Christine Lemmer-Webber6d ago
Submitted without commentary: "AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web" by Mike Masnick https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/25/ai-might-be-our-best-shot-at-taking-back-the-open-web/
AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

I remember, pretty clearly, my excitement over the early World Wide Web. I had been on the internet for a year or two at that point, mostly using IRC, Usenet, and Gopher (along with email, naturall…

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Show threaddushinto6d ago

@cwebber I really had my eyes opened while on PTO for the holidays, when I used Cursor to configure my Home Assistant platform.

Up until then I was struggling to understand the vast amount of yaml configuration needed.

I have lights, temp sensors, and appliances all hooked in, but the automations sucked. A few days of working through the auto option in Cursor, and I had everything set up the way I wanted and no cloud based megacorp can take that away from me.

Show threadMark6d ago
@rickpelletier I’m unfamiliar with how Cursor works. Do they provide their own LLM or do you have to provide e.g. a Claude API key or something? Or is it using a local model?
Show threaddushinto6d ago
@basetwojesus the point about using auto mode was that my whole project cost me less than $20, and only a couple of lazy days fiddling with it to get what I wanted.
Show threadRichard Hendricks6d ago

@rickpelletier @basetwojesus Seems apropos...

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1jfjkae/exposed_cursors_claude_37_max_is_charging_premium/

They recently moved a bunch of models to MAX mode, causing heavy users at our company to gobble all their tokens in days.

Guess the low cost days are over, and AI vendors are going to start squeezing the addicts to pay for their addictions.

Show threaddushinto6d ago

@hendric @basetwojesus I think the point Masnick is trying to make is that using these tools for personal projects is a way to free ourselves from Big Tech - whether you do it today with a double-cost but super easy tool like Cursor or with a home built custom thing.

Either way, we're heading back into a world where people can just build the software they want

Show thread💥meta physical deflationist💥
@rickpelletier @hendric @basetwojesus um no its quiet the opposite and is creating a dependence on big tech.
it allowed you to make something you dont understand quicker than had you learned it but now managing or changing or debugging the thing you made but dont understand requires tokens
Mar 31 at 2:24amWeb