Fair enough. I don't call it "slop" unless it is, and slop can certainly be made without involving computers. But genAI has without question made slop very easy to generate and so we're seeing quite a lot more of it these days.

I'm just saying why genAI art, sloppy or not, is of no interest to me and why I get angry when I've been deceived about it. Watermarking, if it were possible to reliably do (which I think it isn't), would solve that particular issue by making deception impossible. Without a reliable signal, a lot of stuff made after a certain date will inevitably and necessarily be suspect. Not saying that's right or wrong, just that it is. Maybe think of it as the audience being self-protective.

A reliable signal might even make acceptance of machine-generated art easier, by eliminating or reducing the chances that people will feel tricked.

The most common reasons I've heard include that they're mostly interested in maximizing income, that they think they're better than non-SV style devs without actually being better, that they tend to make engineering decisions based on what's currently in fashion, they tend not to play well on teams that don't operate like SV style teams, and so forth. Thinking about it, I think all of the reasons I've heard can be boiled down to "they're unsupportably egotistical".

Not saying I agree or disagree with all of that (broad-brushing any group of people as if they all are alike is extremely error-prone), just relaying opinions I hear the most often.

What I do think is that the two camps have very different cultures with very different worldviews, customs, and practices, and they tend to demonize each other. And while not having a monoculture is a very good thing, I think that demonization is a bad thing.

But (despite that I used to be hardcore Firefox user and advocate) I'm not married to any particular browser. It's so easy to change browsers that I'll do so the instant one that better meets my needs comes around.

How many "fair shots" does he think Flock should get? They've already blown a few.

> And what I came to realize over time was that the responsibility that bears with it is an obligation to make sure that it’s creating a society that we both, you and I, and everyone around us, want to raise their kids in.

Good luck with that. There's no way I want to live in a panopticon (and particularly not an AI-driven one), let alone subject my children to it. I prefer freedom and liberty.

It depends on what the nature of the work is. If it's a work where technical soundness is the most important thing, then I agree. The criteria should be whether or not the work is sound.

But not everything is like that. Take fine art, for instance, where being human-made is a core part of its value.

The title of this post is editorial. The question asked was "Do FAANG developers look down on non-FAANG developers?" And while the answer doesn't literally answer that question, the tone of the answer absolutely screams "yes".

Which is fair enough, I suppose. A large swath of the dev community looks down on FAANG developers, too.

And yes, for me this means that I've graduated from just putting my phone in airplane mode when I enter a store (to avoid the trackers too many stores have started using) to keeping my phone in airplane mode at all times when I'm not at home.

But whether anyone else should do that depends on how sensitive they are to being tracked.

But I'm thinking that there may be a way to turn my car's body into a faraday cage to block signals from leaving the cabin. That would be a nice compromise.

For me, these tools drain too much of the fun and joy out of software development. I'm not leaning into it at all. If my profession requires me to work in a way or under conditions that actively make me unhappy, the only rational option is to leave the profession.

Also, I absolutely don't want to contribute to any of the genAI companies' income streams. As near as I can tell, every single one of them is a real and serious danger to us individually and to society overall. I'm talking here about their actions as companies, not about their products directly.

> if someone has a painful infection or trouble breathing, they’re going to the doctor.

That's not a given at all. I know people who have avoided going to the doctor for painful infections because of the cost. I've done the same myself.

"Trouble breathing" is an interesting thing, because there have been more than one instance in my city of people who didn't avoid going to the doctor but did die because they couldn't afford the ongoing care their conditions required.