Can't wait for New York, Beijing, Shanghai, Berlin, and London to follow our bold lead here! Maybe we can get rid of mass transit too. smh.
Finally. The Bloor bike lanes are getting the only treatment they’ve ever deserved: removal.
Chow spent years treating a handful of cyclists like the most important people in Toronto while everyone else sat in traffic.
Long overdue. Good riddance.
#TOPoli
Derek Watson retweeted
This is one of the most reasonable explanations I've read about the state of coding in the age of AI agents (and it tracks with my experience).
In an ideal world, I would have wanted to continue to meticulously write and review every line of code (I really got into it for the love of the craft in the first place). But we don't live in that world anymore and AI coding agents have made things much faster and more productive.
AI models are not only faster, but also better than most people at coding (especially if you know how to instruct and steer them correctly). Insisting on manual coding is like traveling by horse in the age of motor vehicles.
That said, I still think it is important to learn coding and the fundamentals of software engineering. Having experience with manual coding will make you a much better agentic engineer.
However, getting the manual coding experience in the fast-paced job market is virtually impossible, which is why I think manual coding should be part of the curriculum in grade schools and high schools. Kids should learn to code and pick up their experience before they enter the job market.
I don't read/write code these days, I only instruct an LRM. But it's not because I think LRM code quality is perfect, or even good. And it's not because I think my instructions are always being perfectly acted upon -- I know they aren't.
The thing is: LRMs don't just write your code, they unlock new ways to control what you're doing and maintain understanding of your system, which are about as effective as reading code. You can better test your codebase, you can audit specific components, you can spin up visualizations, you can ask the LRM to red team, etc. You can do all of these things at high speed -- you couldn't before. The benefits of reading/writing code can now be achieved in new ways.
All in all, the ROI of writing code by hand is no longer looking good, not because LRMs got perfect but because they're so fast at doing things that you can develop new workflows around them, workflows that end up being more productive than the old workflows.
Derek Watson retweeted
He discovered Rails is slow today
Been running a beta version of Campfire rewritten in Rust today! The code itself is still ugly as sin, and 6x as verbose, but the conversion was free*, and I never had to look at the Rust directly, so this is awesome 🤩 github.com/basecamp/once-cam…
Derek Watson retweeted
So like, exactly where 95% of programming is going.
"I love Rust! Rust is amazing ...if you never, ever, EVER have to look at it yourself." — @dhh
Long live the new flesh.
Brash, brilliant, and broke: Meet the bleeding-edge filmmakers behind the New Toronto Bizarre, who don't need TIFF to set Canadian cinema on fire. theglobeandmail.com/culture/…
Can confirm
My conversation with Sam Altman (@sama), co-founder & CEO of @OpenAI.
0:00 Tobi Lütke, AI-Native Companies & Why Adoption Moves Slowly
5:45 Sam's Own Resistance to AI & the Missing iPhone Moment
10:00 Models, Compute, Power Laws & Non-Consensus Talent
18:37 From AI-Obsessed Kid to Founder, Investor & Back Again
23:19 Impossible Problems, Scientific Discovery & Human Connection
30:16 AI's Two Biggest Risks: Loss of Control & Centralized Power
33:09 Iterative Deployment, AI Safety & Learning From Reality
40:27 Why People Fear AI & the Coming Small-Business Boom
46:13 Context, Memory & the Next Way We Will Work With AI
49:17 OpenAI's Platform Strategy & Killing Good Ideas
53:20 Peter Thiel, Paul Graham & the Value of Nonlinear Thinkers
1:00:42 How Y Combinator Changed Startups & Shaped OpenAI
1:04:03 Learning More From Success & the Power of Repetition
1:09:45 Building OpenAI Without Customers, a Product or a Playbook
1:15:57 Letters to His Son & Preserving the Story
Includes paid partnerships.
Solving traffic congestion by optimizing for cars is maybe one of the dumbest takes ever. Especially from someone who spent their career knowing better.
Toronto has spent years fighting over bike lanes. It’s time to build something better.
We have ravines, hydro corridors, parks and safer residential streets that can form the backbone of a connected cycling network that’s maintained year-round.
More routes. Safer rides. Less congestion. That’s a city we can be proud of.
Disobey
You can buy ‘em, but you can’t ride ‘em.
In Toronto, e‑scooters aren’t legal to be ridden on public streets, sidewalks, bike lanes or trails. 🛴🚫
Instead of an e-scooter, choose a manual kick-scooter, traditional bicycle or legal e-bike.
Learn more about the rules for all rideables: toronto.ca/rideables
ALT Black electric scooter standing on a red background with bold text warning that widespread presence doesn't imply legality.
Amen
rfc for (every) agents sdk:
---
I want to put my hands in the goo and the clay, and mould it, with infinite course correction and creativity, constantly shaping and adjusting, even as my own desires and wants change what it should become beneath my own hands; this process (or prayer!) was never meant to be a single command, but a living exchange: touch, response, surprise, revision. may it never end.
I want to wander, double back, get distracted, discover the wrong destinations. indeed, the work should resist me, reveal what I could not have asked for, every answer should alter the question
I dgaf about the finished product; I want to swim in the material, learn where it bends and breaks, what it wants from me; let all creative tools draw me into the process, collapse the distance between impulse and expression, letting me wade in all the mess in between, let it be a place to live
I'd also like it to be in typescript and be able to run it in a durable object. evals would be nice.
Derek Watson retweeted
products of 2015 were largely build by senior programmers in the 2010s who joined the industry in the early 2000s and spent the 90s as teens honing their craft while everyone was telling them they won't amount to anything. Of cause they made fantastic things, no one was writing code because it was trendy, they all showed up because they could not stay away. Eternal September 2
I stand a few feet back from the baggage carousel until I can see my luggage and only then do I move in. Am I a hero? That’s for others to say.
Derek Watson retweeted
guy selling post trained oss models: if you don’t own your models you don’t own anything
guy selling harness on top of models: if you rely on one model you are cooked
guy selling tokens: instead of manually prompting your models just put them in a loop where they prompt themselves
Absolute hero. Workspace CLI is an essential product, well built, with a great UX, and it sounds like it never would have seen the light of day if Justin was a large company bureaucrat.
Two months ago I was fired by Google for creating the Google Workspace CLI. It went viral, hit #1 on Hacker News, gained thousands of GitHub stars and many thousands of actual users in just a couple days.
It was an incredible, confusing journey, from directors and leaders asking what they could learn from the tool to getting grilled by legal about why the Google logo and brand colors are on the Google Workspace GitHub code repositories.
I think the cause was that Workspace and certain leaders (and projects) were afraid of being disrupted. But the fear wasn't specific to my CLI, it was a broader fear in what agents meant for Workspace. Either way, the irony of my termination was the announcement at Google Cloud Next two days before I was fired that an official Workspace CLI was coming.
I want this out there because it is easier for me to explain my story and it is an experience I want to fully own. It's also part of my healing.
Nearly 7 years at Google was an incredible opportunity for me and I was fortunate to have wonderful teammates and a manager that fully supported me through these last few months. Thank you.
