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.

So what’s the pros and cons of Mint on Ubuntu vs Mint on Debian? I’m more familiar with Ubuntu, and that’s what I’m running on my PC now, but I’m thinking about trying to go back to Mint.

Main things I’ll need to install is development tools (VSCode, IntelliJ, docker, java) plus Firefox, Discord. I’m also running KDE Plasma - it’s nice, but also I don’t really have a strong opinion so if I wasn’t i wouldn’t care all that much. Nvidea graphics, AMD cpu.

I’m a bit frustrated by the weekly or so discord updates and it would be nice if auto update or apt upgrade would just update it, but maybe that’s a completely separate concern.

Anyway if you time to respond I appreciate it. If not that’s cool too. Have a good one!

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

They are making the absolute most of their limited opportunities to fuck up canon, though.

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.

I would love to have some more Star Wars movies that are actually good. And maybe this will be. But for fuck’s sake can we stop trying to make the most Star Warsiest movie ever? It’s a massive IP. Just tell interesting stories about interesting people who look weird and use laser swords.

This story about the first Jedi, if it is good, will not be good or interesting because it’s the first Jedi. I have a feeling they will look astoundingly similar to the last fucking Jedi.

Fuck! Why is it so fucking hard to understand Star Wars?

I mean I think Ford v. Ferrari was good. Logan was good. Dial of Destiny was garbage. I mean, I guess I’ll hold out hope it’ll be something worth watching, but there’s not one fucking thing in this announcement that I’m excited about.

This is one of those things where home users just default to PC = Windows. But apps are all online now. Probably 99% of the time all people need is a browser. Yeah some people think they have to have MS Office or some other niche windows program, but I consider myself a power-user and the only apps I open on my PC are Games, Discord, IntelliJ, VSCode, and then maybe fool around with local AI stuff. Photos and stuff are usually on our phones, but they can also all be backed up to the cloud from a computer easily enough.

I’ve already switched over to Linux because all of that stuff already works. (Caveat: I also have a PS5 for most gaming).

Most people just need someone to install Linux Mint or whatever and they wouldn’t even notice the difference. The only thing really slowing Linux adoption is folks who don’t want to field support calls from their friends and family.

Okay. Out of curiosity, is it more or less Trumpy than 2020?

Of the Republicans I know, I don’t think any of them are afraid of Kamala. I think they are just Republicans and the idea of actually choosing is a foreign concept.

I don’t get that. I’m an independent. Have been since I could vote. In theory I would vote Republican, but in fact there hasn’t been one I’d vote for since McCain lost the 2000 primary (and that includes when he won it in 2008—I don’t know what they did to him, but he was a different man by then.)

But there are a lot of people who either vote their party or just stay home. This year there are barely any ads for Republican state candidates or Trump (could be I’m in a filter bubble, though). The state GOP is a smoking ruin.

There is nothing here pushing us red. This is so different from 2016 and especially 2020. I’m not a pollster. I’m not a political expert. But I just can’t see any path to a Republican victory here in Michigan as we went blue in 2020 and he had so much more visible support compared to today.

But we’ll see come Election Day.

I went out to my folks’ house yesterday and I was shocked. They are in sort of a rural area and I saw exactly two Trump signs and probably twenty for Harris plus a few for prominent State democrats where they weren’t displaying presidential signs.

By contrast my neighborhood is probably closer to 50/50 and we’re more suburban what with having sidewalks and all.

If it’s effective, it will only be for the wealthy. If it’s a mixed bag, the wealthy will decide who gets it. If it’s a placebo or nearly so, it’ll be everywhere and cheap.

See also anti-agathics and other life extensions.

Well better local than cloud if it does what you need.

I appreciate the tip.