Hey everyone!
My current gig might be wrapping up soon, so it’s time for me to figure out what’s next.
If you or someone you know could use some help with software tools or systems — architecture, implementation, deployment, operations, data pipelines, CD, DX, etc — maybe get in touch? I’ve been doing this a while and I’m pretty flexible.
I’m open to short-term or long-term, part-time or full-time. I’m US-based (NYC area) and a US citizen.
General CV: http://aviflax.com/resume/
Energy-specific CV: http://aviflax.com/resume/energy/
Thanks in advance!
I enjoyed this rant that Rui Carmo just posted:
“A Short Rant on the Current State of Computing”
> Amazingly, the iPad may remain the best hardware option for many years, which, despite my love for the device, is disappointing as Apple still treats it as fancy hardware for children.
Aww man, this house is for sale, but the contract says in order to buy it you MUST agree to build humanoid robots encased in living human flesh 😕
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/410-Trousdale-Pl_Beverly-Hills_CA_90210_M28472-09646
WBEZ just had a pledge drive and didn't meet their goals.
NPR has its problems, but your local station does really valuable journalism for your area and it's accessible to all.
If you haven't listened to your local affiliate or checked out their website, see what you think of their work. If you find it valuable, and you have the means, I think it's good to support such work. Especially now, good, accessible journalism covering your local area and not just national news is important to preserve
Woe is me; my 11-year-old is a slob, and is completely uninterested in my how-to-not-be-a-slob training, even though it is absolutely FREE. 😭
I just recently realized that what I truly hate about LLMs is that it devalues language. I love language, I love using it very intentionally, I love how different people wield and work language differently. A well forged phrase can cut right to the soul. Language is literally magic. It can do things where man and machine all fail.
But now with the press of a button you can get sugary pink language goo in any shape you like. And this is sold as an equal replacement to real human language. The insult! The depravity!
I think it might say something about how far language is already devalued. We live in a morass of content marketing and business process documentation and terms and conditions and propaganda and spam. All soulless language that nobody asks for but that people are compelled to create. We can't imagine not creating such language goo. And so we're grateful for the pink goo machine.
You know those stories about how there was once magic in the world but it was lost? This is it. This is how it happens.
My talk from the local-first conference is up! In it I discuss the difference between local-first and offline-first, and propose a direction for the community in the coming years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMq0vncHJvU&list=PL4isNRKAwz2O9FxP97_EbOivIWWwSWt5j&index=2
Watched “Batteries Not Included” with my 11-year-old last night. It holds up!
Went to a fantastic car show this morning with my kid and our dog. Caffeine & Carburetors in New Canaan, CT. Good times!
Happy Father’s Day!
Holy shit, Radiolab just dropped an episode on aphantasia — the obscure neurological quirk that makes me me!
https://radiolab.org/podcast/aphantasia
TIL that just as they shamelessly copied Slack, MS also has a clone of Notion.
Well, at least they‘re consistent.
It's June 4 today, the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre.
It's not usually on people's radar here in the West. But I think it's an important day to commemorate. It's the day that China, the PRC, the CCP, showed the world its true face.
Yet we (the US, UN, Europe) continued on the path Nixon had set us on a decade prior, recognizing the PRC politically, and integrating with it economically. Three years after the massacre Deng would revive the Reform and Opening-up program during his Southern Tour, and turn China into the world's factory. In two decades we went from injection molded plastics to iPhones.
The Chinese economic miracle fueled cheap global consumerism, and turned the PRC into the world's richest authoritarian state. And as it gained power it become more bellicose, leading to the tense geopolitical situation we live in today.
1989 was a branching point in history. Things could've gone differently in China, if more moderate voices within the party had prevailed, rather than sending in the tanks. But things could have also gone differently for the rest of the world, if more countries hadn't continued to treat the PRC as just another business partner, despite the cold blooded murder of their own citizens.
INCREDIBLE images from China's Chang’e 6 lander, which landed on the far side of the moon late on June 1 and lifted off in an ascent vehicle with the first lunar samples from the far side of the moon yesterday.
Image credit: CNSA
TIL: a 225-mile road trip in a ~22 kWh (usable) CHAdeMO car (in the US, in May 2024) is miserable.
Yikes. Cloudflare. (ht @macdonst )
https://robindev.substack.com/p/cloudflare-took-down-our-website
I love @simon’s proposed new term for LLMs: instead of “artificial intelligence”, “imitation intelligence”
What good is AI if you don't have a planet to use it on?
Microsoft released its 2024 Sustainability Report on Wednesday, and it's mostly bad news. Last year, Microsoft's emissions went up 29%, and it used 23% more water, primarily due to "new technologies, including generative AI."
https://au.pcmag.com/news/105283/microsofts-emissions-spike-29-as-ai-gobbles-up-resources
The Great Lying Machine is eating our environment and spewing out toxic misinformation. Big Tech has become a clear and present danger to all our futures.
@simon if one wanted to maintain a mostly straightforward dataset in a GitHub repo, collaboratively with other people, potentially the public (i.e. “crowdsourcing”) — would you suggest using CSV, JSON, or something else as the file format?
The behavior of business leaders with respect to #genai is distressingly lemming-like.
It’s sad to see Google drink themselves to death on their own “AI” (🤢) flavored Kool-Aid but let’s be honest; they’ve been been headed in this direction for many years.
Here’s an idea for better cities: Make owners of big SUVs & pickups pay more to park.
That's what Montreal now does -- and it's the first North American city to try it.
In Bloomberg CityLab, I explored a groundbreaking way to fight back against car bloat.
