Gosh - I thought I was bleeding edge with my instructions to codex, with all my .md files and such. Lots more to learn!

> However, I've seen multiple times where cops initiate a felony stop

At what point do we accept that all systems are flawed? There could be many variables as to why the perp wasn't in the car. Maybe the perp stole the car. Maybe the perp borrowed the car. Maybe these systems do not work well in fog etc etc. I don't know how we're supposed to advance technology that makes us safer without getting into these muky situations from time to time.

Technology is a means to an end, not the end itself. If you can’t make it safe then don’t deploy it.

There must be some level of acceptable failure.

Flock, like Palantir, is the Torment Nexus from the famous novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.

Considering the potential and demonstrated abuse there must be more robust guardrails than currently exist. The required level of safety is more like “nuclear launch codes” or “commercial airliner”, not “local used car lot landing page”.

This juice ain’t worth the squeeze.

Why do anything at all?

Why even deploy such systems? I would support less for sure.

> Code review should be mandatory and reviewers should ask big PRs to be broken up

Always, even before all this madness. It sounds more like a function of these teams CR process rather than agents writing the code. Sometimes super large prs are necessary and I've always requested a 30 minute meeting to discuss.

I don't see this as an issue, just noise. Reduce the PR footprint. If not possible meet with the engineer(s)

I'm curious what you've used it for? I was firmly in your camp until about a month ago when i used codex to dust off an old side project. I hadn't touched the project in six months. This was literally my first prompt:

"Explain the codebase to a newcomer. What is the general structure, what are the important things to know, and what are some pointers for things to learn next?"

Once I saw the output I giddyup'd and haven't looked back.

I'd argue you still have to stay engaged, if not more-so. Its a different type of engagement. Look at you: You're the CTO now.

It's hard to be engaged when you are constantly jumping from one thing/prompt to another vs you are actually doing the work.

I still write code but do not push everything off to the agent. Try my best to write small tasks. ~20% of the time I have to get in there. If someone says they're absolutely not writing a line of code they must have amazing guardrails.

> This is such a strange take. Your words remind me of past crypto hype cycles, where people pushed web3.0 and NFT FOMO hysteria.

Thats a little harsh. I think most everyone would agree we're in a transformative time for engineering. Sure theres hype, but the adoption in our profession (assuming you're an engineer) isn't waning.

Recent developments offer us evidence but did you really think this wouldn't be the case?

Altman is a consummate liar so no, I didn't.

Feel similarly. And to be honest, even when I do select decline all, I have little confidence that the function does what it says it does.

Yes, I do not have a lot of faith that "essential" cookies are always "essential" for example.

Essential is contextually defined by whoever implemented the that part of the front-end basically.

Certainly advertising is essential to the business model.

Firefox has a setting to dump cookies on exit, which I use.

And there's Firefox Klar on Android. It forgets everything on exit. Some people call it a porn browser, but I've gotten used to it for general use when I don't need to log in somewhere.

For those that wonder, Klar is Firefox Focus with telemtry disabled by default. It is available on german speaking countries due to trademark avoidance with the Focus magazine.

This is how we should view all information we get from a company. If the product say organic, claim to be pure ingredients, recycled material, made in "COUNTRY", or any other claim, it is only just that. It is simply a claim that you as the customer has no way to verify.

That's why we fine companies that make false claims, and if they keep doing it, we shut down the company and imprison the people in charge.

Having seen how these things are implemented in the field, your lack of confidence is definitely well placed. Most of these things send your denial request to /dev/null

When you decline, their tracking becomes illegal, so they are constantly in danger of a legal action. It's a good enough reason to declime for me.

How long can we push this narrative? It was a terrible situation and I can't imagine the minutes of complete fear she must have felt. I pray for her family. But to then draw a conclusion to say this is evidence that we are in some sort of fascist decline, because of this incident, takes away from the innocent lose of life. And greatly exaggerates the skill and aptitude of the killer. People spew the fascist narrative every chance they get. I'm sure most of us who like strawberries will be picking strawberries come June.

Neither Renee Good or Alex Pretti or any of the other innocents that the brownshirts killed will pick strawberries ever again.

Yes I understand. And given the heaviness of the situation I could have chosen a better way to phrase that I completely disagree with it being evidence that we're on the road to fascism.

What would have to occur, hypothetically, for you to conclude that the US is on the road to fascism?

Dictatorship. Control over media. No regard for human life.

"No regard for human life."

How can you watch ICE shoot and kill these two people and then leadership calls them both terrorists and the shooting justified and then suppress and block any investigtation and prosecution of the offenders and think they have ANY regard for human life?!

Nazi Germany had great regard for some human life.

It's not because of one incident. And the fascist part of these incidents isn't just the killing, it's the official response to it. They immediately claim the victims are terrorists and assassins and suppress investigation of it. Let's not pretend this is just some sad accident.

Agreed the official responses to almost everything - killings, terrible policy, various files - has been horrible. That is the result of having an uncouth person as president.

You have an unrealistic picture of what fascism looks like. Most people got to pick strawberries throughout the Spanish, Italian, and even German fascist periods.

The problem isn't that fascism will kill all of us, but that you will not get to choose. If the regime decides that your city, your company, or your friends are an enemy, they will destroy you, and if your fellow strawberry-pickers bother to read about it in the paper they'll be told that you were an anti-government radical who had it coming.

When has this "regime" destroyed any company, city, or any of our friends? I feel this whole conversation is emotionally charged and its clouding reality. People are protesting. Media is not controlled by the government. Our courts are strong. There is no dictator.

Some of my friends lost their research funding when Trump unlawfully cancelled a bunch of grants, and one still hasn't found new employment.

The government is working hard to control the media. Regime allies have conducted ideological purges at the Washington Post and CBS News so far, and another has promised Trump to conduct one at CNN if he's allowed to buy their parent company Warner Brothers (https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/10/media/trump-cnn-sold-paramoun...).

Our courts are strong in some ways and weak in other ways. There's a number of cases where ICE unlawfully kidnapped someone before eventually being ordered to let them go and eventually complying, after days or weeks of holding them in overcrowded facilities with absolutely no basis.

Is Trump Hitler? Probably not. It's true that people are protesting, it's true that public dissent is alive, and it's unlikely IMO that he will be able to engage in mass detention of citizens. But he's extremely open about the fact that he thinks it should be illegal to dislike him, or to try and stop him from doing what he wants to do.