progressdeveloper

My empathy for how hard it must be, and general appreciation of, government is probably 100x what it was 10 years ago. Similarly but less so, I'm way, way, way more open to unions than I used to be, albeit, I still hate them a lot of the time. That said, I really think Canada Post is a great example of the case against both. I don't think many private companies would have survived 7 straight years of losses, all taxpayer-subsidized, in support of an industry whose usefulness is so obviously in the distant past. I almost feel sorry for the CPC workers - I'm sure they are nice people who genuinely think they work pretty hard, and contribute something. I'd have no problem if we were to fire 100% of them, but we should help them transition into something useful.

Reddit Programming is one of the Reddits that I read almost every day (the others: Vancouver, TIL, and Shower Thoughts). I really like this post from today: Software Essays Two of these resonated: 1. How screwed would I be if my house were to burn to the ground with everything I own in it? This is about things like passwords and MFA's, not dogs and kids. I would be 100% OK with passwords because I have those backed up to the cloud (with client-side encryption, duh), but my only MFA backup is my iPad, which presumably I also lost. I am pretty sure I could get access to my bank accounts without MFA by going to a branch, but, if all my ID had been torched, that would be a process, for sure. I might have big trouble with things like AWS and Github, though. 2. This is nerdy but the second essay in there is, basically, saying that you should use purpose-specific types for everything. This is assuming a statically typed language which, IMO, only a sane person would not use, at least in th...

 We went to the Downton Abbey finale ($100 says it's not the last one, by the way): I absolutely loved the DA series and absolutely hated the DA movies prior to this one. So I went with low expectations other than the possibility of a nice nap. In the event, it was not bad at all - orders of magnitude better than its predecessors. The plots were pretty lame, but the acting was good and the characters are just so completely appealing ... it would be hard to me to pick a favorite. Lady Mary is just unbelievably hot. Carson is totally lovable. The Bates are too. Really, they all are. Even Thomas redeemed himself! If (and only if) you like DA, 7/10 would recommend.

The more time passes the more I wonder if China might actually have it all figured out and be, on balance, the better system. They are certainly poised to dominate the world and I have little doubt that 50 years from now, people will think about China the way we used to think about the US, and, the US the way we now think about the UK. That said,  I find this sort of thing dismaying. I think this is one subject, maybe the only!, on which myself and my siblings are in total agreement. Guy in question had apparently took bribes in the $35 million range. Well, it doesn't really matter. He could have torched a nursery full of babies and I would still not vote for the death penalty.

This was the title of one of the best podcasts I have ever listened to, in the sense of, leaving me thinking about it afterwards. The presenter was Abby Bertics, who was the Economist science correspondent - she quit (WTF?!?) to pursue a PhD (oh, OK). She presented herself as somewhat of an AI skeptic, interviewing AI (in the context of education) enthusiasts. As usual, I didn't "learn anything new" per se, but she did have a few observations: 1. AI can be extremely useful to make people who are already experts in a field much more productive. The problem is, to become an expert, you have to do the hard work, and there exists a great temptation to avoid that hard work entirely. 2. Universities serve two purposes: to train people for careers, and, to indulge people who want to improve themselves for its own sake. (Also, research). Most people are probably in the former category and don't really care if AI is ultimately harmful, they just want the piecer of paper. In ot...

Met my Chilean friend for the third time on Saturday, for a coffee. He is here for 6-12 months. I am a bit sad to report that he is not very impressed with Vancouver. The natural beauty, for sure, but he's disappointed with the number of drug addicts and homeless. Maybe this is awful of me, but I don't see it as a problem in the sense of my daily life. Obviously, these situations exist, obviously we should have sympathy and support efforts to change it, but to me they are very limited to maybe two very small areas (the DTES and Whalley), which are easily avoided. I can't remember the last time I saw someone in this situation with my own eyes. It was probably walking around downtown Toronto earlier this year - there, it seems more common, albeit, overall, I think of Toronto as a much nicer city than Vancouver (except for the natural surroundings, obviously). He also commented that the streets and buildings felt a bit dirty and ill-maintained, in comparison with Sydney and Pe...

I'm not a big fan of Twitter (not against it, just don't really care) but I am a huge fan of Idrees Kahloon, whose Twitter I stumbled across. Here is a shocking GIF he posted back in 2021. https://x.com/i/status/1225884047647412225 It might take a moment to understand it. It is showing the change in the number of college educated Americans from 1970 through 2018. Overall, the % of Americans with a bachelor's degree increased from 10.6% to 31.5%. The red indicates the areas where the % is below this national average.They are better educated, on average, but they are less well educated than the increasing small pockets of green.

There was an ominous sounding story circulating about how Trump's Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, has summoned all of his generals to Washington - apparently this is very unusual. I guess it could mean they are about to launch a major new war, but more likely it's some culture wars thing. Maybe they are going to kick all Democrats out of the military. Anyway, I got to wondering. You, like me, may have thought that there are a handful of generals (in the US military). It turns out, there are over 800. Almost all of them report to a dozen or so "four star generals", the number of which is specified per branch (eg. the army has X, the navy has Y) and in some hard to change way. These generals report to someone like Hegseth or similar bureaucrat / cabinet position, etc. Some report directly to DJT himself.

Warning - squirm inducing content ahead! Facebook recently started sending me tons of ads that are variations on this one: I was wondering how long it would take for the "adult entertainment complex" to get into AI, now we know. For the record: 1. No, I didn't, and I won't. I have no doubt it's top-notch quality, though. 2. I have no idea why Facebook thinks this is the ad for me (and it's sending me LOTS). I guess I am in the right demographic (male). 3. This is normal Facebook, not some adult version. This raises the ultra-uncomfortable question of whether "adult AI" does/would/will offer "scenarios" that would otherwise be illegal; and whether they actually are illegal, if they exist solely inside an AI. I am tempted to go read the criminal code. Anyway, let's hope so. I also got an ad (I couldn't find it again) for a service that accepts a simple photo of "anybody" and generates an AI version of that person naked. I do...

I'm back in Vancouver now and way behind on blogging. TBH, with this change in blogging platform, I have been debating giving it up. But for now I will stick with it, even though my # of readers is literally zero, and at best might return to 3 or 4. TBH, I don't hugely care about that. I mostly look at this as a sort of personal public journal. I like looking back on my old blog from time to time and remember what I was thinking about so many years ago. Anyway, how was Haida Gwaii? In short: pretty good. The reason for the trip was a 4 day zodiac (open boat) tour of Gwaii Haanas, the national park that occupies about the southern half of Moresby Island, which is itself the southern half of Haida Gwaii, roughly speaking. I would recommend this tour ... to a certain type of person. There was a LOT of zodiac time, much of which in driving rain and huge waves. Much of it was less an experience to be enjoyed than something to feeling a bit proud of having survived. There was much, m...

Up and out by 8:15, drove to Masset to meet Christian White, a "master carver". Started out a bit rocky, he appeared to have forgotten our meeting (at his workshop) and seemed quite shy and unenthused. But he warmed up and was actually quite interesting and friendly. He sang a Haida song (which he called a "chant") just before we left and while normally I dislike that kind of thing, I found it actually just a little bit touching ... Then a quick snack (fish tacos) at what seemed to be the one and only open food place in Masset (almost everything except the Coop seems to be closed - in many cases, long since), then to Tow Hill, where we spent at least 2 hours hiking around, very pleasant. A quick stop at Port Clements to see the Golden Spruce "memorial", and we're back at our lovely AirBnb. David is making dinner again, which is great! I like David a lot.

 Touchdown in YZP, quick shopping trip in a small Super Valu adjacent to YZP, 20 minute ferry ride (we were 2nd last car on - ferry is tiny and only runs 1x/hour). AirBnb is about 30 seconds drive from Skidegate ferry and is super nice. 3 BR and I think just 1 bath. Huge kitchen. Great view. I think we will be very comfortable. David H is, as expected, unbelievably pleasant and quite fun, but on top of that, seems to know about all sorts of topics that I barely know about and interest me to a greater or lesser extent. How UK's time in India ended. India v Pakistan. Supreme Court in the UK. Whether judges should be elected. He has lived in Africa. He also is super into art as both an observer and a creator. I think the trip will be at least quite good based solely on his involvement!

Here I am at YVR Gate C32, waiting for our flight to Sandspit. We're spending 9 nights (7 on HG, one on a ferry, and one in Port Hardy); we being my oldest sister Janet, and a family friend, David (yet another David! Good grief). As you might recall, I went to HG with ex-work-David in May or so of last year. On that trip we were only on the north (Graham) island. I wasn't able to accompany ex-work-David on his zodiac tour of the south (Moresby) island, where, apparently, resides all the "indigenous stuff". (The north island is pleasant but not all that different from "our" gulf islands, at least in my opinion). So I'm going back to fill in the gap of my HG experience with the south island. I'm not hugely interested in Haida art (I think David is, and Janet for sure is), but I'm somewhat interested in FN topics and trying to do my bit to improve my knowledge / empathy towards "them".

Well, I have my doubts that ANYBODY will read this, but here I am: my old blog at progressdeveloper.wordpress.com has become "read only" for reasons that are beyond my control and that I will not bore you with. I might try to scrape it all and stick it somewhere else, but I doubt it. I will probably just let it live in the never-never land of 99.999999% useless information content until someone at Wordpress decides to retire it. (OK, I will bore you just a little. No, I did not lose the password. But they won't let me in anymore because I don't have access to it's registered email address anymore. I am annoyed at Wordpress, enough to try this platform instead [it's part of Google], but not enough to rant about it. These things happen).