Once I build a few things at work I'll probably be asking Claude Code to look for problems with what I've written, but we're not being pushed too hard to get into AI coding yet, though the writing is on the wall. I'm mostly looking for ways to expand what I can do within our current constraints, and keep my sanity.

This is the strange part for me. I'm one of those people that I assume are really common here on HN - I've been having fun coding on personal projects for a long time, somewhere circa 1978 iirc for me. Where I work we're starting to dip our toes into AI and vibecoding and I'm not a big fan. Even in my boring job the actual coding is the part I like the most. So I've taken a different tack. I've been prompting Claude to teach me how to do things, and that has worked out really well. Some basic info to start with, specific questions as needed, but I'm doing the work. I'm improving my productivity while still learning new things and having fun. Win-win for me.

  1. curate a list of creators you like on a local html page
  2. follow a link into YT
  3. refuse to log in to avoid Google keeping even more data on you
  4. run uBlock Origin on Firefox to avoid ads 

That's strange, because I don't even log in and I still get Shorts.

I got moved up the chain to management and later worked to get myself moved back down to a dev role because I missed it and because I was running into the Peter Principle. I use AI to learn new concepts, but mostly as a search engine. I love the tech behind it, but I don't want it coding for me any more than I want it playing my video games for me. I was hoping AI would show up as robots doing my laundry, not doing the thing I most enjoy.

Most libertarians I know (and I consider myself an on and off libertarian as I learn more about it) want the government to stick to making sure people's rights aren't being trodden upon and otherwise leave us alone.

I'd put my money on this. From my understanding of LLMs, they are basically mashing words together via markov chains and have added a little bit of subject classification with attention, a little bit of short-term memory, and enough grammar to lay things out correctly. They don't understand anything they are saying, they are not learning facts and trying to build connections between them, they are not learning from their conversations with people. They aren't even running the equivalent of a game loop where they can even think about things. I would expect something we're trying to call an AI to call you up sometimes and ask you questions. Trillions of dollars have got us this far, how far can it actually take us?

I want my actual AI personal assistant that I have to coerce somehow into doing something for me like an emo teen.

Just these two things would make me happy (assuming the crowdfunding goes to the Firefox team as well).

I don't know any of the Mozilla execs but from the outside it looks an awful lot like some grifters were attracted to the free Google money and took money from the people doing the actual work.

If I'm wrong, my apologies. There just seems to be a lot of high salaries and a lot of developer layoffs.