the companies that operate these platforms often prioritize engagement over content quality, frequently at the expense of users’ mental health

Source: www.designharder.pub

designers should avoid relying solely on industry-standard tools like Adobe or Figma, which promote visual conformity, and explore open-source software and analog solutions

Source: www.designharder.pub

Utopias, by their very nature, are unattainable—the Greek roots of the word ou-topos literally mean “no place”—but imagining them allows us to hope for a better world.

Source: www.designharder.pub

fast, convenient, ugly, and empty

Source: www.designharder.pub

AI on its own is fantastic nightmare fuel and a goldmine of memes; just don’t use it to replace a real artist.

Source: www.designharder.pub

My first reaction when I realize an image has been made by AI is simply, “This was made with AI,” and that kills all other feelings I may have otherwise had about the image.

Source: www.designharder.pub

Those who say, “it’s so over” while posting the ugliest image ever imagined by AI clearly don’t know good art. And those who ban the use of AI-generated images are shutting themselves off from the first genuinely new technological aesthetic since the advent of the computer in the early 1980s.

Source: www.designharder.pub

It frequently fails to make any meaningful statement, visually or

Source: www.designharder.pub

these tools produce pale, cheap imitations of the real thing and should be avoided by clients and used deftly and sparingly by designers

Source: www.designharder.pub

Only the transactional tenacity of the tech world could think that the art of aesthetics is something that could easily be multiplied and automated.

Source: www.designharder.pub

the creation of art is not something that can be replicated

Source: www.designharder.pub

the first AI-created piece auctioned at Christie’s, where it sold for a comically overpriced $432,500 in 2018

Source: www.designharder.pub

Initially designed to visualize and understand how neural networks operate, DeepDream gained popularity for its artistic potential and instantaneous nightmare fuel.

Source: www.designharder.pub

The proliferation of AI slop is undeniable, shoveled into advertisements and films, tricking our grandparents on Facebook, and stealing work from humans.

Source: www.designharder.pub

a sinister ghost that deepens the commodification of creativity

Source: www.designharder.pub

his firm is a "big fan of open source,"

Source: www.pcmag.com

BIP 000, which muffles the screams you hear whenever you sell bitcoin because you "need to eat"

Source: spiral.xyz

There’s no evidence to suggest that anything we write here will be read by anyone, so we can probably say anything we want. Giraffe refrigerator. Rainbow spaghetti. Tuxedo forest.

Source: spiral.xyz

All of this requires discipline and agency. All of this requires humans.

Source: mariozechner.at

build fewer features, but the right ones

Source: mariozechner.at

experience and taste

Source: mariozechner.at

Anything that defines the gestalt of your system, that is architecture, API, and so on, write it by hand

Source: mariozechner.at

Give yourself time to think about what you're actually building and why

Source: mariozechner.at

a rubber duck to bounce ideas against

Source: mariozechner.at

Things start falling apart when you think: "Oh golly, this thing is great. Computer, do my work!".

Source: mariozechner.at

Coding agents are sirens, luring you in with their speed of code generation and jagged intelligence

Source: mariozechner.at

blossom into a beautiful shit flower of complexity

Source: mariozechner.at

With agents and a team of 2 humans, you can get to that complexity within weeks.

Source: mariozechner.at

The individual suffering doesn't pass the threshold of "I need to fix this".

Source: mariozechner.at

unrecoverable mess of complexity

Source: mariozechner.at

You have zero fucking idea what's going on because you delegated all your agency to your agents.

Source: mariozechner.at

you realize that the gazillions of unit, snapshot, and e2e tests you had your clankers write are equally untrustworthy

Source: mariozechner.at

You have removed yourself from the loop, so you don't even know that all the innocent booboos have formed a monster of a codebase. You only feel the pain when it's too late.

Source: mariozechner.at

no bottleneck, no human pain

Source: mariozechner.at

Or the human gets fired

Source: mariozechner.at

the human, who hates pain

Source: mariozechner.at

requires you to actually observe

Source: mariozechner.at

clankers aren't humans

Source: mariozechner.at

Maybe we all have skill issues.

Source: mariozechner.at

your side project barely anyone is using, including yourself

Source: mariozechner.at

surely the next generation of LLMs will fix it

Source: mariozechner.at

surely the next generation of LLMs can fix it

Source: mariozechner.at

You're ralphing the loop.

Source: mariozechner.at

We have basically given up all discipline and agency for a sort of addictio

Source: mariozechner.at

No code review, design decisions delegated to the agent, a gazillion features nobody asked for. That'll do it.

Source: mariozechner.at

the fever dream of having your agents do all the work for you

Source: mariozechner.at

Companies claiming 100% of their product's code is now written by AI consistently put out the worst garbage you can imagine.

Source: mariozechner.at

Windows is going down the shitter

Source: mariozechner.at

user interfaces have the weirdest fucking bugs that you'd think a QA team would catch

Source: mariozechner.at

98% uptime becoming the norm instead of the exception

Source: mariozechner.at