I will never understand a certain counter culture’s attraction to American Spirit cigarettes. I roomed with the owner’s son back in university. The company is owned by frat douches. The son and I once got into a fight over the placement of a guest mattress (for his friend) and he tried to break my jaw. Serious anger issues there.
I woke this morning to thinking of socialism. The wind in the US is shifting. Not just the left either. Working class people are fed up of barely getting by. The last time this happened at scale was the 70s, Cities around the country built tall buildings to house folks, many of which were poorly maintained and turned to cesspools (but not all) and eventually were torn down. I hope we learn from the mistakes of the past - not only build massive buildings, but the infrastructure to support them too. People need green spaces…and not just roads and parking lots.
I’m optimistic that we will get closer to a success this time. It’s a shame other western countries get to have nice things while we have to work 3 jobs to cover the rent.
How do I plan to prepare? Inform, advocate, encourage. Vote.
Reference to a zombie movie.
I was in Miramar a few months back. Some of the larger condo complexes definitely had signs up saying most of the beach was private, it was only a sliver right by the waves that was public access.
Coral Gables too, there were swathes gated off to private residences. Not sure if it was legal or not, but sure seemed to be accepted.
You have that problem too, huh?
You are in your own bubble and haven’t seen enough countries then. Iran links church with state. Afghanistan overthrew the democracy that the western world attempted to install. There are a glut of totalitarian regimes in Africa, Southern Asia and Central Asia that are monoculture. Russia, Belarus and even Vietnam are oft considered more conservative.
The US is one of the most diverse countries in the world. Consider your perspective, why do you fear guns so much? Do you see them all that often? What do they connote to you?
To me, they demonstrate that we still have utility against an oppressive government. Remember when Trump said “we have to take their guns?” They only want the “right people” to have guns, their people. Because then they have all the power and can coerce us any way they see fit. And yes, they have tanks, and yeah, they have bombs, but did you see how well that worked in Afghanistan? And it’s not like we’re all clustered in one place.
Let them eat crab cakes.
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But he’s right, ya know. We work harder.
I mean why would he? The former president who instituted it was an idiot.
Yep, sure enough have seen this before. Way back before cell phones existed, this is what we had to do to put a phone on vibrate.
Usually ya had to call a 1-900 number to ring it.
Well, this is a step in the right direction from “wiping an entire civilization off the map.”
I don’t know why we ever thought 2 people needed 2000 sqft in the first place. Before the postwar/boomer era, houses were more often multi-family, or at minimum, homesteads were multifamily. I think single family housing has only exacerbated the loneliness pandemic. I’m glad to see we’ve been reversing course, even if the leading factors aren’t ideal.
We have the second one already, we just call it lobbying.
Ya know, I don’t really mind if the doctors and nurses got paid a little bit more for their hard work. But what irks me is that most of this “AI optimization” is probably all gonna go to the big brain insurance and hospital execs who will pay themselves on the back for getting rid of a whole bunch of people making $12/hr.
But you can sleep soundly knowing that your taxes are $0.50 less more this year.
What he describes is exactly what I’m seeing as well. But I also think his last section emphasizes the importance of having a human steer the ship. If you think LLMs are sycophantic when they talk to you, the Code Review Agents / LLMs are doubly so for their own work “dev bot: you asked me to do x so that’s what I did.” QA bot “I can verify that you asked dev bot to do x and that’s exactly what it did” - Humans have to be in the mix to ensure that a) the code is organized and not recursive spaghetti and b) that the software actually does what you wanted it to do both from the front and backend.
The AI does homogenize some of the playing field, but experts are still needed who understand the intent of the software. I wouldn’t trust an AI dev to conform to all GAAP standards. They can help inform code and even provide the documentation, but ultimately a human needs to validate the deliverables.
And if you thought agents were bad at updating legacy code, just see what they can do with their own code when you ask it to add 50 + features that weren’t in the original request. 🤯
So, let me give some advice to others entering into this industry. The way I see it, there are going to be 2 distinct paths in software moving forward.
be customer facing - product management is going to be merged with implementation consulting. These will be the “private eyes” who understand how a customer is using the software, understands the enhancements, the bugs, etc and also trains the customer how to use the software. With how fast AI can now code, it will be interesting to see if we go back to a world where everything is bespoke and disparate (like those homegrown access dnd back in the day) - I certainly hope not or if we’ll stick with platform “COTS” software (think SAS, Intuit, workday, Kronos, Maximo, etc). I’m any case, customers will request more customization because they’ll start to realize it’s now much easier to customize. These “private eyes” will be who informs the developers and helps structure how the updates can work within the platform framework. I think the era of product management and implementation being separate careers is dead.
The development architects. These will be the folks who take in the inputs from the customer facing team and determine the best way to build it into the architecture. They’ll have a legion of agents that they control: research, development, QA, technical documentation. Each architect will be in charge of a district product line. You need people who are experts in their domain to do this work. And these people once again become those developer unicorns that were once (and in some cases still are) the backbone of software companies. Your developer will now be doing the work that a team of 5-10 people would have done in the past. But that should also mean that we should be able to employ more of these brilliant architect types.
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What I struggle with long term, however, is why do we need system software at all? People notoriously hate entering info into systems. They may want to see the data in fancy graphics and infographics, but no one wakes up in the morning and goes “I’m really looking forward to doing all that data entry today.” Humans are also notoriously bad at updating where they are within workflows - we tend to work in the physical realm and update the software as time allows. Agents can and will do a lot of this work moving forward. And they’ll do it (if the systems are built with standards in mind) more consistently than any human would have - a person will just need to validate the data governance. This is how we get to the world of Star Trek, where the computer does the technological lifting and humans do the the human interaction bits. I think (but not sure - do we go back to mainframes???) that databases will still be needed. But software workflows can all be dialed in through training the LLMs. I’m already starting to see it with some of the tools available, but right now it’s very Wild West - at some point once we get the horse back under us, there will need to be standards built in, rather than each person doing it just a little bit differently and therefore getting slightly different results.
There was an interesting podcast recently from freakonomics about Epic software and how it’s always been private. It reinforced my perception that companies do better for humanity when they stay private.
Most C corps have the same tragedy of the masses problem that we face with pollution and resource scarcity. Not to mention that the average anything is mediocre. So, in a word, yes.
I really hope that some of these big players in the AI market will stay private. There are already enough headwinds to them being a force of good in the world without having to report to shareholders of the lowest denominator.
As a lefty this is ludicrously unfair! I mean who the hell carries loose change anymore!?
This weighs heavily upon me.
Talked to my therapist about this just this Friday. I have a friend, let’s call him Saul. He’s got an air about him, the way he carries himself. Good looking but not great looking, wears a certain kind of goatee that looks a little devilish. He presents as he is a gentleman, has manners, good listener, has a light touch - masculine but also effeminate in a way.
Women adore him! Like every woman I’ve ever met says she likes Saul. Not necessarily romantically, but just generally likes him and enjoys his company.
I’ve lived with this man on multiple occasions. He has caused my friends and I emotional harm. He will act overly aggressive about the smallest transgressions. I put a day bed in the common room one time, for a few weeks, and rather than approaching me about him not liking it, he demonstrated overt sex acts on it. The last time I lived with him a decade ago, he and my ex would berate me and the other roommate, in very toxic emotional ways, like in some kind of sadistic hedonist thing that they shared doing together - I think it came from them both being tortured souls from their respective upbringings. Likewise, when he didn’t get his way or the rise he wanted, he would just yell or throw things. Rather than approaching in a discussion, he’d go nuclear.
But that’s not the worst part, because it wasn’t all about what happened to me. A good friend of mine and him started dating about a decade ago. Started out great, romantic, etc. but then he started doing the same things to her, so she broke it off and moved back home. The dude, on multiple occasions, drove the two hours down the road and would just stalk her. Like follow her all damn day. Would make sure she knew he was around.
We’re older now, I see him around town. We have coffee on occasion. He seems to be doing better, got an education, and has a little business that’s woman centric that seems to be doing well.
But I won’t ever forget what I know about this man. The closet is full of skeletons, and damned if this meme wasn’t on point.
I think this very much depends on the person. My boss is one of those types who feels more connected when he is talking around the water cooler. I am very much not. Before him as boss, I was very much thriving in a remote/travel gig, under him, I am very much not.
Not to say I’m going to change my remote status, for one, I’m 1000 miles away. If I change anything, it would be places of employment.
As for this infographic? Like most things in life - it depends. Figure out your boss, and your boss’s boss. Then do what you need to do to achieve your goals.