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Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

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Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#91

Post by throwdbaaway »

TheGRS wrote: post #72
SwellJoe wrote: post #40

Based on my understanding of Gas Town, Beads, and Yegge's philosophy on AI that he's expressed in a variety of media, everything about the whole stack is designed to burn tokens. If you're not burning tokens, real fast, 24/7, you're losing the race. The race to where, I have no idea. Apparently, that includes him burning your tokens, too.

I just had to post this somewhere in this thread, but I bought his Vibe Coding book after listening to him talk through it. I figured it would help me understand his approach and therefore help me get into the same mindset for vibe coding on a serious level. It was garbage. The book is largely written and edited by LLMs and it shows on every page. It was a slop how-to book without many useful gems on how to go about…

His Vibe Coding book is invaluable as a textbook example of slop.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#92

Post by glerk »

selectodude wrote: post #3
keeganpoppen wrote: post #2

iono if “steal” has the right valence here

Eh, he stole a bunch of money with a crypto rugpull, can’t really give him the benefit of the doubt anymore.

Not to get pedantic, but rugpulling is still not strictly speaking “stealing”, because everyone is playing according to the protocol’s rules. Someone controlling a large share of pool tokens can decide to liquidate them and extract the other asset in the pair. Market participants are aware of this risk and who is controlling what share of the tokens at any moment.

This is not to excuse the scummy behavior. I didn’t know Steve Yegge went this low just to make a quick buck, and I lost almost all respect for him.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#93

Post by phillipcarter »

gbnwl wrote: post #52

Why is anyone still using or even talking about Gas Town? Now that HN is largely onboard with agentic development and has at least tried it themselves who's still under the impression that it's useful?

The value you get out of a simpler adversarial loop to critique your "main" agent's work is high. Stacking Steve Yegge's personal Kingdom of Nouns on top of each other doesn't add much more.

And this doesn't even begin to get into the madness that is verification for software that matters and is exposed through multiple modalities. You cannot let an agent just vibe its way around "does this business-critical thing with these specific use cases do its job correctly", much as Yegge might have you believe.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#94

Post by tjpnz »

slopinthebag wrote: post #82
SR2Z wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Bitcoin is a technology that will benefit mankind if it reaches global adoption. So presumably bitcoin mining is useful for the user as well. Doesn't matter who you think benefits because it's still theft and it's still illegal.

Won't reach global adoption if I can't settle a restaurant bill with it and not have the restaurant have to stay open all night.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#95

Post by direwolf20 »

FuckButtons wrote: post #46
Quarrelsome wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I guess good on Steve for doing what he does so well, and getting so much hype around a vibe coded mess. Shit coin aside, I don't get the hate for Gastown, we all know its theoretically plausible and he's giving it a shot. We get value either way, either we learn its not just theory or we get to watch it burn in the flames of a legal/financial/security/maintenance nightmare for its practitioners.

Because he should know better? Because it’s obviously a shit show but he keeps on being very vocal about his shit show? Because it’s annoying to have to see yet another delusional vibe coded project being hyped up instead of this forum being used to discuss actually industry relevant information?

> Because it’s annoying to have to see yet another delusional vibe coded project being hyped up instead of this forum being used to discuss actually industry relevant information?

It's industry-relevant. This is what the industry is now. All in two short years.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#96

Post by direwolf20 »

mlmonkey wrote: post #86

For those of us not in the know, WTF is "Gas Town"? Please ELI5! TYVM.

It's a system of interacting AI agents that is all gas, no brakes and deliberately completely ridiculous. Like OpenClaw, but in a different direction and with multiple agents.

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#98

Post by Jimmc414 »

Open source or not, there’s a strong argument that using someone’s API key to make unauthorized requests is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Using their GitHub credentials to submit PRs without consent is also unauthorized use of access credentials.

The “thoughtless design vs. malice” framing by Anthropic is generous. Shipping formulas that target steveyegge/gastown issues is intentional. Someone wrote those formulas, pointed them at the maintainer’s repo, and included them in the default install. Someone thought it was acceptable I guess because it’s open source?

Re: Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits to improve itself?

#99

Post by hedgehog »

TheGRS wrote: post #72
SwellJoe wrote: post #40

Based on my understanding of Gas Town, Beads, and Yegge's philosophy on AI that he's expressed in a variety of media, everything about the whole stack is designed to burn tokens. If you're not burning tokens, real fast, 24/7, you're losing the race. The race to where, I have no idea. Apparently, that includes him burning your tokens, too.

I just had to post this somewhere in this thread, but I bought his Vibe Coding book after listening to him talk through it. I figured it would help me understand his approach and therefore help me get into the same mindset for vibe coding on a serious level. It was garbage. The book is largely written and edited by LLMs and it shows on every page. It was a slop how-to book without many useful gems on how to go about…

Did you end up finding a reference you liked better? I'm default suspicious of anything called "vibe coding" but there are probably some good lessons in that territory.
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