Great piece on what codeless looks like from Anil Dash. Interestingly, VoidLink malware seems to have been using this same methodology. Used an LLM to write out a dev roadmap, with a team of bots iterating on the code. Got a whole malware framework out in a week.
I’m sure there’s a lot behind this report about CEOs not seeing returns on AI investment. But one thing I hear over and over again on the CISO Series, no one actually has their data ready to fully implement these tools. No one knows what they have, who has access, or who is supposed to have access.
Meta lost an average of $488 per second on Reality Labs since 2020. Instead of the Metaverse, they could have just given away 157 million VR headsets.
I got off the waitlist to try out Rodeo and I realized I literally don’t remember what this app is supposed to do and it is not immediately obvious from the main UI of the app. Like local events of something? This is a sign that the waitlist was too long.
Tried a browser built by autonomous AI agents. On the one hand, the browser built on my Mac and ran. On the other hand, I only managed to get one page to render anything. It’s obviously still in development, and building a browser from scratch is no slight feat.
Finally getting around to reading The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Marx just drops “antediluvian colossi” in the first page.
Finally getting macOS reinstalled on this 2017 Goodwill iMac. Was running into errors in the recovery mode because Apple evidently didn’t renew HTTPS certificates for the server with OS images and I had to go into terminal to get it to go over HTTP. Very weird
My favorite “state of technology” moment is when my Apple TV shows a notification to watch the last 5 minutes of the Bears-Rams game while I’m watching the Bears-Rams game
I don’t know why but every “I switched to Linux post” has to feature a terminal with neofetch output. I don’t mind it, it always looks neat. It’s just weird.
More Linux Love
I’m very much enjoying the Verge’s current lovefest for desktop Linux. One killer use I found for it is reviving an OG MacBook for FireWire capture. OS X ran fine on the old machine, but it was so out of date that I struggled to get a usable browser running on it. 32-bit Linux Mint (CPU on the old laptop was an original Intel Core Duo) ran great with up-to-date Firefox out of the box, and no problem connecting to my Wi-Fi. I was concerned FireWire capture might not be supported, but it worked great with no additional setup needed. Even found an easy command-line utility to automatically capture and clip clips from my miniDV camcorder.
Also Apple, can this mean you can relaunch Apeture? PLEASE??
10-years ago, I bought Final Cut Pro. It remains the best bargain in software. It’s been tied to my Apple account, updated with the latest features, and works great. Only a matter of time before subscriptions ate it on desktop. I fear we are here now with the Creator Studio bundle.
Half way through Stranger Things 5. Maybe just noticing it for the first time but I love the style contrast between the real world and upside down. By starting in the totally CGI world first, then goes to an actual location, it’s a really striking contrast in a way that works with the narrative
I’m only 2 episodes into Stranger Things 5 and the amount of 80s Koss headphones is my favorite part
I used Claude to add some custom CSS to this blog. Not perfect, but it understood the Win95-style assignment.
I recently remembered that Intel Optane was a thing for a minute. The shattered dream that was 3D Xpoint is now dead as a doornail. Intel discontinued this in 2022, right before the generative AI boom. But I forgot that Intel made a version of Optane for enterprise data centers that could fit into specialized DDR4 DIMMs, offering terabytes of capacity.
That got me thinking, did Intel discontinue something that allowed for ultra-high-capacity memory on a single system, just as everyone wanted as much memory as possible for AI inferencing? Isn’t that why people are buying maxxed-out Mac Studios, to run local models entirely in memory? Turns out… not really. In its latest incarnation, Intel could put a lot of capacity in Optane DIMMs, but the throughput was way too slow for anything we’d need for AI workflows, 40GB per second compared to 800GB on a modern Mac. So even with that capacity, the token output would be basically unusable.
I’m always fascinated by the technical road not taken. Optane goes on the glorious scrap heap with Transmeta CPUs and Foveon image sensors.
I hope this is just a temporary glitch, but sad to see the glory that is CES b-roll isn’t fully available. I need to see people looking at VCRs in 1993! https://www.cesbroll.com/archives/
The Verge’s Version History episode on AIM made me realize that AIM was probably the first browser-based app I ever used, through AOL QuickBuddy (I assume it was Java-based). Used it in my school library through the AOL Australia site to chat with friends.
In comparison, working on the OG Surface Go with Ubuntu is very different. Plug into my regular USB-C dock and my monitor and peripherals just work. RAM is fine for a few more tabs, but multitasking is murdered by that dinky Pentium Gold processor. It just chugs doing 2 things at once.
Just tried getting my morning done on a 2019 iPad Air. In some ways surprisingly doable. Safari with extensions goes a long way. Bluetooth mouse and keyboard worked great. Display is nice and big enough. But you’re constantly hitting the RAM filling up. 4 tabs and Clickup app running was too much.
Evaluating ancient tablets for work
Recently got a 2018 Microsoft Surface Go and a 2019 iPad Air. Both are pretty great physical devices. Tried getting work done on both, and you hit some limitations. The iPad really hurts for a lack of memory, switching between an email client, a browser, and Slac,k and you’re hit with reloads all the time.
Meanwhile, the Go is absolutely betrayed by the dinky Intel Pentium Gold processor. It’s got 8GB of RAM, plenty for browser-based work, but you constantly feel it chugging when trying to do two things at the same time. It’s a capable monotasker. And I actually like it as a hardware platform much more. The hinge is great, the hardware feels solid. The screen has some heavy bezels, but it looks good, and the Type Cover is excellent. Plus, it plugs into my USB-C dock to make it easy to swap in.
Makes me wish Microsoft hadn’t waited and been so tepid with Windows on ARM for so many years. Apple clearly showed that the architecture was desktop-ready for years before they made the switch. A Surface Go with an iPad Pro processor from that time would have ripped.
