The search was terrible before the AI mode was introduced. Personally my take on the enshittification of search was that it was a thing long before Doctorow came on the scene, in the late 2000s I rubbed shoulders with grey-hat and darker SEO people and by 2010 or so the people doing affiliate marketing had mostly given up on spamming the SERPs and had become well-behaved buyers of AdWords.
has been relentless about how unfair it is so when I see people upset about how their precious posts are being hoovered up for ChatGPT I can only think “Jesse they are really slow on the draw, maybe ChatGPT would be better off not hovering that stuff up”
But to take that hat off, AI mode works on many queries that would never have worked with the old Google. If I am having a conversation with somebody in a language I barely know I can go back and forth to make very precise replies and ask it “why does it have … in it?” and get a good answer. If I remember there was a scientific paper that came to a certain conclusion I can describe the conclusion and… get it first thing. No way that would have worked with the old google, pubmed, arXiv search…
Of course, if Google didn’t come out with a useful search engine based on the new tech, somebody else would have.
Oh, yes... I didn't mean to imply that the newer "AI modes" aren't better and that we're somehow standing still. More that the differentiation is made much starker due to so-called "enshittification". Whether that contrast is deliberate or coincidental I'm not completely sure, but I'd wager it's the former.
The very best candidates don't want to think about your stuff at all, unless they're paid ahead of time, since they've already made tons of $$$. In effect, they're already getting paid by your competition or they themselves are your competition.
It's a great example of Akerlof's "market for lemons".
The "satisficing" solution IMHO is to take [calculated] risk on available consultants/contractors and keep the better ones on retainer [to hire]. Yes, in a sense, I'm suggesting you pay [more] to interview people. That way you stand a chance of beating the average.
Finding the "best value" in a candidate is a trap... you only need good enough.
If the sender eventually proves to be a freeloader, they get added to an auto-respond list. I hope to enhance the auto responder with AI soon but for now it just tells them I'm busy and to bugger off. You never miss anything that important.
That's a fair point, although I'd just cross them out and write a clean version afterwards. Writing with pen is faster and easier than anything else, I have found that out. I can easily draw schemes and charts at any place, any page. It's just a lot easier than using a computer -- unless I'm using a pad and write on it.
I'm presently writing on a Surface 3 w/ x7-Z8700 atom that's running Ubuntu Noble and vanilla 6.8 kernel. They're about $50. Everything works rather well (including gfx/audio/sleep/hibernate), except the camera, which I haven't bothered with. I'm quite happy w/ it tbh.
One thing to note w/ this model is you'll need the OEM keyboard to install linux since there's only one usb port; which will be required by the install media. Once you've installed though you can use any bluetooth or usb keyboard you want. Another thing is any micro-usb charger should work but I wouldn't rely on just 1amp, go w/ a 3amp.
I'll also "Ssh + GNU Screen + emacs" occasionally on my phone and I'll be honest... it's way better to throw a bt/mini keyboard in the mix.
After that you can have a mostly normal desktop experience w/ the addition of a tablet. How long can a person stare at a screen that's only six inches?
So, ultimately I'd suggest using a tablet and [mini]keyboard with the phone as a hotspot instead; unless you're a die-hard masochist. Of course it's a slippery slope and a full laptop might be ideal for most users.
Phone displays are just too small.
> I've been wanting to build something in this space.
Interesting, what got you interested in having a mobile setup btw?
> Did you have something specific in mind?
I'm still brainstorming on this topic, would love any ideas. But one habit I am noticing amongst my friends and I is assigning a task to an agent, then moving onto the next task while the agent works on the previous one (this can be in codex, claude etc). All of this doesn't need to be on the laptop, infact it could be done through whatsapp or telegram. Let's say I have an ongoing chat with the agent, me giving instructions, getting a diff, reviewing and then hit to commit. Would be useful when I am away from my desk.
Another thing could be an information assistant, to keep me in the loop with what my agents are upto by summarising their performance and current active tasks and letting me butt in when they're stuck somewhere.
> what got you interested in having a mobile setup
Over time the need to quickly address administrative and operational issues while on the road converged with marathon coding sessions. So, I'd say it was organic and more "evolutionary" than "revolutionary". More often than not, I think advances tend to happen in that fashion.
Perhaps that's something to consider while you brainstorm. IOW, it may be good to compromise between a more grandiose vision and a mundane, but tangible delivery... then iterate.
Is this hedging bets a little? Sure, but I've grown into a somewhat risk averse developer so I like playing "small ball". Whether or not that's the best approach, I can't say.
I've had some fun conversations failing to explain why someone needed to try a multi monitor setup. It seems one could just get used to small screen. I normally use a redmagic phone. Today I had to test a website on an older iphone and got some claustrophobia vibes from it. No idea how I've ever used it.
I did some experiments with this https://synesthesia.go-here.nl but was to lazy to sufficiently learn it. I never got around to writing a code viewer.
She can play along on the computer by installing mit-scheme (http://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/) and placing the snippet below into ~/.scheme.init
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