Cory DoctorowJan 6

Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code but that means it's producing 10,000 more liabilities. AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/econopocalypse/#subprime-intelligence

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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/06/1000x-liability/#graceful-failure-modes

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Show threadphaedr0sJan 7

@pluralistic

"One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code."

Show threadDr. Michael HfuhruhurrJan 7

@phaedr0s @pluralistic When I was employed by a certain large company, we needed a feature in our applications that wasn't provided by the OS, so I had to implement it in the app(s).

The next OS had the feature, but we still had to support older OSes. So on the day we ended support for that old OS, I gleefully deleted 7000 lines of code that took me months to write. Best day ever.

The only code with no bugs is code that doesn't exist.

Show threadFallsMom 🌻Jan 7

@ben @phaedr0s @pluralistic

Friend who has a concrete pouring biz says "There are two kinds of concrete--the one that has cracked, and the other is the one that hasn't cracked yet."

Show threadDr. Michael HfuhruhurrJan 7
@FallsMom @phaedr0s @pluralistic See also "There are two kinds of people. Those who have lost data, and those who are going to lose data."
Show threadKhleedrilJan 7

@ben @FallsMom @phaedr0s @pluralistic Also, there are two kinds of people:

1) Those that can extrapolate from incomplete data,

Show threadEpic Null
@khleedril @ben @FallsMom @phaedr0s @pluralistic
2) Those that are the incomplete data to be extrapolated from
Jan 7 at 3:12pmWeb