codebases have always contained slop. we have always been okay with this because code rarely needs to be perfect, outside of mission critical "hard" (eg embedded) software. swe is a unique form of engineering because you're often building something that constantly evolves and is almost organic - user tastes change, your mental models evolve, and features come and go. admittedly, i and many others who've been coding for a long time were initially (like back in 2024) skeptical that agents would write production code. "but what about all the slop that would enter our beautiful codebase?". well, even before, we had human slop, and there was a lot of it! if we're being truthful, most people call "code i didn't write" slop. the reality is that 99% of people (i include myself in that number) don't even know what Good Code looks like, let alone be capable of writing it. i would propose that Good Code is: • correct • bug free • fast and cost efficient to run it has always been exceedingly difficult and expensive to write truly Good Code, because for the longest time (maybe @bendlang will change that), code was not something you could cheaply and formally guarantee to have all 3 of these properties. this is why writing hard software is much more difficult and expensive, because depending on the use case, you may only get one chance and so you have to be right from the start. but the vast majority of software we use does not need to be Good Code to provide value to users. in fact, it is very likely that most software we use is not formally verifiable! we accepted some bugs in exchange for velocity and progress, so we rely on tests and o11y instead and have adopted a more incremental approach. this is a good thing! agents help us move faster, and if you're open to the idea, are capable of helping us write better code. it won't be Good Code (that is still expensive), but it is likely to be much better on average at scale. the new craft of swe is to figure out how to do this. it's your job now! if your productivity with and without agents is not significantly different, you're doing something wrong. but it's not too late to embrace it and use it as an opportunity to learn a whole new skill tree

The Fed is about to repeat its worst mistake from 1973, and Wall Street is cheering it on: - Brent just broke $100 for the first time since May. Diesel hit a record $6 a gallon. Both because the Iran war shut down the Strait of Hormuz. - A quarter-point hike doesn't reopen that shipping lane. It doesn't refine a single gallon of fuel. Ending the war does this. - The only thing it touches is demand, and the only way higher rates bring energy prices down is by beating the economy into submission until people stop spending (in 6 months.) - In 1973, the Fed tried exactly this. Tightened into an oil shock expecting to look tough on inflation, and got a recession stacked on double-digit inflation instead. - Nobody in Washington has figured out the difference between a supply problem and a demand problem in 50 years. Raise rates now and you haven't fixed the oil shock. You've built a second one, and this one's homemade.

PETER THIEL CALLED IT. The Antichrist wouldn’t build the doomsday machine. This clip aged terrifyingly well. Peter Thiel predicted in June, 26, 2025 exactly what is happening right now with Anthropic, Coxon and the AI-safety landscape. “The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon non-stop, you talk about existential risk non-stop.” The 'Antichrist' wouldn’t seize power by creating an AI apocalypse, but by CONVINCING everyone that the apocalypse was coming and then offering safety in exchange for CONTROL. A must watch.

Dario has written that we need to “pace the frontier,” and Sam has agreed. People may be surprised by my response: go ahead. You guys are the frontier. By any reasonable metric — market share, revenue growth, model capability — the two of you have a duopoly on frontier intelligence. You’ve also claimed the lead is widening because of recursive self-improvement. I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible. But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability. Stop pretending METR is independent when it is intertwined with Anthropic’s investors and staff. Stop pretending you need those same evaluators to police competitors who aren’t even at the frontier. Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways. After the Hugging Face episode, it is simply good business for OpenAI and Anthropic to trade some raw power for reliability and predictability. Call it alignment if you want. It is also just giving customers what they want. Pacing the frontier would also create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation about regulation than Bernie Sanders’ “shut it all down.” China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well. So go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it. The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it. Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it. If you do, you’ll buy goodwill for the next conversation. If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election-season psyop.

The teaser for Alex Gibney’s Musk documentary is out, and it already looks like the hit piece Elon predicted. It begins by calling Elon Musk “the greatest living inventor,” but then quickly turns him into a villain. In less than 50 seconds, the agenda is obvious. This looks like a terrible hit piece made by a Democratic donor who already held strongly negative views of Elon. It appears designed to spread even more hate against him. But here is the Elon Musk this four-hour documentary might not show you: • Made electric vehicles mainstream • Built Tesla into a global automotive and energy company • Made the Model Y the world’s best-selling car in 2023 • Built the world’s largest EV fast-charging network • Built Powerwall and Megapack • Built Cybertruck and Tesla Semi • Built Optimus • Built FSD • Working to make autonomous Robotaxis a reality • Built SpaceX • Built Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy • Built Dragon • Built Starship • Made orbital rockets reusable • Landed and reused boosters at unprecedented scale • Dramatically reduced launch costs • Restored America’s ability to launch its own astronauts • Sent astronauts to the International Space Station • Caught a Super Heavy booster with giant mechanical arms • Working to make life multiplanetary • Working to build a future on Mars • Built Starlink • Brought high-speed internet to remote communities • Connected schools and hospitals • Restored communication in disaster zones • Connected ships, planes, rural homes and people far beyond traditional networks • Built Neuralink • Helped paralyzed people control computers with thought • Helped patients control robotic arms with their minds • Working to restore vision • Working to help people communicate through thought • Working to restore independence to people with paralysis • Built xAI • Built Grok • Built Colossus, one of the world’s largest AI supercomputers • Bought Twitter and rebuilt it as 𝕏 • Built The Boring Company • Co-founded Zip2 • Built 𝕏.com, which became part of PayPal • Created hundreds of thousands of direct and supply-chain jobs • Accelerated the world’s transition to sustainable energy • Created technologies and companies once considered impossible • Inspired millions of people to build, invent and dream bigger This is the Elon Musk a fair four-hour documentary would show. Instead, this film may spend four hours attacking him while ignoring who he truly is and everything he has done for the world. Elon was right about Gibney: “He’s a douchebag to his core and, in his own words, incredibly biased against me.”

Another day, another Ethereum staking ALL-TIME HIGH! 📈 🔹 42M+ ETH now staked 🔹 Nearly 35% of the total ETH supply 🔹 Both continue climbing to new highs More ETH keeps getting locked up.

True the frontier model companies and hyper scalers haven’t helped their cause, but foreign influence operations are a big part of this too.

Whole thread is good but this is it right here. The “not now” folks are in effect saying “never”. I think another reason we need to do this soon is to prepare people for MEV burn. I can just imagine the opposition to that, which has also been discussed for years.

After approx. 24 days at sea, the SpaceX Recovery team successfully guided Starship to a location just off the coast of Christmas Island. A team of SpaceX engineers is on their way to conduct additional analysis on the vehicle in calmer waters before attempting to return it to Starbase

Oh look, the guy who was opposing issuance reduction is now saying issuance is so stupidly high, it's a mispractice for any ETH treasury company to not stake. I wonder which one is his real thought.

34 signals, some of which may be the same person or entity? What are we doing here? 😂 I have a small fraction of the mean stake in this cohort, but chose not to connect my wallet. I am not alone.

"I encourage everyone to get more accustomed to what the governance process of Ethereum is. It's a standard process, and the proposition for inclusion, the stage we are here right now is a permissionless one. Like as long as you propose before the deadline you can get in. ... And Proposed For Inclusion is not the decision to include it, there are different steps. There is Considered For Inclusion, Scheduled For Inclusion is after that. So the next deadline is probably October the 23rd. ... We have about three months to debate, discuss the merits of this kind of shape; discuss the proposal itself." piped.video/live/n3UIpOXPmvY…

And control follows the stake, not just the issuance schedule. Stakers as the network's owners is a talking point at a third of the supply. Past 60 it is the org chart. Upgrades, inclusion, the definition of neutral, all through a handful of custodians and pools. (3/6)

A dense but interesting article on the current issuance proposal and an alternative to it.

You are quoting "the decision must be with community", so I went down the thread to see who that is. When someone asked, you said "I don't know", and then "you can't nail it down". Fine as far as it goes. But a standard nobody can pin down never approves anything, it can only say no. And with no definition, it speaks through whoever has the most volume. The same post says the problem is real and the direction of the EIP is valid. That part came out quieter.

People treat the issuance debate as something that appeared out of nowhere this month. The record goes back to 2016. 2016: the first issuance-cut proposal is written. The 5 to 3 cut ships in Byzantium the following year. 2019: the beacon curve merges with its parameters explicitly flagged as non-final. In the discussion Drake calls 32M ETH staked about right for the long term. Months later the reward factor doubles, more tuning was expected. 2020: an issue proposes bending the curve down past 10M. Not adopted. 2023: EIP-7514 caps entry churn, and its text says why, to mitigate high stake levels before a proper solution is implemented. 2024: Drake argues for a quarter of supply staked. Vitalik adds an eighth would personally be fine. Today: 41.8M ETH staked, 34% of supply, past every stake figure on that list, 2.36M more waiting to enter. What 8363 adds is not the question, it is a spec for it. And the more stake accumulates before the decision, the more any later change has to reprice.

How to publicly admit that the network has been captured by a small group of interested parties Is holding ETH still economically aligned with the upside of the network?