The last point I think is most important: "very subtle and silently introduced mistakes" -- LLMs may be able to complete many tasks as well (or better) than humans, but that doesn't mean they complete them the same way, and that's critically important when considering failure modes.
In particular, code review is one layer of the conventional swiss cheese model of preventing bugs, but code review becomes much less effective when suddenly the categories of errors to look out for change.
When I review a PR with large code moves, it was historically relatively safe to assume that a block of code was moved as-is (sadly only an assumption because GitHub still doesn't have indicators of duplicated/moved code like Phabricator had 10 years ago...), so I can focus my attention on higher level concerns, like does the new API design make sense? But if an LLM did the refactor, I need to scrutinize every character that was touched in the block of code that was "moved" because, as the parent commenter points out, that "moved" code may have actually been ingested, summarized, then rewritten from scratch based on that summary.
For this reason, I'm a big advocate of an "AI use" section in PR description templates; not because I care whether you used AI or not, but because some hints about where or how you used it will help me focus my efforts when reviewing your change, and tune the categories of errors I look out for.
I was about to write my own tool for this but then I discovered:
git diff --color-moved=dimmed-zebra
That shows a lot of code that was properly moved/copied in gray (even if it's an insertion). So gray stuff exactly matches something that was there before. Can also be enabled by default in the git config.
I used autochrome[0] for Clojure code to do this. (I also made some improvements to show added/removed comments, top-level form moves, and within-string/within-comment edits the way GitHub does.)
At first I didn't like the color scheme and replaced it with something prettier, but then I discovered it's actually nice to have it kinda ugly, makes it easier to detect the diffs.
That's a great solution and I'm adding it to my fallback. But also, people might be interested in diff-so-fancy[0]. I also like using batcat as a pager.
When using a reasonably smart llm, code moves are usually fine, but you have to pay attention whenever uncommon words (like urls or numbers) are involved.
It kind of forces you to always put such data in external files, which is better for code organization anyway.
If it's not necessary for understanding the code, I'll usually even leave this data out entirely when passing the code over.
In Python code I often see Gemini add a second h to a random header file extension. It always feels like the llm is making sure that I'm still paying attention.
RPi's toolchain situation is awful for beginners/hobbyists. CMake and non-manifest-versioned toolchains are a huge barrier to entry. I'd love to use the hardware but have given up multiple times because I'd rather spend my time writing code than wrestling with toolchain setup. And they won't support platformio which could make things massively easier for beginners to set up.
I've never used their toolchain, I use Rust on the RP2040 and it's a breeze to set up.
But yeah there's also CircuitPython where you literally drag and drop a firmware blob onto the volume that shows up when plugging in an RP2040 board, and then you're just editing a Python-esque script to do stuff. Not sure what could be easier when it comes to starting with embedded stuff. You can even use the Arduino IDE with RP2040 boards if you like.
Here's an excellent video from Juan Browne around the challenges that wires present to aircraft operations [1]. Some of these are human factors for manned aircraft, like seeing a wire but then forgetting it's there, but one of his points is that it's simply safest to avoid flying below 1000ft AGL. That's not an option for drones today, and they presumably don't (yet) have the ability of humans to make inferences about the likelihood of cables near cranes and transmission line towers, making them particularly vulnerable.
That's not true, commercial and municipal drones operate above 400ft all the time. Non-commercial/civilian drones piloted by someone without an FAA Part 107 certification and a waiver cannot fly above 400ft. Also, you are allowed to fly 400ft -above- a vertical structure (like a tower) up to 1000ft tall to avoid exactly this type of collision as long as you are within 400ft horizontally of the structure.
EDIT: crud, I did not read your post carefully enough, sorry, you addressed this point exactly. My bad.
More likely is he paid a ticket incorrectly. Someone said he paid the same ticket twice instead of paying each ticket once. Then the city racked up delinquency fines while making little to no effort to inform him of these fines or the outstanding ticket. One day, he gets towed and can't get his van back until thousands of dollars in fines and penalties are paid from a ticket that he thought had been taken care of long ago.
Is it ridiculous to ticket someone who parks in the middle of Market St if there's no sign that it's illegal?
No. Driving a car is a privilege, and a dangerous one at that, which requires a competency test. It is not unreasonable to expect licensed drivers to know the statewide laws that govern that privilege without reminder signs.
In some ways, yes, though not in many cities like SF, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc.
But it's also a chicken and egg problem: often transit is not viable or is too slow precisely because everything is devoted to cars. The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it stuck in car traffic, but after the BRT the bus is a much better and faster experience than driving could ever be.
One of the most common reasons for watering down or canceling pedestrian, transit, and biking infra projects is a refusal to negatively impact driving in any way, even if the net societal benefit (especially to lower income households who take transit at much higher rates) is far greater.
Good governance requires sometimes unpopular choices (see Paris's recent bicycle transformation, or SF's recent recall election over the creation of a new public park in place of a redundant street)
> The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it stuck in car traffic
It's funny that you use that particular example considering the SF Supervisors of 1958 are the ones who created that problem by refusing to build the elevated freeway that transit planning engineers correctly envisioned we would need. Tearing down the stub end of it also created the most dangerous intersection in the city at Market & Octavia. As a pedestrian it would be so nice to have cars elevated up off the ground instead of having to wait to cross on foot. A lot of intersections of Octavia and its cross streets don't even allow pedestrian crossing at all lmfao
Imagine you and your spouse both work full time, and you have 1-2 children. And your definition of 'living well' includes having those children learn to swim well, and do some sort of after-school sport, and also do math supplementation because SFUSD teaches math at a really slow pace.
I don't believe any of the above are outlier or unreasonable positions to have.
Yet a family in that situation would severely struggle to fit everything in if they had to rely solely on public transport to get between home, school and after-school activities.
(I grew up in London, where public transport is often faster than driving. In San Francisco, most of my car journeys would take 3-4 times as long by public transport.)
Admittedly, public transport is garbage. And for the time we'd go to La Petite Baleen, a car is 0.5x the time. So in that respect I agree. In Mission Bay everything else is close by.
But I think perhaps if someone told me "We don't live well. I can only take my child to swim class on the weekends" I would think that somewhat strange.
Re: La Petite Baleen: 34 mins vs 1 hour 11 mins for me.
My son's swim school is 20 mins away by car, or 60 mins by public transport.
I take your point that these are first world problems.
But my point is that not having access to a car in San Francisco is a significant inconvenience and it's incorrect to say 'you can live well' without that access. You might not be so inconvenienced that you would say "we don't live well", but there's a 'meh' zone in between the two.
Normally I'd agree with you, but I can pick my swim lesson time and I don't have to worry about headway timing because I know when to leave and the train is timed. For untimed services, certainly I'd believe it.
These are complaints of generality that don't have relevance in the specific case.
Your last point is one of the most frustrating things with unprotected bike lanes - drivers will endanger bicyclists for no real gain when they park in the bike lane because the car lane is also still blocked! Somehow they prefer to block 2 active travel lanes instead of just one.
Generally to keep streets safe to drive on, and pleasant to live near.
In particular, SF receives very little rainfall for most of the year, which means that leaves and debris easily accumulate rather than being washed away at regular intervals.
Drivers also have a tendency to leave parts of their vehicles - like broken glass and plastic/metal shards - behind when they routinely crash into each other, which accumulate on the street. Without regular sweeping, those can pose hazards to other drivers and bicyclists, and risk being washed into the bay via storm drains if not swept.
The DMV is unfortunately wrong about this, with an invalid interpretation of CVC - the DMV handbook is NOT the law (it's a simplistic layman's interpretation), and is not a valid legal defense.
That said, in SF proper it's absolutely inarguably illegal as a violation called "Obstructing traffic" in the SF transportation code. A bike lane is an active travel lane for vehicles as defined under the CVC (including bicycles), and therefore stopping in one is illegal just like stopping in a car lane. I've had drivers cited for this in the past.
Yeah, they ignore SF311 reports by policy. I've managed it by flagging down an amazingly helpful parking control officer that happened to be in the area, or else by calling and reporting an obstruction of traffic (not mentioning the bike lane) and then waiting until the PCO arrived and talking to them.
The officers have almost always been helpful, but I think they generally tend towards lower confrontation and more "efficient" violations like street sweeping or expired meters by default (or perhaps directed by management).
This was years ago when I was younger and had more free time. I called SFMTA traffic directly (you learn the menu tree quickly). It varied but I want to say it usually took between 20 minutes to over an hour, including multiple callbacks to check on status and ensure they knew I was serious
Thank you for sharing that. It clears up my confusion. I thought perhaps you had found some magic way to get them to do something without you needing to disrupt your day.
It doesn't seem worth the time investment, as it won't have any effect beyond the particular incident you're reporting. It won't increase the threat of enforcement such that people decide not to break the law.
Incredible work. I'm disappointed to see so many of the leaderboard items are street cleaning tickets.
I get it - street cleaning are "easy" tickets to write in bulk, and therefore efficient ROI for PCO time, but they're not the most important violations to cite compared to safety-critical things like blocked bike lanes (which SFMTA has an official policy to completely ignore citizen reports thereof), double-parking, or red zone (including daylighting) violations.
Part of the issue is improper fine structure (though I think this is at least partly controlled by the state?) - tickets for blocking a bike lane are rarely written and therefore it's a good bet to just do it and odds are in aggregate it's cheaper than paying for parking legally.
UPS, FedEx, Amazon, Uber etc rely on this as a cheap cost of doing business, externalizing their costs onto the safety of the public. SFMTA even offers bulk payment discounts to UPS, when they should be charging escalating fines for repeat offenders.
In practice, delivery vehicles don't have a place to safely stop, because that space is allocated to free street parking for private vehicles.
Subsidized street parking for cars are externalizing their costs onto UPS/Fedex/Amazon, etc. who are then passing that cost along to the safety of the public.
Yep! Market rate for private parking, and offering subsidized short-term commercial parking (which generally has broader societal benefit than private parking) with appropriate safeguards for abuse would be great!
Where should the delivery trucks park if there is no infrastructure for them and the public has an ever increasing appetite for delivered products? Try to think about it from the delivery drivers point of view and their safety. The roads are not any one users exclusive resource. We all pay for them and they must be shared.
One 5 minute delivery spot is as good as many regular parking spots since it won't be taken up by long term parkers. You could probably eliminate 90% of parking spots and turn the other 10% to 5 minute spots and it would be easier for delivery drivers than the status qou
I agree. And on top of that it would be great to have spots with ALPRs that delivery companies can pay for their use and discourage or tow non-compliant vehicles.
Covid time encouraged new food pickup priority parking spots but I don't see a lot of new thinking around emergent street use needs. We have massively increased delivery culture and micro mobility shares and city planning is lagging. (I think delivery is great - fewer car trips and just overall more efficient - my opinion).
In commercial loading zones! We've allocated the color yellow for this in SF.
If commercial drivers petitioned SFMTA to convert more private parking spaces into commercial zones I'd be signing petitions and backing them in their goal 100% of the way.
But generally I've found that commercial drivers would rather just violate the law and endanger others rather than engaging in activism for better infrastructure on our streets, so it's hard to feel sorry for them if they're cited and fined as a result.
I can't speak for SF I'm in Seattle. I don't think it is incumbent on delivery drivers to do activism for their employers. That's my opinion. And I still don't understand why people don't see that the delivery driver on foot is a vulnerable user of the roads and sidewalks. We aren't perfect but we are there for the public not because we like it.
Someone else mentioned "externalizing" the cost of parking via citations. Those are expensive and a trove for the city. That sounds more like subsidising than externalizing.
As far as feeling sorry for "them" - that is a disconcerting view of a servant class.
UPS drivers don't need to write their congressperson. UPS the company can just get their lobbyists to pressure city officials to convert more street parking spaces to commercial only spaces.
Bike lanes reduce the number of cars on the road and therefore make it easier for vehicles that are actually necessary (delivery, work, emergency, etc) to travel and park, not harder. So do all viable alternatives to driving. That in 2025 people still unironically say "just one more lane bro, and we'll solve traffic" is almost unbelievable.
Ok. I understand bike lanes. I didn't say anything about more lanes, bro. I am talking about delivery vehicles and the challenges they face in urban environments. Keep in mind that a delivery driver can spend as much time on foot as they do in their vehicle. This means interacting with vehicles and bikes as a laden pedestrian. They are compromised and it can be dangerous.
Delivery vehicles reduce the number of cars on the road and therefore make it easier for bicycles to negotiate the roads. One delivery vehicle can easily replace dozens of car trips.
Agreed, and it provides important revenue for transportation projects and helps keep our streets clean so I wouldn't want SFMTA to adjust that focus as-is.
I just wish we had proper (read: higher, accounting for real negative externalities and likelihood of citation) fines for other violations that pose active public safety concerns such that SFMTA would be incentivized to also focus on those and not just the "easy" ones. It would also disincentivize antisocial behavior by repeat offenders.
Your mistake is thinking parking tickets exist to benefit the people and create a better city. But in reality they mostly exist as an easy revenue stream for cops and courts. The fact that it incidentally helps once in awhile is just the excuse needed to keep the revenue stream alive.
This is entirely unsurprising. It's been clear that Google has been into their Android duopoly-abusive stage for a while now, with more and more of their Android changes moving into GMS or non-AOSP Google apps (like camera, messages, location services, etc) over the last decade. Graphene has been doomed to this fate for a long time, and anyone who thought otherwise was naively optimistic.
The same is clearly coming for Chromium forks, which is why I've always thought the privacy and ad-blocking forks are a joke - if they ever gain enough marketshare, or if google just tires of the public open source charade, they have no chance of maintaining a modern browser on their own.
This is all the more likely now that Google has been emboldened by not having to sell off Chrome for anticompetitive reasons.
Security patches aren't being delayed for AOSP specifically but rather Android as a whole including the stock Pixel OS. The title is misinterpreting our reply. We didn't say they're delaying patches to AOSP specifically. Stock Pixel OS has delayed patches too.
GrapheneOS has an OEM partner and early access to the security patches so our complaint isn't about us not having access. Google has added an exception to the embargo where binary-only patches can be released which we could use for a special security update branch but that's a ridiculous exception and it should be allowed to release the sources. It can be reversed from the security patches anyway and is trivial for Java and Kotlin. We can't break the embargo ourselves but we CAN publish the security patches early under the rules of the embargo via a special branch and people could reverse the patches from there which could then be applied to the regular GrapheneOS branch. The system is ridiculous and our hope is these changes are undone.
The title should really be changed from "for AOSP" to "for Android". There's a binary-only exception in the embargo now but that's not really about AOSP and isn't being used in practice even for Pixels. They've really just delayed all patches 4 months instead of 1 while also destroying any semblance of there being a real embargo (which was already very weak).
Thanks for the clarification. Delaying patches for all Android is even worse than delaying for AOSP. Excerpts below.
.. Google recently made.. misguided changes to Android security updates.. almost entirely quarterly instead of monthly to make it easier for OEMs. They're giving OEMs 3-4 months of early access which we know for a fact is being widely leaked including to attackers.
.. Google's existing system for distributing security patches to OEMs was already.. problematic. Extending 1 month of early access to 4 months is atrocious. This applies to all of the patches in the bulletins. This is harming Android security to make OEMs look better by lowering the bar.. The existing system should have been moving towards shorter broad disclosure of patches instead of 30 days.
.. Android's management has clearly overruled the concerns of their security team and chosen to significantly harm Android security for marketing reasons.. Android is very understaffed due to layoffs/buyouts and insufficient hiring.. Google does a massive portion of the security work on the Linux kernel, LLVM and other projects.. providing the resources and infrastructure for Linux kernel LTS releases. Others aren't stepping up to the plate.
This would be a good discussion topic for the Linux Plumbers conference in 3 months.
Just a year prior, I would have been against a decision to force Google to part with either Android or Chrome.
Now, I'm of the opinion that they should have been forced to sell off both, and maybe Chromebooks too, for the good measure.
No company with a direction as vile and openly user-hostile as what Google currently demonstrates should have anywhere near this level of control over the ecosystem.
They should lose YouTube as well. Remember how they used their control over YouTube to kill Windows Phone back in the day also. They should have lost it right then.
Google is very clearly an abusive monopoly, and has been for a very long time. We all overlooked it because they were mostly benevolent. That is no longer the case.
> YouTube to kill Windows Phone back in the day also.
I hope you're not referring to YouTube blocking the 3rd party YT Windows Phone client that didn't play or display ads? At the time, Microsoft was threatening Android OEMs with patent infringement (without disclosing the specific patents!), and making it go away if they agreed to make Windows phone models[1]. Google refusing to make a first-party YouTube client for Windows Phone was to be expected, it was an ugly, hand-to-hand fight and all parties used the weapons they had at hand.
1. The agreements were never made public, but HTC and Samsung disclosed they'd be making Windows phones in their respective agreements with Microsoft. Microsoft also initially filed an Amicus brief in Google v Oracle - supporting Oracle's position.
The sad thing is I think Google keeping Chrome is actually likely the better of two possible bad outcomes... Anyone else interested and willing to pay the true value of owning the entire Internet ecosystem is almost certainly going to look to extract value from that, and that's almost certainly worse than what Google does today. E.g. using everyone's browser to extract training data for AI without getting IP blocked.
A year or so ago, I would have agreed. Not anymore.
Sure, a company can buy Chrome and proceed to sell user browsing habits data to the highest bidder, or use it as a backbone for decentralized scraping - backed by real user data and real residential IPs to fool most anti-scraping checks. But if they fuck with users enough, Chrome would just die off over time, and Firefox or various Chromium forks like Brave would take its place. This already happened to the browsing titan that was IE, and without the entire power of Google to push Chrome? It can happen again.
The alternative is Google owning Chrome for eternity - and proceeding with the most damaging initiatives possible. Right now, Google is seeking to destroy adblocking, tighten the control over the ad data ecosystem to undermine their competitors, and who knows what else they'll come up with next week.
Why do suppose Chrome would die off for user-hostile actions under a non-Google entity (2nd paragraph), but not while being controlled by Google (3rd paragraph)?
Not the OP, but Google spent years advertising Chrome front and center on the Internet's most visited pages. Money doesn't buy that kind of real estate, ownership does.
Prior to Chrome, Google actually used to promote Firefox on its own pages instead - which was a major driver of Firefox adoption. Google did it because they had a partnership with Mozilla, and were very much in favor of users switching to a browser that's not Internet Explorer.
Then Google decided they wanted more control over Firefox. Mozilla decided that Google isn't going to get it. This resulted in Chrome.
Firefox was evicted from Google's promotion, and it never quite recovered.
> Money doesn't buy that kind of real estate, ownership does.
If this is the reason, the remedy doesn't attack the root of the matter. If Chrome were unbundled from Google, what's to stop Google from creating a new Chromium fork - and naming it Cobalt and marketing the hell out of it to achieve the same market share?
Antitrust orders are more complicated than just declaring a business unit spontaneously independent. They usually include provisions to ensure the the situation is actually fixed, like prohibitions on the parent competing in that entire market and financial/infrastructure support for the new companies on their transition to independence.
Are you able to share a case when an American court issued such a broad order on a F100 company? There was a stronger case for breaking up Microsoft, but the DoJ shied from that remedy, there was never a chance that Google could have been broken up in this case, IMO.
Split it to a point where no one company can own the entire Internet ecosystem. Apply antitrust laws to keep it like this.
Maybe the development will slow down, but let's be honest: we would still be fine if Android and iOS had stopped "improving" years ago. Now it's mostly about adding shiny AI features and squeeze the users.
>Split it to a point where no one company can own the entire Internet ecosystem. Apply antitrust laws to keep it like this.
Facebook was once small too. Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process. What makes you think the remaining companies offering a free browser wouldn't try to monetize users in a similar way? How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
> Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process.
When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.
> How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer. If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
Also does it have to be 5$ per month? Do browsers need to keep adding so many features, and hence so many bugs and security issues, that only huge companies can keep up and nobody wants to pay for that work?
Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
>When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.
Insurgents like tiktok show that even today, people will happily give up their privacy for some dopamine.
>If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer.
Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it?
>If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
>Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
> Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it?
That is unrelated to the sentence you quote: if people can use Google Chrome for free, they don't pay for a browser. But if Chrome disappeared, they would still need a browser. Maybe they would pay if they didn't have a free choice?
> No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
If there are more browsers instead of a monopoly, then websites will work on the paid, secure browser that I will use, so I'm happy. I don't want to prevent people from using bad software: I want to make it possible for companies to build good software.
By not using Chromium today, many times the websites don't work correctly because devs don't care, because Chromium is a monopoly. I say split it! Then websites will have to work on more than 1 browser.
> Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
It was a huge success? WhatsApp is still a huge success.
Browsers should be classified as critical infrastructure and be run by NPOs or PBCs. There’d be no need for end users to pay anything if the tens of thousands of companies all relying on the web chipped in to sustain the infrastructure that allows them to exist and be profitable.
Non-profits can make a lot of money, they just have to reinvest said money back into capital, labor, or R&D. Non-profits can absolutely charge a license as well, if they want. You can do that with OSS, too. Just make it GPL and then charge for a more generous license like Qt does.
Of course they don't. But the courts/government should force them to do so in this case. If the company or its shareholders need to be compensated then so be it. Better to pay them off and get Android and Chrome out of their hands before they can cause further damage.
Either the new company takes over maintaining Android, or it fumbles the bag and the development becomes less centralized for a while - until some leader emerges and takes over.
Either way, the new control center of Android wouldn't be Google. A decade ago, I would have seen that as a very bad thing. Now, I'm almost certain that this would be a change for the better. Google is not what it once was.
Well, there is barely any new Android feature worth talking about for the past three years (no, new skins definitely don't count). I seriously doubt there is going to be any change in the market share if Android were controlled by a different company. We would have already seen that by now.
Drone manufacturers like Samsung, Xiaomi etc need an OS. Right now it's more profitable for them to just pay licences to Google. But if Google lost Android... they would need to find a solution.
I would like to see this, at least something would be happening.
I could see sort of an Android consortium taking over developing it and keeping it going outside of Google. Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Huwawei, Motorola, etc.
Honestly it'd probably be better off that way. Google has far too much influence and control.
None of those companies have a tiny little bit of interest of helping their competitors with joint development. I guess you're too young to remember the balkanization of Symbian among such companies?
Those are companies, their only interest is to maximise profit. Apparently right now the most profitable is to pay Google for the Android licence.
Huawei found themselves on their own because of the ban, and decided to go for HarmonyOS NEXT. Probably they wouldn't come back to a "joint development AOSP" now.
Now if Google lost Android, what would happen for the others? Would they each try their luck with their own OS or would they try to go for a joint development?
Yep. If we’re gonna be forking browsers, Firefox should be the base, not Chromium. Mozilla is in much less of a position to abuse their position, and more Firefox forks means more chances that one catches on with some slice of the larger public and helps chip away at Blink hegemony.
Fully agreed. I am however worried by the fact that Firefox is basically kept alive by Google. I assume it's just so that they can pretend Chrome isn't a monopoly, but the minute Firefox becomes an inconvenience they can stop financing it. I hope we can find a way for Firefox to sustain itself long term.
It’s a valid concern, and it may not be possible to properly address so long as Mozilla in its current form continues to be the controlling party of Firefox/Gecko. The best scenario might actually be for Mozilla to collapse and some other NPO or PBC with better financial sense to pick up the projects and their engineers.
Google pays Firefox for traffic acquisition, not out of pity. If Google stopped paying, another search engine like Bing or Perplexity would be happy to take over.
True, but what happens when Firefox's marketshare decreases to the point where the amount of traffic lost by not having the Google deal stops mattering to Google?
If Google does the math one day, and determines that they won't lose out anymore by not paying Firefox they'll stop paying.
It's revenue share based, so the cost to google is the time it takes to renew the deal. This is a fixed cost that doesn't depend on the market share of Firefox.
Last time I suggested brave on hn to base off on Firefox and they said its pita but we have unpaid.volunteer run waterfox and others, then we have floorp, tor and others so I know for a fact brave not basing on Firefox is pure politics because of brendan
In particular, code review is one layer of the conventional swiss cheese model of preventing bugs, but code review becomes much less effective when suddenly the categories of errors to look out for change.
When I review a PR with large code moves, it was historically relatively safe to assume that a block of code was moved as-is (sadly only an assumption because GitHub still doesn't have indicators of duplicated/moved code like Phabricator had 10 years ago...), so I can focus my attention on higher level concerns, like does the new API design make sense? But if an LLM did the refactor, I need to scrutinize every character that was touched in the block of code that was "moved" because, as the parent commenter points out, that "moved" code may have actually been ingested, summarized, then rewritten from scratch based on that summary.
For this reason, I'm a big advocate of an "AI use" section in PR description templates; not because I care whether you used AI or not, but because some hints about where or how you used it will help me focus my efforts when reviewing your change, and tune the categories of errors I look out for.