Sam's L33t Journal

Workation in Baltimore was extended due to weather and it was great. Really, really great. Very nice to get extra time with Melissa and Elliott and Simon, wound up taking the slow trip home by train all day on Tuesday so Erica could be back for school on Wednesday (Monday and Tuesday were snow days anyways). Erica wasn't thrilled about the prospect of such a long train ride but then it was fine, she did some craft projects and watched Lu Over the Wall again (we watched it together for the first time on that trip in Cleveland) and the time passed pretty quick. I even managed to get in a productive day of work from the train, despite the flaky wifi.

The storm wasn't as snowy in Boston as the last, but slightly south of Boston got whacked. Providence got more snow than in the Blizzard of '78.

Since then, I continued to spend the rest of the week wringing out concurrency bugs and the US government managed to start another war. And the government is sanctioning AI chatbot company Anthropic for saying its contract doesn't permit the self-described "Department of War" to use the tech for mass surveillance and unsupervised killbots. (With OpenAI stepping into that vacuum, guess it's time to rewatch Slaughterbots and have nightmares.) Just the usual.

I've been thinking about AI a lot this week, in particular this hilarious take on OpenAI's approach to AI development, "If OpenAI Made Black Holes" and the AI 2027 scenario (including this very good video summary).

Still trying to make more of AI coding tools in my job. Those can be a real boost to productivity. These models aren't the best software engineers, a bit stumble-y, but they're very, very versatile, and they can write fast. It's impressive, and unsettling. As Cory Doctorow notes, It's not about whether AI can do your job per se.

Work's been chaotic, I'm moving on to fifth manager since 2022 since ours is changing teams. This was my first time reporting to someone less senior than myself in terms of span on company, team, and career, but two of my previous three managers have been less senior in some of those metrics. I'm a little fish in a big pond, struggling, even thinking this means I'm not cut out for it.

I've started playing Patrick's Parabox a mind-bending block-pushing puzzle game. Great so far. Reminds me of Baba is You, in that it's a block-pushing puzzle game with a twist: In Baba is You the rules of the game are also blocks, in Patrick's Parabox the rooms of the puzzle are blocks.

It's been a week of very busy work. I've been digging some of the new AI coding tools, and man the stuff is pretty mind-blowing. My work this week involved grinding through a lot of complex refactoring, and it sure helped with the boilerplate.

What else: My trip with Erica back to Boston last weekend was very uneventful, compared to the way out. Perfectly smooth.

I tried to get in some cookbook cooking during the week. Last Sunday, I cooked Ana Sortun's recipe for tuna and fennel sarikopites (a phyllo-wrapped stuffed pastry, wound into a spiral shape) from her cookbook, Spice: Flavors of the Eastern Mediterranean. Sortun describes first cooking this in the kitchen of Sari Abul-Jubein's restaurant, Casablanca. The owner was tickled to have a dish on the menu corresponding to his name. (I was curious what Abul-Jubein has been up to since Casablanca closed in 2012. Apparently he only managed a few years of retirement before going back to work as a real estate agent for another decade. Some people are bad at retiring.) Anyways, the sarikopites turned out great, and Erica really enjoyed working on it.

This weekend, Erica's selection of cooking project was challah, a recipe from Melissa Clark's Kid in the Kitchen.

It's been a quiet two weeks without Erica away with grandparents, and now I have the place to myself a bit while Julie goes to pick Erica up and spend a long weekend hanging out with her family. So I have a moment to write and too much to note.

The news is all bad news, it seems.

Some crazy person took a shot at Trump (apparently a right-wing kid with the seeming motive of "wants to assassinate someone and it might not matter much who"), which is the sort of thing that inevitably makes a bad situation worse. I mean, it could have been even worse; little comfort for the loved ones of the bystander murdered in cold blood for absolutely no reason.

Judge Aileen Cannon took Justice Thomas's unsolicited advisory ruling in the Trump immunity case and ran with it, tossing the whole "Trump walked off with boxes and boxes of top secret documents and refused to return them" case on the basis of "special prosecutor, what's that, clearly not a thing". That will get overturned on appeal, but it's more delay.

The media has been fawning all over the Party of Trump's presentation of "unity" at their convention (the first in-person after Trump's utter takeover of the party was complete), without any context of how they're unifying: e.g. Haley utterly falling in line as a Trump loyalist, nothing material having changed about her view of Trump's utter unfitness for office and general moral turpitude, nothing motivating the change of heart except the exigencies of defeat. Trump picking J. "Trump is America's Hitler" D. Vance as his running mate. Vance once called out Trump as a con man, now he wants in on the con. (I called the Vance nom before it was official, the rest of the short list was too normal. "Normal" being very relative in this case. Trump doesn't mind taking someone who formerly had harsh words for him in that way, he likes to be magnanimous. He likes them debased.)

(Vance is a dangerous guy, too. He explicitly said he would have, if in Pence's shoes, which he's attempting to step into (why does this Trump guy need a new VP again?), just gone ahead and thrown out the votes of for starters everyone in Pennsylvania, plunging the US into (no exaggeration) the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War. He also advised Trump during his first term to fire vast swaths of civil servants and replace them with toadies, and to defy SCOTUS when it told him that was unlawful. Of course, that's now officially on the Trump "Project 2025" agenda and the "defying SCOTUS" part is a bit of a moot point because they've now explicitly said they're okay with it.)

Or what they're unifying behind: Literally holding up "Mass Deportation Now" signs, among other things. These are unimaginative people, but it's terrifying to imagine with any accuracy what the implementation of that plan would actually be like, or what would likely follow.

(Well, it was all fawning until Trump's speech, lol. Though he still got glowing reviews from some media outlets who apparently fell asleep for the second half. Like much of the audience.)

Meanwhile, the punditry is still salivating for a trip back to '68 on the Democrat side, which I maintain is still an insane reaction to "President is old and like 2% behind in the polls". Okay, maybe Biden will step down, and never bet against Pelosi, and Biden got COVID again (which I don't think is like "oh he got sick he's going to drop out" but it certainly could turn into something). Still, as the incumbent President and the person who won the primary, who can force Biden out? Will it really be a Party coup against the incumbent President by his own delegates? Sounds insane. Some of this is my anti-contrarian streak, "nothing ever happens", all this "who will be the nominee?" hand-wringing seems very late after the primary election. "How can Biden stay on after this, it's logically impossible!" The "Biden is nominee" betting market odds have bounced back up to 30% from a low of sub 20% as of now but that still seems insanely low to me. (Of course, maybe he'll drop tomorrow and I'll have to eat so much crow I'll be shitting feathers for weeks!)

That was all this week!

And then today like every Windows computer in the world crashed, bringing all the airlines etc. to their knees. That was also a thing.

I haven't posted in so long. I've been tired. Julie's been very busy. What else is new.

A concrete wall around my condo complex is crumbling, and it's gotten to the point where one of the fences on top of the wall has collapsed. So some of my time has been spent embarking on the organization of another major renovation project.

Generative AI stuff has me feeling the most like I'm not keeping up with technological developments that I've felt in my career. Feel like I'm in the wrong subfield. So often feel like I don't have the energy to learn things. At least I am excited to use the stuff. A whole lot of UI stuff is going to get real interesting over the next five years. And as a maintenance coder, I'm sure there will be a lot of incomprehensible stuff for me to debug for at least a few years.

This week, I'm visiting my parents and working from Cleveland over Erica's school break, while she gets some grandparent time.

I have had a little time to play some games. Did a playthrough of Omori, a little indie RPG that might be described as "Earthbound-esque surrealism crossed with devastating childhood trauma". It is quite a game, despite some flaws, and one where any spoilers really do mar the experience. I also played One Shot, a top-down puzzle game with some clever puzzles, a pretty fun bite-sized game. Most recently, started playing Citizen Sleeper, a text-heavy cyberpunk RPG that's really drawn me in.

After the short week where we got back from vacation, had a week where Julie was away for conference travel, MIT Mystery Hunt, and another week another conference for Julie. So I've been busy and not getting to write.

Mystery Hunt was pretty fun, though it ran long. But there were a lot of innovative twists and overall the structure was interesting. More detail later when the solutions are published, if I remember.

Julie's birthday was mid-Hunt, so we (all of us, including Erica this time) went out for dinner afterwards to celebrate, Monday evening at Puritan & Company in Inman. The restaurant was basically empty on that drizzly Monday evening, but the meal was amazing. Erica split the steak with me (I love it when she's willing to try something from the full menu instead of getting a plain pasta or similar upscale kid's meal fare), we had apple Paris-Brest for dessert. As a dessert drink, I got the bar to make me a Coffee's for Closers, a Fred Yarm creation which I'd been really wanting to try but hadn't gotten to previously. (Seemed a bit unusual to order off-menu just anywhere, though it is three-equal-parts-ish, where the -ish is an additional egg.) Was as amazing as I'd hoped, and my hopes were very high.

I've done a ton of organizational work in the house with Erica's assistance over the past few weeks. Installed more storage closets in the garage, replaced the pressed-into-service-as-toy-bins Pack 'n Play crib and playpen with more compact toy-bin shelves. Sent off several boxes of hand-me-down baby toys and books to my baby nephew, Simon. The Pack 'n Plays were gifted to our new-ish (new, but we got even newer neighbors on the other side just recently) neighbors who have an even newer baby (born shortly after the turn of the year). I recall from Erica's tiny years that having a few extra good places to put the kid down was really convenient, pretty sure at some points we were running three crib equivalents in a two-bedroom condo. So I'm happy to see those put to good use.

The weather this week has been mild. Last evening I was loosening my jacket. Felt like the wrong season except for the bit where it was pitch black at five. Overnight things cooled a bit and we got a scattering of precipitation (various types) and the morning was several flavors of damp. Large fluffy flurries descended leisurely later in the day, without much sticking.

Google announced (and implemented) layoffs today. Not great. I'm still employed, at least.

I celebrated Hanukkah at home for the first time in my adult life this week, since Erica (ever interested in any holiday she can get her hands on) was real insistent.

Heading off to visit the in-laws for Christmas break this weekend. Erica had a half-day yesterday, so I got a little time to myself. Wrote a post on ChatGPT and AI safety for my essay blog. (I also got the syndicated feed for that (complexmeme_feed) updated so that's working again, it had been broken by the site migration.)

Last evening, went out with Julie to see a production of Life of Pi at ART. First time I've been to a play for quite a number of years. Was a great adaptation, the staging was amazing, really great acting and in-plain-sight puppetry and several dramatic uses of practical effects that were really emotionally striking. Magical.

Julie is looking after Erica today, so I'll try to get a jump on tidying and packing. I also got a long-overdue haircut.

Also, still following the Elon Musk / Twitter / Tesla saga, which continues to be absolutely insane. Tesla stock is down 30% in that last month, 65% in the last year. With plenty of room to go: its P/E still runs way ahead of other companies in its industry, whether you construe that as automotive or tech. Using something so optimistically priced as collateral on a leveraged buyout has its hazards, and acting like a maniac immediately after seems unwise. This thread (via solarbird) describing an investor call is absolutely insane.

Looking forward to break. Hopefully travel will not be too impacted by the crazy weather.

I'm tired. Tomorrow we're going to Cleveland before Thanksgiving, assuming nothing last-minute derails our plan.

Last weekend I took kid to the ICA, which was fun. They have a youth membership now, where one adult gets in free.

It's been a quiet week at work with many people out. And I took off today because Erica has a half-day before Thanksgiving break.

I've joined the Better Boston Mastodon. Will see if that turns out to be fun. I don't know if more or less of a focus on a specific community-of-interest makes for a better Mastodon server (for me in particular or in general).

Twitter chaos continues. Not that the site will necessarily fall over immediately, but it sounds like the company is very much in trouble revenue-wise and it's hard for me to imagine just how bad the effect of ~75% attrition would be at a company doing large-scale software infrastructure. And this is with the context of just how bad much smaller levels of churn can be for complex software projects. It's possible that Musk is a good front-man (or maybe "con-"), but the sort of rocket-engine-like CEO where there needs to be a layer of middle-management bureaucracy very focused on directing that energy and shielding the rest of the company. And, in some cases, misdirecting the CEO into thinking that's not what's going on. Musk's Twitter doesn't have that, obviously.

Much other news remains terrible. I'm sure I had some coherent thoughts at some point.

The essays in the first edition of Asterisk are very interesting. Scott Alexander of Astral Codex Ten (and formerly Slate Star Codex) fame did one on the science and psychology of wine expertise. But I was most interested by this article on the history of nuclear (de)escalation.

Almost as long as I've been carrying an audio-player everywhere, I've been equipping myself with a pair of Sony MDR-J10 earbuds. I first bought those because they were some of the cheapest earbuds I could pick up at (soon-to-be the late) Radio Shack. But I've kept buying them because they're some of the most comfortable earbuds I've tried.

Most of the earbuds I've encountered have an earplug-like cylindrical or hemispherical design which places the speaker on a circular face covering the opening of the ear canal. The MDR-J10s, on the other hand, has a "half-moon" speaker design: The hemispherical earbud sits with its flat face perpendicular to the opening of the ear, and the speaker is on the half of that face that sits within the ear canal. While this is obviously worse in terms of sound isolation, I like earbuds that interfere less with my ability to hear ambient audio, in particular because this allows me to better pursue my favorite hobby: Not getting run over.

The over-ear clips are also great. They conveniently hook to a shirt collar or pocket when not in use, and I find the curved, flexible design more comfortable than alternate designs that feature elastics or hinged joints.

The only downside is the low durability. And given relative ease of breaking (or losing) even more-durable earbuds, I'd rather have a bunch of cheap earbuds than fewer more-durable ones.

The problem is, these were evidently never a commercial success. Sony no longer makes them or anything with that form-factor. The very length of time I was able to purchase these earbuds deadstock (still packed in tiny ziplocks, never made it to retail packaging) after they were no longer available at retail attests to that. But the last time I went to purchase more, my previous supplier was out, and I had to resort to buying a bunch from some eBay-er shipping from China. Eventually, I just won't be able to find these at a reasonable price.

So I guess I'm keeping an ear out for alternative headphone suggestions. If there's in fact a clone of that design I've missed, that's ideal, but I'm on the lookout for anything that's comfortable to wear basically all the time, has reasonable sound quality, and keeps exterior audio unobstructed enough that I can hear an oncoming bus.