Such is the life of a pirate… morning is permanent and all good things will come to an end.

It’s always good to have alternatives and ensure you’re keeping up with them.

I’ve been using The Cursed Clock from Nine Inch Nails Ghosts: Locust album.

It starts out soft and low, but slowly builds.

I’ve been using this for years and it’s about as perfect of an alarm as I’ve ever found.

LLMs are okay at writing code, but not good at software architecture

This is very much the case. I have a local LLM that does a fairly good job of writing code for quick and easy apps that I might need - for instance, last week I wanted to create a simple floor plan of my house and couldn’t find exactly what I wanted online, so I had my machine create a web based app to do it. But, when I tried to use it to create a fairly large and complex text based adventure game when it reached a certain size my LLM just couldn’t handle it any longer. That project stalled for a bit until a couple of weeks ago when Fable 5 was released… as a test I pointed Fable at that code base and in about 45 minutes it had completed the entire game engine.

I really don’t like the idea of corporate owned LLMs, but I am very impressed with Fable and can’t wait until the Local LLM community is able to replicate its functionality.

It means that data centers will just find a way to have themselves classified as anything except for a data center… meanwhile anyone who happens to have more than 3 computers in their homes will have to pay extra on their electric bills.

To be fair, Google had the ability many years before ChatGPT was released to release a similar product but they purposefully didn’t, and instead they only used it internally. And then when OpenAI did their release Google was one of the voices calling for moderation. They released Bard because otherwise they were going to be left behind, and likely have lawsuits from investors.

Do you want to live in a country with a dictatorship like that? I don’t.

Uh, I’ve got some bad news for you …

I have my local LLM currently setup and it runs just as well as Sonnet 4.6 from a quality standpoint, and for performance it is slightly slower but it’s still faster than I can respond.

This is with a Strix Halo APU with 128GB unified memory using the latest Qwen3.6 models with llama.cpp.

My favorite Scrabble win was using ‘eBay’… before playing that word I looked at the instruction sheet and it specifically said that “words that begin with a capital” are not allowed. There were some sour grapes after that one.

This is how we play… and it has resulted in some VERY long games.

Once we had some friends over and their 8 year old son was playing with us. He almost won a few times, but his dad did everything in his power to keep him from winning. It was close to midnight before that game ended and it was the first time I considered changing the house rules.

“They are living, sentient beings, and if we have the ability to save them through a safe and humane solution, we have a responsibility to try.”

So I’m only going to offer to save half of them.

But seriously, I’m glad he’s able to help. I wish he could find a way to keep them where they are while also protecting the local environment because the story of these hippos is great and could be a nice tourism draw for Columbia, but even saving some from culling is a good thing.

I need to use this because I’m always awkward trying to figure out ways to get people to open up. I work with a couple of Asian guys at work, and one of the guys is VERY open about his background. I could write an essay on his life from age 13 to 60. The other guy is a complete mystery. I’ve worked closely with him for 3 years and I still have no idea about his background. A few years ago he told me he was taking two weeks off “to go back home” and I thought that this was my chance to find out more, I asked “where’s home?”. And he replied “L.A.”.

My dad died at 48… my older brother died at 47… as I approached 48 I had quite a bit of anxiety about it. Around age 40 I let my doctor know that I wanted to keep an eye on my heart (that’s what took them both out) and he said that he didn’t see anything wrong with me, but relented. The first thing we did was got a heart scan. It was a $50 imaging cost and even the woman doing the imaging said that she never sees anyone under the age 50 getting that scan, but they did it… and saw that my aorta was slightly enlarged. Then my doctor had me do a sleep study since I’m a snorer. Sure enough, sleep apnea. I got a cpap and both my wife and I are sleeping so much better now. I felt like I was doing everything right and then around the age 42 I started getting consistent heart palpitations. Even when laying down or resting. That’s when I started seeing a cardiologist. She put me on a beta blocker and that fixed the palpitations (or managed them because I’ll likely always be on these meds now). But my cardiologist says that I’m her favorite patient because I’m doing everything right (other than exercising)… with the meds, the scans and the cpap she said that I’m on top of it. And my last 2 scans have shown that my aorta is back to its normal size and I won’t need any other scans for a few years (likely when I reach 55). I turn 49 next month and as much as I was dreading turning 48, I’m really looking forward to 49 so I can put it all behind me and stop feeling like I have some barrier put up by my brother and dad that I have to get over.

Good luck to you over the next 2 years… I know that dread feeling and I wish I knew a way to get past it rather than just going through it, but make sure you’re seeing doctors and doing what you can to stay on top of your heath. That’s really the only thing you have control over.

In 1998 I worked for a local ISP and would occasionally work the late night shift by myself since we offered 24/7 phone support. It was a great job… go to work and spend hours surfing the internet at insanely fast speeds. One night a huge thunderstorm hit and the lights went out, my computer shut down and then about 3 seconds later it came back. The whole time I could still hear the server room humming along. I thought to myself “battery backups are amazing” and didn’t give it another thought. Until about 20 minutes later when that server room hum went silent. I was dumbstruck. My computer was still on. The lights were still on. But the whole internet for our region came through that room and it was no longer on. I had no idea what to do… I sat there for anywhere between 5 seconds to 10 minutes trying to figure out what my first step should be and then the phone rang. I answered it expecting an upset customer wanting to know why her Netscape wasn’t working, but instead it was my boss, the owner of the company. He never called in, and he sounded chipper and said that he just wanted to make sure everything was ok with the storm that had just come through. I stammered “Uh, so, you don’t know what’s going on?” He lived about 30 minutes away but he was in the office in 10 minutes and had about 150 feet of extension cords. We ran the extension cords over to the outlets that were powered by the building’s generator and got them hooked up to the server room to get it back online.

I’ve never experienced a worse silence in my life since.

Out of curiosity how would you see someone not fitting into typical gender roles as clashing with your religious beliefs?

And to clarify, this is an earnest question with no judgement attached. I’m just hoping to get a better understanding and not looking to change your opinion.

When my daughter was 7 she got really interested in graffiti and had tons of questions about it. She asked if there were any famous graffiti artists and I told her the names of some of the more prolific local artists, but of course told her all about Banksy.

I told her that she’s really lucky to live during a time when Banksy’s identity is unknown because at some point it will become known and the magic will be over.

That was 2 years ago, and I haven’t told her about this story yet because until Banksy confirms it, I don’t accept it. And because it makes me sad that the magic might be over.

We can unmask Banksy but just let the Panama Papers fade into obscurity.

We’ve effectively put sanctions on ourselves, amazing.

Isn’t Nova Scotia poorly located to be an efficient spaceport since it won’t get nearly the same boost from the Earth’s rotation as it would if it launched closer to the equator? I imagine that a Caribbean or South American country would gladly take $200 million to lease them a spaceport location.

I work for a company that makes lab and medical testing equipment, if you’ve had a medical emergency that required blood tests then odds are good our equipment was used. It feels good knowing that I work somewhere that has a positive impact on many people’s lives.

But, I’ve met our company president and he’s a complete piece of shit. I almost quit because the idea of making him even richer makes my stomach turn. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find someplace else that will pay me what I need to continue to support my family… so I look at the positive things that we do and try to forget the psycho.

Does Japan have any of that?

Not really. Their unions are actually designed to be part of the company rather than external for an entire industry. Since the delivery drivers appear to be contractors they aren’t considered eligible to join the union.