I would prefer to replace myself, yes.

I have a 37 year work history of finding ways to replace myself and folks like me. I already offer my clients free Ai consulting on the side to help them replace me. I'm already onto the "next thing" that will replace Ai in the headlines anyway.

I don't own a computer. I am not a programmer. I do everything from my iPhone.

In the past 10 years, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on human programmers to create 3 web apps. Zero of them ever were finished. ZERO.

I used Grok AI to create 5 web apps. 3 of them were monetized almost immediately and have paying clients. All 5 have passed security checks that look for bugs or hack entry points.

One of the 3 monetized web apps took me all of 30 minutes using Grok, on an airplane, using my iPhone. I was able to download the files and upload them to a web server and the site was live. Literally 30 minutes and that website has created thousands of dollars of passive income.

I use vibe coding DAILY to make spreadsheets better for me and clients (I am not in IT). I use vibe coding DAILY to come up with cool functions for my web apps that people pay me to use.

Before drum n bass was a thing, dance halls were enamored of speed garage, eurolounge was all over, and raves were, well, raving, I had already made a couple of analog synthesizers, one intended for a guitar pedal chain, which got used by a vibraphone artist who scared the heck out of me.

I stumbled into electronica, not the disco-in-a-box crap, and started experimenting with all that. Splurging for a TB-303, my first 'purchased' instrument, I started sequencing and stuff. Adding in some filters and whatnot, I got with a soccer buddy and we gave some tapes to the DJ I was working with (lights and video), and they got mixed in to blend from, for instance, from BeeGees to Frankie. Ugly, but kept everyone dancing...

And I never thought of it as music. I had no training. Rhythms I hacked at until I got something that sounded right. Tempo was easy to fix. Making a bbd pitch corrector based on a Sony design cost me 3 months but fixed some analog stuff. But I was just making or using tools to make sounds. Music? Welllll....

And now I hear AI 'generated' music, and it's actually recognizable as music. As if disco with drum kits in a box and 66 key synths spewing orchestra hits was 'music'...

Well it was, and this AI music stuff is, pseudonyms and indecipherable identity not a new thing for bands, and all this is a controversy ginned up by 'artists' who resent competition. They act like poets... Or Boothbay Harbor painters. A pox on them.

0) I know our country Administration hasn't had time to do much is anything except change policies (awaiting tangible results in the military), attitudes, and expectations. 1) should every service member be trained and qualified to serve in combat? Ask the Marines. Cost-effective? Mission capability is the most important metric. Cost is not unimportant. My real question is how would service members be affected by having their peers provide meals? And you could ask Navy personnel that question. Like the Marines, Sailors surviving on warships know they go down if they cannot respond to attack, perform effective damage control, and do whatever needs to be done to stay afloat, fight, and return to port. I did not serve in the Navy, but I know many who did. Their pride in having served aboard a vessel is, to me, well earned. Contracting meds to civilians is an interesting question. I think it deserves consideration by commands.

Sure. That explains the current dilemma, with most of those ovens inoperable... You misunderstood.

Correct. Or, not correct, autocorrect and I keep mixing them up.

Or work for NASA...

For a carrier Skipper there are no abstractions in this matter. The ship they command is of the greatest value in the Navy and quite possibly the single most valuable and useful asset in all the military. If someone could get on the dock, gain access to the vessel, and place, even the most minimal IED, there are many who would consider that to be a great victory. A day's delay in deployment could be useful or detrimental. The only similar object our military has, similar in value and purpose, would be nuclear submarines. Submarines. And you don't get near one of those ever, unless security is broken down or you're a traitor. And they are never considered safe or secure, they are always under threatened. Therefore military speaking they might as well be in theater. Just call it what it is.

Well, one point is that your typical combat user probably doesn't know how to run a trace and work through a seg fault. More importantly, however, military software can be pretty expensive because it's not built to be fixable. It's built not to fail. Flight control systems don't generally present much in the way of error messages, they can't fail. Even common everyday stuff can give you trouble, stories of command centers on Harley Burke cruisers giving up Windows blue screens. That's pretty inexcusable but I got to tell you using Windows as a desktop has been surprisingly better for me ever. Using Linux as a desktop just challenges me to learn completely new and different ways to do things, some of which are not obvious and not intuitive. And it's going to take time for everyone to get used to the new paradigms that are going to come with it. There are little things that a lot of experienced users because they're more mentally agile than I am just blow through without a trouble at all. But then in combat, you're not thinking about your tools. As much as you're thinking about the situation. The open source advantage is that the military can in fact reach in and work through it. But there's no inherent advantage in usability because it's still just software

Do you actually know the connection between open source software and random inexplicable and enigmatic error messages? No you don't, there isn't one. Open source software for military systems has a great deal of appeal and makes a lot of sense. You must not get out much if you think open source software has better error messages or even error handling necessarily. As with all software, it's only as good as those who develop it. If not open source, at least the military should have access to the source.

They already do. As we know, however, there are no promises. Software support can be withdrawn in a moment. Spare parts, not in inventory. It's really not even about money I'm afraid, the military will pay. But will the vendors even honor their contracts, or just say 'but a new one'... If a new one exists.

I think I'm making this seem as complicated as it is.

CVNs are a high value target. They are always in theater, even at dock.

Actually, if our military unilaterally exercised a 'right to repair' for commercially available items, soon enough they would find that no manufacturer that relied on service revenue would offer them to the military, and if they did, likely for substantially higher costs, to 'recover' that lost service revenue.

Beyond the simple 'we bought it, we own it, we need to fix it', there is the somewhat simpler imperative - in war, you succeed or fail. Failure is costly. Unable to feed your crew, do you withdraw? And what are the consequences of that withdrawal? Failure is not an option, and that is not a platitude.

It's a failure of our military that they permit such things to occur at all. Not perhaps the Navy, but other branches, and for the Navy perhaps onshore, too much has been delegated to civilian contractors. Food service is one obvious example. And a common explanation I have heard is that enlistment is so challenged that there are not enough personnel to do 'all that'. Oh, downstream of failed leadership, I think. Leadership is crucial.

If you've paid attention, you know that McDonalds has had trouble keeping ice cream machines running, being hostage to the manufacture and software. For a frikin ice cream machine. Stupid.

And if you're aware of that, you might also be aware of John Deere masking every effort to prevent farmers form repairing their equipment, which during harvest can result in hours waiting for a technician, and lost crops. Lost money. Inexcusable. And again, software.

Right To Repair is going to be essential going on, the simplest things are becoming complex. Home automation suffers from vendor lock-in, and when the support revenue stream dries up, they capriciously 'end of life' items, and that's that, you're abandoned. No promise prevents this.

Our military needs to require this and enforce such contracts. To do otherwise is to risk their troops' lives, and ours.

I almost wonder if that's actually a dude who was on the flight or someone taking advantage of an opportunity to get in the news.

Seems so unlikely.

I agree.