dleslie

That may be true today; but the trend is towards that no longer being the case sometime in the not too distant future.

I think you're undervaluing the skill and technology behind clothing, as well as the impact of clothing. But that's probably a reflection of how technology has allowed us to take it for granted.

Writing code was the "downtime" for me, it existed between boughts of intense problem solving. With AI agents my time is shifting heavily towards solving problems and I have less downtime as a result.

I worry about burnout.

I have friends that enjoy knitting and sewing. Those are great pastimes made commercially unviable for most because of great leaps in logistics and automation. But they are absolutely valid and enjoyable hobbies.

And the skills they provide are transferable. Patience, attention to detail, staying on task.

The LLM would just decompile the compiler and write code that matches the implementation.

Especially now that there's a website that explains clearly that the spec is not to be trusted.

I've stopped shopping on Amazon entirely, and the impact on my credit card bill has been substantial.

It's not simply that products are priced poorly, but it is also that they seem to be priced just at the threshold where the purchase remains sufficiently convenient not to shop locally or elsewhere online.

Because of their predatory practices it seems online prices are roughly identical for Western branded products at all online retailers. For Chinese brands, it's long been cheaper to use AliExpress but shipping isn't as fast and returns aren't as convenient.

But that's perception. I blocked Amazon and continued shopping as usual. The volume of my purchases is now through local retailers, and I'm buying roughly the same amount of stuff but I'm spending a great deal less.

> Within Microsoft’s cloud and AI sector, monthly AI spending limits have reportedly been slashed from $100,000 per employee to approximately $10,000 in the majority of instances.

They were allowing $100,000 per month per employee?!

That's incredible. Just a few years ago that would have been zero.

I strongly agree, but I don't think the USA is capable of doing that. That sort of socialist communitarianism is at odds with the objectivist individualism that they commonly valorize, and underpins most of their heroic stories.

It is a social movement of note and importance because of the power wielded by its adherents.

They should really make this clear on their website.

But thank you, it appears there is an official and generic ACP client.

I don't see a download link for that:

https://antigravity.google/docs/ide/extensions/

What I see is integrations for specific editors.

They removed the ACP command line flag that was in the old Gemini client. That's a signal that they won't support it. The TOS is vague enough that one could argue that altering the usual behaviour of agy will cause it to change the shape of its traffic enough to constitute bypassing normal token usage.

While it may be technically allowed, I'm not about to risk my account. Google has proven themselves to be capricious and arbitrary when it comes to TOS enforcement, and their appeals system doesn't meaningfully exist in practice.

It works but it's a violation of the TOS to use it.

I would rather not risk my Google account.

Emacs integration over ACP.

They've got Zed, VSCode, Jetbrains... But no Emacs or NeoVIM

Anecdotally, the only American liquor that was widely missed was Bourbon.

I say it in past tense because Bourbon drinkers in Canada are switching to similar liquors. "Corn Whisky" is selling well, now.

Even if it ends up back on the shelves the damage is done. Many will avoid American products until the day they die, and endeavour to teach their children to do the same.

America doesn't need anything from the rest of the world, or so is claimed, so the rest of the world should not burden itself with purchasing American exports.

Android jumped the shark when the default launcher introduced a search bar that couldn't be removed.

The problem isn't that it can edit remote files or run remote shell commands.

The problem is that it appears to do this via an AI Agent. This broadens the security concerns significantly.

Ugh. It's never enough, is it? They can't simply be happy making a decent profit and maintaining a reasonable customer relationship.

They always have to squeeze, crush, and destroy. Rob every customer, ruin every product, so they can enrich themselves.

I highly recommend asking if your library has access to Kanopy. It's a video streaming service for libraries, and works on a monthly token system.

My local library has access to Kanopy, Libby, and Blackstone. And as a Canadian, I've got CBC gem as well.

The available library of films, documentaries, books, and so forth is enormous. All bereft of ads, and mostly bereft of slop.

It's mostly AI generated drivel on their home page now.

Android allows parents to monitor and control what apps children use, and for how long, on their devices.

So I block chrome, and require my permission to install any app. They get thirty minutes a day on devices that lack a browser or social media apps. Not even any YouTube.

They can browse the web on PCs that are visible to the whole living room.

This brought me a great deal of joy to stumble across.

I am not affiliated in any way with this company; it's simply that their website brought me joy and I wish to share that joy.

If its purpose is to be the output of a hobby then it is art; if it is shared with the world, then it is performance art.

Art has utility, of course; but we're discussing primary goals.

As I mentioned, projects that take a long time make for interesting artistic statements. But if the goal isn't performance art but is utility, then alacrity matters.

Many other niche projects have enjoyed enough velocity to have meaningful utility, in my lifetime. Linux was still niche when I started using it in '94.

Because it's the question that I'm interested in. I use Emacs still because it's astoundingly mediocre at all things that I use it for; but always mediocre and never terrible. I would like to know if there's something it's the best at, besides being predictably mediocre.

Velocity is important because we all eventually die.

I've been following Haiku since it was announced. In that time a couple of personal friends have passed on, and a number of family members. In that time children have been born, gone to school, grown into adults, and had children of their own.

Projects that drag on forever make for an interesting artistic statement, but if their goals in any way include utility then velocity is important because time is important.

Emacs isn't the best code editor. It isn't the best note taker. It isn't the best document writer. It isn't even a good lisp.

What is Emacs the best at these days?

The best tool is the one that makes completing tasks better: faster, easier, cheaper, or superior.

It takes significant usage and training to overcome the overhead that Emacs imposes. There are other tools that are fast, free, and capable which do not have this problem.

Even tools which are reasonably extensible. Like VSCode. There's good reason that all the new agentic development environments aren't forks of Emacs or NeoVim.