I recently had a mind blowing experience recently building an app with Claude for someone that suffers with autism. Their basic complaint was "I can't work with most software. I think in colors". So I built them an PWA browser-based app designed specifically for the way they think, launched and updated via Github pages, with all data stored locally on their laptop.

Then I did something similar for my son, giving him a targeted job search app specific to his Gen-Z brain responds to, again launched off Github pages as a PWA, but this time with WebRTC to allow iPhone to laptop data syncing.

And along the way I realised there's probably whole host of people for whom software has never really worked. And I can built them things on a highly personalized basis that have only minimal reliance on cloud-based services.

And then I went a bit crazy and created a manifesto which I've done nothing else with https://harryf.github.io/reclaim/ ;)

Wow. The book we need should be titled something like "Of Software Teams and Cargo Cults"

"... a book had washed up on the shore... 'Extreme Ownership' ... soon the tribe was worshipping the book"

It happens over and over again in software history. I remember people running around panicking about TDD "But we only have 99.8% test coverage" until eventually it started to get shot down by "Show me the ROI on tests"

We are in the age of PWAs. I've created a few where I just host them on Github pages (no backend needed, no hosting costs).

And the P in PWA has become "Personal" ... vibe coding apps with no backend for non-developers for their _personal_ needs e.g. a create a job hunting app for my son specific to the types of jobs he's looking for. If I update it, it updates on his phone plus he can sync to his laptop via WebRTC.

Could go nicely with https://auge.franzai.com/ ( CLI on Apple Vision frameworks ) - do the first pass locally. If needed call their API for a more detailed analysis and then _finally_ we produce meaningful alt texts for images in HTML at a reasonable price ;)

Google: USD CHF … set graph to max … it’s right there but it’s a slooooow rot.

Swiss Franc is generally very stable so a good yard stick for other currencies over the long term

It’s not being driven by the UK. Check out all the other countries in the West rolling out Digital ID and it’s clearly coordinated just from the timing

We need to stop using AI as an umbrella term. It’s worth remembering that LLMs can’t play chess and that the best chess models like Leela Chess Zero use deep neutral networks.

Generative AI - which the world now believes is AI, is not the same as predictive / analytical AI.

It’s fairly easy to demonstrate this by getting ChatGPT to generate a new relatively complex spreadsheet then asking it to analyze and make changes to the same spreadsheet.

The problem we have now is uninformed people believing AI is the answer to everything… if not today then in the near future. Which makes it more of a religion than a technology.

Which may be the whole goal …

> Successful people create companies. More successful people create countries. The most successful people create religions.

— Sam Altman - https://blog.samaltman.com/successful-people

Ok yep, fair. My comment was about using copilot-ish tech to generate plausible looking spreadsheets.

The kind of things that a domain expert Brenda knows that ChatGPT doesn't know (yet) are like:

There are 3 vendors a, b, c who all look similar on paper but vendor c always tacks on weird extra charges that take a lot of angry phone calls to sort out.

By volume or weight it looks like you could get 100 boxes per truck but for industry specific reasons only 80 can legally be loaded.

Hyper specific details about real estate compliance in neighbouring areas that mean buildings that look similar on paper are in fact very different.

A good Brenda can understand the world around her as it actually is, she is a player in it and knows the "real" rules rather than operating from general understanding and what people have bothered to write down.

There needs to a financial equivalent to the Mythical Man Month.

There are plenty of things that play the role.

The problem is that people ignore them.

What I love about the words enshitification is it’s _almost_ autological. It takes a nice crisp on syllable word like “shit” and ruins it by adding 5 extra syllables. It just doesn’t worse over time, to be truly autological

It’s worth (re)watching the 1985 movie Brazil in particular the character of Harry Tuttle, hearing engineer https://youtu.be/VRfoIyx8KfU

Neither government or corporations are going to “save us” simply because sheer short termism and incompetence. But the seem incompetence will make the coming dystopia ridiculous

I do wonder if somewhere like China might be better off - they might not have muh freedumb, but their government seems keen to look after the majority and fund things that corporations wouldn't.

I believe that if the elites in China didn't need the populace, they would dispense with them.

You're probably right, human nature probably doesn't change with geography.