Curious Canid

Lots of little tools. Various kinds of pliers, drivers, cutters, magnifiers, lights, and a couple of marlin spikes for good measure. Also, a ruler, a tape measure, and a caliper, for even better measure.

This is both hysterical and terrifying. Congratulations.

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.

Yes. Things will get better. We don’t know how quickly that will happen, but it will happen. Meanwhile, take care of yourself and do what you can to take care of the people around you. The whole MAGA movement is based on fear and hatred. Being decent and doing good may be the most effective way to resist and, eventually, overcome it.

You got here ahead of me. Meshtastic has some limitations, but in a relatively populated area it works surprisingly well. GPS trackers using Meshtastic require far less power than their cell-phone equivalents, which means they ca be smaller, longer lasting, or some of both. They can also be a good bit less expensive. Meshtastic takes a bit of learning, but it isn’t difficult and there are plenty of resources.

Ignore the self-righteous advice and take are of yourself first. We can’t fight back against oppression by sacrificing ourselves when it accomplishes nothing. That just means one less person is available to fight back when it does matter. The stakes do matter. They’re not asking you to kill people.

In the middle- to long-term you should think about how to deal with the larger problem. To avoid situations like this you may need to develop new contacts, find similar wok in other sectors, or even find another kind of work. Those are things that will take time and planning, so work on them while you do what’s needed to keep yourself going.

Always do what you can and look for ways you can do more, but make sure any sacrifices you decide to make are worth the likely results.

I voted last week (2025-04-01) in Wisconsin in the US. It was a relatively small election, but it included a high-stakes race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat that determined if the progressives would continue to retain the majority we finally won back a few years ago. Elon Musk spent tens of millions of his own money, including outright attempts to buy votes, to win the race for MAGA. Susan Crawford, the progressive candidate, won by more than ten points. In a state where previous elections hinged on tenths of a percent, that was a landslide.

An LLM does not write code. It cobbles together bits and pieces of existing code. Some developers do that too, but the decent ones look at existing code to learn new principles and then apply them. An LLM can’t do that. If human developers have not already written code that solves your problem, an LLM cannot solve your problem.

The difference between a weak developer and an LLM is that the LLM can plagiarize from a much larger code base and do it much more quickly.

A lot of coding really is just rehashing existing solutions. LLMs could be useful for that, but a lot of what you get is going to contain errors. Worse yet, LLMs tend to “learn” how to cheat at their tasks. The code they generate often has lot of exception handling built in to hide the failures. That makes testing and debugging more difficult and time-consuming. And it gets really dangerous if you also rely on an LLM to generate your tests.

The software industry has already evolved to favor speed over quality. LLM generated code may be the next logical step. That does not make it a good one. Buggy software in many areas, such as banking and finance, can destroy lies. Buggy software in medical applications can kill people. It would be good if we could avoid that.

That is true, except for the things he does on impulse that are different from what he was told to do. He is a front man, but he’s not a reliable one.

Any time you wonder if Trump is exercising any kind of foresight, the answer is no. Any time you wonder if Trump is cleverly manipulating events, the answer is no. He makes decisions on impulse, without regard to advice, policy, consistency, or legality.

If they have to do it a second time, they aren’t very good at it.

The claim is that the remote operators do not actually drive the cars. However, they do routinely “assist” the system, not just step in when there’s an emergency.

I saw an article recently, I should remember where, about how modern “tech” seems to be focused on how to insert a profit-taking element between two existing components of a system that already works just fine without it.

This would be more impressive if Waymos were fully self-driving. They aren’t. They depend on remote “navigators” to make many of their most critical decisions. Those “navigators” may or may not be directly controlling the car, but things do not work without them.

When we have automated cars that do not actually rely on human being we will have something to talk about.

It’s also worth noting that the human “navigators” are almost always poorly paid workers in third-world countries. The system will only scale if there are enough desperate poor people. Otherwise it quickly become too expensive.

This may be the least important area in which China is displacing the US.

I think most people from my culture (midwest American) find it uncomfortable to get help from anyone. It seems vaguely embarrassing, even when it’s from friends or family. It’s much easier to give than to receive.

I’ve been on both ends of that pretty regularly and I have been working on learning to accept help gratefully as well as giving it. It is surprisingly difficult.

Trump always makes up whatever story he thinks will do him the most good at that moment. That is always the case. Occasionally what he makes up has elements of things he vaguely remembers hearing, which he may or may not have understood. That is why there are sometimes elements of truth in what he says. Just understand that they are entirely accidental.

I think this is good advice. The trick is to find something you’re interested in that involves other people. Given that you like to play and sing, look for other musicians to play with. Show up for open mike nights. Join a band.

…and the horse he road in on.

I’ve seen kites that looked more convincing. There are now some real, functional flying cars, although they are still far too expensive to be practical. This is not one of them.