I have access to AI integrated with my IDE. It mostly guesses at the line I’m going to write. It probably gets it right 50% of the time.

It also very, very often suggests stuff that works but isn’t very good. Like it offered some convoluted suggested for adding audit fields to Firebase. Ultimately it did suggest the solution I went with, but only after starting down the road of stupid ideas.

Like, if your code base is pretty good and you just need to tweaks stuff that is already good enough that’s one thing. I frequently look at the code base and wonder if it was implemented by someone who really knows Java at all.

I suppose it might be fair to assume a huge technology company would have their shit together, but technically I work for a huge tech company… just not the same core business. Tech enough that we have a whole mess of internal AI tooling to create AIs for specific things.

We can create an AI agent, but we can’t follow simple fucking rest standards.

Anyway it’s hard to quantify, but I get less mileage out of integrated AI tools than I do bouncing ideas off ChatGPT.

You are anthropomorphizing it. It can give truth or falsehood the same as pages of a book or a funhouse mirror.

If you ask me today, “what is the meaning of life?” I might give you an answer. And if you ask me tomorrow, I might give a different one. You have no way of knowing whether I’m correct today, tomorrow, or ever. But if one of those answers, right or wrong, helps you find meaning, it’s still useful. (As a rhetorical point. I’m definitely the last person anyone should look to to find meaning.)

AI is a lot like that. You give it input, it gives you output, and whether you get anything of value depends greatly on what you are looking for.

I’ve gotten some advice on improving some of my writing. And some of the advice I took, some I ignored, and some I modified before using. I think the writing turned out better, and since I largely write for myself I’m pretty happy with that.

I’ve asked it for help programming, and at times it was helpful and other times cost me hours circling around the same old wrong answers, but there’s every chance I would’ve struggled just as much looking online.

The other day my daughter was making a slushie and it was turning out really wet and gross, so I explained to an AI what we’d done and asked if it had any idea why it didn’t turn out. And it turns out, we were using zero sugar soda which doesn’t work—the sugar is necessary. So we added some simple syrup and it turned out perfectly.

And it was much faster and easier than Google. But if the advice had been wrong, nothing of value would’ve been lost.

trying to fit this square shaped solution into circle shaped holes

This exactly. AI is great for certain things. What everyone tries to use it for, like the bullshit in this article, is not great.

It’s not AI that’s lying. The AI is just doing what AI does.

It’s not a lie, it’s just not what most people think it is. There’s a lot of ignorance and a lot of lies about AI.

Was it Google who claimed 25% of their production code last year was written by AI? Microsoft? Anyway, I’m going to call bullshit on that right now. Or they require a curious amount of bullshit code to run their business.

My twelve year old is Evelyn. My 14 year old is Genevieve. Which is apparently still out there but I thought it was pretty uncommon when we named her.

There is a free spot on my bingo card the size of Texas. And Florida.

Actually, we should give up Bingo and start a new game called Headlines. It’ll be like Cards Against Humanity, except the black cards will all be “____ arrested for <offense such as child pornography or domestic violence>”.

The white cards will all just be various individuals or descriptors like “Hulk Hogan” and “Texas Megachurch youth leader”.

After everyone plays, you do a search for the headline and the most recent exact match wins.

I spent more time thinking about this than it’s worth, but I’m committed now.

It was an expressway. There were no lights other than cars. You’re not wrong, had a human sprinted at 20mph across the expressway in the dark, I’d have hit them, too. That being said, you’re not supposed to swerve and I had less than a second to react from when I saw it. It was getting hit and there was nothing I could’ve done.

My point was more about what happened after. The deer was gone and by the time I got to the side of the road I was probably about 1/4 mile away from where I struck it. I had no flashlight to hunt around for it in the bushes and even if I did I had no way of killing it if it was still alive.

Once I confirmed my car was drivable I proceeded home and called my insurance company on the way.

The second deer I hit was in broad daylight at lunch time going about 10mph. It wasn’t injured. I had some damage to my sunroof. I went to lunch and called my insurance when I was back at the office.

No one was hitting it. It ran into the tall weeds (not far, I’ll wager). I couldn’t have found it. Had it been in the road I’d have called it in.

I hit a deer on the highway in the middle of the night going about 80mph. I smelled the failed airbag charge and proceeded to drive home without stopping. By the time I stopped, I would never have been able to find the deer. If your vehicle isn’t disabled, what’s the big deal about stopping?

I’ve stuck two deer and my car wasn’t disabled either time. My daughter hit one and totaled our van. She stopped.

That said, fuck Musk.

I think this is the key right here. The election is important, but most of us have far more immediate concerns.

Pretty sure I’d go full Sith. I’m not super big on hate, but if I could move things and influence people with my mind I’m under no illusions that I would use that power for good.

We simply don’t talk politics. My wife is the peacemaker. When someone brings up something political she shuts that shit down quickly.

It’s when people don’t know what to talk about other than politics that I think they are truly lost. Watch some fucking football and hate on each others’ team. I think some people need that sort of idle animosity.

Anyway, there are more to people than politics.

I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max. It’s a nice phone. I like IOS better than I thought I would. I do think the Galaxy I had before it was pretty good though, too. If I didn’t struggle so much with the iPhone keyboard, I guess this would be my favorite, but I use my phone so much and the swipe typing is so rough, it’s hard to give a full endorsement.

That said, I am probably overestimating how gos typing on Android was. I remember lots of autocorrect issues, but iOS has a bunch of keyboard bugs that make correcting errors even more frustrating than making them in the first place.

So, put them on blast?

I’ve already got that without a new browser. I’m good, thanks.

I’m trying to figure out what that means. Like if I were to imagine a wishlist of things AI might do in a browser:

• generate user-scripts to modify styling and perhaps even layouts through natural language.
• Use AI to automatically detect and remove advertisements, nsfw, etc. as desired
• identify spoofed websites and prevent them from opening
• search through browser history by natural language so that you’ll always be able to find that one page where you read that thing
• scan through a massive website (Wikipedia, corporate confluence or sharepoint) to find pages relevant to a natural language search
• identify fake content (lies, veiled advertisements, seo spam, satire)

Okay that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Those would in theory be nice features to have, although I’d be worried about the ability to reliable deliver.

I also think all of that could be offered as a plugin for a regular browser. So I’m at a loss as to what would make the whole browser AI-centric.

Also I’m only reading the quote here, but I’d they are referring to the original vision of the web, it has nothing to do with any of this shit. But if that’s not the original vision being referred to then never mind.

self- rectal exam

Just like checking your breasts for lumps, the fight against colon cancer begins at home.

I like this. Just one little further tweak: every hour block should be a time zone conversion to a completely useless time.

For example the hour long block at 8:00am would be: 0:00-0:59 Ugandan time

For even more bonus points, account for Uganda not observing DST.

Does your boss fish? If not, this might look disturbing to him.

Five Guys Hooker tournament 2-4. Entry: $75. Min length: 8". Biting = Big O

Fishing tournament sponsored by Five Guys from 2-4pm. Entry fee is $75. Any fish under 8" don’t count towards total weight. “Big O” lure is expected to perform well.