Happy weekend to both of you reading this :) Actually, Tiny Analytics recently informed me that I'm averaging over 1000 visits a month, which exceeds the free account threshold, and that they would like me to start paying. I never thought site traffic would build back up like that. I'll probably just remove the analytics because I really don't care about the stats.
I spent the week looking for a job. It's bleak out there. I've also spent a lot of time this week thinking, researching, and playing with cash flow spreadsheets for being self-employed. Right now its 50/50 which way I go. If my options at the end of this month are take a job I'm not excited about or go solo, I think I'll go solo. Maybe. This decision is more complicated than it needs to be in the US because of of the lack of a social safety net. I'll have to buy my own health insurance, which will be my second largest monthly expense after my mortgage. And even with that hefty premium, I'm still looking at needing thousands of upfront cash to get by deductibles. It could actually cost more than my mortgage on an annual basis. Imagine needing two mortgages just to get by. It fucking sucks. Basically, only live in the US if you rolled a 20 on your Constitution roll during character creation.
You'd think not working would mean I have lots of links for you, but I don't. I'm not sure if that is related to how focused I was on looking for a job, or maybe my mood was shit all week and nothing seemed good to me.
You should use /tmp more argues that we should get in the habit of puttting any temporary downloads in /tmp, so we always know they can just be deleted later. When I think about all the time I spend deciding what in my downloads folder I need versus what can go, this seems like a very good idea.
This 15 minute video argues that the hyper growth of the last 150 years is a complete outlier that has to end. We spent millions and maybe billions of years building up fossil fuels in the earth, and we are going to use up all that stored energy in 200 years.
If confronted by the police, can you prove you are a US Citizen? Unless you are carrying your birth certificate or passport around with you 24 x 7, your answer is nope. Scalzi makes a very strong case for getting a passport card and keeping it in your wallet, not for crossing into Canada or Mexico on a regular basis, but to avoid getting sent to El Salvador if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
AI is an important technology, but LLMs are likely to kill us all before we master the power of the technology. LLMs are basically very expensive Mad Libs. It's not crafting answers to your prompts, it's filling in the blanks, often totally devoid of context.
Keep writing and publishing, especially if nobody is reading. It's the only way you'll get better.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
