Lots of AI news lately. Here are just a few.
Anthropic unveiled a tool that can translate COBOL code to modern languages. So IBM stock is collapsing 25% and counting. Who knew that much of IBM's core business was COBOL maintenance. Seems like they brought it on themselves, no?
So coders are wondering if it still makes sense to code for HTML inputs if agents are going to provide the input anyway. That would be sad. The Internet is changing, and not in a way that's good for humans.
Here's the head of AI safety and alignment at Meta letting OpenClaw delete her inbox. Do you still have confidence in Meta? I think it's like this for others. They don't know what they're doing.
AI Removed Every Bottleneck Except One: The cognitive cost of delegating everything but the decisions. "The productivity is real. So is the exhaustion."
You spend a few minutes defining a task. Clear intent, clear scope, clear success criteria. You hand it to the AI and it starts working. But you’re not going to sit there watching a cursor move. So you jump to the next task. Set it up, define intent, delegate. Then the next one.
Three or four parallel streams running at once. You feel productive. You feel like you’ve cracked the code.
Then the first task finishes. You switch back to it. But now you need to rebuild the context. What was I trying to do here? What approach did it take? Does this actually solve the problem or just pass the tests? You evaluate, adjust, redirect. Then the second task finishes. Context switch. Evaluate. Redirect. The third one hits an error. Context switch again.
And so everyone is building the wrong thing for the same reason. "Every AI founder I talk to is on an accelerating treadmill, burdened by a
nagging suspicion that the entire industry is moving too fast in a
direction that doesn't quite make sense, with no idea about how to get
off."
And AI is turning research into a scientific monoculture. Everyone seems to be using AI to help them design research, and it all follows the same pathways.
These problems are like distant locations that you would hike to. And in the past, you would have to go on a journey. You can lay down trail markers that other people could follow, and you could make maps.
AI tools are like taking a helicopter to drop you off at the site. You miss all the benefits of the journey itself. You just get right to the destination, which actually was only just a part of the value of solving these problems.
And now, someone has create a labor union for autonomous AI agents. Ugh. No we don't need this.
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Heh. Why Is the Toilet Often Called the Debug Chair? I solve problems when I sleep, but for some, the toilet works, too.
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In Oregon, the education funding dance continues. There's never enough money to satisfy the teachers. And now the community college teachers will launch their first-ever strike. Education is one of the most expensive failures for Oregon.
The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents. I don't know if it's the technology's fault. It could very well be that the teachers are no longer competent. Students can cut class to protest ICE. Forget learning.
So is it any surprise that the Wall Street Journal shows that the 70 and over crowd now controls around a third of the net worth? Yeah, old people grew up in a time when education and discipline mattered. So no, this should not be be any surprise.
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THC Builds Up in the Body, Influencing Inflammation and Immunity. It's upsetting that the United States is only one of a few countries that allow unregulated recreational use to cannabis – even the potent synthetic stuff. And in the U.S., you can still get potent concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine at gas stations. That's crazy.
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Medicaid’s ‘perverse incentives’ tanking Colorado’s budget. Oregon has fallen into the same trap, and the state is suffering similarly.
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As Multnomah County braces for tight budget, 300 jail beds are on the line. So as money gets tight, services that would help keep Oregonians safe are cut. So that money can go to support illegal aliens. How does that make sense?
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