I use AA and buy books. Typically I may start a series on AA epubs then buy the books. Sometimes authors take money directly (patreon, straight donations, etc) which is how I would rather pay them than pay the publisher for them to only get a small cut.
Are libraries unethical to use? You can go to your library and read books without paying for them.
But you must understand you are a minority. Most people don't do this, they will get something for free and fiercely defend this right to get things for free.
Libraries aren't unethical, because they're just letting you borrow stock of books. There's practical limits on how it scales, and any impatient users might just buy the book. Once you can infinitely duplicate a work, it's not borrowing.
> Most people don't do this, they will get something for free and fiercely defend this right to get things for free.
So what? I think, if you read a good book, learn something or are well-entertained, it's a positive externality, so there is no problem with people doing it for free.
The only real issue with IP piracy is when someone gets money by copying the works. Which were originally the cases copyright tried to prevent.
Maybe you can clarify why you see people doing these things for free a problem, when there is a net benefit to society and also you.
If I didn't have a resource like AA I would likely read less and in the end spend less on books.
When people around me ask about how to "get into reading" I tell them to just find stuff they like online (via AA) or at the library and go from there. If you don't pay initially you don't feel as bad about trying things that may be "bad" or that you aren't interested in.
How do you know most people don't do this? All my e-book-reading friends buy physical and digital copies of books in addition to whatever they get off AA.
> I would rather pay them than pay the publisher for them to only get a small cut.
Publishers aren't just stealing money that should go to authors. We can debate percentages and such, but buying a book also pays the editors (who any author will tell you are just as important to a book as they are), the typesetters, the designers, etc.
Obviously publishers provide some amount of value, but for a subset of the media I consume they are not great.
In the more indie fantasy scene authors often pay for editing themselves out of pocket. Often the only "publisher" they can get is direct publishing through Kindle, which then locks them into exclusivity with Kindle/Amazon. It's frankly disgusting but it's a way to help them get paid. I'd rather kick these people $20-50 directly than do anything else.
The easiest thing for people to do if they aren't confident about their level of stress (moderate vs vigorous vs maximal) is to wear a smart watch with a HR monitor. They aren't perfect (chest straps better yada yada) but you can see your HR zones and if you are in Z1 you are moderate, Z2/3 vigorous.
The language isn't that precise because a trained marathoner is doing 7 minute miles for two hours at 50% of the populations resting heart rate.
I've got multiple wearables and they all seem to agree that normal walking does nothing for me. Barely increases my heart rate, not even Z1. Nor does "doing chores" which seems even more nebulous. But that's just a data point of one.
Vigorous would be Z2/3 cardio, so like 120-160 BPM for most adults. Moderate would be Z1 90-120.
Once you are capable of doing cardio consistently in Z4/5 with HIIT and tempo training you really don't need to worry about "am I doing enough exercise."
I mean, according to this study I would still need that. I can average 165 BPM (because I'm trained, used to average 175) and max 180 in a session. But that's all the cardio I get. I walk 20 minutes per day to bring the kids to school, and lift weight.
Weight lifting doesn't count, but I tested yesterday and I average 110 bpm during a workout (it's constant ups-and-downs). Based on that, it would count for moderate exercise.
The time investment is steep if we cannot count weight lifting, there is no escape.
If you really wanted to you could add some trigger on save for a file that would re-run tests for said file. Maybe a plugin or key bind could run a specific test which you choose in buffer.
That actually makes it a great analogy. An IDE allows you to make common edits like renaming a variable, just as an airplane gets you to any big city. But when you need to make an uncommon edit, it’s better to reach for Vim – just like you need a car to get to some random place in the middle of woods.
This comment is so absurd I'm struggling to reply.
A car takes you to an "uncommon place in the woods?"
Taking a plane is a "common edit?"
For the majority of people a car would be the "common" usage and a plane would be the "uncommon" usage. Unless you're a billionaire taking your private jet between runways to then hop on a helicopter for the rest of your trip.
The blog post is weird. It feels like shadowboxing.
"Where are the vibecoded X app replacements?" questions aren't asking that question, they are making the argument that the author is. Software is immensely complicated and "vibecoding" is not going to build products.
You could reword the original question as: "If LLM coding is so fantastic and game changing, why are major products which are hugely profitable not battling with other companies which are producing competitors? Why would OpenAI/Anthropic sell the LLM access itself, instead of hoarding all the compute they can and become mega conglomerates in a takeover of all software?"
The author argues that software is way more complex than some prompt can describe, and that's what the original question also states. Level 1/2/3 BS nothing - coding was never and will never be the hard part.
I don't particularly like phrasing the argument I described as "where are the vibecoded X?" but instead as "Why are there so many issues still with major products? Why does Windows still have so many issues? Why is performance still absolutely shit on nearly every application?" The answers to these are not solved by more code, but by actual engineering, which LLMs don't provide. But the LLM dealers will try their best to convince you that they do provide on this level.
> Why would OpenAI/Anthropic sell the LLM access itself, instead of hoarding all the compute they can and become mega conglomerates in a takeover of all software?
Because selling shovels is a guaranteed way to earn you money, unlike digging for gold.
But that is part of the point of the argument which the author is shadowboxing against. If LLM sellers are shovel sellers, does that not make you suspicious when they are the ones telling you that there is gold in the hills?
> Typescript, Visual Studio Code, GitHub, npm, and so much more exist primarily because Microsoft executives believe this will lead to more business for Azure and other Microsoft offerings.
I don't think its a conspiracy theory to think Microsoft releases their tools with the intention of people using their paid platforms/services. But the original person I replied to definitely thinks the author of the blog post is implying something insidious, which they don't seem to be.
> Surely you don't think that the details of a particular written language's syntax are an appropriate criteria for grading an exam?
Computer science is the science of computing. Programming languages are the language used to implement computer science. Therefore you would expect that students accurately use the programming language to answer questions about computing. Seems reasonable to me.
If instructors are testing implementation details on paper exams then they're really missing the point of CS education. Completely lazy and incompetent, should be terminated.
Some portion of computer science education needs to be practical (implementation details), while some portion needs to be pure computer science (pseudo code).
Obviously projects are a good way to measure implementation details, but they are too easily cheated. Every class I took had exams as 80% or more of the grade. Not every class expected accurate syntax on exams, but most expected code rather than pseudo code (typically C).
Even a large AAA game should be able to be cloned to a machine. You don't need to clone history, just use --depth to specify the number of commits you want.
Obviously a 20 year git repo with all commits is going to be massive, but you don't need that locally.
Also, it seems like it would be reasonable for a AAA game to version control assets separately from code.
Are libraries unethical to use? You can go to your library and read books without paying for them.
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