> Their current "system" is Excel.

> The bottleneck is still knowing what to build, not building.

I'd amend this to "the bottleneck is being _interested_ in building."

The piece that is _constantly_ missing from AI discourse is that no amount of "breaking down barriers" will result in people who aren't interested in building, building.

I really think that it's as simple as that. Most either don't have the wherewithal or the interest to try and build something beyond the tools that are currently at their disposal -- they're just trying to complete a task, not build the tool that enables them to complete the task; the few that do become programmers. Thus, you have untold instances where "their 'system' is Excel," and programmers selling them solutions to replace it.

It's not intelligence, it's not knowledge, it's not even really aptitude. It's interest.

Another example of this is the reaction to more "creativity-focused" AI models: you see people acting like they've been gate-kept by having to know _how_ to do a thing in order to _do_ a thing, which is somehow this great injustice and AI has finally leveled the playing field so they can finally show those snooty artists who's boss (this attitude is _all over_ places like /r/aiwars). But the reality is that these people simply are not interested enough in music/photography/whatever to learn it, and will largely remain uninterested in the field once this moment is normalized and we get used to the new position of the goalposts. They don't like _creating_, they like _having created_ and whatever social cache they mistakenly believe comes with it (which explains their near-hatred of artists -- they are, very simply, jealous).

These dynamics also explain why no-code tools don't seem to ever stick. Building something requires that the person doing the building be interested in building, but people who are interested in building will have already learned to build in some form or fashion, or at least can easily see the shortcomings with tools that ultimately take away their agency to build and/or their participation in the process (which, for many -- including myself -- is kind of the whole point: I love the process!)

</rant>

Google Docs is not the comparison here. Google Workspace is.

I'm with you. The fact that Apple isn't yet pushing AI in everything is a feature for me.

Dark is so, so, so good. Just wow.

The cost of creating a book is essentially $0 when compared to movies.

I daily drive an M1 MacBook Air and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 11 running Arch/Hyprland. Software-wise I absolutely adore the latter, but hardware-wise it falls short of the Mac on nearly every level.

Battery life is horrendous (despite extensive tuning). The speakers are complete crap (despite using Easy Effects). Fans get loud sometimes because, well, it's x86_64.

It's a shame, because even though the Apple Silicon CPU is faster on paper, the same task flies on the Thinkpad compared to the Mac. And of course the Thinkpad's keyboard is fantastic.

Honestly the one thing I simply can't look past are the speakers. I work from home so battery life isn't a massive issue for me. Fans I can look past. But I simply cannot stand listening to music or watch a YouTube video on it, they are SO bad.

I have a T14s and recently bought an iPad Air and was blown away by how good the speakers and display are. (I understand the iPad Pro is even better) Speaker and display is just not a priority for thinkpad it seems. Noise cancelling headphones solve the problem for me.

OTOH with Linux you can get an OLED display and amazing speakers right now if you want!

Try as I might, I can't get that to raise an exception.

That said, agreed that this is weird. Python makes some really unintuitive choices regarding scope.

Ok. Try this.

    if input() == "dynamic scope?":
        defined = "happyhappy"
    print(defined)

it raises an exception if blahblah() returns False, because then b never gets defined.

I will never be able to square the circle of c suites pushing both RTO and AI at the same time. You can't seriously believe in the "power" of face-to-face meetings while simultaneously forcing your employees to work with chat bots all day.

I think that that kind of domain knowledge and getting your hands dirty is more necessary when you're actually having to solve real problems that real people pay real money for -- money that isn't able to be borrowed for free.

It's no coincidence that the clueless MBA who takes pride in knowing nothing about the business they're apart of proliferated during economic "spring time" -- low interest rates, genuine technological breakthroughs to capitalize on, early mover advantage, etc. When everyone is swimming in money, it's easier to get a slice without adequately proving why you deserve it.

Now we're in "winter." Interest rates are high, innovation is debatably slowing, and the previous early movers are having to prove their staying power.

All that to say: the bright side, I hope, of this pretty shitty time is that hopefully we don't _need_ to "put all this nerd talk into terms that someone in the average C-suite could understand," because hopefully the kinds of executives who are simultaneously building and running _tech companies_ and who are allergic to "nerd talk" will very simply fail to compete.

That's the free market (myth as it may often be in practice) at work -- those who are totally uninterested in the subject matter of their own companies aren't rewarded for their ignorance.

The one in Burbank was Area 51 themed. Huge UFO crashed into the front, aliens everywhere, etc. It was great and is sorely missed.