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A desktop made for one

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Re: A desktop made for one

#111

Post by 1123581321 »

jpease wrote: post #66
sandworm101 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shudder to think about the security implications of everyone rolling thier own software. I trust my OS/browser/file system is secure because thousands of people are invovled in a complex network of interests in keeping it secure, from the kid contributing his first bit of code to the PHds at NSA writing encryption standards. The idea that any one person can replace that network is laughable.

Just to be contrarian, perhaps some measure of risk is reduced by the scale of one. Identifying a vulnerability that can be exploited against many thousands or millions of targets is perhaps more attractive than a single one of individually low value. This of course would assume that vulnerabilities are in fact unique (which is admittedly questionable).

We should expect the same automated personalization to be used offensively and for that personalization to be packaged into tools anyone can run (natural language interface, likely.)

(Appreciate your counterpoint for its own sake. It’s an interesting idea.)

Re: A desktop made for one

#112

Post by gwern »

geir_isene wrote: post #40
dadoum wrote: post #19

Sorry I have a question that is a little off-topic: what's the value of generating an image of a laptop on a desk? That's not like it's particularly relevant, when you could have integrated a screen shot of your set-up (like the same one you put on a few of your repos) or something more unique, and even if you want to show that, it's easy to find similar images with the same vibe, so I guess it's for some fun I misse…

I like the image. It was simple.

But doesn't that make it bad? It doesn't say anything new. Unlike the software in question, which is personalized, so it's not even symbolically reflecting the topic. It's a sheer waste of pixels and time spent looking at it or scrolling past the cognitive junk food.

Re: A desktop made for one

#114

Post by globalnode »

geir_isene wrote: post #10
cultofmetatron wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seriously.... we already have a constellation of good deterministic tooling for taking a relatively high concept spec to low level assembly. what does an llm offer in generating optimized asm that rust wouldn't??

Less memory footprint. No reliance on libs. Pure first-person control. No wasted CPU cycles is the target here for me. And if you read the post, the asm set is only for the desktop itself. The tools I use are in Rust. Result is: Laptop now runs at between 5-6W (down from ~9W) [XPS14 latest hw] on Ubuntu 26.04 - giving me around 3.5h extra battery life.

+3.5h extra battery life is a real measurable result! well done.

Re: A desktop made for one

#115

Post by jzb »

sandworm101 wrote: post #54
redfloatplane wrote: post #22

I (and I'm sure many others) have been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of months. I called it "Extremely Personal Software" in a blog post a few months ago ( https://redfloatplane.lol/blog/14-releasing-software-now/ ) but there are lots of names and concepts floating about for the same basic idea. I think it's possible the amount of new software that will be written for an audience of 1-10 will be grea…

I shudder to think about the security implications of everyone rolling thier own software. I trust my OS/browser/file system is secure because thousands of people are invovled in a complex network of interests in keeping it secure, from the kid contributing his first bit of code to the PHds at NSA writing encryption standards. The idea that any one person can replace that network is laughable.

If they’re hosting network services, sure. I wouldn’t put vibe-coded software outside a home network, ever. But it seems low risk if people are just creating their own desktop software: especially since it’s less likely to be vulnerable to widespread malware.

(Note: I’m not an LLM fan, don’t vibe code myself at all. But I would be unconcerned about security for the kind of things I would create if I did start doing so.)

Re: A desktop made for one

#116

Post by tekchip »

nz wrote: post #81
Agingcoder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed I’ve already started writing software for myself using Claude. I would never have done this if it weren’t for AI - I simply don’t have the time otherwise . I now have tailor made apps with all kinds of bells and whistles that commercial products can’t offer easily ( I fall under non commercial usage which opens a lot of doors ), and that free software might offer, but later. I have also learnt a lot technicall…

I don't know how to tell you this, but people have been writing custom software for personal use for decades. I've been doing it since at least 2009! I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs. Is it the price? Are people simply too cheap to buy books? Or have they simply "forgotten" how to patiently and thoughtfully…

There's a whole lot of people who want software to do certain things but whos job isn't programming and life requirements don't allow the time for all the book reading, tutorial running, and practice to write useful code.

I'm a long time ops guy. I script, but I spend most of my time configuring, patch testing, and keeping the low level infra running much of which doesn't require "coding" per say. Infra as code is in the grand scheme relatively new and still not ubiquitous despite what silicon valley would have you believe. I never had a need to learn to code to a level to do many of the things I'd like to see happen and find useful. Now I can make those software desires a reality without having to alter my career, preferred hobbies, or much of anything else about my life.

Re: A desktop made for one

#118

Post by JodieBenitez »

nz wrote: post #81
Agingcoder wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed I’ve already started writing software for myself using Claude. I would never have done this if it weren’t for AI - I simply don’t have the time otherwise . I now have tailor made apps with all kinds of bells and whistles that commercial products can’t offer easily ( I fall under non commercial usage which opens a lot of doors ), and that free software might offer, but later. I have also learnt a lot technicall…

I don't know how to tell you this, but people have been writing custom software for personal use for decades. I've been doing it since at least 2009! I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs. Is it the price? Are people simply too cheap to buy books? Or have they simply "forgotten" how to patiently and thoughtfully…

> Basically, I am prepared to accept that there is a friction that LLMs lubricate away, but what is the source of the friction, and why am I (and a bunch of other colleagues) not feeling that friction daily in our practice?

You must be extremely talented and fast if LLMs make no difference for you.

For people like me though, it's another story: I've been doing this professionally for 25 years and of course, like many, I have been writing custom software for my own use all this time, on personal time. But with LLMs I get better results, faster and with very little effort. And that is the difference between another item in my list of unfinished software that consumed too much of my weekends and a cool utility/toy/useful thing I got after a few fun and interesting chat sessions.

> I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs.

We didn't lack LLMs, we lacked time and energy.

Re: A desktop made for one

#120

Post by ashtonshears »

wyclif wrote: post #103
mrob wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still vaguely remember how difficult man pages were to understand when I first started reading them. I'm pretty sure the biggest obstacle is the fact that most documentation is written for people who already know the standard computer science terminology. I have a generally negative opinion of LLMs, but one thing they do very well is function as a "reverse dictionary". You can input a idiosyncratic description of s…

I've commented on this subject before, but the fact of the matter is that kids getting into high tech and programming mostly don't read books anymore. How do I know? Recently I was hanging out with a bunch of high school students who asked me how I learned. I said it was mostly via books and man pages. "Yeah, don't sleep on high quality written material. O'Reilly. Wiley. Addison-Wesley. Manning. MIT. No Starch Press.…

That has been the case for a decade
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