chasing

Maybe. But I can think of some very wealthy people who do not have these luxuries.

Yup, time and freedom. The true luxuries. And a subset of freedom: The freedom to work on projects that excite you with people you like.

Pay attention to what you consume. Find sources you trust, creators you enjoy, and communities that are real. Participate.

Not sure what else to say. Yeah, if you consume the "internet" like some firehose of information you spray at your face hoping for the best then, yeah, even today you're going to wind up gargling mostly shit.

The "internet" being a small group of well-minded people who largely shared a similar outlook on things was the anomaly, not what's going on now.

So what you're saying is: You no longer visit LinkedIn.

I'll just have my AI do it...

Won't there instantly be tools to detect and remove/obfuscate these kinds of watermarks?

I have an AI agent that poops for me and just reports the results.

“Tech” is one of the most rapidly-changing disciplines historically. It was very different in 2016. In 2006. In 1996. In 1986. It will be very different in 2036. If this is your career, part of your job is being aware of those changes and being the person who can help others create value from whatever new technologies come around. I’ve always found these changes exciting and fun, but I’ve also been aware my entire career that whatever I’m doing be year could be out-of-date and not of value the next. Tech is exciting. Trepidation is a part of excitement.

LLMs don’t have taste. Almost definitionally they can’t. They can parrot what they think other people think is tasteful, but they cannot have taste.

Yeah, I have told people that I’m fully capable of typing things into ChatGPT or Claude myself. What I need from people are their own warty ideas. Sometimes real ideas are blurry or incomplete. Or have open questions. Making your own presentation can be a personal exercise in clarifying your thoughts. And sometimes the fact that ideas are half-baked or tricky is exactly why you’re having the meeting in the first place…

I guess if you’re in an environment where the emphasis is put on busy-work and formalities, then you’re going to get this sort of shit. Deeper organizational problem at that point, though…

It just makes me wonder what else in your content is AI-generated. Just sows a little seed of distrust.

The goal of someone putting actual ideas out into the world should be to establish trust, not create questions about whether the ideas are theirs or plagiarized from ChatGPT.

Ozone hole over Antarctica.

It is possible for us to work together and fix these things.

Edit:

Moving away from leaded gas might be another example.

(CFCs and leaded gas invented by the same dude, fun fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. Quite a legacy...)

Maybe. I think people could survive it, sure. But I also wonder if there's a part of our lizard brain that just for safety's sake prefers to be able to see out of any small enclosed space we might find ourselves in. And that lizard brain is smart enough to know that a flat screen is fake. Again, I just think of flying in a plane today but with no windows and I, at least, am immediately squigged out.

I also feel like a lot of modern air travel is designed around making something that's highly unnatural and inherently terrifying into something palatable for most people. I'm not talking about actual safety, but the perception of safety. Which isn't exactly a logic thing. More about keeping that lizard brain from freaking out too hard.

Feels like no windows is almost a deal-breaker? No? Do humans handle small enclosed spaces with no way to look outside well? The mock-up image looks like a small two-or-three seat compartment, which seems like it would be awful. Maybe an open space would be less claustrophobic, but still. Imagining just a normal jetliner today with no windows feels... not great. And I'm not sure having a giant flat screen wrapped around me would solve the problem.

This is reductionistic gibberish. If you want to understand how USAID had actually benefited the region, go read some of the actual reports and analyses on the matter.

But just to engage with your numbers (which I don't agree are fully accurate and are definitely not at all a complete picture):

Getting the rate of starvation down from 33% to 20% in an already food-stressed region that has experienced 5x population growth could be presented as an accomplishment, yes. Flip your numbers around. In 1961 200m Africans were food-secure. Today 1200m are. A billion extra properly fed people, by your (possibly bad and definitely over-simplifed) numbers.

Because we're rich and powerful and we believe the world should be a better place.

It doesn't matter what other countries do. We should want to step up and help. Leaders lead.

And racism.

By design, no?

Good artists copy. Great artists steal.

Plagiarists also steal.

I find that younger software engineers sometimes take the attitude of: Why would I pay for that when I could easily just do it on my own? As they grow and gain more responsibilities that flips to: Why would I build and maintain something on my own when I could pay someone else a few bucks to do it? At least I feel I went through this change as I grew professionally...

So many things I am completely capable of doing on my own I simply don’t want to. I have better things to do. More valuable things.

Yes, build versus buy. The eternal question!

Trump's tax cut on the wealthiest 1%? $1,000,000,000,000 over ten years.

Daily cost of the Iran debacle: $2,000,000,000.

We sure as shit have money to fund research.

We prefer to fund second yachts, third vacation homes, and bombs.

It certainly is when people are typing the word "black" into the search field when deciding what programs need to be cut...

Poop like an elephant, pee like a bee.

Yeah, it's not just my job to generate the code: It's my job to know the code. I can't let code out into the wild that I'm not 100% willing to vouch for.

Unions empower the middle class.

That's why the ownership class fights so hard against them.

Cybertruck is a gimmick. And the fad has passed. No wonder they're not selling well.

And they don't age well. Most of the ones around here are starting to look... grimy. Or dingy. After just a couple of years. It's a poor advertisement for itself.

And, yeah, then there's cultural eye-rolling. It's really the only vehicle I hear people openly mock when they see one... And that's not a Tesla/Elon thing entirely, since people don't have the same reaction to other Tesla vehicles.

Alternate take: The cost of building software will remain the same but software will need to be 10x as feature-rich to remain competitive.

If you can build it in a weekend so can I. So you're going to have to figure out bigger things to build.

They're wonderful but, yes, the cost is out of control.

Higher education delivers a fantastic ROI for the country as a whole. The people who benefit most from a strong economy are the wealthy. So tax them more. And put that money towards lowering the cost of education. Win-win-win.

Young people get sick and have accidents, too.

If life was perfectly predictable then, yes, insurance wouldn't have much of a point. But alas.

We all pay in a bit and those of us unlucky enough to need a huge amount of help can have access to the resources they need. Hopefully that will never be you! But as they say: The reward for a long life is to get to experience the decay of your own body. Good health is temporary for all of us.

That said, you're right: Single-payer would be a huge improvement. Let's do that.

My thing is: If you have something to say, just say it! Don't worry that it's not long enough or short enough or doesn't fit into some mold you think it needs to fit into. Just say it. As you write, you'll probably start to see your ideas more clearly and you'll start to edit and add color or clarify.

But just say it! Bypass the middleman who's just going to make it blurrier or more long-winded.