AI has problems for sure. Not a month goes by without news of yet another idiot lawyer getting sanctioned because of the hallucinations were presented as fact. However......have you tried coding with AI? I have. I'm 5x more productive than before, and I can solve problems now that I wouldn't have touched before. I still test my code. I still review it. But man, this thing is a game changer. I can see why people are paying big money for it. It absolutely is delivering.

To give you a recent example - I know nothing about terraform, but I had to implement a proof of concept in AWS and was mandated to use terraform. Previously, I would have spent some time understanding terraform concepts and then worked out some basic examples before attempting the task at hand. None of that was needed. I was coding from day 1. Yes, the AI can go wrong, but I find its never a syntactical error. When errors do occur, its usually a misunderstanding of the requirement I gave it, and because I know what I had in mind, I can always rephrase to get the right results. I have not so far encountered a situation in the coding realm where hallucinations caused me problems.

The other day, I asking the AI to do some task it noticed that I was using java 17 and offered me the upgrade to 21. I thought it was a trivial upgrade, but the implementation, when I said "yes", was breathtaking. It asked for me to sign into git, then created a branch, generated test cases for my code, after applying its changes, it ran the test cases, committed its changes, asked me for approval to merge to main and then did it.

Magnificient!

Yes, lesser number of programmers will be needed. What makes me most happy though is that this levels the playing field. No longer do I have to deal with those difficult prima donnas who are only tolerated because they are good developers, even though they mess with the team and make everyone elses life miserable. I can't wait for those people to get fired because there is no more excuse for them to be kept on.

I bought a Prius PHEV even though I'm firmly convinced that the PHEV is the worst of both worlds. You don't get the freedom from maintenance hassle that the BEVs give you, and the battery is small enough that it cannot fill all use cases _and do what you paid the premium $$ for_. If you want compromises, the hybrid will be a cheaper car.

Why did I buy this car? Because for reasons that I couldn't fathom, the BEVs that were in my price range were simply not available on the dealer lots at the time I needed a new car.

That being said, the car is working out great so far. Its been three weeks since we drove it off the dealer lot and thanks to our normal driving patterns (to the office / grocery store and back), we have not consumed more than half a gallon. There is a real danger that the gas in the almost full tank we have will degrade to the point its unusable before we end up using it.

For 20 years, plus or minus, personal computers reversed that idea.

I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.

The force is strong with this one! Moderators, please mod this one up for being funny.

I'm not sure where to lay the blame - the execution team (people making the films) or the production team (people signing off on the vision), but the end result hasn't been very good at all. The one exception seems to be the remake of Casino Royale - which would have been a good movie even without the additional allure of it being a Bond film. That film had soul. Bond, the character, and not the Bond gadgets, are the things that made the difference in the plot of that movie. But all the subsequent Daniel Craig movies had a steady degradation in quality. Even the last one - "No time to die" - even though it was better than its predecessor, didn't come close to the high-watermark established by Casino Royale.

When one compares the creative gimmicks and the stunts of the series, the Mission Impossible series is much better. All in all, I'm just not excited about there being any future Bond films. If the Broccoli family wants to fight it out with Amazon, maybe someone can make an interesting movie out of that conflict. I think the entertainment needs to move on and focus on building new narratives, characters and worlds rather than using old ones as a crutch.

Known VPN services have identifiable server addresses that can be blocked. Instead, you can set up a cheap raspberry pi (or other) at your home and use an encrypted SSH connection to that [raspberry pi] from far away. Then turn on your SOCKS proxy (part of WiFi Details on Macintosh) and check to see that your IP address shows to the world you access as that of your raspberry pi. I do this all the time, including right now. It also helps to watch sports events.

Thanks.

> The more competent military leaders, like Lee... FYI, the podcast ["Behind the Bastards"](https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fbehind-the-bastards%2Fid1373812661) is currently doing a 4 part deep dive on "Robert E. Lee: A Lifetime of Failure." I'm only up to the middle of part 3 with him starting the war as commander of Viginian forces (the Confederacy is still being formed) but the general vibe so far is "he is definitely not the genius the Lost Cause makes him out to be, but he's smart enough to pull back Jackson from invading Maryland and provoking the Union because they have no army yet." Worth a listen.

Regarding the apocalyptic mindset, I'd like to propose that if anyone ever makes a public claim of such they are required to read the [Wikipedia list of predicted apocalyptic events](https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events%3Fwprov%3Dsfla1) and write a 5 page essay about why they're right but all the hundreds of other folks were wrong. I'm sure it wouldn't change a single mind, but it'd generate some hilarious content. Aside: If you have a few minutes, check out the list. It actually comforts me that this is an intrinsic facet of human stupidity and not something new.

It's good that there were no injuries in last night's incident out of Portland. I'm not sure if the timing makes Boeing's request look horrible or hilarious. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn.com%2Fen-us%2Fnews...

> Imagine that every time you pay for a beer you let the bartender rifle through your wallet and see everything you're involved with. We all have our kinks and if I like playing "You're a naughty consumer," that's my business.

Can someone post the full article. Its behind a paywall.