MerrimanInd (u/MerrimanInd)

MerrimanInd commented on AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions github.com/ghostty-org/gh... · Posted by u/freetonik

hodgehog11 · 3 days ago

How does this not lead to a situation where no honest person can use any AI in their submissions? Surely pull requests that acknowledge AI tooling will be given significantly less attention, on the grounds that no one wants to read work that they know is written by AI.

MerrimanInd · 3 days ago

It just might. But if people generate a bias against AI generated code because AI can generate massive amounts of vaguely correct looking yet ultimately bad code then that seems like an AI problem not a people problem. Get better, AI coding tools.

MerrimanInd commented on Sequoia backs Zed zed.dev/blog/sequoia-back... · Posted by u/vquemener

rtfeldman · 4 days ago

We're working on it! :)

You can pay for Zed today if you'd like - https://zed.dev/pricing - and also the editor itself is open-source under the GPLv3 license. So if at any point in the future Zed changes direction in a way you don't like, you are perpetually free to build the version you liked from source (or make a community fork and take it in a different direction).

MerrimanInd · 4 days ago

I'm a big fan of Zed and having met much of the team I think it's some great people building a great product. But I do echo concerns that while the intentions are all honorable the incentives of the pricing structure, business environment, and now a funding round are concerning in the long term. I don't think anyone at Zed has a single ill intent or a secret master plan but these days anything I'm not paying for I just assume is going to be enshittified eventually. Especially for an app where the only paid features are AI-centric and there's a VC expecting to make multiples on a $60m investment.

So here's my ask: let me pay for it without paying for AI! None of my use cases will stress your servers; I have `"disable_ai": true` in my settings.json. Give me a $5/mo "support the devs tier" or a $10/mo tier with some random app quality-of-life features and I'm there. I specifically want to pay for good software without paying for AI to signify the value proposition that still exists there cause I don't think a VC would believe me otherwise.

MerrimanInd commented on Sam Altman is in damage-control mode after latest ChatGPT release cnn.com/2025/08/14/busine... · Posted by u/reconnecting

lurking_swe · 10 days ago

“no scientific breakthrough”

careful. I too am pessimistic on the generative AI hype, but you seem even more so, to the point where it’s making you biased and possibly uninformed.

Today’s news from BBC, 6 hours ago. “AI designs antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA superbugs”

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr94xxye2lo

> Now, the MIT team have gone one step further by using *generative AI* to design antibiotics in the first place for the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea and for potentially-deadly MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).

…

> "We're excited because we show that generative AI can be used to design completely new antibiotics," Prof James Collins, from MIT, tells the BBC.

MerrimanInd · 10 days ago

I don't think that BBC article is technically detailed enough to make that case. The actual study may be, so I'm not saying you're wrong, but "generative AI" is far too large of an umbrella term that encompasses two very different views. The common thesis here is that AI is a wildly powerful tool to do fundamental science, and I think most technologists with any knowledge of neural networks would agree that's true. But the problem is that the Sam Altmans of the world are applying that thesis to the promise that GPT5 is on the path to AGI and they just need to keep scaling and pouring more billions of dollars into these massive models to get there. When I see actually interesting applications of AI in fundamental science the studies are usually of custom programs starting with smaller or more purpose-built foundational models, being hand tuned by knowledgeable researchers with deterministic/testable validation feedback loops. So what you're saying can be true while what Altman is promising can also be absolutely false. But it's hard to say without actually reading that MIT study.

MerrimanInd commented on GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation theverge.com/news/757461/... · Posted by u/Handy-Man

nlawalker · 13 days ago

I think many of the concerns are valid, but I'm not sure I'd read too much into the name of the absorbing org. Org names at Microsoft end up being misaligned and unintuitive all the time.

MerrimanInd · 13 days ago

While that may be true, I don't think the specific name of the team at Microsoft absorbing GitHub is what's concerning users. I can't think of a team up there that wouldn't be a red flag in this case.

MerrimanInd commented on Our $100M Series B oxide.computer/blog/our-1... · Posted by u/spatulon

kierangill · 25 days ago

I applied in early 2021. Getting rejected from any company carries a sting, but I was grateful to have gone through the process.

I didn’t realize at the time, but Oxide’s application process was the best form of interview prep I’ve done. The process forced me to thoroughly document my values and career accomplishments. In later non-Oxide interviews, I effectively recited what I had written my materials. In that way, it has felt less one-sided than every other company application process I’ve gone through. I was able to take away an artifact from the experience, versus being filtered out via a coding challenge. It’s also been rewarding to reflect on my submission from years ago to see how my mindset and skills have evolved.

If you have any interest in working in the pediatric telemedicine space, I encourage you to email me your application. We accept Oxide materials. I’m happy to provide feedback as a hiring manager. My email and our company website are in my bio.

MerrimanInd · 25 days ago

That's very interesting because in their episode on hiring practices they said that they hoped the materials would be a valuable exercise for anyone deeply engaged in a job search. Hearing that same feedback from the other side of the process really closes that feedback loop!

MerrimanInd commented on Local-first software (2019) inkandswitch.com/essay/lo... · Posted by u/gasull

samwillis · 2 months ago

There is now a great annual Local-first Software conference in Berlin (https://www.localfirstconf.com/) organised by Ink and Switch, and it's spawned a spin out Sync Conf this November in SF (https://syncconf.dev/)

There was a great panel discussion this year from a number of the co-authors of the the paper linked, discussing what is Local-first software in the context of dev tools and what they have learnt since the original paper. It's very much worth watching: https://youtu.be/86NmEerklTs?si=Kodd7kD39337CTbf

The community are very much settling on "Sync" being a component of local first, but applicable so much wider. Along with local first software being a characteristic of end user software, with dev tools - such as sync engines - being an enabling tool but not "local first" in as much themselves.

The full set of talks from the last couple of years are online here: https://youtube.com/@localfirstconf?si=uHHi5Tsy60ewhQTQ

It's an exciting time for the local-first / sync engine community, we've been working on tools that enable realtime collaborative and async collaborative experiences, and now with the onset of AI the market for this is exploring. Every AI app is inherently multi user collaborative with the agents as actors within the system. This requires the tech that the sync engine community has been working on.

MerrimanInd · 2 months ago

There's also an excellent Local First podcast that interviews the engineers building local-first apps and infra!

https://www.localfirst.fm/

MerrimanInd commented on Cobb Tuning Hit with $2.9M Fine over Emissions Defeat Devices roadandtrack.com/news/a62... · Posted by u/peutetre

giantg2 · a year ago

So... how do track-only cars deal with this? My understanding is that non-road vehicles wouldn't have the same restrictions. Even at the state level, travelling under 5k miles per year exempts you from emmissions standards. I'm not sure if this is built off of the federal law, but it would be very interesting if it actually conflicts with it.

It would seem that these tuners have a lawful purpose if there are in fact exceptions for non-road vehicles, such as true race cars.

Edit: answered my own question. Seems it's just selective enforcement. State level inspection exemption is still a "visual only" inspection, meaning there can't be any obvious deletes (not really enforced it seems). https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/2137/epa-clarifies-its-...

MerrimanInd · a year ago

Historically the entire engine tuning industry's loophole was some text on their website and product packaging that said "for off road use only". But over the years they've become more brazen about marketing for street use while expecting that disclaimer to protect their liability. IMO the real breaking point was the diesel truck guys. They were both far more active in marketing their defeat devices for road use ("improve towing fuel economy with a DPF delete") as well as the coal rollers just being so hilariously anti-social that there was bound to be pushback. They really pushed the uneasy look-the-other-way truce that the industry had with the EPA and even as a longtime car enthusiast (and engineer who's worked in both emissions engine calibration and electrical vehicles) I can't fault the regulators on this.

So to answer your actual question, while technically actual off road use is still legal a lot of bad actors in the industry used every bit of leeway that the regulators gave them and now this crackdown is the result.

MerrimanInd commented on Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years loglog.games/blog/leaving... · Posted by u/darthdeus

fidotron · a year ago

It's not hard/fast but I would tend to agree with an approximation of this.

Back when I worked properly on big games the UI libs would often be trees of widgets with injectable functions for modifying the rendering, which is actually one of the points in this blog the writer would like. (The UI lib of classic Sims was exactly like that). These days the stuff I've done, although entirely in JS, at https://luduxia.com/ follows that pattern for the 3D components at least. The world is defined in an almost classic scene graph and then behaviour is added by attaching functions to pieces, which can be composed functionally.

Much of the anti-OOP noise is the result of people that have suffered from others creating hierarchies of the world too literally. Quite why it proves so difficult for developers to slow down and think about the right course of action is beyond me. They're also staggeringly resistant to changing afterwards.

MerrimanInd · a year ago

>Much of the anti-OOP noise is the result of people that have suffered from others creating hierarchies of the world too literally.

I think one of the problems is that a heirarchy is inherently opinionated. You have to choose the criteria around how to group the objects/nodes in your graph and that criteria is context-dependent. The example I've used with animal taxonomy is grouping your objects via things you can eat vs things you can pat. Thsoe are two very different graph structures of the same group of objects and if you started with one then realized you need to change, how you use your objects you're gonna have a bad time. Multiple inheritance is the bandaid solution that usually comes with more hassle than it's worth.

Building a UI is a good example of a heirarchical structure where you know exactly how you want to use your objects and how they'll relate to each other, Not having access to that programming structure would be frustrating and just feel like a loss. But I've also done multiple large refactors of Python projects because I relied on OO inheritance models that turned out to not be quite the right implementation. In those situations, Rust traits are a breath of fresh air for offering the right kind of polymorphism.

MerrimanInd commented on Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years loglog.games/blog/leaving... · Posted by u/darthdeus

beders · a year ago

I shall recommend this talk for you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc

MerrimanInd · a year ago

I love a long, deep-dive, nerdy talk like this! I'll check it out, thanks.

MerrimanInd commented on Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years loglog.games/blog/leaving... · Posted by u/darthdeus

fidotron · a year ago

Starting by saying I fundamentally agree wrt iteration speed. This is ultimately why [C/C++]/Lua was such a thing for a while, and it seems quite plausible that you could benefit from a core engine in rust bound to a scripting language.

But ultimately I sense the subtext here is much the same as with other Rust problems: the object oriented baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, often in the name of premature optimisation, but also with a sense of misplaced religious purity regarding the evils of state and the merits of functional programming. There never was any OOP law that your inheritance hierarchy had to be insane, or that you had to create classes for absolutely every last thing. Now we have people hitting the opposite extreme where everything has to go through the same function switched on a pattern matched enum. One of the core problems with Rust is it lacks the mechanisms to allow moving adequately out of this tarpit.

I still think Rust might have a place at the lowest level core where it is all about shuffling arrays of things through compute units, but for the higher level pieces it is clearly the wrong thing to be using.

MerrimanInd · a year ago

I've been playing around with an idea about OOP for awhile, not sure if it'll ring true or not but I'll run it up the flagpole for feedback.

I think FP is a great way to program actions and agency but OOP is a great way to model the world. I like Rust's trait system because the polymorphism is based on what you want an object to do not what it is. But when you're creating models of the world it's usually really convenient and even accurate to use nested inheritance models. Maybe the original system for this is the flora/fauna taxonomy but it applies to a lot of things; like GUI elements or game models.

If this is correct, it might explain why the discourse is so polarized. Whether OOP is a blessing or a curse probably depends on whether you're using a programming language as a modelling language or as a logic/execution language.