[HN Gopher] Using computers more freely and safely (2023)
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Using computers more freely and safely (2023)
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 92 points
Date : 2025-06-13 17:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (akkartik.name)
(TXT) w3m dump (akkartik.name)
| layer8 wrote:
| Original discussion (67 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36113115
| rpdillon wrote:
| This approach has been my central philosophy for years, and is
| why I dislike central app stores so much: they put significant
| downward pressure on hobby coders releasing their work, which
| leaves the store with a bunch of primarily commercial software,
| which aligns incentives around extracting data or money from
| users. F-Droid is a great counter-example that highlights this.
|
| I think my decisions have panned out pretty well, in a
| /r/stallmanwasright sort of way. I caught a lot of side glances
| for using Linux back in the late 90s and early 00s (I wanted to
| load it onto some computers on LHD-4 during my tour aboard, but
| the command said it was a "hacker" operating system), but these
| days, looking at what Apple and Microsoft are doing, I'm thrilled
| to be using System76 machines for me and my kids.
|
| Emacs has been a consistent friend over the years, and I still go
| back to it for anything text-centric. It's made the transition to
| the LLM-era quite gracefully. Tiddlywiki has also been a reliable
| source of value over the years.
|
| I tend to not install apps for sites on my phones. They offer
| less control than a browser I can add uBlock to and just visit
| the site. Not always (I use the Amazon app, for example), but
| mostly.
|
| In general, I've cultivated an attitude of reverse-entitlement:
| sometimes I really want things, but I have to stay real with
| myself that I don't need them. Some examples that folks will
| probably argue with, but are good illustrations of the idea:
|
| I'm a huge fan of VR, and have had amazing times in Beat Saber
| and a few other games. I bought Quest and Quest 2, but when Meta
| locked me out due to a SNAFU with the Oculus/FB account mess up,
| and I was unable to file a ticket to get the account unlocked
| (because I couldn't log in), I lost $1000 in hardware and a
| couple thousand in VR software, but I just walked away. I realize
| the relationship was abusive, and that I didn't need Meta in my
| life. That was 2 years ago, and I still miss Beat Saber, but it
| was a good decision.
|
| I had a LinkedIn account, and gave my name and email when I
| signed up. When my phone fried and I didn't have backup MFA, they
| demanded my state-issued ID to let me back in (rather than, say,
| verifying by email). I don't trust MS with my ID - they said they
| would delete it, but I didn't believe them (prior data breaches
| at ID vendors motivated me). But more importantly, it was an
| escalation: they didn't verify my identity when I signed up. So
| they should be trying to confirm that I'm the person who signed
| up. But they instead wanted me to verify I'm rpdillon, which is
| moving the goalposts. They're doing it as a transparent data
| grab. So I walked away. That was a few years ago; turns out I
| don't need LinkedIn!
|
| There are probably dozens of examples like this, but I'll stop
| here, since this is already too long.
|
| My core point here is: it turns out I don't need most of the
| stuff these companies offer, and they do seem to be getting
| increasingly abusive. I read about the WebRTC backdoor in Meta's
| apps last night, but I quit Facebook in 2009, because the writing
| was on the wall. I think the article offers a good perspective.
| This is quite at adds with opinions I read here all the time
| ("Libreoffice is a useless replacement for Excel", "It's
| literally impossible to program unless I have my liquid retina
| display", "Unless I'm rendering at 144Hz, it's like a slideshow",
| etc.), so it might be a _highly_ individual thing, but I thought
| it was worth mentioning, since it might be a fun discussion about
| how folks think of these tradeoffs.
| fifticon wrote:
| intereatingly, for apps you mention '..they offer less control
| ..'
|
| Maybe for the user, but for the corporation, they offer more
| control..
| tempodox wrote:
| > they do seem to be getting increasingly abusive.
|
| Positively, I can confirm. Cory Doctorow's Lecture on
| Enshittification describes it perfectly:
|
| https://doctorow.medium.com/my-mcluhan-lecture-on-enshittifi...
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Upvote for Love and Lua!
| GMoromisato wrote:
| I'm sure this article resonates with many people; it doesn't
| resonate with me.
|
| I get value out of (and even enjoy) lots of software, commercial
| and otherwise (except for Microsoft Teams--that's an
| abomination).
|
| Ultimately, everything (not just software) is a trade-off. It has
| benefits and hazards. As long as the benefits outweigh the
| hazards, I use it. [The one frustration is, of course, when an
| employer forces a negative-value trade-off on you--that sucks.]
|
| I'm suspicious of articles that talk about drawbacks in
| isolation, without weighing the benefits: "vaccines have side-
| effects", "police arrest the wrong people", "electric cars harm
| the environment".
|
| Ironically, the best answer to many of the article's suggestions
| (thousands rather than millions, easy to modify, etc.) is to
| write your own software with LLMs. The future everyone wants is,
| I think, one where users can ask the computer to do anything, and
| the computer immediately complies. Will that bring about a
| software paradise free from the buggy, one-size-fits-none,
| extractive software of today? I don't know. I guess we'll see.
|
| We live in interesting times.
| bevr1337 wrote:
| > As long as the benefits outweigh the hazards, I use it.
|
| You and the author may be in agreement but with differing risk
| tolerance.
|
| > Ironically, the best answer to many of the article's
| suggestions... is to write your own software with LLMs.
|
| I don't think it's ironic but I do think it's false. How do
| LLMs satisfy a single requirement from the author's punchline
| list?
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| LLMs don't but the problems you write for yourself using
| LLMs, do.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| > You and the author may be in agreement but with differing
| risk tolerance.
|
| I agree. And I'm not saying the author is wrong--they have
| their preferences. I'm just saying that for me the benefits
| outweigh the risks, and I'm betting most people are like me
| (at least outside HN).
|
| > I don't think it's ironic but I do think it's false. How do
| LLMs satisfy a single requirement from the author's punchline
| list?
|
| The main suggestion from the author is to write your own
| custom software tuned to your needs instead of relying on a
| mass-market, one-size-fits-all piece of complex, expensive
| software that has to be monetized by dark patterns.
|
| I guess in a world where everyone knows how to program, and
| has the time and desire to do so, that would work. But in the
| real world, the only way to get the bulk of humanity to write
| their own software is with LLMs.
|
| I think it's ironic because I bet the author does not like
| LLMs.
| akkartik wrote:
| Don't bet too much, because I'm still undecided on LLMs.
|
| Interestingly, I have no memory of ever thinking about LLMs
| as I wrote this. Part of it is I slaved over this talk a
| lot more than my usual blog posts, for about six months,
| after starting the initial draft in Dec 2022
| (https://akkartik.name/post/roundup22). ChatGPT came out in
| Nov 2022. So I was following (and starting to get annoyed
| by) the AI conversations in parallel with working on this
| talk, but perhaps they felt like separate threads in my
| head and I hadn't yet noticed that they can impact one
| another.
|
| These days I've noticed the connections, and I feel the
| pressure to try to rationalize one in terms of the other.
| But I still don't feel confident enough to do so. And my
| training has always emphasized living with ambiguity until
| one comes up with a satisfying resolution.
|
| It took us 200 years from the discovery of telescopes[1] to
| attain some measure of closure on all the questions they
| raised. There's no reason to think the discovery of LLMs
| will take any less time to work through. They'll still be
| remembered and debated in a hundred years. Your hot takes
| or mine about LLMs will be long forgotten. In the meantime,
| it seems a good idea for me to focus on what I seem
| uniquely qualified to talk about.
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20140310031503/http://tofsp
| ot.bl... is a fantastic resource.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| > And my training has always emphasized living with
| ambiguity until one comes up with a satisfying
| resolution.
|
| I wish more people had this attitude, particularly
| towards LLMs. We're at an interesting point in time where
| we don't know how LLMs will evolve. Maybe we've hit the
| plateau and LLMs won't get any better. Even in that case,
| it will take decades for their effect to be felt in the
| entire industry, much less the world. Or maybe they will
| continue to improve on their way to ASI.
|
| My point, though, is that if you're worried about user
| control over their computing environment (which I 100%
| understand), then LLMs might be the best solution. I
| think they could be the only practical solution, as all
| others seem like pipe dreams.
| akkartik wrote:
| It's not clear to me why you consider my approach a pipe
| dream. The only criticism I've heard is that people won't
| adopt it. Is that the only one?
|
| One critical question for you is: can someone rebuild a
| piece of software for themselves, from scratch, using
| LLMs, without changing radically in terms of how many
| neurons in their brain are devoted to programming?
|
| If they need to have real control here, they'll need to
| understand a lot about programming, build up a certain
| skeptical mindset in reviewing code, etc. That sort of
| requirement feels like it'll also affect adoption.
|
| If they do so without learning much about programming,
| then I'd argue they don't have much control. It's not
| them rebuilding the thing for themselves, it's the LLM
| rebuilding the thing for them. And that comes with the
| same sorts of Principal Agent problems as depending on
| other sorts of AIs like tech companies to do so. They'll
| find themselves awash in eldritch bugs, etc.
|
| So I think LLMs can't square this circle. If they want to
| not devote a lifetime to programming, user control using
| LLMs feels like more of a pipe dream than my approach.
| Because my approach depends crucially on personal
| relationships. There's no illusion that each person is
| getting personally customized software. Instead we're
| banding together in computational space as if we're
| travelling through medieval Asia -- using a caravan.
| Caravans had a natural limit in size, because larger
| caravans were easier to infiltrate with bandits. Managing
| those risks in a large caravan requires the geopolitical
| skills of a king to constantly see all the angles of who
| can screw you over at each point in time.
| akkartik wrote:
| > I'm betting most people are like me (at least outside
| HN).
|
| Oh yes. If you want to be like most people, you should stay
| right where you are.
|
| The question I'm interested in is: where _should_ most
| people be? Are they where they _should_ be? Is the current
| world the best we can do?
|
| I have no illusions about converting a large following. I
| just have different priorities than you, it seems.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| > Oh yes. If you want to be like most people, you should
| stay right where you are.
|
| I don't really have a choice. As a great philosopher
| said, I am what I am and that's all that I am.
|
| > The question I'm interested in is: where should most
| people be? Are they where they should be? Is the current
| world the best we can do?
|
| These questions can only be answered by actions. You're
| doing the right thing: you're creating the kind of
| software that you want to see in the world. That's really
| the highest service that a programmer can perform.
|
| I actually think we probably agree on how crappy most
| software is. But whereas your answer seems to be "depend
| less on software", my answer is to rebuild the whole
| (software) world from scratch. We'll see which one of us
| is crazier.
| safety1st wrote:
| The fundamental tradeoff a lot of consumer software seems to be
| based on these days is they will offer you stuff you want (i.e.
| be feature rich), in exchange for stuff you don't (i.e. steal
| your data, show you ads). Whereas a FOSS author is a lot more
| likely to take the "do one thing well" approach.
|
| What I settled for was an approach where I try to minimize the
| use of commercial software in my personal life, but in my
| business if we need what the commercial software does we'll
| just license it and get on with things. For the most part in my
| life I don't really NEED some feature or another, it might be
| nice to have, but with any type of commercial software or
| service there's always going to be the risk that they'll push
| some update that shoves ads down my throat or introduces
| microtransactions or something, so I'm OK to just go without
| and use the FOSS alternative.
|
| In business though, we'll be at a competitive disadvantage if I
| force everyone to use only FOSS. There are many times where
| I've looked at the open source equivalent of some big SaaS and
| it was just going to be more work to set up and maintain a less
| featureful open source equivalent. So, I'm more inclined to do
| a deal with the devil because at the end of the day our time
| and resources need to be focused elsewhere.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| That's because (on paper) B2Bs get much more out of their
| clients (sorry!)
| maegul wrote:
| > Ironically, the best answer to many of the article's
| suggestions (thousands rather than millions, easy to modify,
| etc.) is to write your own software with LLMs.
|
| Not sure exactly irony you mean here, but I'll bite on the
| anti-LLM bait ...
|
| Surely it matters where the LLM sits against these values, no?
| Even if you've got your own program from the LLM that's yours,
| so long as you may need alterations, maintenance, debugging or
| even understanding its nuances, the nature of the originating
| LLM, as a program, matters too ... right?
|
| And in that sense, are we at all likely to get to a place where
| LLMs aren't simply the new mega-platforms (while we await the
| year of the local-only/open-weights AI)?
| GMoromisato wrote:
| > Surely it matters where the LLM sits against these values,
| no?
|
| Yes, I agree, but it's all trade-offs. The core problem is
| this:
|
| 1. Software is very expensive to write
|
| 2. So, you need to sell to as many people as possible
|
| 3. So, you need to add lots of features to attract as many
| people as possible
|
| 4. And you need to monetize it with ads, data-selling, and
| SaaS subscriptions.
|
| 5. But that makes software complicated, brittle, and
| frustrating.
|
| LLMs can break the cycle if they make it cheap to write
| software. Instead of buying a mass-market product with 10x
| more features than you need, you create custom software that
| does exactly what you need and no more.
|
| But aren't we trading one master of another? Instead of
| bowing down to Microsoft/Meta/Google, we bow down to
| OpenAI/Anthropic/Meta/Google? Maybe, but when an LLM writes
| code for you, you own the code. The code runs outside of the
| LLM (usually) on an open platform.
|
| But what if you have to modify the code? Then you ask an LLM
| (maybe not the original LLM) to modify the code. That's far
| easier than asking Google to modify Gmail.
|
| If you believe in the suggestions of the author, then I don't
| think there is a better answer than LLMs. We don't live in a
| world where everyone can solve their software problems by
| forking some code, much less modifying it themselves.
|
| And the reason I think it's ironic is because I suspect the
| author hates LLMs.
| akkartik wrote:
| > 1. Software is very expensive to write
|
| I disagree with this, right at the start. I think software
| is cheap to write but expensive to maintain when you try to
| sell to as many people as possible. It's the OpEx that
| kills you, not the CapEx. I go into this more in the
| current state of https://akkartik.name/about
|
| So I wrote OP to encourage more exploration of the
| alternative path. If you build something and don't keep
| adding features to it in a futile attempt at land-grabbing
| "users" who will for the most part fail to pay you back for
| the over-investment your current VC-based milieu causes you
| to think is the only way to feel a sense of meaning from
| creating software -- if you don't keep adding features to
| it and you build on a substrate that's similarly not adding
| features and putting you on a perpetual treadmill of
| autoupdates, then software can be much less expensive.
|
| I plan to just put small durable things out into the world,
| and to take a small measure of satisfaction in their
| accumulation over the course of my life. The ideal is a
| rock: it just sits inert until you pick it up, and it
| remains true to its nature when you do pick it up.
|
| > LLMs can break the cycle if they make it cheap to write
| software. Instead of buying a mass-market product with 10x
| more features than you need, you create custom software
| that does exactly what you need and no more.
|
| That's the critical question, isn't it. Will LLMs yield
| custom software that does exactly what you need and
| stabilizes? Or will they addict people to needing to
| endlessly tweak their output so AI companies can juice
| their revenue streams?
|
| What skills does it take to nudge an LLM to create
| something durable for you? How much do people need to know,
| what skills do they need to develop? I don't know, but I
| feel certain that we will need new skills most people don't
| currently have.
|
| Another way to rephrase the critical question: do you trust
| the real AIs here, the tech companies selling LLMs to you.
| Will the LLMs they peddle continue to work in 10 years time
| as well as they do today? If they enshittify, will you be
| prepared? Me, I'm deeply cynical about these companies even
| as LLMs themselves feel like a radical advance. I hope the
| world will not suffer from the value capture of AI
| companies the way it has suffered from the value capture of
| internet companies.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| Lots of interesting questions here.
|
| > I think software is cheap to write but expensive to
| maintain
|
| OK, but I think you're agreeing with me. Regardless of
| why it is expensive, it drives companies to bloat their
| products (to increase their market) and to exploit dark
| patterns (to increase unit revenue).
|
| If software were very cheap to create and maintain, then
| it would break that cycle.
|
| > if you don't keep adding features to it and you build
| on a substrate that's similarly not adding features and
| putting you on a perpetual treadmill of autoupdates, then
| software can be much less expensive
|
| In the 90s Microsoft found that people only used 10% of
| the features of Microsoft Excel. Unfortunately, everyone
| used a different 10%. At the limit, you would have to
| create a separate product for each feature permutation to
| cover the whole market.
|
| And of course, creating and maintaining 10 different
| products is more expensive than 1 product with all the
| features.
|
| > I plan to just put small durable things out into the
| world
|
| This is great! Actions speak louder than words and you'll
| learn a lot in the process.
|
| > Will LLMs yield custom software that does exactly what
| you need and stabilizes?
|
| I agree that this is the critical question. No one knows
| (certainly I don't). But let's say the goal is to create
| custom software that does exactly what you need. Is there
| a practical path to that other than via LLMs? I don't
| think so.
|
| > do you trust the real AIs here, the tech companies
| selling LLMs to you
|
| I think this is orthogonal to whether the tech works at
| all. But, in general, yes, I trust most tech companies to
| provide value greater than the cost of their products.
| Pretty much by definition, for all the software I pay
| for, I trust the companies to deliver greater value. When
| that changes, I stop paying and switch.
|
| And, of course, I support all the usual government
| regulators and public/private watchdogs to hold
| corporations accountable.
| akkartik wrote:
| I think the differing stances towards tech companies
| might be the crucial axiomatic difference between our
| positions. I've just lived through 30 years of reduced
| regulation of Tech, and it's hard to imagine a world that
| reliably prevents that from recurring.
|
| > In the 90s Microsoft found that people only used 10% of
| the features of Microsoft Excel. Unfortunately, everyone
| used a different 10%. At the limit, you would have to
| create a separate product for each feature permutation to
| cover the whole market.
|
| They were approaching this from the other side, though,
| of already having built a ton of features and then trying
| to fragment a unified market. It doesn't work because
| from Microsoft's perspective the goal of Excel is market
| control at the cheapest price, and giving each user their
| 10% is more expensive.
|
| But if you shift perspective to the users of Excel, you
| don't need to care about market control. If everyone
| starts out focusing on just the 10% they care about, it
| might be tractable to just build that for themselves. The
| total cost in the market is greater, particularly because
| I'm not imagining everyone using the same 10% is banding
| together in a single fork. But that becomes this totally
| fake metric that nobody cares about.
|
| My approach involves throwing an order of magnitude more
| attention at the problem than people currently devote to
| computing. But a single order of magnitude feels doable
| and positive ROI. If everyone needs to become a
| programmer, that's many orders of magnitude and likely
| negative ROI. That's not what I'm aiming for.
| gsf_emergency wrote:
| > _I get value out of_
|
| That's the rub. Does it benefit the developers _much more_ than
| the users, _in aggregate_?
|
| It's not an easy question to answer even for vaccines..
|
| But I'd wager it's a no, because, e.g. Pfizer(plus or minus
| BioNTech) probably could not have learnt enough* from their
| deployment..
|
| *I.e. gain nonfungible knowhow
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