Major Scale

One thing I think a LOT of smart people misunderstand is that the power of computers is always SCALE. Computers are very fast, don’t get tired, and they have no shame. If you are smart, you can point those characteristics in useful directions — and people have been doing exactly that for decades. Large language […]

“Am I so out of touch?”

Some time around my freshman year of college, my Dad’s company gave him a phone with Windows CE on it. It quickly became a running joke in my house, because the phone was both kind of incredible, and the dumbest thing in the world. Dad hated it, surely in part because he didn’t like the […]

Accountablli-Buddy

My Theory of Productivity Allow me a theory. I probably didn’t invent this, but if I did, bully for me. Work output, when increased beyond the amount of available accountability, without a matching increase the available accountability, will never generate a lasting increase in productivity. Here’s what I mean by all these terms. Work output […]

Real-World Vibe Coding

It’s been a couple years since I took my first look at generative AI and concluded that the most likely use case for this kind of technology, by far, was “better” spam. Since then, despite all the activity, investment, discussion, and model releases, nothing has really fundamentally changed my mind about that. While image generation […]

Competence Theater

I have worked at many places. Without exception, the biggest challenge every one of them faced during my time there was either: That’s it. When we addressed these things, we did better. When we didn’t, we did worse. Heck, even my own company was like this! I continually refused to address the first problem, and […]

Work is Weird, Weird is Hard

One cool thing about life, or at least my life, is that as I’ve gotten older and moved around, I’ve gotten to know some people who do jobs that I’ve always been aware of, but actually know very little about. The challenge with these kinds of jobs (and there are a lot of them) is […]