Watched: Gary Hustwit’s 2024 documentary about Brian Eno: Eno. An amazing musician who doesn’t play any instruments.
“Culture is everything we don’t have to do.”
It’s on the Criterion Channel with Hustwit’s other documentaries, including Helvetica - also highly recommended.
The term “artificial intelligence” is terrible. It carries so much baggage and it’s implying things that rightly make people feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, we’ve coined this apt new term, agent - it’s friendly, helpful, most importantly, not intimidating. I think I’ll use agent from now on.
MacBreak Weekly listeners: One of our providers (Megaphone) was down for 17 hours yesterday which caused a problem with Apple Podcasts. Some listeners trying to download the show yesterday were told it was paid only. Not on my watch! It’s fixed now. Try again and my apologies!
After a couple of (very productive) months using Claude code with Claude Max subscription I’ve decided to give GPT 5.3 Codex a try with OpenAI’s max subscription. It feels like a break up. Is that weird? I have to pack up all of Claude’s stuff and put it out on the stoop while Codex moves in.
Life is Full of Empty Boats
I love the “empty boat” philosophy from the 4th century BCE Taoist Chang-tzu.
[!quote] A man’s riding his boat in a river. Suddenly another boat strikes his own–but there’s nobody in the other boat. It’s an Empty Boat. The man doesn’t get irritated or bewildered; he critically assesses the situation and decides how to move around the Empty Boat and get across the river. But if there were somebody in the boat–well, then the man becomes overcome with anger. He shouts and curses, pinning blame on his assailant, demanding payments and solutions.
Do we get mad when an empty boat runs into ours? No because there’s no one to blame. Of course the temptation is to ascribe blame. To assume someone is wronging you, which leads to resentment which eats you from the inside out. An empty boat is just that - empty, intentionless. There’s no one to blame. Life is full of empty boats. Relax.
Lovely thought for a lazy Sunday, 90% of everything is sanding h/t Matt Webb.
It’s so unsettling watching our 250 year-old democracy decay into dictatorship while the most disruptive technology since steam power is evolving at superhuman speed. It’s like watching a locomotive barrel headlong into a tornado. I have a bad feeling about this.
,Services
Watching the Superbowl while waiting for the Hellman’s ad (and my son’s half-second appearance in the background) and vibe coding a TUI to handle all the systemd services on my system. I was able to push it to Github faster than the Patriots could lose the game.
github.com/leolaport… (I’ve started naming of all my command line apps with a comma prefix per Brandon Rhodes).
Who knew the metaverse was text based all along?
Uncharted Territory
I just vibe coded an entire TUI RSS reader in a morning.
It’s hard to describe the awe I felt watching Claude Code write this in Rust. We are in uncharted territory.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Words to remember even if, right now, the universe seems to be bending toward evil and chaos. I want to ignore the horrors of the global stage and focus on the local. What else can I do except to register my opposition and move on? I feel helpless. Lisa and I will go to the protests, again. We will vote in November. But I feel helpless in the face of this unchecked and corrupt government.
RIP Stewart Cheifet. He was an inspiration to all of us who stood on his shoulders.
And just to prove Claude Code really can do some interesting things, I just used it to add the ability to post to here directly from Emacs. It referred to several Micro.blog posts and set it up in one shot.
Thank you, Claude!
Trigger warning: I am going to say something nice about AI.
I am blown away by what Claude Code can do, and not just in writing code but in all kinds of system configuration tasks.
This month, I’ve used Claude Code (the $20/month version) to clean up and enhance my emacs configuration, adding a complete org-babel literate coding capability and creating a list of all my custom keybindings - something I’ve been meaning to do for ages.
=> github.com/leolaport… - take a look at CLAUDE.md and keybindings.md for an example of what Claude can do. It’s far more organized than I am
I also used it to configure the Sway window manager for a new laptop. I am new to Sway and the waybar but Claude is apparently an old pro. Incrementally, with Claude’s help, I was able to make it better and better until it’s the best Linux environment I’ve ever used - fully tailored to my exact specifications.
I keep wanting to type “thank you, Claude!” but I know that’s just a waste of CPU cycles.
It’s nice that they’ve doubled my token quota through the end of the year. I’ve got lots more little things to do that I’ve put off for years.
Today would be a good day to remember that correlation does not imply causation.
Please forgive a proud father one more clip. From the NY Times:
Salt Hank Rules the Sandwich World - NY Times
It’s so worth watching, but beware, you will want to get in line for Salt Hank’s.
Bee Acquired by Amazon? Oh dear!
From a Bee.computer founder on Linked In:
I guess I always knew this was a possibility, but I’m very disappointed. I’ve immediately deleted my Bee account and data. I pray they do, in fact, delete the data. There’s a huge amount of private information in my Bee data – essentially everything I’ve done and said for the past six months – and I really don’t want to give it to Amazon, regardless of their assurances.
This is a nice exit for the Bee team, and I’m happy for them, but I’m sad that this great idea is now part of the evil empire.
I also apologize to anyone who bought the Bee on my recommendation. I should have known better.
Mike Masnick nails it again in “Fascism for First-Time Founders” on Techdirt:
Real innovation happens when companies have to compete on merit, not on who can kiss the leader’s ass most effectively. In a functioning democracy with actual rule of law, the best products have the opportunity to win. In an authoritarian system, the company that makes the dictator happy wins—and that’s it.
Also this from Liberal Currents: Mark Andreessen is a Traitor.