That’s an improvement.

If you believe ChatGPT isn’t already subtly trying to sell you something someone paid OpenAI to plug, I have a bridge to sell you.

OpenAI is earning peanuts and trying to sugar-coat it, sure. But the crucial thing is how much they’re willing to enshittify their service to achieve that minuscule income compared to their insane investments.

OpenAI’s enshittification is proceeding apace.

My company is approaching AI like it’s been approaching anything for the past 40 years: with extreme caution. It’s coming alright, but the engineers are carefully evaluating it for coding, and it certainly isn’t being rolled out recklessly.

I’m one of several die-hards who flat-out refuse to use it - not so much because it’s AI, but because it’s provided by an American company - and my choice is respected. Our CEO sees old-timers like me as the fallback is AI ends up shitting the company’s bed.

It’s not hoarding as long as it doesn’t impair your ability to lead a normal life in a livable home. Beyond that, to each their hobbies.

…now

You have to be very patient and have an awful lot of storage space - and bet that the junk you’re storing will be worth something some day - to even bother keeping crappy stuff in any large quantity to turn a profit in the future when the stuff is still crappy and not worth a damn now.

The reason 386s are getting rare is because nobody in their right mind made that bet when they were still around and completely deprecated.

The only person I met who made a similar bet and won big money was a Brit who bought 6 Jaguar E-Types sight-unseen when they came out, and put them in storage for 30 years (prepared professionally for long-term storage too). When those cars came on the market, brand new with zero miles on the clock, they sold for millions, the guy bought a nice house in Hampshire and retired in comfort.

He told me he just knew that model would be a highly desirable classic the minute he saw a picture, and almost bankrupted his family to buy them as an investment. Ballsy.

My Mom had a saying when I was young(er): vintage is all the crap we couldn’t wait to get rid of and couldn’t throw away fast enough.

Decades later, I totally get what she was saying: 30 year old PCs are utter crap in my eyes. Good riddance. Who wants to restore that junk: it was cheap-ass commodity hardware at that point. A PDP11 on the other hand… 🙂

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure I guess. I can’t count the number of PCs I brought to the recycler simply because I literally would have had to pay someone to take them back in the days. I wish I had kept them to sell to today’s enthusiasts and get back some of the insane money that stuff sold for when it was new.

the Strait of Hormuz. It’s all they ever harp on about.

It’s called the Strait of Epstein Distraction now.

Fascinating to watch the strategist in chief play three-dementia chess…

That’s why I said poor Canadians. What have they done to deserve this?

Don’t forget Canada, Trump threatened to make Canada 51st state of USA.

I hate to say it for the poor Canadians, but that would make the US 1.97% less shit.

Sigh…

I have a great job, I’m reaching the end of a successful career and I’m very happy with the choices I’ve made in my professional life.

But my job is NOT important and I’m not proud of it. I’m only proud of having the honesty to do what I’m paid to do well. Beyond that, my job is a means to an end: supporting my loved ones. They are what’s important. Nobody goes to their grave reflecting on what they did for a living.