... sadly for the Americans, the rest of the world now knows they can't count on a US based provider for this kind of thing any more.

It was uncomfortable enough relying so heavily on American software back when it couldn't be switched off remotely on the say so of an idiot. Today it's an intolerable risk.

I think it may be evidence that Amazon has a shitty corporate culture that squeezes every penny it can out its employees.

Corruption can happen anywhere, but it's more likely to happen in totalitarian cultures where people feel like the system is rigged anyway. That's why countries like Russia and China have corruption problems. But I suspect the same feelings of me vs. the system occur in a capitalist enterprise like Amazon where employees are governed by dystopian, rigid, computerized metrics.

The restrictions are a mix of reasonable nuisance management and paranoia about who is flying drones, what they can do, and chain of custody.

Beijing proper is a city with a population density of over 21,000 / km^2 -- so you can imagine the chaos if any tech enthusiast resident could fly a drone without a permit. Except for a couple of free zones in the outer boroughs, New York City restricts drone launcing and landings within the city to flights with a permit and flight plan, because otherwise the sky would be black with drones. Many cities -- both red and blue -- have zone restrictions for drone flights, and those currently hosting World Cup matches have tightened them for the duration of the tournament.

"I want to use claude code to run 10 unattended Chrome beta testers [more info about what is being tested and specifics]. Write me one or more md files to execute and give me instructions for enabling Chrome mcp, then give me an sh script to launch 10 separate Chrome instances on macos."

I wrote that exact prompt, more or less, a month or two ago, and then other iterations since then, and it's been working very well.

Using LLMs to create prompts for LLMs to use was a good realization.

This makes me laugh! I see classes at universities and colleges on using AI. Not just in the tech arena either, I'm talking liberal arts--med school, law school, you name.

As best as I can tell, "how to use AI" is more or less "don't be a dumbass."

To be succesful with AI, you need the same skills you need to be successful otherwise. Analyze problems, test solutions, think critically, etc. Unattended vibe coding or turning in of AI slop is the same as people who cribbed essays, copied and pasted from Wikipedia, etc.

IMHO, you still need to be a developer to be able to use AI effectively. If you start with a really solid schema, or an existing framework, AI is great at building on top of that. If you give it specific guidance for what and how you want it to develop code, it can do a good job. It is NOT just "lol write me a network utility lol" -- that is a path to disaster.

I've also had good luck with updating and modernizing older code, migrating to a new frameework, and refactoring.

If i'm using claude code, my steps go something like this.

1. Using plan mode, analyze the code base, create a thorough plan and testing strategy for XYZ (Or I provide SQL schema, or I provide a thorough plan of what I want to do, etc.)
2. Refine Claude plan mlutiple times until I'm happy with it
3. Start with writing a set of unit tests to confirm current behavior
4. Implement the first part of the project (this is not coding the whole thing in one shot)
5. Run unit tests, check for regressions.\
6. Rinse and repeat..

Steps 1 and 2 -- with no code being written -- are probably the most important parts.

I should also add that, imo, this will be a relatively short moment in time. I've seen people who are spinning up dozens of agents at the same time -- backend designer, frontend designer, security consultant, css specialist, etc -- that all work together and iterate amongst themselves.

We've been running a beta test of some new software, and one beta tester out of ~30 people hit an error. We could not reproduce it. Claude took ~5 hours, but using Claude to remote control Chrome, in conjunction with analyzing the state of the backend database, and auditing the codebase, Claude was able to reproduce the error and suggest a fix. In this case, we disagreed with the fix (rather, we went for a bigger logical change as opposed to a bandaid), but we've had really great luck with using Claude Chrome mcp as a beta tester.

...a lot of people online were saying there was an upcoming event called The Halvening that would change everything.

I guess this is it?

Seems to me 'dead' for a taxi isn't 'dead' for a static power bank. If I'm running a taxi I've got hard limits on how large my battery can be and how heavy, and I want to maximise the mileage I get between charges, because while my taxi is charging it's not out on the road earning money. When that battery is keeping only maybe 80% of its original design charge, and now I have to schedule one recharge too many per working day? Bang goes my business plan, so I'm replacing it.

If I'm storing energy for the grid I'm a lot less worried about that. It only stores 80% of what it did when new? Better than nothing, and the taxi firm is selling them off cheap. I'll stack them up!

Perhaps not, but if you pick your moment right then permanently stopping the work of some of the most talented researchers there could very well make a difference. A spectacular incident that makes the headlines might also deter others - bright graduates might decide it's far safer to take up a different line of work, subcontractors and suppliers might decide doing business with AI firms isn't worth the danger, investors might figure the increased risk of loss of premises and equipment into their projections, that kind of thing.

If people genuinely believed AI takeover was a real, present and imminent threat, then they wouldn't just be publishing essays online, they'd be forming direct action groups, along the full spectrum of campaigning: all the way from awareness raising publicity campaigns, through picketing, blockades and sit-ins, up through Black Bloc type actions, right up to menacing intimidation campaigns and terrifying physical force operations. But I don't see any Butlerian Jihad getting started. Which tells me they don't actually believe this at all; they're just bigging up their own importance. 'Oh yes, our technology is so incredibly powerful, if it were done wrong then imagine what could happen! Keep the money coming to make sure it's done right instead! Then all that power can be ours instead!... I mean, uh, yours, Mr Investor sir.'

AI stock valuations don't make a bit of sense unless the technology turns out to be every bit as powerful as that. If they don't keep that thought alive, then the bubble bursts right now. That's what all this hot air is about, and that's why nobody really pulls a Miles Dyson at the AI research lab.

The interesting thing about the Terminator movies is that when AI researcher Miles Dyson became convinced that his work had a high probability of resulting in an artificial general intelligence attempting to replace humanity, he did not go and post a ten thousand word essay on LessWrong about how he had updated his timeline and p(doom) estimates and discussing the full Bayesian analysis of the situation. He went to the lab that very night with some heavily armed companions and he blew the place up.

I keep hearing that one AI researcher or another claims that they believe as Dyson came to believe. Until one of them takes similar action, I simply do not believe that they actually think their research carries such a risk.

You have access to the lab where the work is being done? You regularly meet in person with leading researchers and talents driving the project forward? You are an American and you have the Second Amendment? And the entire future light cone is at stake? Quintillions of hypothetical future lives riding on the outcome of this project here and now?

What's the most effective, altruistic thing you could do for them?

Yeah, exactly. I've never heard of anyone shooting up their AI lab. Which tells me they don't believe their AI is at all likely to wipe us all out.

... and then to secure Ukraine into the European economic and defence structure as firmly as possible. At this point they're far ahead of NATO on how to use drones and robots in war, and they're clearly getting very, very good at building them too. European military and aerospace people both will have a lot to gain from cooperation with Ukraine after the war is over.

As cadets were so memorably told a generation ago: remember always, your duty is clear - to build and maintain those robots!

Sounds good - DDG is pretty bad lately, it typically just returns a list of AI generated SEO slop pages, so I've been switching back to Google in a private tab for a lot of things. Might be worth trying this one now!

If they leave them there, the next administration might be able to switch them back on and start gathering woke climate science data again.

Long ago, the UK courts ordered all the major consumer ISPs to block The Pirate Bay along with various other popular services. Ever since, we've had to keep up to date on what the latest proxy address might be.

Of course, thanks to the new censorship laws introduced more recently, we're all on VPNs now, so as to avoid having to hand our ID to the wallet inspector for every last website we ever use. And once that was set up, it was nice to discover that the original is still in play!

The jokes about Darth Jar Jar were everywhere of course, but it could have worked. Star Wars lifted a few ideas from classic SF sources including Asimov's Foundation series - in which, we might recall, the terrifying, unstoppable galactic warlord known as The Mule was hiding in plain sight as a clown, who seemed to be merely a harmless entertainer at court. His military success was chiefly thanks to his psychic ability to manipulate others' minds to his liking - Darth Jar Jar could have done very well that way!