Advertisements and tracking.

About 90% of the bloat found on most big company websites comes from these scripts being added all over the place. Ideally removing these would make these sites far more efficient, but the marketing and sales folks probably wouldn't allow it.

But personally I not only like to be able to debug issues with the code generated, but make my own changes on top of that. Programming things is kinda fun in of itself, and the idea of just leaving a machine to do it all for me just doesn't sit right here.

https://github.com/w-social-eu

But I do kinda wonder the legality of this sort of move anyway. If other people contributed code and didn't agree to some terms of service saying their work would become the property of the project owner, would it even be legal to make it closed source under a different license?

It's also potentially hazardous for your health if you're not careful with your diet/don't stay in shape. Being in an office definitely limits your opportunities to eat unhealthy food, and (in a walkable city at least) forces you to walk at least a certain distance every day.

I suspect this is why a lot of software engineers nowadays seem a lot more interested in going to the gym or sticking to a healthy diet than they used to.

But yeah, it's admirable. Especially given how the average comic strip runs for decades on end with less and less humour or charm until its eventual cancelation.

Also been working on a mod for a SNES game I grew up with as a side project for the last 12 years or so, and I promise that one day I actually hope to finish it. It's just I have a really bad tendency to fall victim to scope creep/feature creep, and that only got worse when I taught myself 65c816 assembly language and decided I'd add 3-4 unique mechanics per level in the style of games like Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.

Yeah, compatibility on Linux is better now, especially with Valve implementing Proton so games would run on the Steam Deck.

But there are still incompatible games, and non-Windows operating systems are generally not a priority for many game developers. So, you have to hope that either Valve or the community have found a way to make them run on other systems.

And then there's the aforementioned niche stuff. Yes, your games may be compatible with Linux, but what about the tools needed to mod them? Plenty of modding and ROM hacking communities only develop for Windows, so anyone looking to get involved in those scenes has no real choice other than to use Windows. Wouldn't be surprised if plenty of non-gaming communities made heavy use of tools from the days of Windows 95 or MS DOS too, whose creators haven't bothered to update them in years or who have no interest in porting them to Linux in general. Bonus points if the tool is closed source freeware from some site that looks like it was made in 1995.

That way if it's AI slop it'll say [AI slop], if it's spam it'll say [Spam], if it's dubiously legal/illegal content it'll say that, etc?

You could use that to decide if you want to give the submission a chance or not.

And while there's nothing official, there are ways to use the built in Switch browser like a normal browser through homebrew as well. I think one setup even allows functionality the default browser doesn't support, like normal HTML video tags.

And the online setup is arguably even better for the reasons noted. Perhaps in that case, paying could be something you do if you want a hard copy of the book to peruse without a computer/mobile device.

That's worrying for any company that depends on these things, and we can already see companies like Amazon and Microsoft freaking out about how much they're spending on AI services for employees to use.

And it's also why I'm hesitant to use them too much. Personally, I refuse to use subscriptions for anything unless absolutely necessary, and I'll always either pick an open source option or a one time purchase if it's available. I think that mentality might become more common in future when these services hike up the price.

First, a decent percentage of people enjoy programming for the process itself, and not the end result. For them, the idea of having a computer handle everything and playing QA tester every now and again feels like it goes against everything they enjoy about software engineering. If you're the kind of person who dislikes Dropbox because they can do everything themselves, AI is hardly going to rank any better there.

Secondly, a lot of people here do care a lot more about things like performance, technical debt, code quality, etc. AI probably appeals more to those that don't like to think about said things very much, and that's only a percentage of the Hacker News userbase.

Thirdly, a lot of projects discussed here are on the more complex or at least esoteric side. This is where AI tends to fall short, and hence those people may be a lot more skeptical about its usefulness.

There are also a lot of groups here that have... reasons to dislike AI in its current form. Maybe they're open source supporters that dislike how the biggest companies and most up to date models in this space seem to be against everything relating to software freedom (self-hosting, open source, no controls on content or usage, etc). Maybe they're worried their job is at risk, or are struggling to find a new one in this market. Maybe they like building computers or working on hardware and are finding everything's gotten significantly more expensive now that AI companies are using so many resources.

There are a lot of communities and subgroups here who have clear reasons to dislike the current AI boom, and who probably want the bubble to burst sooner rather than later.

Oh, and there are also plenty of people who hate how much of the site seems to revolve around AI now, and wish there were more posts and discussions about anything else.

Does that mean everyone here dislikes AI? No, of course not. Plenty of people here use it, or see it as a useful tool with a lot of potential.

But there are a lot of people here who have clear reasons to dislike it, either because the way it works is antithetical to what they enjoy about programming, or because their situation could get far worse due to its rise in popularity.

This browser based version on the other hand, is in far murkier territory. The fact you don't need a ROM means the assets are definitely included by default on this site, and Nintendo would have a way better case for getting it taken down.

It's basically equivalent to those ROM sites that let you play GBA ROMs in the browser through an emulator written in JavaScript or WebAssembly.

But Nintendo's lawyers pay a lot less attention to anything prior to the Switch generation, and the same presumably goes for the Pokemon Company ones. If this project gets a lot of media coverage it's probably toast, but if it's mostly discussed on the odd programming forum like this one, it could survive a very long time.

On the lower end, there are a lot of companies whose sole purpose is to build websites for other small/medium sized businesses that don't care enough about tech to pay for a full-time engineering team.

For those companies and developers, I suspect the increasing rise of AI will be a bloodbath. If your whole value proposition is "we can build your website using WordPress/Squarespace/Shopify/[CMS name here]", then AI can basically do about 95% of your job. I suspect a lot of these companies are going to shutter when clients take the work in-house due to AI, and many others will probably lose about 90% of their employees due to AI solutions being generally 'good enough'.

On the other hand, if your company is tech focused and needs to implement more complex functionality as a selling point, then there'll still be a place for software engineers even with AI. This is where the engineer as pseudo project manager thing comes into play, and where the actual coding side of things is probably going to be limited to things the AI can't implement properly.

Both situations will probably see a significant drop in the number of software engineers employed there, but the latter feels like it'll still have some room for a career.

Of course, this does create a sort of catch 22 situation. If you lie about using AI and get caught, people will hate your work because you lied about it. If you admit to using AI, they'll hate your work because you used AI.