When ordinary things become part of a nation’s power projection, then those things can become part of its PTSD as well, even if they should have been pure beautiful art.
This is why I say it’s by design. The attitude of patriotism and power projection is by design
In Western media there is a tendency to treat Chinese drone shows with the same attitude that the US treats its own firework shows.
Look at the tone and the social media replies, people are often treating Chinese drone shows as a threatening technological flex, rather than an artistic display.
Realized I should clarify as the logic leap might be a bit far:
In the US fireworks displays are often treated as displays of power and patriotism. The “rockets red glare” and “bombs bursting in air” on 4th of July aren’t talking about fireworks.
Fireworks are often named after bombs or weapons
You are so close to the truth dear Redditor. Now let’s think more:
Firework shows are specifically designed to sound like war. It’s not an accident. It’s purposeful prep and desensitization.
If they are switching to drone shows now it’s because they expect the sound of war to change soon.
Hah! The difference is people started using actual agents. My on and off usage for prototyping, maybe 8 working days per month, can hit $300 easily, so I’m sure a full time dev would make $1000 a month look cheap
Those $20 entry points were just heavily discounted bait for beginner learners
GLM 4.6 is the best one you can run locally right now, but again, you’d need probably around $100k hardware to run it at a decent speed.
If you can tolerate 5 tokens/sec then maybe $30k of hardware
Local models are already good enough to work with as an acceleration if you have enough coding skill to know what to ask for, the right jargon and frameworks and structures.
The main difference is that the big frontier models have gotten so good that you hardly need any coding skill at all.
Most companies aren’t going to have the resources to run their own data center AI hardware, and the easiest way to set workers up with local AI is gaming computer style local AI rigs for about $30k each.
But those are probably not getting sent to your home, you’d have to go into an office to use it
If the central rented model of AI falls apart completely it might just be good for all of us to use local AI: lower tokens / sec of lower quality output with additional human involvement is better for the brain.
It’d be good for the software industry as a whole but it probably leads to reduced RTO:
No Kings. No Jesters. No Child Molesters. #WeSayNoKings
Calling it now: impending nitrogen shortages are going to lead farmers to rely on use of biosolids from sewage as fertilizer. The thinking will be “better to do this than for people to starve”. Next stop is a mass public health disaster from PFAS and microplastic contamination.
For sure. And don’t underestimate the power of having a local phone number. It can just be a travel SIM number for the local country, but it helps the application stand out more than you’d think because it shows you have ties and are committed to the move
Technically the route I went allows you to leave the US immediately, with no requirement to go back. In fact I could not leave the country while my visa app was in.
It’s not certain. It costs money and is stressful, but it’s way more likely to get you the job offer and visa fast.
So here’s what worked for me in NZ: Fly in on vacation with a 90 day tourist visa, loved it and wanted to stay longer -> Extend to nine month visitor visa for extra time + talk to Talent Army agency -> They landed me a job offer within about a week -> Straight to residence visa for skilled workers
My tips: Don’t apply by yourself. If you are talented then you let an agent find you your job. I used Troy Hammond of Talent Army to find an NZ job. I highly recommend Talent Army for NZ
Also it helps to be in country with a local phone number. It shows the companies you are serious.
Currently reading one of Jane Jacobs' lesser known books, written decades after Death and Life.
Her loathing for cars (and Robert Moses) did not diminish with age.
"Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities."
Someone in NYC should do interviews with middle-school kids who take the subway to and from school every day, to see if they have any advice for Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy who can't seem to go a single day without pissing himself in fear over them.
Wow it is so blatantly obvious when Cursor Auto mode switches from Opus 4.6 to a dumber model. Night and day difference in code quality, and adherence to instructions. I can't go back, only Opus 4.6 for me now.
Trick question: the product is the user and their data
Steve Yegge already wrote this blogpost đź«Ł
On a serious note, I finally gave Gas Town a try, and I can't tell if it's good or not, but I know I can't afford it, that's for sure. I ran out of budget in just 30 mins
Reminder that Anthropic’s “radical leftist demands” are to ask the US to please not use their models to make autonomous killer drones or do domestic surveillance on American citizens.
How far has America fallen into fascism that these two requests are now considered “radical”?
That’s specific to building a product where the API is the feature. If you are building SaaS or a consumer application then you can force migrate people in place. As long as the UI is the same then most people won’t care that the backend or API is cleaner now
I agree. But as a product person, this is why I say it takes willpower. I often have moments where I'm like "Ahhh we aren't moving fast enough".
But then I also need to remember that moving fast in a disastrous direction is much, much worse than moving at a reasonable pace in the right direction
It takes willpower to say "we aren't in a rush".
If last year, before AI adoption, the task took two weeks, and today, with AI help, it only takes one week, then that means there is an extra week for polish.
It doesn't mean we have to rush half baked code and tech debt out the door in a week.
But why must the scale of work be magnified by so much?
My point is that if I can do things so much faster with an AI agent, don't I have extra time to polish it and make sure it is made right?
Let's say AI makes me 3x faster. Why not plan to be only 2x faster, so I have lots of time to polish?
Scale it down to individual tasks now. If a dev can build something with an agent in an hour, what stops the dev from spending two hours instead of one?
Unless you operate in constant crunch time, it’s often a matter of willpower to spend an extra hour of boring work polishing before delivery
My theory is that anything you can build with agents in a week should be able to be rebuilt again in another week: in a clean manner, perhaps using another agent, wielded by a more experienced dev, with migrations of old / prototype data to new implementation
I honestly can’t take think pieces about AI data center water usage seriously as long as there are >2000 bright green 18 hole golf courses in arid areas of the US.
Even by conservative estimates, those things consume 10x the water of every data center in the US.
I’m much less scared of technical debt these days now that I’ve personally seen Opus 4.6 executing some very impressive tech debt reductions: Angular to React migration, major refactors, framework upgrades, etc.
Tech debt has always been a willpower problem, but now it is no longer a time problem
