A robbery occurring under the pretense of expertise.
If we want to talk about innovation, we need to talk about the "Efficiency Tax" levied on small businesses by tech giants and monopolies. We have to orient technology to be human-centric and trust-centered.
Instead, these tiers are priced on a darker metric: the knowledge that your time is valuable.
We’ve reached a point where basic efficiency is being sold as a luxury good.
There is no technical reason. It is purely an extraction of wealth from the end customer.
There is a profound disconnect between the story we tell about technology and the reality of using it.
In the SaaS world, everything has become a ransom. We are seeing heavily escalating pricing tiers that aren't rooted in actual costs - it's "Premium" wrapped in CSS.
I loosely understand what's happening here. But I'll follow along to look at the pretty colourful orb.
effigy being made to the machine gods
Replaying this back through the process of writing it out and the only firm conclusion I have on what to do different next time is to pray harder to the machine gods.
Image source is @ChickneNuggetOreos on Reddit
- Get Gemini to write me the code for the manifold pipe.
- Point out to gemini that Opus 4.5 exists and is available for use
- SUCCESS
Is AI hype just the copium we take to tell ourselves that once we figure it out, the Yaks will shave themselves?
- Reinstall Vscode, install is now successful
- Discover Openwebui does not natively support Anthropic
- Discover Anthropic Manifold pipe! Download is giving a 502 error
Logically here I probably could have stepped away and returned but, I was too deep into shaving the Yak at this point.
In this particular case my cascade was
- I'd like to use Openweb UI to test certain prompts on Claude
- Requires Python 3.11 (have 3.13)
- I need to get the "new" python installer from the Windows store
- Error on install, apparently I don't have VS redistributables
- This breaks my VS code install
I discovered the phrase for "ick" I walk away from my computer with after navigating a cascading shitstorm of dependencies is "Yak Shaving".
I'm not a software engineer by trade so perhaps this is some sort of right of passage, but how do y'all do it without deciding this isn't for you?
Is there any wonder why anxiety and social pressures of young folks have been on a steady ramp when the shift in our model is a gambling away of their futures?
@techpolicypress.bsky.social
This image & generous description very accurately describe what it's like to be me watching CLINE eat up my API credits while it helps me to clean up my #digitalgarden #ai
@bmann.ca you should chat with Zander!
www.linkedin.com/in/zmfraser/
I am in @itseieio.bsky.social ‘s essay!
I love this question! In my experience - no. Once it is managed it generally becomes an ingrained piece of habit, culture, instinct etc. At which point the measurement may end up being a friction point that would be best left to the wayside.
It was at that moment I went "I think this game was made with love!"
To whomever was filling entire boards with matching white pieces. You put up a noble fight but I have to say it felt good wiping the board clear.
Chuckled when my rook gained the title "self-hating" after clearing numerous rooks.
"Where were YOU when our SaaS spend was going to leave us ASS OUT?"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf-_...
You pulled an Xavier youtu.be/Ye_iob2MwGw?...
A stack of lego bricks is just as good as a GPU prop as the fancy thing you can buy on Amazon for 10 bucks.
Fair enough! Apologies if I was coming off crass about it, hearing Merlin's name dragged through the mud is... upsetting to me. 😅
A book series that instead does the Merlin archetype some justice IMO is The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell
The rich traditions of real world grimoires and works which are and were actively contributed to by artists, philosophers, and minds such as Isaac Newton. Which she distilled and watered down in order to make a pretty penny while contributing nothing back to the culture she land-grabbed from
What gets measured gets managed
Whenever listening to someone in the tech world talk about the inevitable dominance of some tech or product, it's helpful to remember that 5 years ago every single one of them said that we were on the verge of everyone wearing VR headsets for work and play.
Great pieces about the tension between freedom and safety by @isthisa.com in the latest issue of Protocolized 💫
open.substack.com/pub/protocol...
Problem statement: searching my AI chat history is as essential today as seeing my search history
Current solution: #Readwise highlighter for web, syncing to #Obsidian via plugin
New Problem: tagging and organizing for optimal human and AI retrieval
With #Gemini2.5 packaged in with my Google Workspace subscription, continuing to pay for #Claude on anything but an API basis really isn’t mathing.
““Hot Girl” is a mentality, you cannot buy it, it’s already within you.”
open.substack.com/pub/simplyal...
✅#paperless-ngx set up with docker compose
✅SSL set up for iphone access on local network
✅test receipts scanned
✅back-up script triggered by duplicati
I think it's now safe to plug in the papershredder?
have you played around at all with @obsidian.md ? I think selective publishing to public spaces can be handled in YAML frontmatter with certain community plugins
