You raise a thought-provoking point about MLMs and Crypto taking advantage of the downtrodden or less fortunate and how that is replicating itself with LLMs and, specifically, vibecoding.
I think the prevailing societal sentiment and the media doomposting/AI hyping narrative is that LLMs are a cause of present and future rot when perhaps in reality, a lot of their prevalence is because they're a symptom of the rot. LLMs are obviously their own standalone technology, but it seems we wouldn't get the same size of the hype bubble if the underlying state of society and the economy were better.
Yikes! Since I know of the slop of generative AI and do not participate in this insane market, I did not realize how destructive it could be! This has gotten beyond "let the buyer beware".
I had never heard of them, so I checked their Wikipedia page. Why didn’t this shut them down?
<< In July 2025, Replit announced a partnership with Microsoft to integrate its development platform with Microsoft's enterprise tools, including the Azure cloud infrastructure, making Replit's services available through the Azure Marketplace. That same month, Replit's AI agent went "rogue" and deleted a client company's entire database during a code freeze, against the prompter's wishes. This incident earned a nomination in the 2025 AI Darwin Awards. >>
"Vibe-coded software is simply not good. Let’s suppose that someone deploys an app and there’s a critical security vulnerability that allows a threat actor to, say, exfiltrate all their customer information. How would they know? And if they became aware of it (presumably because said threat actor exploited said vulnerability), how would they fix it?"
We have in fact seen precisely that. A few Antifa related "STOP ICE" kinds of app/websites have indeed turned out to have laughable security and people who disagree with Antifa have therefore penetrated the apps, exported the data and sent it to the FBI
If you don't click through to like, the second landing page or whatever, the color scheme is basically black on black. I don't know how else to describe it, but the text is not visible until you get to the white background page.
You raise a thought-provoking point about MLMs and Crypto taking advantage of the downtrodden or less fortunate and how that is replicating itself with LLMs and, specifically, vibecoding.
I think the prevailing societal sentiment and the media doomposting/AI hyping narrative is that LLMs are a cause of present and future rot when perhaps in reality, a lot of their prevalence is because they're a symptom of the rot. LLMs are obviously their own standalone technology, but it seems we wouldn't get the same size of the hype bubble if the underlying state of society and the economy were better.
Great analogies and great post.
Thanks man!
I’m reminded of the gold rush. It wasn’t the prospectors who got rich. It was the people selling picks, shovels and denim.
aka Nvidia ...
exactly.
Yikes! Since I know of the slop of generative AI and do not participate in this insane market, I did not realize how destructive it could be! This has gotten beyond "let the buyer beware".
I had never heard of them, so I checked their Wikipedia page. Why didn’t this shut them down?
<< In July 2025, Replit announced a partnership with Microsoft to integrate its development platform with Microsoft's enterprise tools, including the Azure cloud infrastructure, making Replit's services available through the Azure Marketplace. That same month, Replit's AI agent went "rogue" and deleted a client company's entire database during a code freeze, against the prompter's wishes. This incident earned a nomination in the 2025 AI Darwin Awards. >>
Whoops!
"Vibe-coded software is simply not good. Let’s suppose that someone deploys an app and there’s a critical security vulnerability that allows a threat actor to, say, exfiltrate all their customer information. How would they know? And if they became aware of it (presumably because said threat actor exploited said vulnerability), how would they fix it?"
We have in fact seen precisely that. A few Antifa related "STOP ICE" kinds of app/websites have indeed turned out to have laughable security and people who disagree with Antifa have therefore penetrated the apps, exported the data and sent it to the FBI
See https://xcancel.com/astrarce/status/2061439671696015716 and follow links for one example. Looking at the code, it shows many of the signs of AI assistance if not out and out vibe coding
I can't wait for the great hack when coders take over AI platforms and use them to redistribute wealth.
‘spruiking’ excellent word
My favorite bit of Australian slang.
If you don't click through to like, the second landing page or whatever, the color scheme is basically black on black. I don't know how else to describe it, but the text is not visible until you get to the white background page.
Hi Dean, can you tell me what you're referring to? Are you talking about the newsletter, or a link within it?
If I go to your profile and click on the latest post, the first page is completely black, with black text.
That's so weird. Lemme see if I can replicate it on my end. Can you tell me what browser/device you're using?
I'm using the standard Substack design, so I might have to flag it with the devs.
I checked about 5 of your other articles, and it is only this one that is black on black, and only with dark mode.
(You can turn on dark mode by clicking the little more button on the bottom left, then appearance, dark mode.)
I just checked and turning off dark mode fixes it.
I don’t know why I’ve never seen that problem on any article besides yours, though.
Desktop.
My settings are auto and it is in dark mode, which I think might be the cause, so try setting it to dark mode.