Agentic AI without understanding what it's doing is like owning a warehouse but knowing nothing about manufacturing. Or, managing people but never actually meeting with them. You can use it to generate stuff, but you need to go back and understand in detail what it did and how it works.
Trump is like your father who overreacts to everything but changes his mind when he calms down. "You're grounded for a year!". 1 hour later. "Ok, you're not grounded. But you can't go out with your friend this weekend".
I'm sure there's a more formal distinction. But I've noticed younger developers don't call themselves programmers anymore. Computer programmer was always the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" job title for kids into computers and coding, but that's changed.
Every time I'm forced to use Teams it's a chore. I was trying to find a way to set a virtual background or change camera settings, and it looks like it's only available right before you join a meeting. It's wild.
To be fair, their status page reported problems super early. It might even be automated. Usually you have to search Twitter for accurate information on outages.
System design interviews encourage this. Not everything needs to be infinitely scalable. I've whittled down more than a few things to static webpages generated using a cron job.
The one I see the most is "cargo cult Agile", where teams adopt practices like sprints and story points without truly understanding the values behind Agile. This often happens when people mimic what they’ve seen on other projects without fully grasping the concepts, leading to a cycle of misinterpretation. Frameworks like SAFe and even Scrum can exacerbate this by encouraging a focus on rituals over figuring things out, working together, and getting things done. As a result, organizations become bogged down by bureaucracy, excessive planning, and topdown control, all while claiming to be * Agile *. True Agile emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and continuous improvement, not just following rituals.
The voices are excellent, but the app needs work. It lost my place in a book a few times, so I switched back to VoiceDream (don't use VoiceDream, it stinks unless you're a legacy purchaser).
It's kind of like the export controls over strong encryption that we dealt with in the 90s. There used to be separate binaries for Netscape or Mozilla back in the day.
The TikTok ban is worse for national security. It's trading in an imagined threat for a real threat. Though Xiaohongshu is having a cute little cultural exchange between Chinese people and Americans, there's so much more Chinese propaganda on that platform. I got recommended a few videos talking about Chinese/American wargames and how Americans were done for due to ultrasonic missiles and naval capabilities. You never see anything like that on TikTok. And the only reason Americans are exploring that platform is because of the TikTok ban.
People don't fully understand what is at risk of being lost here. Science, history, and technology tutorials, practical life skills like cooking, budgeting, mental health, chronic illness, trauma recovery, creative expression, small businesses, home repair, friend groups, communities, and many people who make their living on TikTok. Losing TikTok means losing a massive ecosystem and all of its connections, knowledge, and content. It's like a library of books vanishing, or a large city disappearing off of a map.
ElevenLabs Reader is the same thing, but much higher quality voices for free. I've lost my place a few times so it's not quite as reliable as VoiceDream. But you aren't paying an expensive subscription with mediocre voices.
"I would literally write my social security number on a sticky note and stick it to Xi Jinping's forehead than go back to using Instagram Reels"
I saw this yesterday and it's hilarious but this is the feeling right now. TikTok has such a culture of authenticity and realness and Instagram is so phony and overly perfect (not to mention ads and so many bots and spam). It's like shutting down Reddit and telling everyone to go to LinkedIn.
I searched for "WWE CEO" and it came up with Vince McMahon. He hasn't been CEO since 2022. Nick Khan was CEO for a couple years after Vince left, and Nick Khan now serves as president of the WWE under TKO ownership. Google returns the proper information.
Obviously this was a bad idea implemented poorly. They never thought about the "why" for any of this. There's real value in fictional chatbots (Character AI) though. With Character AI, you can role play and have outlandish conversations that you might never have with a real person. There's even apps like SocialAI where every profile is AI so you can experience going viral and social media stardom without sacrificing your privacy (at least on paper). But a fictional Facebook profile? Just to like and leave comments? That's nothing you can't do already.
It's very cool, but we've gotten too many of these big bold announcements with no payoff. All it takes is a very limited demo and we'd be much happier.
Another perplexing decision. It reminds me of when Bush won his second term. In retrospect, nobody today thinks that was a good move. But you'd be surprised how many people vote for Trump because they want to save money on taxes and think republican policies will help the economy.