Figure right after A6 is pretty striking. Ask people if they expect to use AI and a vast majority say yes. Ask if they expect to use AI for specific applications and no more than a third say yes in any industry. That should be telling imo. What we have is a tool that looks impressive to any non-SME for a lot of applications. I would caution against the idea that benefits are obvious.

You're making an odd request, but I'll bite because it seems sincere. I'm younger! I didn't live through the period, and I'm not a statistician, but I have to ask if this kind of representation is really a gimmick?

For some, it's very meaningful. That character is bisexual, not gay, and it's pretty authentic representation. The reason why it's not so focused on is because people like this, especially at that time, often don't care much for labels. That scene you mention is with a closeted man. This is not unheard of. You may not have had this experience personally, but does that mean it didn't happen? The campy part? Okay. The show wasn't perfect. It did get canceled, after all. But it worries me that you singled this particular thing out because this is obviously a political topic, and you missed the fact that the scene did demonstrate some things about the character, like his recklessness, impulsiveness and opportunism.

He complicated something that could've been simpler, and he did this because he had a hard time separating his personal thoughts and feelings from his work. This is a theme that plays out a lot in his interactions, and I wonder if your understandable discomfort and lack of familiarity with the other aspects of the scene colored your perception here.

Do you mean in terms of adding one more feature or in terms of how a feature you're adding almost works but not quite right?

I find the latter a lot more challenging to cut my losses when it's on a good run (and often even when I know I could just write this by hand), especially because there's as much if not more intrigue about whether the tool can accomplish it or not. These are the moments where my mind has drifted to think about it the exact way you describe it here.

Yeah the latter. Doesn't happen much with super obvious stuff, but especially when I'm a bit fuzzy on requirements, it can be just endless iterations.

It seems strange not to mention ICE or even treatment of transgender individuals if you mention travelers. We've effectively taken out round-the-clock advertisements saying "If you're not a fire-breathing, straight WASP, tread lightly". Normally, out of a sense of egalitarianism for even conservatives, I would tag on "even though it's not true", but I fear the evidence simply doesn't bear this out anymore.

We're searching the phones of visiting punk kids. We're cruelly punishing Canadian residents for clerical errors by unnecessarily detaining them. We've told our own citizens that it's reasonable to interrogate them at any moment for looking brown or black. We told an entire class of people they simply do not exist as they or even their family, friends, and coworkers understand them. Finally, we're deporting people who, although they've been here unlawfully for years, have also contributed a great deal. I've left out the most egregious examples to remain focused on the system.

All of this is happening as a backdrop while droves of US-born and immigrant citizens alike lose their jobs and are unable to find new ones. To say the irony is palpable is an understatement.

Respectfully, 25 years ago someone might've said the same thing about you spending any time online at all. Today, people spend far more time on all number of "artificial" experiences. I'm not going to try to convince you that it's good or lasting or even personally entertaining to me, but it seems that it's entertaining to someone.

I hate to say this. I can't even believe I am saying it, but this article feels like it was written in a different universe where LLMs don't exist. I understand they don't magically solve all of these problems, and I'm not suggesting that it's as simple as "make the robot do it for you" either.

However, there are very real things LLMs can do that greatly reduce the pain here. Understanding 800 lines of bash is simply not the boogie man it used to be a few years ago. It completely fits in context. LLMs are excellent at bash. With a bit of critical thinking when it hits a wall, LLM agents are even great at GitHub actions.

The scariest thing about this article is the number of things it's right about. Yet my uncharacteristic response to that is one big shrug, because frankly I'm not afraid of it anymore. This stuff has never been hard, or maybe it has. Maybe it still is for people/companies who have super complex needs. I guess we're not them. LLMs are not solving my most complex problems, but they're killing the pain of glue left and right.

The flip side of your argument is that it no longer matters how obtuse, complicated, baroque, brittle, underspecified, or poorly documented software is anymore. If we can slap an LLM on top of it to paper over those aspects, it’s fine. Maybe efficiency still counts, but only when it meaningfully impacts individual spend.

Additionally it's not like you're constrained to write it in bash. You could use Python or any other language. The author talks about how you're now redeveloping a shitty CI system with no tests? Well, add some tests for it! It's not rocket science. Yes, your CI system is part of your project and something you should be including in your work. I drew this conclusion way back in the days where I was writing C and C++ and had days where I spent more time on the build system than on the actual code. It's frustrating but at the end of the day having a reliable way to build and test your code is not less important than the code itself. Treat it like a real project.

Should've built it in WordPress instead of Gatsby /s

Isn't it remarkable how much less bitter even the tone of the text in the transcripts are too? This is from far before Citizens United. They talk about it with almost idle fascination.

It’s got the tone of public radio, which I think this reporting was from.

This seems like it would work if you build a system on solid bedrock, but how often does that really happen? CarPlay, for example, started as a disaster. Unsurprisingly, it has changed a lot but remains one.