Simon Bächler

Digital Immigrant, Developer

[tobi lutke @tobi]

A huge amount of the Anti-AI code sentiment massively overestimates the quality of human code outside of a very small set of open source and high quality company codebases. Human Slop is everywhere and can trivially be improved on by any opus level model.

[Chubby♨️ @kimmonismus]

Today is a dark day for freedom and democracy in Europe. General chat surveillance has been implemented in Brussels. A disgrace.

The so-called Chat Control 1.0 cleared a crucial hurdle in the European Parliament today. This means platforms may once again be allowed to scan private messages, officially on a “voluntary” basis, but in practice this marks the return of indiscriminate monitoring of private communication.

What makes this especially bitter is that a majority of the MEPs who voted were reportedly against it. According to Patrick Breyer, 314 MEPs voted against the regulation, 276 voted in favor and 17 abstained. And yet the rejection failed because it was not enough to have a simple majority of those voting. An absolute majority of all MEPs would have been required.

That is the democratic scandal.

When a majority of those present votes against a proposal and it still passes because a formal threshold is not reached, it does not feel like democratic decision-making to many citizens. It feels like a procedural trick.

And it becomes even more problematic when you look at the context: Chat Control had already been rejected before. Yet the issue was put back on the agenda shortly before the summer break, through an urgent procedure, at a time when absences could become decisive.

This is not just some technical regulation. It goes to the very core of private communication. It is about whether digital messages remain fundamentally private or whether platforms may systematically scan content again, without concrete suspicion, without a court order and without any individual cause.

A free society must not turn private communication into a potential surveillance zone. Anyone who takes digital fundamental rights seriously cannot accept millions of innocent people being placed under general suspicion.

Today, a dangerous signal was sent: fundamental rights can be hollowed out through procedural logic, timing and political tricks. Not through an open, clear and honest majority, but through a system in which absence effectively helps the supporters.

This is a dark day for Europe.

Not because the fight is over, but because today showed how easily digital fundamental rights come under pressure when surveillance logic, symbolic politics and institutional tricks come together.

Anyone who wants a free internet, anyone who wants to protect private communication and anyone who takes democracy seriously should talk about this.

Share this issue. Inform yourself. Look at who voted how. And never forget: freedom rarely disappears all at once. It disappears step by step, often in technical details, often in complicated procedures and often exactly when too few people are watching.

[Dr. Friedrich Pürner, MPH @DrPuerner]

Da reibt man sich als Abgeordneter ungläubig die Augen: Eigentlich war die Chat-Kontrolle vom Tisch. Doch kurz vor der Sommerpause – während alle die Badeutensilien packen und auf die Fußball-WM schielen – schiebt die Parlamentspräsidentin das Thema klammheimlich wieder auf die Agenda. Natürlich unter anderem Namen. Heute wird also abgestimmt, ob das Ganze am Donnerstag zur Abstimmung kommt. Realsatire pur.
Und tatsächlich: Das Dringlichkeitsverfahren wird angenommen – am Donnerstag wird nun in der Sache selbst entschieden, das Manöver ist aufgegangen. Unglaublich!

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@addyosmani It will take several years for a junior developer to reach senior level. By that time even seniors will have been replaced by AI or struggle to keep up.

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@Citrini7 The internal costs for the AI companies don't even matter that much. A few companies control the market and can therefore set prices. This is an oligopoly. Demand will always be high.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

this is what's keeping me up at night these days...

1. google has become unusable. once you get used to "deep research" (thanks grok, perplexity etc), google feels like bringing a typewriter to a macbook meeting.

2. MCP will do for ai agents what REST did for web services - this standard protocol means an ai agent built for healthcare can instantly talk to billing systems, patient records, and insurance databases without custom code, unlocking thousands of new startup opportunities. it's really exciting!

3. we're seeing the entire cost structure of building businesses collapse - you can now build profitable companies serving tiny, weird niches that were impossible to reach when you needed a full team. what used to need 1000 customers to break even now needs 10.

4. it's not too late to be a creator or build a media business. creators are evolving into the new holding companies, consolidating influence, revenue streams, and audiences in ways that mirror corporate giants. somehow it's still early

5. really big arbitrage opportunity to buy businesses without taste and add taste. "taste private equity" has a nice ring to it.

6. figuring out LLM seo. billions of dollars will flow to new players who figure out how to get "cited" by LLMs. finally.

7. most ai apps are designed for websites not mobile. ai-first consumer mobile is really interesting. we saw with cal ai and the looksmaxing apps, that this is just the beginning.

8. every product launch needs video now - i'm watching great features die on landing pages while quick screen recordings go viral and drive thousands of signups. the social feeds have spoken.

9. what used to require millions in vc funding now needs an api key, some prompts and a tweet. this fires me up!!

10. faster than ever to launch something of quality. faster than ever to pivot. knowing when to pivot is an art.

11. i dont understand anyone who sitting in business school right now. literally everything is being rewritten.

12. who is building the app store for ai agents? companies will browse and hire pre-trained, specialized agents like we download apps

13. the way to stop a big player to compete with you in this new world is to own distribution.

14. you can spend a lot of time thinking about politics or checking emails or on social in the name of research, but not really moving forward anywhere.

15. we're about to see software companies capture value that used to belong to agencies, consulting firms, and entire departments.

16. we're about to go from "there's an app for that" to "there's your app for that.

17. minimum viable audience is more important than minimum viable product

18. I don't know how long this window stays open, but we're in a moment where all the rules of building businesses are being rewritten. and for the people who are playing with this new tools, putting stuff out there, creating audiences/communities, you've got an unfair advantage.

i hope you get some sleep.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

This chart is nuts. Software developer jobs down 70% from peak.

People will blame the end of free money. But something way more interesting is happening.

The middle class engineer is dying. And it's dying because they're not needed anymore.

One good dev with Github Copilot ships what entire teams did five years ago. Microsoft just reported the highest revenue per employee in history.

The "entry-level engineer" doesn't exist anymore.

Instead, we have product builders who happen to code. Armed with AI, they ship entire products in days.

Meanwhile, the truly elite engineers are making more money than ever.

And they've shifted to working mostly on frontier tech. I mean the stuff that's really hard.

AGI at OpenAI.
Designing rockets at SpaceX.
Self-driving car tech at Tesla.

Product builders are becoming solopreneurs and creators Frontier engineers are making hedge fund money

In 2025, "software engineer" doesn't mean what it meant in 2020.

And that's what this chart really shows.

The middle is gone. The top is elite status. And everyone else is becoming a builder.

[Deedy @deedydas]

o1-preview is far superior to doctors on reasoning tasks and it's not even close, according to OpenAI's latest paper.

AI does ~80% vs ~30% on the 143 hard NEJM CPC diagnoses.

It's dangerous now to trust your doctor and NOT consult an AI model.

Here are some actual tasks:

1/5

[Chubby♨️ @kimmonismus]

Eric Schmidt, ex CEO of Google, says:
- infinite context window
- Agents
- text to action
Are coming this year!

Oh, and btw: he also says within his lifetime (he is 70) will replace all programmers in the world.

So yeah, AGI 2025 feels pretty safe to assume.

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

📣Official statement: the new EU chat controls proposal for mass scanning is the same old surveillance with new branding.

Whether you call it a backdoor, a front door, or “upload moderation” it undermines encryption & creates significant vulnerabilities

https://t.co/g0xNNKqquA

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@shreyas Slightly over budget but definitely non-smart with style, heritage and a digital display (LCD/OLED). Hamilton American Classic PSR (Swiss made)

[Jeremy Nguyen ✍🏼 🚢 @JeremyNguyenPhD]

Meta's new AI—Llama3—beats an old version of GPT-4, Claude 2.1, and GPT-3.5!

You can run it:
- 100% free
- with 100% privacy (no data leaves your machine)

See the comments for an easy way to install 👇

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@tomwarren 10Gb/s, not 10GB/s

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@tomwarren 10GB/s symmetrical for 73$/mo in Switzerland. You even get 25GB/s for the same monthly fee if you choose a more expensive router. (init7)

[James Campbell @jam3scampbell]

People are really bad at understanding just how big LLM's actually are. I think this is partly why they belittle them as 'just' next-word predictors

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

Extrapolate the progress Tesla has made over the course of the last 12 months on Optimus, and then consider the rate of progress we are seeing in machine learning/AI, and within 5-7 years Optimus-like robots will be able to do most mundane tasks that human beings do.

People underestimate the convergence of multiple exponentially progressing technologies. The next decade is going to be absolutely insane!

I'm excited. Are you?

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@iwangulenko I‘d already be ok with candidates that look good on paper and are actually decent.

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@ryanflorence Some of our customers have their own font made because it is cheaper in the long run.

[Coby @Cobylefko]

Building more housing decreases the cost of housing, because when there is enough for everyone to go around, we don't have to compete with one another.

This is basic math. Those who dispute this are no different than any other sort of skeptic or conspiracy theorist.

[Simon Bächler @simonbaechler]

@gregyoung The cutoff time is set by your bank. The later the transfer the higher the fee for the bank.