LLMs and LLM providers are massive black boxes. I get a lot of value from them and so I can put up with that to a certain extent, but these new "products"/features that Anthropic are shipping are very unappealing to me. Not because I can't see a use-case for them, but because I have 0 trust in them:
- No trust that they won't nerf the tool/model behind the feature
- No trust they won't sunset the feature (the graveyard of LLM-features is vast and growing quickly while they throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks)
- No trust in the company long-term. Both in them being around at all and them not rug-pulling. I don't want to build on their "platform". I'll use their harness and their models but I don't want more lock-in than that.
If Anthropic goes "bad" I want to pick up and move to another harness and/or model with minimal fuss. Buying in to things like this would make that much harder.
I'm not going to build my business or my development flows on things I can't replicate myself. Also, I imagine debugging any of this would be maddening. The value add is just not there IMHO.
EDIT: Put another way, LLM companies are trying to climb the ladder to be a platform, I have zero interest in that, I was a "dumb pipe", I want a commodity, I want a provider, not a platform. Claude Code is as far into the dragon's lair that I want to venture and I'm only okay with that because I know I can jump to OpenCode/Codex/etc if/when Anthropic "goes bad".
We discovered this change recently because my dad was looking for a file that Dropbox accidentally overwrote which at first we said “no problem. This is why we pay for backblaze”
We had learned that this policy had changed a few months ago, and we were never notified. File was unrecoverable
If anyone at backblaze is reading this, I pay for your product so I can install you on my parents machine and never worry about it again. You decided saving on cloud storage was worth breaking this promise. Bad bad call
I'm a little confused on the ToS here. From what I gathered, running `claude -p <prompt>` on cron is fine, but putting it in my Telegram bot is a ToS violation (unless I use per-token billing) because it's a 3rd party harness, right? (`claude -p` being a trivial workaround for the "no 3rd party stuff on the subscription" rule)
This Routines feature notably works with the subscription, and it also has API callbacks. So if my Telegram bot calls that API... do I get my Anthropic account nuked or not?
If you are wondering how it works. You get a link from LinkedIn, it's from an email or just a post someone shared. You click on it, the URL loads, and you read the post. When you click the back button, you aren't taken back to wherever you came from. Instead, your LinkedIn feed loads.
How did it happen? When you landed on the first link, the URL is replaced with the homepage first (location.replace(...) doesn't change the browser history). Then the browser history state is pushed to the original link. So it seems like you landed on the home page first then you clicked on a link. When you click the back button, you are taken back to the homepage where your feed entices you to stay longer on LinkedIn.
I wrote this. I had/have absolutely no expectation that Flock would comply with my request, but figured I should try anyway For Science. Their reply rubbed me wrong, though. They seem to claim that there are no restrictions on their collection and processing of PII because other people pay them for it. They say:
> Flock Safety’s customers own the data and make all decisions around how such data is used and shared.
which seems to directly oppose the CCPA. It's my data, not their customers'.
Again, I didn't really expect this to work. And yet, I'm still disappointed with the path by which it didn't work.
They were saying "don't write to us, talk to the people who own the cameras and ask them to delete the data". A company that manufactures video cameras is not the one to talk to when someone records you, talk to the person who recorded you.
But a reasonable person would say -- the data is stored on Flock servers, not with the camera owners. And Flock would say, just because we sell data storage functionality to camera owners doesn't mean we own the data, anymore than a storage service you rent a space from owns what you put in that space.
But then an even more reasonable person would say: the infrastructure is designed in such a way as to create inadvertent sharing, and the system has vulnerabilities that compromise the data, so Flock has responsibility for setting up the system in such a way that it's basically designed to violate privacy.
And that is the main criticism of Flock. You need to have a more nuanced criticism. It would be really interesting to see this litigated.
I'm going to drop Backblaze for my entire company over this.
I need it to capture local data, even though that local data is getting synced to Google Drive. Where we sync our data really has nothing to do with Backblaze backing up the endpoint. We don't wholly trust sync, that's why we have backup.
On my personal Mac I have iCloud Drive syncing my desktop, and a while back iCloud ate a file I was working on. Backblaze had it captured, thankfully. But if they are going to exclude iCloud Drive synced folders, and sounds like that is their intention, Backblaze is useless to me.
I don't want to stop Flock the company. I want to stop Flock the business model, along with all the other mass surveillance, and the data brokers. If the business models can't be made illegal, it should at least come with liabilities so high that no sane business would want to hold data that is essentially toxic waste.
Without that, we are quickly spiraling into the dystopia where privacy is gone, and when the wrong person gets access to the data, entire populations are threatened.
I am an active and enthusiastic recordist and have decades of stuff I've accumulated over the years.
One of the concerts I captured in the 90's, lives on as a bootleg which I often see around the scene of this one particularly great live electronic dance band, whose punters have created true value out of the hour and a half of live concert input I managed to record, standing right there front stage and center, with the band looking right at me.
It was a hilarious experience - I expected to get booted out pretty fast, so I held my ground as still as I could, DAT-tape rolling by, shotgun mike held in front of me like it was just normal, as if I belonged there.
The lead singer caught my eye and gave me a wide grin. I survived the concert, it was awesome, but boy was I relieved to have made it home with that DAT - which I of course, proceeded to digitize with my brand new spdf/io ..
The next year the band (who are big and famous, btw) were in the same city and I happened to be around, I got invited backstage to meet the band, participate in a bit of nerdery regarding their live setup and gear and so on, and talk about that recording I'd made.
I'd put it out as a pure bootleg, no questions asked.
Turns out they'd heard it and enjoyed it and came to appreciate the nature of their bootleggers, as avid fans who gave the band themselves something extra to think about in what was then, a burgeoning digital/online universe about to explode.
So, seeing it around, almost 30 years now .. here and there, again and again .. is quite hilarious. Youtube often recommends it to me in my playlist, its just there.
And at a certain spot in the recording, I tell my mate to stop standing so close to me (he was blocking the shottie), and prepare for my ass getting bounced - which never happened, thankfully.
So yeah, I just wanna say, if you personally have the desire to be a recordist, and have a pure purpose in it, I'd say just freakin' go for it.
Record All The Things.
Its good for the Artists, yo. And also their fans. (Its how we get rid of the managers, cough cough..)
The issue with a client app backing up dropbox and onedrive folders on your computer is the files on demand feature, you could sync a 1tb onedrive to your 250gb laptop but it's OK because of smart/selective sync aka files on demand. Then backblaze backup tries to back the folder up and requests a download of every single file and now you have zero bytes free, still no backup and a sick laptop.
You could oauth the backblaze app to access onedrive directly, but if you want to back your onedrive up you need a different product IMO.
This is incredibly stupid, but don't laugh at Spaniards: your (and my) lawmakers are equally likely to enact similarly stupid laws. It's mind-boggling how stupid the world can be sometimes.
Personally, I see this as an assault on 3d printing more than any real attempt to regulate guns.
I own several 3d printers. If I wanted to make something resembling a firearm I'd go to home depot WAY before I bothered 3d printing parts. You basically just need a metal tube, and well... a pipe from home depot does that much better than trying to 3d print something much less reliable.
So given we don't do this regulation for any of the much more reliable ways to create unregistered firearms... what's special about 3d printers?
So my assumption is immediately that some relatively large lobbying group feels threatened by 3d printing, and is using this as a driver to try to control access and limit business impact.
This is incredible. There are soooo many features that Davinci already handles so damn well when it comes to color editing, that I only wish they existed in photo editors. To the point there were people posting videos on Youtube about hacky workflows to edit RAW photo files on Resolve and export each one as JPG files haha.
Only Darktable seemed to push the technical capabilities of photo editing forward (AgX, parametric masks, tone equalizer, etc), while rest of "industry standard" software lagged behind for quite so long, stagnant. Even more so when it comes to "creative" ways of editing, which Video Editing software have adopted for years but photo editors didn't (relight, actual LUT usage without complications, film emulation, halation, other aesthetic effects like VHS film damage, etc).
There's so much we can do. To me, it seems like these sort of conservative culture (photography) vs progressive (video editing). I've been into both worlds, and for some reason video editing software and professionals were much eager to try new stuff and celebrate new ways to shape visuals, compared to photographers.
I guess the problem with Backblaze's business model with respect to Backblaze Personal is that it is "unlimited". They specifically exclude linux users because, well, we're nerds, r/datahoarders exists, and we have different ideas about what "unlimited" means. [1]
This is another example in disguise of two people disagreeing about what "unlimited" means in the context of backup, even if they do claim to have "no restrictions on file type or size" [2].
> But no need to wait. At a high level, Gas City is the answer to all your problems. Ha! At least, for certain classes of problem, such as, “How can I bring AI into my company and pass an audit trail,”
The important audit at my company is conducted by the FDA.
I have a feeling when they ask what processes we followed to mitigate any user harm that could be caused by software changes that "I told an AI-mayor in the form of a cartoon fox what to do and he spit out a bunch of vibecode software written by AI-driven virtual cartoon characters" is not among the answers they want to hear.
Shoutout to Arq backup which simply gives you an option in backup plans for what to do with cloud only files:
- report an error
- ignore
- materialize
Regardless, if you make it back up software that doesn’t give this level of control to users, and you make a change about which files you’re going to back up, you should probably be a lot more vocal with your users about the change. Vanishingly few people read release notes.
Any company that does the "unlimited*" shenanigans are automatically out from any selection process I had going, wherever they use it. It's a clear signal that the marketing/financial teams have taken over the businesses, and they'll be quick to offload you from the platform given the chance, and you'll have no recourse.
Always prefer businesses who are upfront and honest about what they can offer their users, in a sustainable way.
I used to work at Blackmagic, wrote some of the peripheral code around BRAW and did some work with the Resolve guys up in Singapore.
Used to have lunch regularly with one of the owners too. Need to check in with him again!
At least back in 2019, BMD made a lot of money selling professional licences for DaVinci Resolve. I don't know exact figures but that part of the business was healthily profitable of its own accord. Very, very healthily profitable!
Most parts of the business were profitable standalone, AFAIK. Their model didn't revolve around loss leaders, burning VC money or anything like that; just selling good products at fair prices and making bank.
I think a big part of it was a fairly lean culture (whole company was bootstrapped and grown sustainably), and specifically in the case of DaVinci they bought out an existing business that had already done a lot of the development and marketing work for absolute peanuts.
I did something similar to a local company here in Spain. Not medical, but a small insurance company. Believe it or not, yes, they vibecoded their CRM.
I sent them an email and they threatened to sue me. I was a bit in shock from such dumb response, but I guess some people only learn the hard way, so I filed a report to the AEPD (Data protection agency in Spain) for starters, known to be brutal.
I've also sent them a burofax demanding the removal of my data on their systems just last friday.
The paper opens with "to feed a growing population" without asking is that what we need? want? where we are actually heading to?
Is feeding the world a real problem? I've yet to see compelling evidence that it really is except as a secondary effect of logistics, energy supply, and war.
edit: I understand the environmental impacts. I think we should solve our energy problems first.
Youtube must know better than me what to recommend me out of all the videos... still, I get presented the same shite again and again.
To be fair: not everything is shite and Youtube is my favorite social media (especially for discovering new music), but I noticed a big drop in quality videos from one day to the other a couple of years ago. Just opening up Youtube one day and seeing all kinds of thumbnails with people with their mouth open, very 'colory' thumbnails (more childlike), channels that I would never watch being presented... I should have noted the exact date, but I didn't. I guess it was around two years ago.
Even searching for specific topics is hard. I just know there's enough material on the platform, but in my search results I get so many doubles and channels that I already know. I can keep scrolling, but to no result.
If anybody knows some good DIY or woodworking channels, let me know!
You can build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
- No trust that they won't nerf the tool/model behind the feature
- No trust they won't sunset the feature (the graveyard of LLM-features is vast and growing quickly while they throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks)
- No trust in the company long-term. Both in them being around at all and them not rug-pulling. I don't want to build on their "platform". I'll use their harness and their models but I don't want more lock-in than that.
If Anthropic goes "bad" I want to pick up and move to another harness and/or model with minimal fuss. Buying in to things like this would make that much harder.
I'm not going to build my business or my development flows on things I can't replicate myself. Also, I imagine debugging any of this would be maddening. The value add is just not there IMHO.
EDIT: Put another way, LLM companies are trying to climb the ladder to be a platform, I have zero interest in that, I was a "dumb pipe", I want a commodity, I want a provider, not a platform. Claude Code is as far into the dragon's lair that I want to venture and I'm only okay with that because I know I can jump to OpenCode/Codex/etc if/when Anthropic "goes bad".