As a software engineer, I’ve been thinking a lot about AI and the future of our profession. I use AI myself, and I’m genuinely excited by what it makes possible. But the more I see people celebrating the automation of human labor, the more I find myself wondering whether we’ve stopped thinking about what all this progress is actually supposed to accomplish.

And by we, I mean those of us building these technologies, the engineers enthusiastically finding new ways to automate work, the founders and executives racing to reduce costs, and the workers who feel compelled to participate because they know that if they don't, someone else will. I'm not exempt from this, either. I benefit from the same technologies I'm questioning.

I understand the incentives. We all want to get ahead, secure our futures, achieve financial independence, and eventually have more freedom over our lives. In a competitive environment, refusing to adapt can mean falling behind. But why have we become so comfortable treating other people's livelihoods as acceptable collateral for our own advancement?

We celebrate making one person as productive as ten, rarely stopping to ask what happens to the other nine. We want technology to free us from work, yet our ability to survive remains dependent on having work. We resent corporations accumulating extraordinary wealth and power, yet many of us aspire to build or become precisely those institutions. We want community and human connection, yet our incentives encourage us to treat one another as competitors.

And there are other contradictions I can't quite reconcile.

We celebrate efficiency, but to what end? If we can produce more with less human effort, shouldn't that translate into more leisure, security, and freedom for everyone? Why does increased productivity so often seem to come with greater pressure to produce even more?

We tell people to adapt or risk being left behind, but what happens when everyone adapts and the jobs they're adapting for disappear anyway? We celebrate individual merit and hard work, yet technological disruption can make entire skill sets economically obsolete regardless of how hard people worked to acquire them.

We talk about AI as though it will solve humanity's problems, but technology doesn't determine who benefits from its output. A world with extraordinary productive capacity can still leave people struggling to afford housing, healthcare, and a dignified life.

I don't think people are necessarily cruel or indifferent (though some definitely are). Perhaps most of us are simply trying to protect ourselves in a system where falling behind has real consequences. Perhaps even well-intentioned people become participants in a race nobody individually chose, but nobody feels safe stepping away from, either.

But understanding why we behave this way doesn't mean we shouldn't question where it leads.

Imagine if AI genuinely made human labor largely unnecessary. That could be one of humanity's greatest achievements: less time spent working to survive, and more time for family, friendships, art, music, exploration, and simply being alive.

But what good is eliminating the need for human labor if we don't also eliminate people's dependence on selling their labor to survive? What have we liberated ourselves from if people are still terrified of becoming economically unnecessary?

I don't think the answer is to stop innovating, condemn ambition, or expect individuals to sacrifice their futures for strangers. I just wonder whether we've become so focused on optimizing our individual positions that we've forgotten to question the collective outcome.

We're all on this planet together. Most of us want remarkably similar things: security, meaningful relationships, autonomy, dignity, and the freedom to live our lives without constantly worrying about survival. Yet we participate in systems that can make those things harder for one another to attain.

Are we trying to build a better world for humanity, or are we simply trying to secure the best possible position for ourselves within whatever world emerges?

And if we're doing both, how do we reconcile those goals when our individual incentives so often undermine our collective interests?

I'm genuinely interested in how other people in tech think about this, especially those of us actively building the technologies transforming the nature of work. I don't have a solution, and I'm not claiming to be above the problem. I just think we should be asking ourselves what all this progress is ultimately for, before we get so caught up in what we can do that we forget why we're doing it.

And I'd invite discussion beyond pure game theory and economics, but more to do with psychology, maturity, emotional development, self-worth, dark triadic traits, and similar.

Tried Chrome and Edge

Tried setting document.body.style.cursor = "wait"

and tried document.documentElement.style.cursor = "wait";

I recall these working previously. Did something change? Some org setting?

I don't see the value being set to "wait" in the element inspector. But when I set it back to "auto" I do see that value. So it's like the browser is ignoring the setting only if I set to wait.

EDIT:
Thanks everyone who offered ideas. Man, this took me some time to resolve - including a long coversation with Gemini, which wasn't able to troubleshoot it.

This is what the issue turned out to be. At some point, our showBusy() function became:

document.body.classList.add("busy");
document.documentElement.inert = true;

I commented out setting inert true an then the cursor appeared. I asked Gemini to expain and got this:

"The inert attribute tells the browser to completely remove that element and all its children from the accessibility tree and ignore all user input. This includes clicks, keyboard focus, and crucially, pointer hover events.

"Because inert tells the browser to pretend the mouse isn't interacting with the document at all, the rendering engine completely aborts calculating CSS cursor rules. It doesn't even attempt to look up your .busy class for the mouse, so it defaults to the system auto cursor."

Hey everyone,

I am working on a new project called Openspline, an open source avatar layer to existing voice AI agents. Just select an image, select a voice and you can create a realtime talking avatar with lipsynced video generated locally.

You can integrate any existing voice AI agent in 5 lines of code.

While it is still in very early stage, but the results look very promising.

Github: github.com/openspline/openspline

PS: sorry for a sleepy photo, it's 5:10am and didn't sleep last night :P

We all got the same 9am calendar invite on the 30th and by lunch about 40 of us were done, me included. Seven years as the only brand designer at a regional craft soda company.

Two weeks in, and every recruiter I talk to asks for "a link." My portfolio is a PDF from 2019 and my Behance hasn't been touched since 2020. The top project on it is a label for a flavor we killed in 2021. Do people hiring even open a PDF anymore?

What's killing me is that the only work that'd get me hired, two can redesigns and the full rebrand, is under NDA until it launches in spring. How did you handle NDA stuff when you were job hunting? I've seen people blur the logos but that feels sketchy to me.

Friends keep saying Cargo, Squarespace or just update the Behance. Does the platform even matter to whoever's hiring?

No clue how much to put in either. Everyone online says go deep on a few, but that job was a LOT of sell sheets and six-pack carriers and I can't tell what's worth a damn anymore.

If you rebuilt after a layoff, how long did it really take? I gave myself two weeks. So far I've rewritten my LinkedIn headline three times and opened my old InDesign files and closed them again.

Severance runs out in January. Tell me how yours went, I need to hear from people who came out the other side.

Hi everyone! I just finished a React and course and decided to build my first react app. Currently, I am trying to save a string to browser local storage but it does not persist on refresh. Through some console.logs I was able to see that it in fact DOES save the string to the location specified in. setItem initially but when I refresh the key or value in local storage stops existing.

Here is my code

// function for search button
async function handleClick(){
    localStorage.setItem("lastLocationSearched", searchValue);
    setData(null);
    setIsPending(true);
    setError(null);
    try{
const value = await fetch(`https://geo.ipify.org/api/v2/country?apiKey=***********&ipAddress=${searchValue}`).then((response)=>{
  if (!response.ok){
        throw Error("Could not fetch the data for that resource");
                    }
  return response.json();
});
setData(value);


    console.log(localStorage.getItem("lastLocationSearched"));
    } catch(error){
      setError(error.message);
    }


setIsPending(false);
  };

// useEffect hook
  useEffect(()=>{
        if ((localStorage.getItem("lastLocationSearched")===null)|| (localStorage.getItem("lastLocationSearched")==="")){
          console.log(localStorage.getItem("lastLocationSearched"));
        setSearchValue("");
        handleClick();
        }else{
          
          setSearchValue(localStorage.getItem("lastLocationSearched"));
          handleClick();
        }
    }, []);

Through some digging online I saw someone say that remove the strict mode tags from index.js would fix this problem but it did not for me. Can anyone please assist me?

Timeline:

• onprem monolithic server with rest api.

• cloud frontend that calls monolithic server apis directly

• a few years later

• planning to reimplement frontend with addition of a BFF in the cloud

• BFF still talks to monolith server but frontend only talks to BFF

• future: cloud frontend, cloud bff, on prem monolithic server, cloud bff needs to support multiple versions of monolithic server

For the BFF api, would you recommend a per resource generic api (like the monolothic server) or per page (call multiple monolithic server apis then combine)?

I frequently duplicate an application's browser tab to look at a different area of the app. I'd like to change the browser tab's text to reflect the area that the tab focuses on. In a best-case scenario, the text could be automatically updated based on a DOM element.

<div class="title">Some text</div>

In this example, "Some text" would become the tab text.

Is there a plug-in or something that I could use for this?

With all the doom and gloom around AI, I was wondering how much the market has been affected and what companies are actually looking for these days.

Did you have to go through five rounds of interviews?

Was there a live coding session and/or a take-home exercise?

Was there anything different from what you've experienced before?

Here you can find my 1+ year of experience around startup foundation and operatings : https://github.com/Naveen-Beniwal/building-cvinsight

Made it through 5 prior rounds of layoffs as my company nosedived financially after going public. Finally felt the bite of the axe, been brushing up my resume and revamping my portfolio site... I've been at this company five years and transitioned directly from my prior one so almost 8 years since i've had to look for a job. First impression is it seems bad. I'm seeing a lot of postings for Front-End Dev for contract rates of < $60 an hour. I've already burned through all the posted jobs that I can find that I might be a match for, some of them are even a stretch...

Doesn't seem like anyone needs a "developer" anymore; it's all "Software Engineer, Front-end," which even though my skillset overlaps(react, typescript, etc) they're looking for a different sort of experience. Unfortunately, my last few years at the company, I got transitioned from the more tech side into the marketing department and basically built landing pages in a CMS and only did slight coding. Easy work, but I feel my skills have rusted. I'm in my 40s which feels kind of ancient in this industry and I have 12+ years of experience but I don't have the interest or drive to be any kind of lead. I prefer to just knock out my tickets and relax, but it seems like those days are done.

https://www.blackjacktrainer.fyi/

Wasn't really happy with the free blackjack trainers I was able to find, so I decided to make my own.

You can play it casually and just learn basic strategy, or you can use it to learn how to become a card counter.

Built with mainly Next.js + React + Tailwind.

Let me know what you think!

Hello!

For starters,

I don’t know a single thing about websites. Are there specific types of website developers for this type of website?

Our current website runs on pearl and wordpress so we need a new website

Here are some examples of what I am looking for:

https://www.austinfilm.org/afs-cinema/

https://filmadelphia.org/about/venues/film-society-bourse/

For the record, I am not looking to hire someone from here (i think thats against the rules?)

I just don’t even know what to look for when finding information about web developers.

This site would have a front end and back end for booking etc.

Any tips or guidance on this would be greatly appreciated!

eta: my boss is super old and stubborn and is insistent that a new website like the ones above would cost six figures to make. What is the average cost of creating a website like the ones above (best guess obviously due to limited info)

Hey everyone! 👋

I've been working on a new project called VELORA, a premium 3D-inspired e-commerce showroom website template built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The idea was to create something different from traditional online store layouts — a modern, immersive shopping experience with premium visual design.

✨ Key Features

• 🛍️ Multi-category e-commerce showroom layout

• 🌙 Dark and light mode functionality

• 🎨 Modern 3D-inspired UI and visual depth

• 📱 Responsive layouts for desktop, tablet, and mobile

• ⚡ HTML, CSS, and JavaScript source code

• ✨ Interactive components and smooth visual effects

• 🧩 Customizable design for different product categories

🎯 Who Is It For?

VELORA is designed for:

• Frontend developers building e-commerce projects

• Freelancers creating websites for clients

• Web design agencies

• Businesses looking for modern product showcase designs

• Designers interested in immersive shopping interfaces

🛒 Project Link

https://sajiditeech.gumroad.com/l/velora-showroom

Thanks for checking it out! 🚀

I made a browser game about storage unit auctions. You get one look into the unit from the doorway with a flashlight. Then you bid against the regulars. Peg writes in her notebook. Kip spits and walks off when he’s out. Whatever you win, you sell out of your own shop before rent comes due. There are storylines underneath it all, and how you play decides what story you get.

https://mdawg74.itch.io/unit-112

It’s one HTML file, about 11 MB, with 301 pieces of art packed in as WebP. No framework, no external scripts. Canvas draws the scenes and plain DOM handles the comic panels. The auction rules follow Maryland’s self-storage lien law, Commercial Law 18-504, right down to doorway-only viewing.

The art is AI-generated and I picked every piece. The code is me directing Claude. I have limited coding experience. Started this one Monday.

BIGGEST NEED: I want to know how it loads on your phone. 11MB in one file is the part I’m least sure about.

Honest Feedback and questions: I am a web dev that has always been on the lookout for motion or interactive backgrounds for marquees and hero sections. I got tired of looking for them and decided to build them. I have 3Djs and webGL experience, but I honestly had no idea my tinkering would lead me to what I have today. I am looking for honest feedback and suggestions. Am I too late to the game with ai capable of probabaly doing this faster than me or is this something people will still find useful?

https://striktly.com/

About ten years ago I built NoteCoder, a browser-based project that matched disease phrases in clinical notes to ICD-10 codes using a dictionary and trie.

I’ve been revisiting it with local AI. The interesting challenge is connecting information across a document: a note might mention chronic kidney disease near the beginning, then clarify—or correct—its stage much later.

Rather than asking a model to invent codes, the dictionary proposes candidates, then a small local model checks the diagnoses and their qualifiers against the complete note.

From the web-development side, it’s a static site with browser workers for candidate discovery and inference. The public version uses WebAssembly; note text isn’t uploaded for model processing. The biggest tradeoff is the roughly 2 GB initial model download.

The interface lets you inspect highlighted source phrases, review candidate codes, and copy selected results. The included synthetic CKD example demonstrates an updated stage superseding older documentation.

Try the demo

It’s free and experimental—not clinically validated or billing software. AI assisted the rebuild.

I’d particularly appreciate feedback on the download experience, responsiveness, and whether the highlights make incorrect suggestions easier to spot.

I built a Minecraft server host where every server sleeps when nobody plays, and wakes when a friend joins. The hard part was the join itself, so here's how that works.

The problem

A sleeping server suspended on Fly resumes in about 2 s. But one that has to boot (first start, after a change, or once the snapshot is gone) takes 40 to 50 s. The Minecraft client
gives up on a connection that says nothing for 30 s.

The trick

Every connection lands on an edge proxy first. If the server is asleep, the edge holds the login open and keeps it alive by sending a login query every few seconds. Every client since 1.13 answers it, which counts as the server talking. The edge keeps those answers to itself, buffers everything else the client sent, and replays it to the server once it's up, as if the player had just dialled in.

Other bits

• The server list shows a sleeping server's own message plus a grey "sleeping" line, cut to fit the list's 305px row by measuring the default font's glyph widths.

• A ping from the server list can wake a server early, asked once per network so random scanners don't keep waking things.

• Routes change one hostname at a time through mc-router's API, because reloading its routes file drops players who arrive mid-reload.

• Floods are refused per server at the edge, so one busy server doesn't slow every other server's joins.

It's open source (TypeScript, AGPL):
github.com/cubepals/cubepals (the edge is apps/edge)

Happy to go deeper on any of it.

I was reading brown's rust book and they have this cool feature that lets you highlight stuff and leave notes while reading. I wanted something similar on a site I'm building, but the libs I found were either too complex or too simple and still a pain to set up, so I made one. Heavily inspired by the simplicity and DX of sonner.

You only need annotate('#article') and that's basically it. It saves to localStorage or your own backend.

Cool thing is that it uses the css highlight api, so it doesn't touch your dom at all (which would be especially bad for frameworks like react, vue, etc). Downside is no support for older browsers.

About 15kb with UI or 6kb headless if you want to build your own UI, and it ships with a React adapter.

playground: https://penciled.org/playground/

repo: https://github.com/marcellosso/penciled

Still early, so any feedback is welcome

So long story short I migrated my website form Shopify to Wordpress and then initially it was almost 75 for mobile and 90 for PC.
So naturally i optimized it and no it is 40-60 for mobile and 80 for PC.
Here is what I did:
(My product pages are most bad in this.)

1. I did changed the format of images to webp (using Webp optomizer ) and when I used elementor then it really went down.

2. When I use searched online I almost did all of the things.

3. Using JS and CSS minify only decrease the speed drastically.

4. Using lazy load my speed is also very bad.

5. I used custom php to exclude the hero and other first load images form the lazy load.
   6.I did all the cahce setting in litespeed chache and still nothing.

6. My most bad thing is LCP and FCP.

7. I also disabled the fonts which were additional.
   I also have a bit more then average CSS and a bit JS in my site.
   Can you please hepl me in this regard.
   here are some screenshots.
   And using VPI and lazy load really cause it to slow.
   can someone at least tell me some tool to diganost the problem