Infinite Quack

Have you had that feeling before, that your brain's on fire? I hope so. Everyone should, from time to time. The first time I can remember feeling it was when I was six, and discovered computers. I've written about this before , briefly: My grandparents left a TRS-80 at our house while going off to travel, and they also left the manual. As a kid I was a precocious little snot, already able to do some reading by the time I was in kindergarten. The computer's manual explained how to program it in BASIC. I picked up the book and started reading it, trying out the examples. Then I started improvising, mixing and matching the pieces, writing entirely new programs. I don't think my grandparents had any idea what they'd set in motion, quite by accident. I was obsessed . I was enamored of this mysterious machine, that could be given instructions in a language vaguely like English but with much stricter rules, and would dutifully execute with absolute faithfulness. When I tr...

The problem in a nutshell You have a large, detailed, complex blueprint describing the world as you want it to be. You have another equally hairy document, a description of the world as it is today. If you decide to reify your blueprint, to breathe life into it, what about the world is going to change? Answering this question is critical, because someone has to review this blueprint for mistakes. You want to find those mistakes before they impact customers, not after. When your blueprint is large, no human can effectively scrutinize every line. You must narrow it down to what is changing. Why I care I've thought about this problem a lot. Since 2018 I've been on a Builder Tools team at Amazon that specializes in Infrastructure-As-Code (IAC). The product we own, "Live Pipeline Templates" (LPT), is in essence a scripting library that lets our customers describe what infrastructure they want, across every AWS region. If you've worked with AWS, you probably know Cloud...

Based on lyrics of  Yours Truly, 2095  by Electric Light Orchestra (1981) 2025, 2025, 2025, 2025 I love you, sincerely Yours truly, yours truly I sent a message using just my mind But as the days unwind This I just can't believe I built a world inside a VR game Maybe my life's the same  But this I just can't conceive Can you see me? I ride inside the latest EV car I don't know where we are But it whisks me around the bend I met someone who sounds a lot like you She says the things you do But she is an LLM (2025, 2025, 2025, 2025 I love you, sincerely Yours truly, yours truly) She's built to answer anything I ask And she can multitask Her words always seem so wise She promises me I'm her superstar But when I go too far She spins a world of lies I parrot every phrase that she invents She wins all arguments And she doesn't break a sweat She always knows exactly where I am She aced the bar exam And her brain is the Internet Is this what you want? (Is it what you...

Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two Still beating this drum. People need to understand this dynamic because Trump and his followers either don't have that understanding, or are deflecting, when they blame it all on immigrants. John Oliver recently did a piece on automation -- also worth watching. Let me try and explain what I'm doing in my current job. I work for Amazon (standard disclaimer: I don't speak for them). Amazon used to make all its money from selling to customers, but now makes billions from AWS, Amazon Web Services. This is a tech company leasing its tech to other companies. What for? So those companies can do their own buying and selling online, and whatever else they do. It's safe to assume that part of what they're doing is automating their own processes. Netflix is a well-known AWS customer. If you're on  Netflix, go find Hasan Minhaj's excellent show Patriot Act . There's an episode about Amazon, in which--to turn the whole thi...