Software engineer, fiction author.
https://www.iangmcdowell.com
> - This is partly b/c it is good at things I'm not good at (e.g. front end design)
Everyone thinks LLMs are good at the things they are bad at. In many cases they are still just giving “plausible” code that you don’t have the experience to accurately judge.
I have a lot of frontend app dev experience. Even modern tools (Claude w/Opus 4.6 and a decent Claude.md) will slip in unmaintainable slop in frontend changes. I catch cases multiple times a day in code review.
Not contradicting your broader point. Indeed, I think if you’ve spent years working on any topic, you quickly realize Claude needs human guidance for production quality code in that domain.
It sounds like in this case there was some troll-fueled comeuppance.
> “We’re not a scam,” he continued. “We’re a married couple trying to do the right thing by people … We are legit, we are real people, we employ sales staff.”
> Australian Tours and Cruises told CNN Tuesday that “the online hate and damage to our business reputation has been absolutely soul-destroying.”
This might just be BS, but at face-value, this is a mom and pop shop that screwed up playing the SEO game and are getting raked over the internet coals.
Your broader point about blame-washing stands though.
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