Oh good heavens, they really are trying to bring back the company store.

Tools as part of compensation are a long-standing labor issue.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-compute-compensation-software-engineers-greg-brockman-2026-3

The creator of Nearby Glasses made the app after reading 404 Media's coverage of how people are using Meta's Ray-Bans smartglasses to film people without their knowledge or consent. “I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.”

https://www.404media.co/this-app-warns-you-if-someone-is-wearing-smart-glasses-nearby/

Gen AI is an expensive way to create text and images. Right now, much of that cost is being subsidized and hidden, but it will eventually need to be paid. Because charging the actual cost will likely negate most of the value proposition of genAI, the companies that run the big models are focused on altering the social and economic context so that there are big external costs to opting out. E.g. getting companies to fire staff makes it difficult to pivot back away from AI because hiring and training replacement staff can be difficult and costly. Hence, the huge rush and hysterical sense of urgency around adoption: the demand for profitability is an approaching tidal wave, and they need to lock entire industries in before that wave hits.

That's why resistance IN THE PRESENT counts for a great deal. Right now, we have the approaching wave in our favor, and they're counting on cultivating enough dependence before it hits that we'll have no choice to accept the actual costs. The closer they get to locking society into dependence on hyperscale AI systems, the more difficult it becomes to opt out of even the plainly dystopian uses of the technology. And the longer we "wait and see," the less say we may ultimately have in how this technology shapes our society.

AI is making us write more code. That's the problem.

I analyzed research papers on AI-generated code quality. The findings:

→ 1.7x more issues than human-written code
→ 30-41% increase in technical debt
→ 39% increase in cognitive complexity
→ Initial speed gains disappear within a few months

We're building the wrong thing faster and calling it productivity.

Nearly a year ago, we lost @codefolio. A kindness in the community and a keeper of  _why's flame.

In the ✍️ guestbook, Noah wrote:

> Why is gone but never forgotten.
> Ruby and Shoes!
> — Noah Gibbs

He spent years preserving _why's work, rebuilding #Shoes and reminding us that programming could be joyful.

Now, Noah is gone too.
Even further. 🕯️
But like _why, he's never forgotten.

Rest well, Noah. 🦊💜

#whysfoxes #WPGTRPage115 #noahgibbs #SpaceShoes #WhysPoignantGuideToRuby #Ruby

Herb v0.8 is here! 🚀

The biggest release yet, packed with new language bindings, Linter Autofix support, Linter Fix-on-Save, a new `.herb.yml` config file, formatter improvements, Tailwind Class Sorting integration, and a ton of performance, tooling and LSP improvements! 🌿