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A desktop made for one

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Re: A desktop made for one

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software made for one, made by LLMs which regurgitate the average of existing tools, are going to have more security issues, not less.

But how would you exploit them when every one of them is subtly different? With software that's deployed to millions of computers you have an abundance of targets, but trying to target some random LLM average todo list at scale is hard, isn't it?

Yes, but it should be fairly easy to "simply" attack the common technologies that LLMs keep parroting. NextJS, or some Rust tools, or whatever other tools LLMs "love" using, are all great targets.

Once millions of completely unskilled developers have "workflows" that consist of asking an LLM to make a thing, followed by those LLMs pulling in the same 100 (often outdated versions of) dependencies, you have a beautiful attack vector.

Yes, it's "easy" to attack something like Obsidian. It's probably easier to attack a couple hundred dependencies LLMs like to use, or to test what LLMs commonly do to implement things from scratch, and attack those weaknesses.

We are just lucky that enough real, smart, people engineered things that actually work, are well understood, and keep us safe, like firewalls.

Re: A desktop made for one

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! GP never claimed otherwise. As for the rest of your comment, it's frankly a bit patronising: are people too cheap, are people too lazy to read, are people unable to type...? No, people are busy, a fact which GP made abundantly clear in the very first paragraph. > I wo…

But if people are so busy, when are they planning to use their suite of bespoke software anyway? Like isn't this all about recreation anyway? This blog post certainly seems to be that at least. Is this really all about spending money on AI to write something that you then are using just for job? Because, apparently, you have no time otherwise? If its not for fun, what's it for? It doesn't really seem like anyone is m…

> But if people are so busy, when are they planning to use their suite of bespoke software anyway?

The original blog post, and the ensuing discussion, is about creating software that fits your specific requirements, for the purposes of daily use.

As for using vim, the author did, for 20 years. The article discusses that in detail.

Re: A desktop made for one

#233

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…

[dead]

Re: A desktop made for one

#234
post #81

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…

It's a question of time and priorities.

I work 8-10 hours a day and outside those working hours I want to spend time with my family, my friends, and my hobbies.

At the same time, during those 8-10 working hours I don't want to spend time fiddling around with different programming languages or software patterns just to spit out a quirky little tool that would make my job a bit easier.

For example, I wanted a local to-do list software that I could easily integrate with my workflow. Spent some time trying to find one, but not a single one worked the way I wanted. So, one morning, I spent 5 minutes detailing what I wanted, prompted it to Claude and let it rip while I was working. 30 minutes later, it was ready.

Re: A desktop made for one

#235

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 called it "software". It's so strange to me that since the 1960s with BASIC then later on dozens of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_educational_programmin... including Logo by Feurzeig/Papert/Solomon there is effort to precisely help beginners program software. The effort was not to onboard future professional software developers but rather to make the personal in personal computer, or PC, meaningful. It's YO…

To me this doesn't seem like a step towards those foundations, but another layer of of loss of agency. You can run "a" model locally, but you cannot make it locally (at least not for the purpose of just talking software into existence). You need to slurp up all the internet first, so to speak. And even if you could do that, you still depend on people putting new things onto the internet for you to slurp up. So is it really my software? What if it breaks or I want a new feature and AI corp nuked my account? How much did I learn during my time having it done for me?

And before anyone mentions it, I don't think the fact that I need a compiler and a manual and some example software to learn from is quite on the same level. I might be wrong but I would need some convincing.

Re: A desktop made for one

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! GP never claimed otherwise. As for the rest of your comment, it's frankly a bit patronising: are people too cheap, are people too lazy to read, are people unable to type...? No, people are busy, a fact which GP made abundantly clear in the very first paragraph. > I wo…

But if people are so busy, when are they planning to use their suite of bespoke software anyway? Like isn't this all about recreation anyway? This blog post certainly seems to be that at least. Is this really all about spending money on AI to write something that you then are using just for job? Because, apparently, you have no time otherwise? If its not for fun, what's it for? It doesn't really seem like anyone is m…

That’s one question never answered. It’s way easier to write a vim/sublime/emacs plugin than a whole new brand editor. These days, I try to use single purpose programs that does one thing and compose them instead of trying to get the “one true” software.

Re: A desktop made for one

#237

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…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46334206#46376113

Re: A desktop made for one

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I called it "software". It's so strange to me that since the 1960s with BASIC then later on dozens of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_educational_programmin... including Logo by Feurzeig/Papert/Solomon there is effort to precisely help beginners program software. The effort was not to onboard future professional software developers but rather to make the personal in personal computer, or PC, meaningful. It's YO…

To me this doesn't seem like a step towards those foundations, but another layer of of loss of agency. You can run "a" model locally, but you cannot make it locally (at least not for the purpose of just talking software into existence). You need to slurp up all the internet first, so to speak. And even if you could do that, you still depend on people putting new things onto the internet for you to slurp up. So is it…

You can also run a computer at home but you cannot even make a 486 from scratch at home, let alone something released more recently.

I agree on the SaaS side of the story, that's why it is so important to have open models.

Re: A desktop made for one

#239
post #18
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they basically generated a desktop for themselves, what’s the chance they didn’t generate the article? I think pretty slim. Also, reading it is probably not the intended use. It’s probably: “Hey Claude, give me a TLDR of this”

Who cares? It’s their content. If they hired an editor to help them, cool. If the content doesn’t suit you, move on. But the incessant “AI was used here, thus is it garbage” is long past time to enter the grave.

>But the incessant “AI was used here, thus is it garbage” is long past time to enter the grave.

Nah, that rule is more relevant and true now than it was a year ago.

Re: A desktop made for one

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I called it "software". It's so strange to me that since the 1960s with BASIC then later on dozens of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_educational_programmin... including Logo by Feurzeig/Papert/Solomon there is effort to precisely help beginners program software. The effort was not to onboard future professional software developers but rather to make the personal in personal computer, or PC, meaningful. It's YO…

To me this doesn't seem like a step towards those foundations, but another layer of of loss of agency. You can run "a" model locally, but you cannot make it locally (at least not for the purpose of just talking software into existence). You need to slurp up all the internet first, so to speak. And even if you could do that, you still depend on people putting new things onto the internet for you to slurp up. So is it…

Agreed, I wasn't advocating on using LLMs, even "open" or "local" ones.
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