A good reminder of how things actually work, but the article could use some more balancing…
> Let that sink in. You scanned your European passport for a European professional network, and your data went exclusively to North American companies. Not a single EU-based subprocessor in the chain.
LinkedIn is an American product. The EU has had 20 years to create an equally successful and popular product, which it failed to do. American companies don’t owe your European nationalist ambitions a dime. Use their products at your own discretion.
Of course an American company is subject to American law. And of course an American company will prioritise other local, similar jurisdiction companies. And often times there’s no European option that competes on quality, price, etc to begin with. In other words I don’t see why any of this is somehow uniquely wrong to the OP.
> Here’s what the CLOUD Act does in plain language: it allows US law enforcement to force any US-based company to hand over data, even if that data is stored on a server outside the United States.
European law enforcement agencies have the same powers, which they easily exercise.
> European law enforcement agencies have the same powers.
No they don’t, not in the way that is implied here. A German court can subpoena German companies. Even for 100% subsidiaries in other European or non-European countries, one needs to request legal assistance. Which then is evaluated based on local jurisdiction of the subsidiary, not the parent. Microsoft Germany as operator is subject to US law and access. See Wikipedia “American exceptionalism” for further examples.
>The EU has had 20 years to create an equally successful and popular product, which it failed to do. American companies don’t owe your European nationalist ambitions a dime. Use their products at your own discretion.
I can see not everybody here will agree with me, but I find this take absolutely reasonable. The European space has the capacity and the resources to create a product that replaces something as trivial as Linkedin, and yet it takes the lazy approach of just using American products.
It's the same thing with China's manufactured products, at some point the rest of the world just accepted that everything gets done in China and then keep complaining about how abusive China can be.
The most recent issue is the military question. Europe relied for decades on the "cheap" protection of the USA. Now the USA gave the middle finger to Europe and Europe acts shocked, but Europe is not so shocked when it comes to the military budget it did not spend on self defense during all the time the Americans provided protection.
> "The most recent issue is the military question. Europe relied for decades on the "cheap" protection of the USA. Now the USA gave the middle finger to Europe and Europe acts shocked, but Europe is not so shocked when it comes to the military budget it did not spend on self defense during all the time the Americans provided protection."
Fully agree. Europe expects some kids from nowheresville Tennessee to die in a ditch defending Ukraine. The war will be over the second they need to draft 18 year-olds at scale from anywhere in western Europe to go defend "Europe". Nobody in France will die defending Poland, nobody in Greece will die defending Latvia. The EU is such a joke.
The "pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" advice has more weight when the person saying it hasn't taken control of all bootstraps for a good 75 years. This is this toxicity in the toxic relationship between the US and EU. Foot in our faces telling us to pick ourselves up. Ditto South America.
He's right though. Blaming someone else for your own failures is victim mentality - regardless of whether they really are the cause or not. Notice how China managed to break free from US tech dominance, no matter how difficult it was, by making itself strong and capable instead of accepting helplessness which is victim mentality.
>Notice how China managed to break free from US tech dominance, no matter how difficult it was
They did this because in the Chinese narrative Americans are a bunch of hegemonic brutes and self sufficiency was a matter of survival. Europeans don't use LinkedIn because they're victimized, they use American products because there was a belief that the United States is a civilized country whose companies and government can be relied on.
That Americans of all people now adopt the rhetoric of the Chinese about themselves and Europe, which has some terrifying and unflattering implications about their own self image should make people think about what they're saying. Europe didn't go for a different route because of victim-hood, but because the rule of law and the so-called Western values do still mean something on the old continent.
If Americans now openly say, Europe you losers you should have treated us the way the Communist party told you to, fair enough but mind you that's how people talk who are at the end of their own civilization, I'm German I know the attitude very well.
That response reeks of astonishing arrogance. It doesn’t surprise me that nearly 50% of Americans voted for Donald Trump he perfectly embodies that mindset.
Do you genuinely believe you are superior to the rest of the world? What you call “innovation” or a “better product” is often nothing more than the creation of dominant market positions through massive, capital deployment, followed by straightforward rent extraction.
The European Union has every right to regulate markets operating within its jurisdiction, especially when there are credible concerns about anti-competitive practices and abuse of dominance. From what I’ve seen, there may be sufficient grounds to consider collective legal action against LinkedIn at the European level. As for so-called “European nationalist ambitions,” rest assured: Europe does not lack capable lawyers or regulatory expertise. I will be forwarding the relevant material to contacts of mine working within the European institutions in Brussels.
Why can't the EU deploy capital? Regulation doesn't create better products, more aggressive marketing techniques, or deeply entrepreneurial mindsets which favor innovation and growth.
While OP is quite aggressive here, there is a nugget of truth: innovation doesn't happen because "we have the best lawyers" or "the best regulations". Maybe some self-criticism would be warranted to solve the problem.
Also nothing forces Europeans to use LinkedIn. I deleted my account long ago after getting search requests from NSA-adjacent private intel companies.
Here's another JD Vance who doesn't understand what international rules are and justifies that with (lack of) innovation
Below you can find the relevant GDPR excerpt. But before that, let me add to the coment below that US companies only comply with what EU institutions can enforce and what suits them; which is normal, since China does the same. Well, it couldn’t have been said better: in fact, we’re beginning to view you the same way we view China. And China innovates a lot, right?
"Article 3 – Territorial scope (GDPR)
This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.
This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to:
(a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or
(b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.
This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data by a controller not established in the Union, but in a place where Member State law applies by virtue of public international law."
First I'm not american, I'm simply displeased to see my fellow Europeans seething about the consequences, while refusing to address the causes.
You speak about China: their government is very eager to favor local alternatives, which helps fund the local ecosystem.
In contrast, Euro countries don't generally procure office software from elsewhere than US companies (especially, Microsoft). It's always talk, talk, when the time for action comes, everyone looks at their shoes and signs the contract from the US company.
Even the European commission does the same, and filed a lawsuit against their own regulatory body after it pointed out that MS Office 365 wasn't fully compliant with the EC's own privacy rules! Rules for thee, not for me, as always with the EC.[0]
So yeah, regulations and laws don't replace political will and action. Especially when we talk about the EU, where hypocrisy and lobbying is at its highest.
The point here isn’t that Europe lacks innovation and is too bureaucratic. I have no problem admitting that. The crux of the matter is that, in response to my complaint about the possible failure to comply with a European law, the reply was: LinkedIn answers to American laws, you have no alternative to LinkedIn, and therefore there’s no point in opposing it. You just have to put up with it; it’s your own fault for not innovating.
The scenario being portrayed is one in which the law of the strongest prevails over the rule of law. As a European, coming from the continent that gave birth to the rule of law, I find all of this appalling. And I am sorry to hear that a fellow European thinks along the same lines. I don’t believe this is realism; rather, it is surrender.
The law is just mere words if you don't have an army, the guns, and the will to back it up. It has never been different. Louis XIV's wrote "The last argument of kings" on his cannons, in the 17th century.
Guess who holds the guns that protect Europe right now? So yeah, either comply, leave (what I did), or create an alternative. The EU had Viadeo[0], it could have pushed it to have an alternative. It didn't.
You’d be well served to stop the political name calling, it’s childish.
I view the dynamic from the opposite direction. You might think that that the EU is starting to view America the same way it views china, but in actuality the EU is starting to behave more like China. The wheels of a great firewall for the EU have been turning for some time already.
Is LinkedIn established in a place where Member State law applies? I guess not? You can't just go around pretending your law applies to people in other countries because none of the necessary institutions in those countries will respect your law.
The GDPR applies to the personal data of individuals in the European Union, regardless of where the data is processed. You can easily find the relevant law online.
It might say it applies but other countries have their own sovereignty and their residents aren't bound by every extra-territorial law written by every other country in the world.
European governments and institutions have conveniently exempted themselves from GDPR.
And just because it's a law somewhere on earth, doesn't make it reasonable or enforceable or legal.
1. American and European laws have different standards for data processing
2. EU citizens willingly go into a contract with an American company, buying and using American services
3. EU citizens complain American law is different than European law, whilst continuing to use American products
4. EU citizens expect their laws and regulations to apply to American companies
Nobody can reasonably expect American companies to just bend over for whatever the lawmakers in Europe demand. It's an absurd scenario that only the EU can come up with.
Maybe 30% of Americans voted for Donald Trump. This response reeks of ignorance and hubris.
> Do you genuinely believe you are superior to the rest of the world?
This assertion wasn't made, in any way, by the person you're replying to, and it sounds as though it's being asked in anger. This entire conversation has been about data privacy and stewardship. The OP has pointed out, correctly, that there's nothing that has prevented a EU based professional social network from existing in a way that is satisfying for EU based data policy.
If you sign up on an American website, you've decided to do business with Americans in America. Why are you entitled to something that the people you are doing business with are not subject to?
Trump received 77,284,118 votes, representing 49.8% of the ballots cast for president. The 30% figure you mention refes to the share of the total voting-eligible population, including those who did not vote.
A national poll conducted on February 16–18 found that 42.4% approve of Trump’s job performance, while 54.6% disapprove. Whether you accept it or not and whether you are a Democrat or Republican Trump now is the face of America and most of Europeans are of the same opinion.
Regardless of the fact that LinkedIn is an American company, it is required to comply with the GDPR when operating within the European Union. I am not a lawyer, but I don't believe that there is evidence of full compliance here.
We can have a more detailed discussion around political alignments in America, but you've already agreed that your original statement was false. I mention the 30% figure specifically because you said "nearly 50% of Americans voted for donald trump".
American companies "complying" with is only required insofar as the EU authorities can do anything about it - and that's the same dynamic that exists across all geo boundaries on the internet, that's not specifically American - see China and its great firewall. If an American company is taking steps to be in compliance with GDPR, it's because there is benefit in doing so.
WRT GDPR, I'd ask a clarification before continuing - you said "operating within the EU" - what does that mean? If I deploy a website, from America, onto American servers, and you can reach them from within the EU, am I "operating within the EU"? I'm not trying to be coy by asking this, I actually don't know the extent to which I agree or disagree with you.
Indeed. But Americans are told they never use that strength to their advantage. It's all just the working 23 hours a day, determination and chasing the American dream that has resulted in supreme economic success.
Military is just for defence against baddies and liberating countries from dictators etc
> That response reeks of astonishing arrogance. It doesn’t surprise me that nearly 50% of Americans voted for Donald Trump he perfectly embodies that mindset. Do you genuinely believe you are superior to the rest of the world? What you call “innovation” or a “better product” is often nothing more than the creation of dominant market positions through massive, capital deployment, followed by straightforward rent extraction. The European Union has every right to regulate markets operating within its jurisdiction, especially when there are credible concerns about anti-competitive practices and abuse of dominance. From what I’ve seen, there may be sufficient grounds to consider collective legal action against LinkedIn at the European level. As for so-called “European nationalist ambitions,” rest assured: Europe does not lack capable lawyers or regulatory expertise. I will be forwarding the relevant material to contacts of mine working within the European institutions in Brussels.
This all seems to miss the point, which is: why does the US create so much stuff that Europe doesn't? Turning that useful reflective question into an attack on Americans sounds perfect if you want to refuse to work it out and change accordingly.
>why does the US create so much stuff that Europe doesn't?
because the "stuff" in question is social networks who live, as the name suggests, off network effects. To have a European LinkedIn would require everyone in Europe to switch at the same time. Which can be trivially arranged, we just would need the courage to ban LinkedIn and every other American social media company. We'd have a clone up and running in a month. You only need to look to China who did exactly this.
> "We just would need the courage to ban LinkedIn and every other American social media company. We'd have a clone up and running in a month. You only need to look to China who did exactly this."
That's socialist dictatorship. Why do you want the EU to be more like China, instead of the EU being more like the US? It will result in further isolation and decline of Europe which sorely depends both on the US (and China) for survival.
I don't want to, but if people like you represent how Americans think, with nothing but contempt for Europe and only obsessed with power, then the Chinese were right about who Americans are and we were naive.
Then achieving autonomy quickly is necessary. And it's not about isolationism, just different priorities. The Chinese aren't isolated either. It's the US that's isolating itself right now as other countries see how they're treated.
> but if people like you represent how Americans think, with nothing but contempt for Europe and only obsessed with power, then the Chinese were right about who Americans are and we were naive.
I think it's much more the other way round. As a not-American, the amount of contempt I see Europeans having for Americans for not "valuing family" (i.e. lots of free childcare and maternity pay), or generally not having really expensive social programmes, and having medicine prices based on the R&D costs, when the only reason they can do that is because the US taxpayer funds most global shipping, and most health R&D in the world, is much higher than the reverse.
Saying "oh we should be autonomous" won't ever remove all the free help the US has given those countries in the past, even if they stop relying on it in the future.
> This all seems to miss the point, which is: why does the US create so much stuff that Europe doesn't? Turning that useful reflective question into an attack on Americans sounds perfect if you want to refuse to work it out and change accordingly.
Because the US had so much venture capital, during the time of the low interest rates it was basically free money so they could afford to throw it to the wall and see what sticks. 90% of them would sink but it didn't matter. That doesn't fly here.
Then, they used that money to subsidise adoption, and then once the users were hooked into rent extraction as the OP mentioned. We call this process enshittification these days, and it's a really predatory business practice.
European companies don't do that as much because we have more guardrails against it, and more importantly we didn't have random cash sloshing up the walls. American could do that especially because of the petrodollar. Once the dollar loses its international status it will be a lot harder to do (and it already is due to the rising interest rates).
It was no surprise that exactly with the rising interest rates all the companies started tightening up their subscriptions. Netflix, amazon, all exploding in cost and introducing ads. Same with meta's platforms.
Oh no! Not your "relevant material" and your "contacts working within the European institutions in Brussels".
Listen, I'm truly sorry to be so direct but you sound like exactly the kind of person that needs to hear this.
> Europe does not lack capable lawyers or regulatory expertise. I will be forwarding the relevant material to contacts of mine working within the European institutions in Brussels.
Who do you think - between the current US government and the kinds of global, powerful tech behemoths being discussed in this article - gives a single flying fuck about more European lawyers and more European regulation? You literally didn't get the first thing about the point I made. You perfectly played out that classic trope we've all come to know. How about instead of lawyers and regulation Europe actually produces a successful competitor that challenges LinkedIn in any successful manner? What makes you think an army of lawyers and some more regulation are going to change simple, obvious facts about Europe's decline in productivity, innovation, etc?
Listen. The reason not a single worthy competitor has come out of Europe is because Europe just doesn't have what it takes. And it never will have what it takes, because the mindset is exactly what you're demonstrating here: EU is not out to actually build anything useful, it's about hiring armies of lawyers and creating paperwork and regulation nobody has asked for. Your funds and money should go to technology, competitiveness, tech education - not this lawfare nonsense. The EU right now doesn't have the right people, the work ethic, the funds, the innovation, the will to challenge and dream big, the incentives to bet big on tech. You know it, I know it, everybody else knows it. But please, tell us more about how we need a bit more lawyers twiddling their thumbs on the tax payers' bill.
You need to understand something quickly: Europe depends sorely on the US and China. You don't change that through lawyers. Europe is behind on every front.
Building a site like LinkedIn is really easy. Europe can easily do this. All it is is yet another social media site of which there are tons. There is nothing special about LinkedIn.
The reason we didn't was critical mass. Everyone was already on linkedin and there wasn't really a reason to pick something else until the US started becoming a nuisance. It's marketing, not technical.
I'm sure an EU alternative will come up now that the US is no longer a trustworthy partner. A lot of people like myself now have ethical issues with using american products (especially from big tech) and there's a lot of demand for EU-local stuff that wasn't there before.
> I'm sure an EU alternative will come up now that the US is no longer a trustworthy partner. A lot of people like myself now have ethical issues with using american products (especially from big tech) and there's a lot of demand for EU-local stuff that wasn't there before.
This is all hot air. If it's so easy to build, it would've been built by now. I bet you that there won't be a single successful European LinkedIn competitor - not for the past 20 years, not now, and not for the next 20. Europe is fundamentally at a deep state of decay at every level. The only way anything might be built, is by banning the competition. At which point you might as-well just forget about a social network for professionals entirely, because you're probably working at a gulag and there's no job hopping to be done anyways :)
Sure, in fact it's USA that is well behind Europe in happines (World Happiness Ranking) , life expectancy , infant mortality rate, general literacy ( PISA scores ), homicide rate, mass shootings frequency, violent crimes, inequality, democracy ( as reported by the Democracy Index) , press freedom ( World Press Freedom Index), just to name the first indexes that came to my mind.
One detail you might have overlooked: even if you're an American company - if you offer your services in Europe (through the web or otherwise), you're subject to European laws and regulations, including the GDPR.
> In other words I don’t see why any of this is somehow uniquely wrong to the OP.
Did you read the article? It's a dark pattern. It is an act that takes 3 minutes to perform. Yet it takes multiple days of reading legal documents to understand what actually happens. I would argue this feels wrong, to most people who interact with technology.
We have a set of laws here that companies are obliged to follow, regardless of where they are incorporated, so we expect that. We are used to having some basic human rights here, perhaps unlike most Americans these days.
Data processes and ownership of biometric data should be made explicitly clear. It shouldn't take days of reading to understand. It feels wrong to me too.
I see this sentiment constantly. It is genuinely hilarious to watch Americans lecture the world about the free market while feigning shock that Europe hasn't produced its own tech giants.
Claiming "the EU had 20 years to build an equally successful product" is the geopolitical equivalent of a deeply dysfunctional 1950s household. For decades, the husband insisted he handle all the enterprise and security so he could remain the undisputed head of the family. Then, after squandering his focus on a two-decade drunken military bender in the Middle East, he stumbles home, realizes he's overextended, and screams at his wife for not having her own Silicon Valley corner office, completely ignoring that he was the one who ruthlessly bought out her ventures and demanded her dependence in the first place.
America engineered a digitally dependent Europe because it funneled global data straight to US monopolies. To blame Europeans for playing the exact role the US forced them into is historical gaslighting. And pretending the CLOUD Act's global, extraterritorial overreach is the same as local EU law enforcement is just the icing on the delusion cake.
The US is not just alone, EU governments are fully cooperating, happily.
A Microsoft official explained during a french parliamentary session that he couldn't guarantee that the State data was safe from US requests. It created a shockwave, as everyone discovered what was evident from the start.
Of course, nothing happened, and they renewed every contract since then. We could talk about the F35 procurement.
They renewed every contract, but the French government is hard at work at replacements for Microsoft stuff, called 'la suite'. The Germans are doing the same under the name 'opendesk' and the suite shares a lot of common tools in fact.
This predates Trump II by the way, they did have more foresight than a lot of EU institutions.
Things have changed for sure but big ships take long to turn.
This is a lot bigger than one municipality. And with the Munich thing there was a lot of dodgy lobbying going on. Like Microsoft suddenly moving their HQ there. Then a new mayor came in that was suddenly all pro-Microsoft.
La suite is a lot bigger than that. And parts are actually being used already. They recently started using the meeting component called visio.
There are already credible alternatives, from the EU, which do not require rebuilding everything from scratch. OnlyOffice, for instance. The french government's job isn't to write a new office SaaS suite.
Oh, the EU is a victim now? And the EU's laziness, bloat and uselessness is the US's fault now?
And where's all of this evidence of this hidden extraordinary European talent and ability that just needs to be unleashed given some more lawyers and regulation?
Exactly! It's the same with the military dependency.
America wanted a weak Europe, to be dependent on them so they would have geopolitical influence. They basically bought influence. They didn't want us to have nukes to defend ourselves from the Russians (the French are frowned upon and the British don't really have their own, they are beholden to the US). It also gave them a huge market for their products and services (and no there was no imbalance if you take services into account which Trump doesn't).
Then Trump comes and complains that we're not investing equally. Well no, but this was exactly as his predecessors designed. Now we will build it up but of course we will need to build our own nuclear umbrella and we will no longer give the US its influence it previously had, obviously.
We also don't need quite as much military expenditure anyway because we're just looking to defend ourselves, not trample oil-producing countries. The only times we did that were exactly due to the US' bought influence.
everything you're pointing out is better explained by "Europe didn't want to spend the money, they'd rather let America spend". This was true right after WWII because Europe needed to dedicate money to rebuild their economies. It remained true as later Europe continued to rely on tariff regimes to protect inefficient home industry sectors, and financed increasingly expensive welfare state programs to appease voters.
The US was only in favor of Europe rebuilding after the war, and rightfully against the rest of it.
the US has never been anything but helpful to Europe, but Europeans need a boogeyman to draw attention away from their own failings. It is very important to the European psyche that they be seen as near perfect on every measure. Americans are much more comfortable with, and benefit from, self criticism.
Thank you for your words I couldn't say any better. I agree on everything but one thing. I definetely don't find this hilarious. I find it frightening and disgusting.
Nobody is forcing you to use LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an American product, made by an American company in America, subject to American law. When you create an account - you agree to American terms and conditions, arbitrated by American courts.
LinkedIn doesn't need to obey to EU law. It needs to obey to American law, which allows LinkedIn to do business with anybody (other than people from sanctioned countries) whilst complying with US law. EU's laws don't matter in the US. The EU can sue LinkedIn, but LinkedIn can just safely ignore any lawsuits and ignore sanctions, because they are an American company subject to American laws.
EU citizens are willingly subscribing to an American service, then complain the American service doesn't abide by EU laws. That's laughable at every level, to any individual with a modicum of intelligence. If you don't agree to the terms, don't use LinkedIn. You are not entitled to anything.
> you agree to American terms and conditions, arbitrated by American courts.
"Designated Countries. We use the term “Designated Countries” to refer to countries in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland."
"If you reside in the “Designated Countries”, you are entering into this Contract with LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company (“LinkedIn Ireland”) and LinkedIn Ireland will be the controller of your personal data provided to, or collected by or for, or processed in connection with our Services."
"If you live in the Designated Countries, the laws of Ireland govern all claims related to LinkedIn's provision of the Services" "With respect to jurisdiction, you and LinkedIn agree to choose the courts of the country to which we direct your Services where you have habitual residence for all disputes arising out of or relating to this User Agreement, or in the alternative, you may choose the responsible court in Ireland."
Nobody cares. They keep a skeleton crew office in the EU for compliance purposes only. Whether they have an office in the EU or not is inconsequential. If they closed it tomorrow, the EU would literally have nothing to go after...
Call them whatever you want. All I'm saying is that Europeans are hypocrites for fucking over their greatest ally via unenforceable and anti-competitive regulation that's not worth the paper it's written in (and that European institutions have even exempted themselves from). The one ally that they desperately depend on for safety and security, technology, medicine, research, etc.
> The EU has had 20 years to create an equally successful and popular product, which it failed to do. American companies don’t owe your European nationalist ambitions a dime.
So true.
There's a lot of passive-aggressive anti-US rhetoric and fearmongering on HN at the moment, while America is simply doing what it's always done - innovating and thriving.
As a European, I wish our continent was able to be more like America, as opposed to jealously coveting its outcomes.
> "People underrate Google's cost effectiveness so much. Half price of Opus. HALF."
Google undercutting/subsidizing it's own prices to bite into Anthropic's market share (whilst selling at a loss) doesn't automatically mean Google is effective.
What does that have to do with what I said? Everyone knows that the companies are operating at a loss right now to capture market share in the hope that it's sticky. Google is losing far less money and will not need to get nearly as extreme with how they try to extra money from the product. That honestly makes me feel better about it's long term prospects. And who knows, maybe local llms will prevent it from getting truly bad anyways. Competition tends to keep product quality high.
For a specific bad thing like "rm -rf" that may be plausible, but this will break down when you try to enumerate all the other bad things it could possibly do.
We can, but if you want to stop private info from being leaked then your only sure choice is to stop the agent from communicating with the outside world entirely, or not give it any private info to begin with.
And? If your LLM is controlling user-mode software, you can still easily capture and audit everything from the kernel's perspective. Sandboxing, event tracing, etc...
No need to "ask" for "proof". You can monitor the system in real-time and detect malicious or potentially harmful activity and stop it early. The same tools and methodologies used by security tools for decades...
Your family had to leave everything behind, risking a weeks-long journey at sea costing them everything they ever had, going into the unknown - at a time where nobody could travel. The US was not as rich, or built, or anything.
People today get a 50$ plane ticket and move straight to the Bay Area.
> People today get a 50$ plane ticket and move straight to the Bay Area.
> You don't see why things need to change?
Are you asserting that the current system of legal immigration needs to change, with an unsubstantiated example of a rare $50 dollar plane ticket as if people can easily move to the US by plane? Do those people leave behind most of their belongings, or do they instead make multiple plane trips to move them? And what about all of the paperwork and approval and unpredictable waiting [1]?
I took issue with the specific example you used ("get a 50$ plane ticket and move straight to the Bay Area") because it was too reductive (and unsubstantiated) to represent "the realities of" the immigration system "of the time we live in" in a way that would let me "see why things need to change". I think you should have fleshed out your example or chosen a better one.
Interesting. I think the senior Bush must have used it during the '84 campaign at the RNC? My memory is slipping plus I would have been like 8. But I was a nerd who followed politics for a while before that.
The tenant admin configures that mapping. They can also configure whether the data can be exposed to users outside of the organization. There’s no magic here.
The EU in a nutshell. It's never about achieving anything through actual work - it's all about the illusion of progress through buying domain names, custom fonts, padding: 200px, marketing, and more paperwork.
So where’s all of this cutting edge amazing and flawless stuff you’ve built in a weekend that everybody else couldn’t because they were too dumb or slow or clueless?
- https://github.com/simonw/denobox is a new Python library that gives you the ability to run arbitrary JavaScript and WASM in a sandbox provided by Deno, because it turns out a Python library can depend on deno these days. I built that on my phone in bed yesterday morning.
- https://github.com/simonw/pwasm is a WebAssembly runtime written in pure Python with no dependencies, built by feeding Claude Code the official WASM specification along with its conformance test suite and having it hack away at that (again via my phone) to get as many of the tests to pass as possible. It's pretty slow and not really useful yet but it's certainly interesting.
- https://github.com/datasette/datasette-transactions is a Datasette plugin which provides a JSON API for starting a SQLite transaction, running multiple queries within it and then executing or rolling back that transaction. I built that one on my phone on a BART (SF Bay Area metro) trip.
- https://github.com/simonw/micro-javascript is a pure Python, no dependency JavaScript interpreter which started as a port of MicroQuickJS. Here's a demo of that one running in a browser https://simonw.github.io/micro-javascript/playground.html - that's my JavaScript interpreter running inside Python running in Pyodide in WebAssembly in your browser of choice, which I find inherently amusing.
All of those are from the past three weeks. Most of them were built on my phone while I was doing other things.
I am not at all an AI sceptic, but probably less impressed by what LLMs are capable of.
Looking at these projects, I have a few questions:
1. These seem to be fairly self-contained and well specified problems, which is the best case scenario for “vibe coding”. Do you have any examples of projects where the solution was somewhat vague and open-ended? If not, how do you think Claude Code or similar would perform?
2. Did you feel excited or energized by having an LLM implement these projects end-to-end? Personally, I find LLMs useful as a closely guided assistant, particularly to interactively explore the space of solutions. I also don’t feel energized at all by having it implement anything non-trivial end to end, outside of writing tests (and even then, not all types of tests!).
3. Do you think others would find these projects useful? In particular, if you vibe coded them, why couldn’t someone else do the same thing? And once these projects are picked up by future model training runs, they’ll probably be even easier to one shot, reducing the value even further.
Let me provide an example of what I mean by (2), at least in the context of hobbyist dev. I could have Claude Code vibe code a Gameboy emulator and it would probably do a fine job given that it’s a well specified problem that is likely well represented in its training data. But the process would neither be exciting nor energizing. I would rather spend hours gradually getting more and more working and experience the fruits of my labor (I did this already btw).
At $DAYJOB, I simply do not have confidence in an LLM doing anything non-trivial end to end. Besides, the complexity remains in defining the requirements and constraints, designing the solution, gaining consensus, and devising a plan for implementation. The goal would be for the LLM to pick up discrete, well defined chunks of work.
I have another project in the works in Go which is proving to be a ton of fun from a software design perspective, but it's not ready for outside eyes just yet.
"Did you feel excited or energized by having an LLM implement these projects end-to-end"
I'm enjoying myself so much right now. My BART rides have never been this entertaining before!
"Do you think others would find these projects useful? In particular, if you vibe coded them, why couldn’t someone else do the same thing?"
I don't think many developers have the combined taste and knowledge necessary to spin up Denobox or django-transactions. They both solve problems that I'm very confident need solving, but I expect to have to explain why those matter in some detail to all but a very small group of people who share my particular interests.
The other two are pretty standard - I suggest anyone who wants to learn more about JavaScript interpreters or WASM runtimes try something similar in the language of choice as a learning exercise.
Thanks for sharing, that project indeed looks useful.
> My BART rides have never been this entertaining before!
Not clear if this is snark, but if vibe coding on a train ride is actually energizing, then good for you haha.
> I don't think many developers have the combined taste and knowledge necessary to spin up Denobox or django-transactions.
Perhaps, but that’s just for now. What do you do when your “taste” no longer makes a difference? In other words, looking at the bigger picture, do you like where the field is going?
> I suggest anyone who wants to learn more about JavaScript interpreters or WASM runtimes try something similar in the language of choice as a learning exercise.
Agreed, but depending on learning style, vibe coding such a project might not teach you anything new at all :)
> I have another project in the works in Go which is proving to be a ton of fun from a software design perspective, but it's not ready for outside eyes just yet.
As a long-time user of the language I'm happy see that Go seems to be excellent for LLM agent development. The language is simple, there's only one way to do loops etc. It hasn't changed that much syntax wise (I think `any` is the only thing that LLMs miss).
Gofmt (or goimports) makes sure all code looks the same, there are VERY robust linters and a built-in testing framework so the LLM only needs to know one. And the code won't even compile if there are unused variables or other cruft.
It might be boring or verbose, but it's also very predictable and simple. All things LLMs like :D
Based on those, it seems you are not actually using them to create big codebases from scratch, but rather for problems that would normally take quite a while, not because they are inherently difficult to implement, but because you would normally have to spend considerable time on the finicky implementation details.
I think that's the reason why LLMs work so well for some like you, and generate slop for others, because if you let them alone with projects that require opinionated code and actual decision making they most often don't grasp the users intention well or worse misinterpret it so confidently that you end up with something with all the wrong opinions and decisions compounding path-dependently into the strangest and most useless slop.
"for problems that would normally take quite a while, not because they are inherently difficult to implement, but because you would normally have to spend considerable time on the finicky implementation details"
Yes, exactly! How amazing is it that we have technology now that lets us quickly build projects where we would normally have to spend considerable time on the finicky implementation details?
Pretty nice I guess. Cool even. Impressive! And I only say this , just in case, for someone else maybe, ehh—is that it? Because that’s totally fine with me, same experience actually funny that, really impressive tech btw! Very nice. Just, maybe, do the CEOs know that? When people talk of “not having to code anymore”—do they know that this is how it’s described by one of its most prominent champions today?
Not that I mind, of course. As you said: amazing!
Maybe someone just check in with the CEOs who were in the news recently talking about their work force…
> When people talk of “not having to code anymore”
You should reinterpret that as "not having to type the code out be hand any more". You still need a significant depth of coding knowledge and experience to get good results out of these things. You just don't need to type out every variable declaration and for loop yourself any more.
Every single tool or utility you have in the back of your head, you can just make it in a few hours of wall-clock time, minutes of your personal active time.
Like I wanted a tool that can summarise different sources quickly, took me ~3 hours to build it using llm + fragments + OpenAI API.
Now I can just go `q <url>` in my terminal and it'll summarise just about anything.
Then I built a similar tool that can download almost anything `dl <url>` will use yt-dlp, curl and various other tools depending on the domain to download the content.
Another lens is that many people either have terrible written communication skills, do not intuitively grasp how to describe a complex system design, or both. And yet, since everyone is a genius with 100% comprehensibility in their own mind, they simply aren't aware that the problem starts with them.
Well I think it also has to do with communication with LLMs being different to communication with humans. If you tell a developer "don't do busywork" they surely wouldn't say "Oh the repo looks like a trash dump, but no busywork so I'm not going to clean it up, quickly document that as canonical structure, then continue"
$200 to Anthropic, $20 to OpenAI, ~$10 in API fees for various other services, and I get GitHub Copilot in VS Code for free as an open source developer.
Mid-Senior in MENA. My monthly Salary is around 740 USD (Converted), and while I exaggerated that more than 50% figure, 200 USD/m is still a gigantic chunk of money to spend on something with dubious return on investment.
> gigantic chunk of money to spend on something with dubious return on investment.
There is nothing dubious about it. It’s providing verifiable value. Tasks that we would have set for developers or UX’ers last year are solved by it. At 1/50 of the cost, and with great scaling because the tasks are solved faster than you would even be able to explain them to a human and we can initiate 5-10 parallel tracks without having to onboard new people.
And sure it might not make sense to give a 200$/m AI tool to a worker you are paying 800$ but when we have devs that are paid 8000$/m then it’s great return on value to have one person being 10 times as productive at 8200$ instead of spending 80000$/m on ten developers just to be able to say we are doing authentic AI free artisanal software development.
You keep saying you "built" this or that, but did you really?
Of course I don't know for sure if you had any substantial input other than writing a few paragraphs of prompt text and sending Claude some links, because I didn't witness your workflow there. But I think this is kind of what irks some people including myself.
What's stopping me from "building" something similar also? Maybe I won't be as fast as you since you seem to be more experienced with these tools, but at the end of the day, would you be able to describe in detail what got built without you asking Claude about it? If you don't know anything about what you built other than just prompting an AI, in my opinion you didn't actually "build" anything -- Claude did.
Based on your comment history it seems like you're making an assumption about my intentions here, but I'll bite anyway.
When you build a table, you use a tool as a means to an end, i.e. you use the tool to cut and shape, but you are fully in control and engaged in the process. When you prompt an LLM, you tell it what to do and it does something for you. How is that not the same as telling someone else to build the table for you? You don't say "I built the table", you say "I got someone else to build the table for me."
I think it's great that simonw responded with some information on his process, that definitely helps provide perspective on how he engaged with Claude to make these projects.
People are under zero obligation to release their work to the public. Simon actually publishes and writes about a remarkable amount of the side projects he builds with AI.
The rest of us just build tons of cool stuff for personal use or for $JOB. Releasing stuff to the public is, in general, a massive amount of extra work for very little benefit. There are loads of FOSS maintainers trapped spending as much time managing their communities as they do their actual projects and many of us just don't have time for that.
> The rest of us just build tons of cool stuff for personal use or for $JOB. Releasing stuff to the public is, in general, a massive amount of extra work for very little benefit. There are loads of FOSS maintainers trapped spending as much time managing their communities as they do their actual projects and many of us just don't have time for that.
I wouldn't worry about this.
There are many examples of people sharing a project they've used LLMs to help write, and the result was not a huge amount of attention & expectation of burden.
Perhaps "I don't share it because I'm worried people will love it too much" even suggests the opposite: you can concretely demonstrate the kinds of things you've been able to build using LLMs.
> This is such a tired response at this point.
Lack of specificity & concrete examples frequently mean all that's left for discussion is emotion for hype and anti-hype, though.
In this thread, the discussion was:
pro: use LLMs or get left behind
conserve: okay, I'll start using LLMs when they're good
pro: no no they won't be that good, it takes effort to get to use them
conserve: do you have any examples?
pro: why should we have to share examples?
I like LLMs. But making big claims while being reticent about concrete claims and demonstrations is irksome.
The response may be tired when asked in this personal way, but in general, it's a fair question. Nobody is forced to share their work. But with all the high praises, we'd expect to see at least some uptick in the software world. But there is no surge in open source projects. No surge in app store entries. And for the bigger companies claiming high GenAI use, they're not iterating faster or building more. They are continually removing features and their software is getting worse, slower, less robust, and less secure.
Software quality has been on a step downwards curve as far as quality and capabilities are concerned, for years before LLM coding had its breakthrough. For all the promises I'd have expected to, three years later, at least notice the downward trajectory easing off. But it hasn't been happening.
I find it increasingly confusing that some people seem to believe, that other people not subjecting themselves to this continued interrogation, gives any credence to their position.
People seem to believe that there is a burden of proof. There is not. What do I care if you are on board?
I don't know what could change your mind, but of course the answer is "nothing" as long as you aer not open to it. Just look around. There is so much stuff, from so many credible people in all domains. If you can't find anything that is convincing or at least interesting to you, you are simply not looking.
> People seem to believe that there is a burden of proof. There is not. What do I care if you are on board?
The burden of proof rests on those making the positive claim. You say you don't care if others get on board, but a) clearly a lot of others do (case in point: the linked article) and b) a quick check of your posts in this very thread shows that you are indeed making positive claims about the merits of LLM assisted software development.
Without enough adoption expect some companies you are a client of to increase prices more, or close entirely down the road, due to insufficient cash inflow.
So, you would care, if you want to continue to use these tools and see them evolve, instead of seeing the bubble pop.
This is baffling. Why would you make the claim if you do not care if we are on board? Who are you talking to if not exactly those who you care to convince?
"Web Pipe is an experimental DSL and Rust runtime for building web apps via composable JSON pipelines, featuring native integration of GraphQL, SQL, and jq, an embedded BDD testing framework, and a sophisticated Language Server."
I've been working at quite a clip for a solo developer who is building a new language with a full featured set of tooling.
I'd like to think that the approach to building the BDD-testing framework directly into the language itself and having the test runner using the production request handlers is at least somewhat novel!
GET /hello/:world
|> jq: `{ world: .params.world }`
|> handlebars: `<p>hello, {{world}}</p>`
describe "hello, world"
it "calls the route"
let world = "world"
when calling GET /hello/{{world}}
then status is 200
and selector `p` text equals "hello, {{world}}"
I'm married with two young kids and I have a full-time job. Before these tools there was no way I could build all of these experiments with such limited resources.
Asking Simon Willis “where is all this amazing stuff you’ve built” is crazy. I assume you didn’t know who you were responding to. Not only is he insanely productive, but he’s also incredibly open and sharing about his work and his work gets posted to hackernews constantly. It was the top most upvoted blog of 2024 by almost twice the as much as the next runner up.
All of the linked apps look trivial to me.
Also, the first one, the UI has no feedback once you click the answer (plus some questions don't really make sense as they have the answer in them).
There is more on the website, so there could be something interesting, but I'm having trouble finding it among all the noise.
Not saying simple apps have no value. Even simple throwaway UIs can have value, especially if you develop them quickly.
The first one is basically some glue code using pipes.
The ones I'd say are not trivial are the VMs in Python.
However, I'd say they are entirely useless, and not too complex either (although somewhat tedious to implement).
I feel like I'm being punked, being told that this "bullish vs bearish flash card" thing and this "here's your user agent, something people have been doing for thirty years" thing, are "cool stuff". This guy seriously needed AI to make those?
I can't gauge the other two since I don't use those things, so maybe they are cool, idk.
llmslave3 appears to have deliberately picked the least interesting from my HTML+JavaScript tools collection here. This post describes a bunch of much more interesting ones: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/10/html-tools/
No, I am pointing out the hypocrisy in demanding evidence of production results in a derisive manner whenever someone mentions a productivity boost with AI.
To some extend it's an understandable ask, but obviously even with a decent productivity boost side projects still require a lot of time and effort before a possible public release.
It honestly starts to sound like they just botched the design and placement of these cables - placing them in shallow and exposed passages, with no proper defense against dragged anchors.
Real shades of "that cable shouldn't have been dressed like that, in a dark and narrow channel, clearly marked on navigation charts(to mitigate exactly this scenario, from good captains at least)" energy.
Problem is that you need to buy a new one of them once they do not get updated anymore, and the apps start requiring newer versions of android.
But yes, this seems like the best possible option - also it enables the extra security through clean separation, as long as the phone is dedicated for that use case only.
> Let that sink in. You scanned your European passport for a European professional network, and your data went exclusively to North American companies. Not a single EU-based subprocessor in the chain.
LinkedIn is an American product. The EU has had 20 years to create an equally successful and popular product, which it failed to do. American companies don’t owe your European nationalist ambitions a dime. Use their products at your own discretion.
Of course an American company is subject to American law. And of course an American company will prioritise other local, similar jurisdiction companies. And often times there’s no European option that competes on quality, price, etc to begin with. In other words I don’t see why any of this is somehow uniquely wrong to the OP.
> Here’s what the CLOUD Act does in plain language: it allows US law enforcement to force any US-based company to hand over data, even if that data is stored on a server outside the United States.
European law enforcement agencies have the same powers, which they easily exercise.
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