jerich

I’m the same way; I feel like Claude is doing more than just writing code, it’s getting me unstuck.

I’ve been pulling projects out of the closet that have been sitting there for years. It’s because I can sit down and get started so seamlessly. Before, I might waste the first couple hours configuring my environment and tool setup, but with Claude Code I can just jump in and start building, start solving the real problem.

I just built something this week where I had the parts sitting in my closet for a couple years, but just got curious to see how Claude does with embedded C, so it got me started. (Turns out Claude scanned my drive and found an abandoned C project that was outside my usual DEV folder, and just built on that). The code was 5% of the project, but it got done because Claude Code gave me the momentum push.

For my personal projects, the last 3 weeks have been more productive than the last 3 years.

Apple should hire a couple hackers to create “end-of-life” firmware for their obsolete devices; give them new life as super-specialized devices. Part green program, part customer delight, even some wacky art projects.

Maybe if an iMac doesn’t have a video input—have it boot as an AirPlay-only monitor.

I’ve got 2 old EOL appleTV boxes sitting in a drawer—again, one last firmware update to make them dedicated AirPlay receivers.

Take my 2011 MacBook Air and make it a dedicated Notes machine/word processor—all it does it run notes and sync with iCloud.

Obsolete iPad picture frame is an obvious one.

They can work on the “Reuse” side of the 3R’s of waste reduction (with reduce and recycle, right?)

PS, I’m available, 9 years embedded SW experience ;)

Anyone who’s read the short story “The Billiard Ball” by Asimov would have taken it into account.

I think they’re over in line behind “The La Brea Tar Pits”

So the US sells some bonds, then slips a couple trillion into a brown envelope to buy Baja California from Mexico, then “lease-to-own” it on very favorable terms (0 down, 0% APR, 150 years) to New Taiwan, or Formosa II. Uproot TSMC and an entire culture and move them over, then let China wave the flag over the mound of dirt left behind. Pencil them in to NAFTA and watch the chips flow over to the new iPhone plant outside Mexicali. Tijuana to Ensenada remains Mexico and is a buffer between them and the USA, and the night markets there are the envy of all food-eating people on the planet—-I can’t wait to try the albondigas soup dumplings.

I think AirBNB has the infrastructure to upend the Realtor market. If they just add an “AirBNB listings” buyers can search and scroll through pictures. They’d have to show exact location, but otherwise pretty much the same as what’s there. Seller pays an upfront listing fee, gets referrals for staging and photos if they want to stand out.

Simply add a “30 minute viewing” rental for $25-$50 (AirBNB keeps $10-25), available to registered users (with already-verified ID). Maybe rent the homeowner a bundle of cams for viewings for extra security.

If a buyer is really interested, have an above-market-rate nightly rental—I’d love to spend a night in a house before paying a million+ dollars for it (without the cams, of course). Maybe half refunded with an offer made thru AirBNB Listings; full refund with an accepted offer (again, less AirBNB fees). Maybe partner with Redfin or Zillow to set prices, provide school and property info, and finish the deals. Do it all cheap enough to make it worth sellers forgoing an MLS listing; should be a flat fee, a tiny fraction of 6% in most cases.

A startup couldn’t do it, but AirBNB has the name recognition, and the pieces already there, right? I’m available for consulting, or send me a fruit basket if it all works out, a nice one, without a lot of melon.

Although I know financial markets are extremely complex and driven by human psychology, I can’t help thinking about thinking about it in terms of classical control systems.

Do you want a smooth input, or an abrupt step input? Psychologically, I’ve got to believe there would be a quicker response by consumers if rates shot up overnight vs “boiling the frog” with a gradual increases.

In simpler dynamic systems, you get a faster response with overshoot and ripple, maybe this would be similar? But would it be better? I wish the article author had been able to find more discussion by economists talking about the potential effects.

Could you pull out of a recession or pop a forming bubble in months instead of years? Maybe it could lead to a smoother Macro-macroeconomics. But maybe the overshoot is too much; maybe the system is just too chaotic to control effectively.

Financial markets dislike abrupt changes, but I think if the central bank was perfectly transparent about their goals and responses (“To maintain a annual growth rate of 1.9%, Fed decisions will be made based on a PID controller with the following parameters…”), some smart financial engineers should be able to account for the rapid changes in their own models. Maybe there’s even some profit potential anticipating the overshoot and ripple that could provide some dampening effects.

I’m sure I’ve completely Dunning-Kruger’d this and millions of lives would be ruined, but since I’m not the Fed Chairman, we’re all safe.

After growing up on a Mac SE and going off to college with a Centris 650, I went through a string of windows PCs until the 2013 MacBook Air brought me back into the fold.

I still use the 2013 MBA almost daily—mostly as an external keyboard and screen for my iPhone notes, but it really slowed down with Mojave, so I’m trying to decide whether to pick up a cheap replacement M1 model now, or wait for sales on the M2. I think I can hold out a little, but won’t quite make the 10 year mark.

BTW, the c. 1993 Mac Centris was able to boot up last year (at 28 years old!), and thanks to an Ethernet adapter I dumpster-dived from work in the early 2000s, I was even able to get online with it without any extra configuration. Netscape Navigator doesn’t do too well with modern websites (and probably made for a baffling entry in some server logs), but I could at least load the Dole/Kemp ‘96 site.

For the first question, I ended up using this trick for a video editing app on Android phones about 10 years ago in order to cut video together on low end, out of date (Android 2.3) phones. They couldn’t handle video compression in a reasonable time and we didn’t want to upload/download to process on a server.

The point of the app was to sync the cuts to music cues, so each clip had a defined length. I ended up doing it all through file manipulation. You can cut into a video file starting at any arbitrary I-frame then trim it to the desired length. I would cut the input videos down to size then concatenate the files, replacing the audio with the new soundtrack at the end.

It worked great, only took a few seconds to create the final edit. Of course you couldn’t overlay text or filter video, but I still think it was a valid solution.

With the requirement of starting each clip on an I-frame, there was some imprecision in where your cut would actually start—an arteur might have a problem with their masterpiece being butchered that way, but it would certainly work well for some special cases like efficient distribution or being able to show a diff that a video was unaltered outside of timing cuts.

I thought it was most interesting to see how clearly crocheting was “generation-skipping” with the 40-year periods between peaks in popularity: 1890s->1930s->1970s->2010s

Maybe the latest peak is pushing out due to having kids later in life (i.e., grandparents now 50-60 years older than grandkids, rather than 40-50)