[HN Gopher] Warranty Void If Regenerated
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Warranty Void If Regenerated
Author : Stwerner
Score : 50 points
Date : 2026-03-17 20:39 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nearzero.software)
(TXT) w3m dump (nearzero.software)
| SeriousM wrote:
| This is such a good written fiction story. Well done. And the
| best part: I can see myself as Tom.
| bstsb wrote:
| excellent story, it was both interesting and mildly terrifying.
| to think that one day software could be malleable seems so wrong
| to me - you would think having deterministic results is important
| for programming - and yet with "vibe coding" that really seems to
| be where it's going.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| It's a neat piece of writing, but not nearly dystopic enough for
| my taste. There will only be one farm and whoever is fixing it
| will be on the other side of the world.
| iwontberude wrote:
| Dystopians are too easy. The real challenge and reward are
| interesting utopian novels.
| recursive wrote:
| I used to live in Marshfield WI. It's kind of jarring to see it
| mentioned "in the real world", the the extent that HN resembles
| that.
| jumpalongjim wrote:
| Often suggested by optimistic podcast guests these days: the as-
| yet-unknown new careers that will replace the familiar old ones
| and thus give employment in the AI era. I think your story is
| more a commentary on the current AI goldrush than an insight into
| future careers.
| Avicebron wrote:
| You could fully remove AI from this and it's basically the main
| character Tom running a one-man MSP in Marshfield WI.
| hatthew wrote:
| A fun read!
|
| I'm mildly thrown off by some inconsistencies. Carol says "I've
| been under-watering that spot on purpose for thirty years," and
| then a paragraph down Tom's thoughts say "Carol didn't know that
| she under-watered the clay spot." Carol considers a drip
| irrigation timer the last acceptable innovation, but then the
| illustration points to the greenhouse as the last acceptable
| illustration. Several other things as well, mostly in the
| illustrations.
|
| Are these real inconsistencies or am I misunderstanding? Was this
| story AI-assisted (in part or all)? Is this meta-commentary?
| cortesoft wrote:
| I do enjoy this sort of speculative fiction that imagines though
| future consequences of something in its early stages, like AI is
| right now. There are some interesting ideas in here about where
| the work will shift.
|
| However, I do wonder if it is a bit too hung up on the current
| state of the technology, and the current issues we are facing.
| For example, the idea that the AI coded tools won't be able to
| handle (or even detect) that upstream data has changed format or
| methodology. Why wouldn't this be something that AI just learns
| to deal with? There us nothing inherent in the problem that is
| impossible for a computer to handle. There is no reason to think
| AIs can't learn how to code defensively for this sort of thing.
| Even if it is something that requires active monitoring and
| remediation, surely even today's AIs could be programmed to
| monitor for these sorts of changes, and have them modify existing
| code when to match the change when they occur. In the future,
| this will likely be even easier.
|
| The same thing is true with the 'orchestration' job. People
| already have begun to solve this issue, with the idea of a
| 'supervisor' agent that is designing the overall system, and
| delegating tasks to the sub-systems. The supervisor agent can
| create and enforce the contracts between the various sub-systems.
| There is no reason to think this wont get even better.
|
| We are SO early in this AI journey that I don't think we can yet
| fully understand what is simply impossible for an AI to ever
| accomplish and what we just haven't figure out yet.
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