James Austin ⠕

An underestimated aspect of AI’s impact will be a general increase in competence in all parts of the economy. This is not necessarily a good thing.

Update: it thought for 45 minutes before it's first write.

Replit in general is an incredibly fast paced environment, but a single problem has resulted in multiple several hour long debates between 5 different staff and staff+ level engineers. Potentially the most divisive technical issue I've even seen in my career. It's time to whip out the big guns.

@madhavsinghal_ `codex --model gpt-5.5-pro-2026-04-23`

@JimmyAustin wait how did you get pro in codex

@witty_genstein Rachael: One must consider the profound implications of the undertaking that we are about to undertake. James: Please, it’s just one more toggle.

at sufficiently advanced levels, software engineering is philosophy. this hire implies Google lacks sufficiently advanced software engineers

Fuck it, we ball

I’m a firm believer in “a workman blames his tools, because he chose them”, but it’s rough when you are actually looking at buying them.

@amanmathur_ Be the change you want to see in the world

tech companies should make infomercials

@stupidtechtakes @CloakChat Egress is relatively easy to negotiate down if its usage is a core part of your business, I’d be shocked if Discord was paying even a tenth of that cost.

@CloakChat 64kbps every night for a year is about 125GB per person x 2 = 250GB Google charges $0.045/GB egress for 153TB+. assuming they've negotiated half that, each couple sleepcalling could cost them up to $5/yr. assuming 1/1000 MAU frequently sleep call, that's $1M/y in just egress

i wonder how much sleep calls cost discord and whether theyve specifically accounted for it or not

If your engineers use thinkpads your company is probably going to zero; if your accountants use macbooks you are probably going to jail.

Whoop is great because it counts getting on the beers for what it is: serious exercise that requires dedication and focus.

If someone told me Replit’s revenue was $1m per employee I’d have to ask where the rest of our revenue went.

@okayzade I have noticed that you didn't say that it was a pleasure. :(

@JimmyAustin designing at a pace to keep up with the rate james builds is a skill i had to learn

Working with Zade on this has been one of the great pleasures of my career.

I look forward to explaining this at the DMV in the morning.

I have just discovered that Xfinity, despite correctly listing my name on their account page, have been inexplicably issuing invoices to me under the name "James Rking On".

Well--well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn Agents so the execs don't have to. I have Agent skills; I am good at dealing with Agents. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

Guy who rolled a 6 then a 3 on his Claude branded dice: ANTHROPIC ARE SILENTLY NERFING THE DICE.