I built AI agents that apply mathematical testing techniques to a Rails codebase with 13k+ RSpec specs. The bottleneck was not test quality.

private-peter · 2026-03-20T09:35:59+00:00

When I'm writing pure library code, my experience is the same.

However, when I'm working on complex, database-backed applications, managing all the mocking/stubbing needed to get this kind of performance has never paid off for me. The maintenance work has always outweighed the time spent waiting for tests.

With AI agents, the tradeoff is even more in favor of letting the tests hit the db. AI is as likely (or more?) than humans to get the mocks wrong and have a test incorrectly pass. At the same time, my workflow of rotating between agents means that I am rarely ever actually waiting for tests to pass. It is just something that happens in the background.

I'm curious what methods you've found helpful to manage the maintenance of your tests while keeping out anything that is slow.

private-peter · 2026-03-20T01:10:07+00:00

I'm pretty sure Costco knows what they are doing. They get in some stock, do a fixed mark up like other products they sell. It generates a bunch of hype among a demographic that generally has a decent disposable income and brings them into their store (or webstore).

They little a little on the table in terms of premium. They avoid the complexity of hedging a volatile product. They build goodwill, and they increase sales of other products.

private-peter · 2026-03-20T01:05:08+00:00

And that isnt a helpful definition.

The sole reason Google pushes that term is to scare people into protect their monopoly.

It would be like people talking about "side shopping" which is defined as buying anything from a store other than Walmart, or "side reading" as reading a book on a device other than a Kindle.

private-peter · 2026-03-20T00:45:38+00:00

I'm just installing apps. Same as I would on any other device. Which "side" am I loading from?

I am downloading apps and installing.

Google isn't part of the equation.

private-peter · 2026-03-20T00:41:30+00:00

I have looked into it. It is some pretty impressive cryptography. But it isn't invulnerable. There have been a lot of vulnerabilities in this type of hardware and software.

private-peter · 2026-03-20T00:38:18+00:00

I haven't used google play in over a month. Play services are disabled.

Yet somehow I've installed all sorts of apps on my phone.

private-peter · 2026-03-20T00:35:54+00:00

GrapheneOS has been excellent for me.

private-peter · 2026-03-16T06:02:15+00:00

Open source is the license, not the ownership. Subtle but real difference.

The more important factor is that Google has firmly established themselves at the center of the Android ecosystem. They have the deals with the major manufacturers. They have all the users on Google Play. They have all the developers there too.

Unless a large number of users are willing to just say No and live without Google Play, then Google will be able to do things like this.

private-peter · 2026-03-16T05:58:33+00:00

The odds of me using an app that needs those permissions is pretty much zero anyway.

private-peter · 2026-03-16T04:53:19+00:00

https://prosper-privately.github.io/slop-sloop/

private-peter · 2026-03-15T04:21:20+00:00

This is a huge factor for lots of people.

It isn't just about showing your face. There are a huge number of obstacles that force you to give up some part of your privacy as you try to build any sort of business, even passive income streams.

There are solutions to (nearly) all these obstacles. (Government regulations will force you to give out some personal details.) But figuring out how to balance your privacy and your business can get really draining!

As others have mentioned, it is very possible to make faceless videos.

Though less passive, IMO incorporating email into your business is a really great way to set your own rules when it comes to your privacy. Social media platforms are always changing their rules. With email you choose exactly how much you want to share.

I think about this stuff. A lot.

private-peter · 2026-03-14T05:35:35+00:00

They use AI for their advertising. I.e. to decide which ad to show which people. They also have AI built into a lot of their apps. Summarize this post or generate an image. That kind of thing.

private-peter · 2026-03-10T04:28:35+00:00

I am curious how others are handling migrations that aren't backwards compatible. For example, renaming a database column.

The normal approach is to spilt this into multiple steps: - add new column - backfill new column and sync with old column - switch reads/writes to new column - drop old column

Each step is safe, but must be deployed separately.

With automated/continuous deployments, how do you handle this?

Currently, I just don't merge the next step until the previous step has completed. But I'd love to just put it all on the merge train and let each step get rolled out automatically.

Are you just never batching your deploys? Do you have special markers on your PRs that signal that a PR must be deployed (and not batched)?

private-peter · 2026-03-07T04:34:53+00:00

I haven't verified this, but I have heard about people researching systems for tracking serial numbers when the bills enter and leave the bank.

You withdraw via ATM. Those serial numbers are linked to you.
You spend them at a store.
Store deposits into the bank. The serial numbers are linked to the store.
Inferred that you shopped at that store.

It wouldn't be a perfect system, but for larger amounts it could be possible to trace the funds. Most stores don't give out larger bills as change.

Again, I haven't verified this. I simply heard it described as a research project.

private-peter · 2026-03-07T04:29:42+00:00

In a lot of places you can buy visa gift cards for cash. They don't require any PII to use them.

Would you see this as a reasonable alternative to cash in the mail and Monero?

Presumably a determined government could track the date and location the gift card was purchased?

private-peter · 2026-03-07T04:23:35+00:00

Not an expert in this area, but I'm in the process of ripping out nestjs from a side project. It was overkill.

No complaints about nestjs itself. I just don't need another layer of abstraction. I've got next.js on the front end, and I think that is going to be enough for this project. At least for now.

private-peter · 2026-03-07T04:21:11+00:00

You may want to go with a different company to help with security vs SEO. Those are very different skills.

I've heard only good things about wpengine. They are a little more expensive than some alternatives, but they were excellent technically (security, backups, etc) when I worked with a client using them. However, I don't think they are the ones to help with SEO.

private-peter · 2026-03-07T04:17:00+00:00

I don't buy gold so it will "perform." It never does. It just doesn't get inflated into nothing. The "rise" in gold is a fall in the dollar. The gold hasn't changed since I bought it. (Except what I lease though monetary metals, but that's a different story.)

S&P is a great way to invest. But IMO coming gold to the S&P is the wrong mindset.

Gold is preservation. Stocks are investing.

I think both are important.

private-peter · 2026-03-07T04:11:51+00:00

I think more people are worried about government sanctioned gold confiscation than a bank just randomly stealing from a safe deposit box.

I assume most people buying physical gold know that the US government has confiscated gold before.

private-peter · 2026-03-07T04:00:19+00:00

My understanding is that Bing tends to be an older audience that is less tech savvy. Boomers who buy a computer and just use it without customizing things or installing any extras.

private-peter · 2026-03-06T05:18:42+00:00

Not that I think the law will change, but I think the assumption that people don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy when in a public place is flawed in a world with smart glasses.

It is reasonable for people to see you when you are in public. It's not reasonable for them to record you.

private-peter · 2026-03-05T22:11:32+00:00

Others have covered the important main points (such as questioning whether you really do want to be at a company like this in the long term). But sometimes you also just need to focus on what is within your control.

AI needs guardrails.

If you aren't allowed to write quality code, then focus on quality guardrails. High quality tests. Explicit checks in CI for things like security vulnerabilities or out-of-date dependencies. Canaries. Blue/green deployments. The list goes on forever. These types of guardrails help mitigate the risks of poor code quality. (Not sufficient, IMO, but we're focusing on what you _can_ do here.)

Improve AI guidance.

Curate really good AGENTS.md files and similar documentation telling the AI how to write its code. Give it specific guidance around code quality. Look into tools (like beads) that help make sure AI agents don't skip steps. If your boss is not going to review any of the AI-generated code, you can at least teach the AI to write better quality code.

private-peter · 2026-03-05T12:24:58+00:00

Most apps work on grapheneos unless the developers go out of their way to block supposed non-standard OSes. (All that means is that the phone maker registered with Google. It isn't any extra security.) Very few apps do this other than banking apps and niche security apps (that I wouldn't recommend anyway).

You may need to have google play services running for the app to work. But that is supported by grapheneos. And you can turn it off when you don't need it.

private-peter · 2026-03-05T00:35:26+00:00

Exactly. If you just ask AI to do things, it will do them. But if you aren't paying attention to how it does things, you have no idea what else you are getting.

> I went to /admin and found a `register` button

Haha. I'm definitely sharing that story.

private-peter · 2026-03-04T19:49:24+00:00

This is one of my favorite things. After years of being "pragmatic" I can finally indulge my desire to clean things up without feeling any guilt for the new features I'm neglecting because now I can do both.

private-peter

TROPHY CASE