The essay gives a bunch of reasons to drop the "type" altogether and just use "<optional scope>" as prefix. The type either doesn't really mean anything or is redundant when writing commit headlines as English sentences. In a message like "Prevent thing from happening" the verb "prevent" is already basically a synonym for "fix". Similarly "Add" or "Support" likely implies "feat"/"feature".
To some extent the "type" is simply about trying to limit/standardize the number of possible "verbs" to start a commit headline with, in which case Conventional Commits made the mistake of mixing verbs and nouns (fix and refactor are verbs but feature and chore are nouns) and adding distracting punctuation where English prefers none between the Verb and its direct object in a "Verb the thing" sentence. "Verb: the thing" only ever really looks awkward.
But also do we really want to limit the possible number of verbs that a headline sentence can start with when making commits? "Fix" and "Prevent" may often act like synonyms but there are connotative differences. In some cases "Prevent" may be a shorter way to explain why something needed to be fixed in a headline because "prevent" also says "stop a thing from happening that wasn't supposed to happen" whereas "fix" alone may not yield that extra context. The top line of a commit should be a short and sweet headline and sometimes the cleanest way to do that is to use the full gamut of English verbs at your disposal to tell the right story as quickly as possible.
That shift might have been plausible if it happened in the 40s or 50s when the economy switched from war to consumption - but in the 80s? What kind of massive breakthrough in food production happened there that we mysteriously never heard of?
There were a ton of programs after WWII to improve the nutrition of the country. This largely meant raising calories to prevent malnutrition. And the 80s are as good a point as any other to where that succeeded.
2025: If we aren't really careful with AI it will start to recursively improve itself and grow into an unstoppable superintelligence that will eradicate humanity!
2026: Working hard to make that recursive self-improvement a reality! Any minute now...
Well, it's just a slice of the picture. It's just the one nobody likes to talk about.
A different slice: went to the supermarket the other day, late on a Sunday. There were two workers in the whole supermarket, both elderly women in their 70s.
Economy sucks here so pensions are bad, they chose to keep working.
But obviously they didn't chose to work on Sunday night. They didn't have a choice there.
If they owned the place, they would have closed at a normal hour.
One of them let out an exasperated sigh when I walked in. More work for her, but not more profit.
I overheard one say to the other, "and then at the end of the month you go to the bank and collect 800 Euros."
Not as much as if they improvised it from scratch - but the decision when to use the technique and the discovery and coordination with the other agent would still be interesting.
I regularly have agents communicate with each other this way using my tools Deciduous (https://deciduous.dev). It keeps all decisions in a DAG and the other agents, when configured, read from it constantly and use it to inform their new decisions. Extra entries in the same space from another agent come to light and they can begin to work together like this.
I think locals (unlike economists apparently) are also thinking what is produced in particular in those facilities.
Yes, a chip fab might in fact be more of an environmental hazard, but at least the benefits of the products are clear.
I think this even used to be true with data centers before AI: It's sort of easy to see the need for one if you're hosting your own website in one or at least understand a bit more how the internet works.
The problem with AI is that both the product and its production now have a negative reputation.
Why should people tolerate the downsides of a factory if its only product is actively causing job losses, mental health problems and large-scale cognitive decline?
True, centralized power generation using a grid that can carry that load would be the best solution. But in absence of that, the alternatives only seem to be between inefficient decentralized green and inefficient decentralized non-green solutions. In that case, I'd opt for the green ones. (Or of course: no datacenter at all)
> Data Centers (and one day EVs) are the kind of push we need to get the complacent monopolies to do the work.
Genuinely interested to know, has this actually happened on a larger scale? I.e. data centers triggering a systematic push to modernize the grid?
My impression (from headlines) was that companies either accept rising prices for grid power or generate their own power - using noisy, polluting and CO2 emitting gas turbines. In both situations the local communities are left holding the bag.
> they are getting some jobs. 20 jobs of remote hands, plumbers, and security guards is better than zero.
They'll also have made sure they won't ever get any more jobs from that "investment" over the next decades, whereas someone else could have built something with actual job growth instead.
I think those takes are a bit like saying the Fentanyl factory next door is great because it also needs a janitor and the exhaust contains CO2 so will make the plants grow faster.
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