If you're at all familiar with his blog, or have seen him talk on the subject, nothing in the book will come as a huge surprise. I think what's remarkable about it, tho, is the clarity of the construction. The anecdotes and examples in the book are stories he is often repeating, but they do come together as a coherent, convincing argument about how to confront the AI bubble.
I'd been kind of mulling how to talk about LLMs and related technologies in public for a while now. It's not easy. I'm professionally required to cultivate a pretty sizable amount of enthusiasm for the technology. On the other hand, quite a few friends and online communities talk about it like it's the Great Satan.
I feel much more aligned with Cory's take on things. There is actually something useful here. I hate the billionaire-fueled con job inflating the bubble to utterly preposterous proportions. A data centre boom in the middle of a decidedly laissez-faire regulatory environment means these dumbasses are building out gas turbines instead of being forced to power these things with renewables, which might actually end up helping with the climate emergency. Everything about the bubble economics of this thing is stupid and terrible and is making me incredibly anxious for a variety of reasons.
But there is a there there. This technology is going to have a pretty profound effect on my profession, if nothing else. I'm not going to pretend I can tell you what it will be. This isn't LinkedIn. But it's also interesting.
I've been somewhat fortunate that I've been able to take the centaur role with LLMs. I can use them or (mostly) not use them as I see fit. (My actual work revolves around LLMs, so avoiding them would be a bit silly, but my actual process is mine to develop). I mostly write the code myself, chatting with the coding agent if I get stuck (rubber duck style). Then I get the agent to do a code review and did-I-miss-anything verification with Jira before sending it off to the team to review. And I feel way more productive for it.
I think this is the way to do it. I need to understand the code that has my name on it, and the best way to do that is to write it. Writing code isn't that hard when you've been doing it for a while. I find myself beating my head on the desk a lot less, because the agents are good enough now that they can spot errors I'd have spent hours debugging in the past. So all good, right?
I am, of course, more than a little anxious about where all this is going. As Cory cites Stein's Law, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." And this bubble can't go on forever.
Okay, I'm a little late actually writing this. I did actually start the post on Canada Day, because it was honestly pretty exciting. Blog posts do take a bit of mental bandwidth, tho, even when I'm trying to convince myself to dash them off like it's 2004 again. I'm giving myself a bit of grace, tho, since this is my 11th blog post this year, a number of posts this blog hasn't seen since 2013. And I've still got nearly half the year to go.
This is a bit weird for me. But I can't help but feel excited. I've gotten more and more into the contest since I started watching it when it was on OMNI in 2018 or whatever. When the budget item to "explore participation in Eurovision" was put forward last year, I honestly didn't expect it to go anywhere. Like maybe CBC would air it and send hosts, like Australian broadcaster SBS had been doing since the 80s. Do that for a few years, build the audience and then maybe see about getting special permission to join, like Australia did.
But nope! CBC full-on joined the EBU, giving it the right to participate (and also giving it access to the member news content, which is arguably more important). And then Mark Carney's all like "We're going to Bulgaria, baby!"
It's a weird world.
I am honestly looking forward to being in the fandom as a member of a participating nation. I put my name down at Canadian Fans of Eurovision and I'm enjoying the anticipatory fandom feelings. Of course, this isn't my first rodeo, but these things can be fun and I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
I'm also enjoying the speculation from Eurovision fans about who we might send, and discovering some cool new artists in the process. (I'm less enjoying Canadians' speculation, because people have no idea how this actually works, but I want to stay positive here). I'm filled with a mix of excitement and dread at what the CBC might come up with for a national final, because I think it'll also expose me to music I haven't been exposed to before and I think it'll be fun, even if we pick someone terrible and they bomb out in the semis.
Just finished playing Star Trek: Resurgence: a game you can't buy anymore. It only came out a few years ago. But you know... licensing.
I actually bought it pretty much as soon as it came out on Steam. But it's been sitting in the to-be-played pile. I started it, but it's a Telltale-style adventure game, and I find those kind of stressful. I haven't really had the bandwidth for stressful.
I still don't but I decided to pick it up again and decided I'd actually roleplay it out without worrying about the outcomes. This is the correct approach. Spoilers after the cut, but yeah, while there are different outcomes, there isn't a huge variance and if you stay true to the Star Trekness, you'll be fine.
Before the cut, tho, I just want to point out the biggest thing that drew me to this game: the hero ship, the USS Resolute NCC-92317, a refit Centaur class ship.
The Centaur class was a kitbash filling out the background of some shots in DS9, with an Excelsior saucer and an oversized USS Reliant roll-bar and weapon pod making up the nacelle pylons and secondary hull. For the game (after a "refit"), they gave it a proper secondary hull with a deflector, although keeping a bit of the look of the weapons pod for rear torpedo launchers. They put some real love into the design of this ridiculous thing. It's great.
