Excerpts where he explains: "Now this was technically a fault in the application (Word 6.0 for the Macintosh) not the operating system (MacOS 7 point something) and so the initial target of my annoyance was the people who were responsible for Word. But. On the other hand, I could have chosen the "save as text" option in Word and saved all of my documents as simple telegrams, and this problem would not have arisen. Instead I had allowed myself to be seduced by all of those flashy formatting options that hadn't even existed until GUIs had come along to make them practicable. I had gotten into the habit of using them to make my documents look pretty (perhaps prettier than they deserved to look; all of the old documents on those floppies turned out to be more or less crap). Now I was paying the price for that self-indulgence. Technology had moved on and found ways to make my documents look even prettier, and the consequence of it was that all old ugly documents had ceased to exist."
and
"When my Powerbook broke my heart, and when Word stopped recognizing my old files, I jumped to Unix. The obvious alternative to MacOS would have been Windows. I didn't really have anything against Microsoft, or Windows. But it was pretty obvious, now, that old PC operating systems were overreaching, and showing the strain, and, perhaps, were best avoided until they had learned to walk and chew gum at the same time.
The changeover took place on a particular day in the summer of 1995. I had been San Francisco for a couple of weeks, using my PowerBook to work on a document. The document was too big to fit onto a single floppy, and so I hadn't made a backup since leaving home. The PowerBook crashed and wiped out the entire file.
It happened just as I was on my way out the door to visit a company called Electric Communities, which in those days was in Los Altos. I took my PowerBook with me. My friends at Electric Communities were Mac users who had all sorts of utility software for unerasing files and recovering from disk crashes, and I was certain I could get most of the file back.
As it turned out, two different Mac crash recovery utilities were unable to find any trace that my file had ever existed. It was completely and systematically wiped out. We went through that hard disk block by block and found disjointed fragments of countless old, discarded, forgotten files, but none of what I wanted. The metaphor shear was especially brutal that day. It was sort of like watching the girl you've been in love with for ten years get killed in a car wreck, and then attending her autopsy, and learning that underneath the clothes and makeup she was just flesh and blood."
I wonder if this can be paired with a local URL shortener? Chaining this with a local URL shortener can mean access to any doc with a single letter (or very letters).
> His research addressed "complex problems lurking at the center of fusion vacuum chambers and at the edges of the universe", according to the university's obituary.
>He also studied how to harness clean "fusion power" to combat climate change, CBS said.
Clean energy is pretty controversial in US. Most people are against it.
> In an open-ended question, 69% of respondents identified the primary advantage of clean energy as some form of environmental protection, like mitigating climate change or improving air and water quality. Only 13% offered lower energy costs as a central benefit, and 22% said clean energy offers no clear advantage.
>America has neither the interest nor the capital to chase EVs or force them down American consumer throats.
But America always has the interest and capital to protect oil interests and supply chains worldwide by being the biggest spender on military, funded by taxpayers.
> when metrics aren’t correctly setup.
All management is about massaging metrics, things are getting 'better', here, see this chart. It is going up/down.
Executive (VP+): I like to see a burndown chart (or some other format). I want a dog in a cat form factor.
AI is the only 'technology' that nobody knows what it solves. If it is a fridge, people buy it. If its a dishwasher, people buy it. The use cases of these technologies are immediately understood. AI is pushed down hard by the 'leaders', C-suite is pushing everyone to use AI at most companies. Nobody knows what its supposed to help with but a great many people claim 'success' with AI. Every full text search that was perfectly working before got converted to AI search and is instantly 100x worse. Same with lots of customer facing FAQs, customer support, etc.
Meanwhile, 67% of my time is gone fixing autocorrect on apple devices.
I don't have much proof, but given the incentives and the possibility of doing it I'd be surprised if it wasn't happening everywhere. How much would be enough to pay the top 50 influencers in a market to push something? To hire 100 people to be active full time on all social media sites? To a company with billions they wouldn't even notice the expense
Default to skepticism and double down on your critical thinking skills. More important than ever today
They're me, my coworkers, my friends. Talk to people. ChatGPT and the other big LLMs has hundreds of millions of users.
You might not like using LLMs. You might not find them useful. You might think they're bad and harmful (I do). But to claim that no one finds them useful is a completely different position, and one that's about as disconnected as it's possible to be.
> They're me, my coworkers, my friends. Talk to people.
I have all of those. Most don't use AI at all. Some use it on a limited basis but it is unclear if there is any worthwhile gain in productivity. Remaining are two who use it with regularity, including one who's all in. I personally use it for 2 limited use cases. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes I'd be done sooner without it.
Conversely, I need to mediate an epidemic of AI foistware and AI UX pollution. 100% of my userbase is subject to overpushy AI offerings and an endless minefield of shifty, unwanted AI elements. These users are clearly more productive when I keep AI out of their way.
On balance, AI is presently a net negative for my clients.
Excerpts where he explains: "Now this was technically a fault in the application (Word 6.0 for the Macintosh) not the operating system (MacOS 7 point something) and so the initial target of my annoyance was the people who were responsible for Word. But. On the other hand, I could have chosen the "save as text" option in Word and saved all of my documents as simple telegrams, and this problem would not have arisen. Instead I had allowed myself to be seduced by all of those flashy formatting options that hadn't even existed until GUIs had come along to make them practicable. I had gotten into the habit of using them to make my documents look pretty (perhaps prettier than they deserved to look; all of the old documents on those floppies turned out to be more or less crap). Now I was paying the price for that self-indulgence. Technology had moved on and found ways to make my documents look even prettier, and the consequence of it was that all old ugly documents had ceased to exist."
and
"When my Powerbook broke my heart, and when Word stopped recognizing my old files, I jumped to Unix. The obvious alternative to MacOS would have been Windows. I didn't really have anything against Microsoft, or Windows. But it was pretty obvious, now, that old PC operating systems were overreaching, and showing the strain, and, perhaps, were best avoided until they had learned to walk and chew gum at the same time.
The changeover took place on a particular day in the summer of 1995. I had been San Francisco for a couple of weeks, using my PowerBook to work on a document. The document was too big to fit onto a single floppy, and so I hadn't made a backup since leaving home. The PowerBook crashed and wiped out the entire file.
It happened just as I was on my way out the door to visit a company called Electric Communities, which in those days was in Los Altos. I took my PowerBook with me. My friends at Electric Communities were Mac users who had all sorts of utility software for unerasing files and recovering from disk crashes, and I was certain I could get most of the file back.
As it turned out, two different Mac crash recovery utilities were unable to find any trace that my file had ever existed. It was completely and systematically wiped out. We went through that hard disk block by block and found disjointed fragments of countless old, discarded, forgotten files, but none of what I wanted. The metaphor shear was especially brutal that day. It was sort of like watching the girl you've been in love with for ten years get killed in a car wreck, and then attending her autopsy, and learning that underneath the clothes and makeup she was just flesh and blood."
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