I recently read a few articles about a startup called PocketOS allowing a coding agent to delete their entire production database. Here is an example of one such post.
As a Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a successful bay area tech company, I’m deeply bothered by the founder’s lack of personal responsibility.
He gave an ape a machine gun and blames others for the things that went wrong!
Let’s talk about the glaring mistakes.
For starters, the Tom’s Hardware article linked above says they restored to a 3 month old production backup. This is negligence, full stop. Production databases should have regularly scheduled automated backups.
Secondly, engineers are responsible for access control. Blaming Railway for their API keys being excessively permissive is immature. If a staging environment’s API key can access a live database, it’s an immediate issue and measures must be implemented to reduce the blast radius. One simple solution is to put the production and staging environments in separate accounts.
Additionally, engineers are responsible for evaluating the tools they use. If a cloud provider’s offerings are not robust enough for your use cases (e.g. – orbital-slop-cannon vibe coding), then action is required. There are practically infinite ways to deploy an application. PocketOS chose to use a platform without granular control, presumably because it was easier than investing engineering time in to infrastructure.
Lastly, AI agents making mistakes is nothing new. Professionals understand this reality, and don’t expect LLMs to always make sane decisions. There are many mechanisms to control agents, including system level hooks, filesystem permissions, and sand boxed environments.
The founder exhibited multiple levels of incompetence, and should take more accountability for his mistakes.
When I was twelve years old, I became obsessed with Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. The psychedelic music of the late sixties and early seventies was a clear reflection of a paradigm shift in human consciousness. Music had expanded tremendously from the previous decade’s shallow pop tunes about driving around in cars and asking ladies “do you want to dance with me, sugar?” Even as a naive Christian boy from a repressed and sheltered culture, I perceived the colors that doused this music. It’s odd to me that this psychedelic explosion is now sold on $40 Target t-shirts, but that’s beside the point. The magic plant was working on me before I met her. I was singing these songs and learning them on guitar.
And so castles made of sand fall in to the sea…eventually
I went through my first bout of serious suicidal depression when I was thirteen. I was a thousand miles from home due to circumstances I don’t feel like explaining, but I was subjected to some pretty horrific bullying and violence. During this time, the only people who were kind to me were the stoners.
I stopped believing in any sort of God, and adopted a belligerent atheism. My opinion at the time was, “if there is a God, he is a cruel piece of shit.” I was a scared animal, backed into a corner. My nihilism and bitterness tried their best to keep me safe from seemingly infinite wells of sadness.
A couple years later, I was fortunate enough to be riding around in the front seat of a truck on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. The driver had a strain called Blue Satellite. It was the greenest and shiniest weed I’d ever seen at that point in my life, undoubtedly grown by outlaw hippie smugglers in NorCal. We smoked it while we were cruising around, looking down below at the Tennessee Valley. The driver put on Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada, as the plant overtook me.
When the dissonant humming erupted in to the tremolo guitar, it was as if a roto rooter began working its way through the canals in my mind. The plant started decompressing a zip file that had always lay dormant. The beauty of our planet was undeniable at that moment. I could no longer subscribe to my previous ways of thinking. I no longer knew irrefutably that the universe is just a cipher that aimlessly rushes nowhere.
She showed me the rhythm underneath it all. She showed me overarching meta-patterns of interconnectedness. She told me through this experience that she loved me, a feeling I had forgotten.
Unfortunately, I lacked the capacity to integrate this experience. I was a young teenager who wanted more mind altering experiences, so I began chasing powders and pills and drank as much as I could.
Fast forward the better part of a decade, I spent a period of three and a half years sober before returning to the plant. I met a dear friend tending to a handful of grows around Denver who loved the plant. I was immediately spellbound by this beautiful spirit.
My relationship wasn’t always balanced. It took me nearly a decade to learn to interface with her mindfully, and even still I have moments where I get out of balance. But my karma yoga with this plant has given me more than I ever dreamed.
It has helped me become more:
patient with my loved ones
mindful of the way I talk to myself and others
healthy and considerate about my impact on the living world
present and disciplined in my work
devoted to my dharma
I don’t deny that many people use this plant as nothing more than a tool for attaining pleasure. To those people I would say,
Take some time to listen to what she is saying. Spend more time in meditative and mindful spaces. Chase pleasure if you wish, but rest assured there is far more in those spaces than blasts of quickly fading euphoria.
On the other hand, I don’t deny that Cannabis can make many people anxious and uncomfortable. To those people I would say,
Trust that there is wisdom to be found in this discomfort. She often shows us narratives that don’t serve us, while putting the thinking mind under a microscope. Often times, she shows us incongruence in our hearts and mind. Addressing this disconnect can help us become more embodied and authentic versions of ourselves.
I am overwhelmingly grateful for the people’s psychedelic. May she grow symbiotically in living organic soil for millennia to come!
If any of this resonates with you, feel free to comment.