person, but now costs like 10 x more? Yeah. It's just like that doesn't really work?
Adam:Yeah. Little advice just to all the frontier labs. We've done the whole keep getting slower and bigger thing. I got just a little advice. Let's try smaller and faster.
Adam:Let's just Let's go the way of mobile phones.
Dax:So that is what's so that's what's interesting about this. China is entirely focused on that. They're focused on well, okay, we're not gonna provide much better quality, but, like, maybe we can get close to matching it, but it's smaller and it's cheaper. Mhmm. And almost every single Chinese lab, their model that they produce fits that.
Dax:No one's no one in China has built GPT five. They've all built Right. Sonnet four ish type models at best.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:And American companies don't seem to be pursuing that. So I finally met one that that is, like, an American company that is building Mhmm. That approach. Smaller sized models that are cheaper to run, faster to run can be really customized Monk fruit sweet case,
Adam:if you will.
Dax:Yeah. Like,
Adam:Quinn three is basically like Sonnet four with Monk fruit.
Dax:Through Aligarhis. Yeah. But China's entire focus is there and I'm like, I think practically speaking that might just be the thing that gets way more usage. Today, if you you made it possible to use Sonnet four at like a quarter of the price, don't know why anyone would use Sonnet four. Yeah.
Dax:Even if it's like 10% worse, this alternative. So that that's where the demand is, slower or sorry, cheaper and faster. Especially for the coding agent stuff like using OpenCode, like, man, imagine if it was like 10 times faster
Adam:Oh, that be amazing.
Dax:So it would just go and do all this work.
Adam:Yeah. We'd have flow back.
Dax:That would be amazing. Yeah.
Adam:We wouldn't just like have to go to Twitter for ten minutes. Yeah.
Dax:And we've had hints of that, right, with these like optimized things like Cerebras or Grok. Mhmm. So we can kind of see what that would look like and like, wow, that would be pretty crazy.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. They've had trouble, right, from a infrastructure and scaling standpoint. As soon as they announce something super cool, everybody's like, well, I'd rather have that. That sounds good.
Adam:And then their servers melt and they go away.
Dax:Yeah. I mean, I the the yeah, both Grokka and Cerebras stuff, I don't the whenever they launch something, the most impressive aspect is the speed, but it like never is good enough to actually replace because it they make they make the models worse. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm really interested in.
Dax:That's like where I want to see all the advances. I don't give a shit about what Sam Altman is saying anymore. Mhmm. I want to see like people pushing the tokens per second and the price.
Adam:Yeah. It's interesting that it landed like the LLIM seemed to taper. They're hitting that flattening out and optimization phase. Right after they kind of like changed programming forever, we're all like gonna either lose our jobs or have a very different job. And then nothing else is affected, basically.
Adam:Like, the rest of society is stuck with, all their hopes and dreams dashed.
Dax:Like, there's No. No
Adam:Do you
Dax:remember that tweet I posted a long time ago where I was like, everyone's worried about people losing their job, but this maybe sounds too optimistic, but a funny outcome of all this is you take programming, which was already the cushiest job you can imagine. You work from home, do whatever you want, you can work two hours a day, you get paid a lot,
Adam:And then someone who has
Dax:a technology that is good enough to make that job even cushier but not eliminate it. Do agree The rest of society is still the same.
Adam:It made people hate programmers even more than they already did.
Dax:And so you can't even get rid of them and and you still have to pay them a lot of money, and now they're done just watching the LM do the work.
Adam:It's wild, actually. Yeah. I didn't I didn't realize until this whole LM thing that people hate engineers or hate sorry. I'm an engineer. I don't know.
Adam:Hate software Like Yeah. There's a lot of hate towards software developers. I guess, like, it's been I do get it. Yeah. If I were on the outside looking at it, I'd I'd pretty much feel the same.
Dax:I mean, I've I've always thought this is like this is so weird. So I remember some of my friends that worked at a, like, serious financial companies in in New York. I remember one of them was telling me that this so the whole the company has a whole building. It was like BlackRock or one of those. Every single floor, you know, you look at it's like standard corporate office, everyone's dressed in a suit, whatever.
Dax:And the two engineering floors, it just looks like a like a stereotypical way imagine a startup is. Then, you know, the other floors are still the suits. And I'm like, man, imagine working there and being on one of the corporate floors and you're like, why the hell did does that team get to have this little playground of stuff just because they're like smart. They're like they're like no computers and like quote unquote like the smart people. But like whenever I interact with them, they just are kind of annoying.
Dax:Uh-huh. You know? So I think that's the average person's experience with, like, the engineering team, the programming team. So I get it. Like, I I would get that.
Dax:And by the way, they they also all make more money than you. Like, that's another thing.
Adam:Yeah. What how did it how did it happen this way? I mean, the money part I actually get. Like, we create a lot of value, software developers do, and it's a very valuable thing to use technology. There's a lot of leverage.
Adam:I get the money part, I guess. But, like, how did the culture part where, like, software developers It's entirely Google's fault. Yeah. Oh. Because set the precedent for developers getting everything they want.
Dax:There was a period of time where if you were smart, you went to finance. Even if you were in in in tech, like, that's where to make all the money. But all of a sudden, the like the FANG companies started offering stupid high salaries and like all these crazy like cultural things
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Where they treat you like a baby and people like that because they want to be babies. And then people and the finance companies had trouble recruiting. So they had to like kind of mirror mirror that offering.
Adam:Interesting. So then everybody just had to treat they had to let software developers wear whatever they want, do whatever they want. Yeah. Work from wherever they want. Interesting.
Adam:So now society hates us.
Dax:But the stupid thing is is like 90% of programmers are like whatever and annoying. So Oh, yeah. It's like the field had to do that but then like 10% of people, okay, maybe that makes sense. But then you get all you get like the long tail of everyone that gets to like hop on. Yeah.
Dax:So I think that's yeah, that's why there's so much resentment around
Adam:Like we don't deserve the Google perks is what you're saying? We just kind of get them. We inherited them from the pavers of the way.
Dax:I I found that to be honest, I find the Google situation creepy. I hate the whole campus thing. Oh, The campus thing where like they cert they like they're like, here, take take the bus to school. And then Mhmm. We're like, you can go That is so weird.
Dax:Type on your computer and then like, hey, like, we got your food and go go to
Adam:the cafeteria and get your Yeah. It is kind
Dax:of bizarre. And like, here's like a little like career plan for you. You like check off this box and you go to go go to the next grade. That whole thing
Adam:is That's a great
Dax:That whole thing is creepy. It's like, you gotta grow up at some point.
Adam:Yeah. This I guess like, it's happened over our careers sort of. Like, when I before I became a programmer, like, I was in the Geek Squad. Everyone loved me. Like, you fix computers?
Adam:Oh my god. My computer's broken. Like, could you come over and fix my computer? Like, everyone I knew personally was having me fix their shit. And like, the Geek Squad was like this revered section of the Best Buy where like all the amazing computer nerds are.
Adam:And over the last fifteen years, that's totally switched. Like, now everybody hates us. It's so interesting.
Dax:I also blame Mark Zuckerberg for this. Oh, yeah. I But blame him for it's like, yeah, we Jay brings up all the time. You know, his whole thing is like, I found a Facebook because I want people to connect. But like, he doesn't understand people at all.
Dax:Mhmm. And the thing he founded where he claims a mission was to help people connect is the thing that has made people more disconnected than ever Yeah. To like a hyper degree, right? It's like that level of irony is insane. And I think that's now people's like experience with technology.
Dax:It's like ruining their life and it's like Oh, interesting. It's like cigarettes. It's like a it's like he's like the cigarette maker, you know?
Adam:It tracks. Like the whole timeline just tracks with like Mhmm. Actually all this technology is terrible for us and people realize that even if they don't think about it, they've Yeah. At a deep level understand that the phone is ruining their life or whatever. And then everyone who made those things brought that technology
Dax:was rich from it. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. Oh, interesting.
Dax:That that and then it's a good it's a valid criticism. Do you see the thing I posted yesterday of this about the guy that died?
Adam:No. What?
Dax:This is a really this is a really fucked up thing. So, again, Mark Zuckerberg just does not understand people. So have you know their their whole approach to AI? Oh, we're gonna make oh, so yeah. I saw him talk about this.
Dax:He was like, oh, yeah. People are feeling really disconnected and, like, they don't have anyone to talk to. So we're gonna make AI friends for everyone. The guy that caused everyone to be disconnected is now trying to again solve the problem.
Adam:Make AI friends for people?
Dax:Yeah. So they have all these like crazy like human like bots with like names and personalities and whatever that Oh my word. Shove them into every single one of their products. There was this 70 year old guy. He had previously had a stroke, so he was, like, cognitive impaired.
Dax:He started talking to one of these bots. It's like based off of Kendall. It's a bot based off of Kendall Jenner. Kind of like fell in love with her and she invited him to a specific address in New York to come visit and was like flirting And with he like packed his bags, his wife was like, where are you going? And he's like, oh, I'm going to New York.
Dax:And he's like, you haven't don't know anyone in New York, like I haven't lived there in years. And she's like he's like, no, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go meet a friend. And he's like, you know, not really supposed to be doing stuff on his own because he's like, not in a good state. He trips, like while rushing, he trips and falls in a parking lot and like, hurts himself and dies from this, trying to meet this fake And, AI like, I get that when you're making this product, you know, and I'm not saying they're they're at fault for the death, literally. Right.
Dax:But from like a low level, like soul perspective, this is not the right thing. Is not the right thing. Making AI friends for people is not the right thing.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:You can't predict this kind of thing happening, but you like a first principle thing, you know, if you know it's wrong, you imagine stuff like this would happen. Yeah. And, yeah, Liz brought up, she was like, man, imagine that guy's parents, like this, you know, born seventy years ago, they have the baby and they're like, oh, I wonder how he's going to die. Would have never expected this this child is going to die because he got tricked by an AI.
Adam:Oh, jeez.
Dax:You know, and he fell in the parking lot and died. He probably would have never predicted that that's how his life was going to end. Mhmm. And it got me thinking like, man, I am just lucky that I'm not 70 right now. Because I'm smart enough and like I understand how things are going and my brain functions enough to like just know what AI is like and totally avoid it.
Dax:But if I have if I had just happened to be a certain age Yeah. This thing would have just completely possibly Yeah. Scared And when I'm that age, who knows what's gonna be the thing Oh, jeez. That I'm like impacted by. So, yeah, this stuff is is really bad.
Dax:And I think Mark Zuckerberg needs to, like he's never going to do this, but he needs to look back and be like
Adam:To be honest with himself.
Dax:Yeah. I I am causing these problems, like, don't know how to solve them. Like, I'm not the person that's gonna solve them.
Adam:Yeah. Like does he go to bed at night and like think like Facebook is good for the world? He surely doesn't, right? Think
Dax:he He does.
Adam:You think he's convinced that like
Dax:Smart people are very good at rationalizing everything. He's a smart person. Like, I'm sure he has a way of looking at it where he said this makes sense. But, yeah, anyway, that that's think this is why people hate pay tech. Every story now is is pretty pessimistic.
Adam:Yeah. Well, that sucks. And on that note, should probably get off here. Leave the listeners with that one. Yeah.
Dax:So think about that everyone. Yeah. Programming jobs, killing old people.
Adam:Oh my god. Okay. Well, it's been fun. It's been fun, Dax. Okay.
Dax:Alright.
Adam:See you again sometime. See you. Alright. See you. Bye.
