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Comment Re:As someone who has limited / little coding skil (Score 1) 76

every drop of the 500 or so pages of code its written for me

What does that even mean? What's a page of code? Are you printing it? I have no idea how many pages of code the software systems I've worked on are. We've talked about lines of code and number of files, symbols, functions. Pages? No.

Comment Guardrails (Score 1) 105

That opaque, non definitive word is rearing its ugly head again (used to hear it a lot in the 90s). Every AI concept at work, every time we are all giddy about MCP servers (ugh), but they must have the appropriate guardrails. Whatever, just define what the AI thing should and should not do. Guardrails: don't hallucinate!

Comment The modern search engine (Score 1) 53

I fully embrace the AI tools and use for whatever productivity I want to extract. But there is clearly a commoditization going on similar to the search wars of the past. There has to be something else to make it sticky. ChatGPT was the first AI app I added on my iPhone. I recently deleted it.

I retain Gemini, Perplexity and Duck.ai (for privacy). I use Kiro and Gemini at work as allowed AI. We can use CoPilot too. It went from "cool" to annoying and stop making lousy suggestions. ChatGPT is totally fine, but as TFA states, it has no moat, nothing makes it sticky.

At this point, I am willing to pay once a year for an AI to get deeper research. Gemini won this round with a solid promo. They are overlapping and will continue to outdo each other.

Comment Re:Will cover important fundamentals? (Score 1) 51

I've been doing this for 30 years (dev, etc.). This should be easy since it's just a basic requirement for a high school curriculum. Alright let's go!

1. What is encryption? How to protect yourself using it.
- Kind of vague. I could exchange public/private certs or a symmetric token. Not sure what the outcome of proficiency is expected here.
2. How to verify identity online, using technology such as PGP.
- Know of it, never used it or needed it
3. How to read and understand software licensing and privacy policies.
- Know of it, never used it or needed it
4. How to understand unsafe data handling practices.
- Good one
5. Why open standards matter. For instance, why you should use ODF instead of DOCX.
- No idea what ODF is and why it's important over DOCX which is Microsoft's doc format IIRC. I have used/shared a doc/docx in 10+ years.
6. How to pick privacy and digital liberty protecting software.
- No clue what this is
7. The dangers of subscription first licensing.
- No clue what this is
8. Backups, why, how, and why they're actually important.
- Good one
9. Domain separation, how to separate Work, Personal, Temp and other activities.
- Good one
10. OS selection. Yes, I really want kids to know you have to consider the OS you run.
- I use the same one as my work. Used to be Windows, now Mac OS past 10 years. My first OS was an obscure mainframe platform so didn't translate at home. I was probably still on DOS at that point.
11. Safe browsing, which goes into all user agent masking, IP masking, profiles, containers and all that lovely stuff.
- Good one sort of, though I don't go masking user agent and IP but it's good to understand what it means
12. The importance of system cleanup, why you need to clear browsers every day, run tools like BleachBit, etc...
- What the hell is BleachBit? It's good to understand things like browser history and other tracking though.

Comment Re:Keeping up with the jones (Score 1) 52

I theoretically live in an excellent school district and I view my friends with means that leave their kids in public school as borderline abusers

That doesn't sound like an excellent school district. What makes it excellent if you see it that way? I live in a medium cost of living area of about 1 million people. My kids went to public high school and most everyone in their sphere was competing for getting into top UC (California) system colleges and elite adjacent private universities. They had a great public school experience.

Comment Could be useful (Score 1) 38

I see comments about "what's the point, Gmail or Exchange already do this." I agree if you're looking at it in a rigid free/busy context.

Where AI could help is making fuzzier suggestions especially if I could make my blocked times more contextual. For example there are standing meetings that I will attend if I'm free like a monthly Java knowledge sharing session. There is the Maybe option, but doesn't seem to help with finding time to meet with others.

If I could rank/classify meetings, that might help and AI is good at sifting through that kind of stuff. Some of my meetings I might give high, low, medium priority. Some are recorded. All this to say if I need to meet with a few key people with busy calendars (managers and architects typically) and there aren't any free gaps, maybe it will identify recurring meetings they're in an send a proactive Slack to confirm if the slot can be reassigned, stuff like that. The same with edge work hours. We cross all 4 time zones. Here in California, I'd like my edge hours between 8:30 and 10:00 as last resort, as an example.

I have found many practical uses for Gemini and Kiro (Amazon) AI. I use both a lot and know I'm the final decision maker. They shrink the time getting from A to Z.

Comment Re:Cheap electricity and expensive gasoline (Score 1) 199

Good point and stats as a reference. Now consider that in much of California, gas is mid $3 range and if you need to charge on the road, it's running around $.47/kwh. I just did a road trip this weekend. Tesla superchargers can be $.35 if you fill up off peak. And, if you put gas in the car off the freeway, it's more like $4+ range, but that's the beauty of gas cars, a 250 mile road trip is easy on a single tank of gas so you fill up where it's cheaper in the home neighborhoods.

And I drive a Model Y. It's a great car, but not getting much savings from the energy cost. PG&E rates are nuts. I do save dollars on maintenance though tires are wearing fast (and I'm a mellow driver). I like how it drives for sure. The Model 3 is even better from a driving experience having owned one before the Y.

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