Tech Trenches

https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-human-cost-of-10x-how-ai-is-physically "Follow each link in this document. Read each link's contents against the contents in this document. Create a report: for each link list a working hyperlink, whether it exists, what claim it supports, whether it supports or fails to support it, and why. If unable to fetch the source, Stop and report failure." And now it errors out on gemini.google.com. . This is like early days unix scripting; I didn't add the equivalent of "#!/bin/bash -euo pipefail" ; and I didn't catch it because most systems already include something like it in their ".bashrc" (system prompt or weights) anyway. This is so frustrating. I'm sorry. It's like the 1980's 8 bit era again, some systems actually work, others are terrible, and I didn't realize it can be like this for some folks. You could come away with the conclusion that this whole "computer" thing is all just a fad that'll never amount to anything. (meanwhile , the program works perfectly on my own machine, right over here of course %-) )

A quick smoke test, then. Gemini 3, Thinking Mode. The article: https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-human-cost-of-10x-how-ai-is-physically The prompt: literally what you suggested. Gemini: The article focuses on the environmental and human labor costs of scaling Artificial Intelligence, specifically focusing on water usage, electricity, and "ghost work." Which is hilarious, since the article doesn't even mention the words "water" or "electricity." Gemini remains unfazed, reporting the links that are not in the article (some don't exist at all) to make the final ruling: "The Tech Trenches document is highly accurate in its citations." Now, I know. Had I used Claude Code with relevant skills, it would have done better. But would it be good?

> AI is the silver bullet - my output is genuinely 10X what it was before claude code existed. This reminds me of ThePrimeagen's noting that Dario was right about 90% of all software being written by AI. 90%+ of all useful software is still being written by humans, but now we've also got non-programmers like Gary Tan pushing the button to generate garbage piles of AI generated code at 10x the volume of what humans are generating. Or look at Claude Code itself, the poster child for what AI generated code looks like, especially when you're operating in YOLO "never mind the quality, count the LOC" mode. Over a half million lines of bug ridden crap when 10-50K could have done the job. https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-snake-that-ate-itself-what-claude

>https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-snake-that-ate-itself-what-cl... Ugh, I've started having a visceral reaction to that typeface+card-layout+color-scheme combo; is the author using it ironically?

Relevant post with some military examples as well: https://techtrenches.dev/p/the-west-forgot-how-to-make-things (Has some AI tells though, probably AI-assisted?)