Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

  • Hacker News
  • Meta: isn't it still 2026 pretty much globally? When did we switch from only labelling older articles with their year?
  • Agreed. People should experiment and let their creativity run rampant.

    What stands between them and that is the current crop of AI design tools and skills. lovable, emergent, frontend-design, Impeccable. They ship someone else's taste and hand you a 95% website. Good website, not your website.

    These tools are nozzles. They shape the flow before it leaves your hand. If you want creativity unchecked, use the raw tool.

  • I really miss that flash let non-programmers or ‘lite’ programmers (which I was at the time) make cool shit.

    I still don’t think a tool has really replaced it as a visual coding tool.

  • I think the moat(s) is anything the models still are nowhere near performing on their own, OR, getting them to do that is seriously expensive.

    I don't know about Astra, and have used Fable 5.1 only slightly (And burned 85% of my 5 hour quota in 1 prompt).

    In my experience, LLMs are completely devoid of "thinking outside the box" capabilities. And I'm not talking about 6 thinking hats type of stuff, but slight of to the right field lateral thinking. Something a 6 year old does for fun when playing with their mates.

    If this weren't so, we wouldn't have been through so many "<buzzword> engineering" in such a short amount of time.

  • I think the emotional investment of people into your work is the actual bulwark.

    Star Trek turned 60, and most of the newer stuff was mediocre at best, still it persists, because people made it a part of their identity.

    Star Wars, Doctor Who, Disney, The Kardashians, GTA, Harry Potter …

    I think streaming services still have to realize that, their short lived „10 episodes and gone“ approach keeps people from getting invested.

  • Maybe everyone has it backwards. They shouldn't be mad at everyone pumping out AI shit. They should be mad at all the crappy stuff we were forced to endure that was no better than AI shit. The only difference is the crap doesn't cost anything anymore.

    The emperor has no clothes.

  • > The Present Works and is Boring

    "Genuine creativity" for mundane web sites is a reason to close the page and buy from someone else. I'm tired of the overcomplication. The page jerking around as more crap is loaded. One minute page loads on mobile (looking at you, CNN).

    All that has negative value if you just want to buy the thing. I just got done with an "instant quote" site that took 12 hours to respond for a request for a mattress install.

  • That's not a moat, that's a red queen?

    A moat allows the owner a degree of passivity. Eg, you own the desktop OS. You are already using this moat to get office software on every machine, while competitors either have to dance to your tune when publishing a program, or think of a way to get their own OS out there. You can see how the internet develops, knowing that you can get your own browser on every machine for free. You can watch for a bit before you move.

    Relying on continuous inspiration is a treadmill that goes faster and faster. That's what's described here. Come up with something new and clever, someone copies it, come up with another thing. You can't be passive, you have to be moving constantly.

Explore Birbla archives