Daniel Jalkut

Twenty years ago or so, Coldplay was a guilty pleasure, a little too mainstream for me to embrace too deeply. But I don’t know what I was thinking. They’re just a good band. And Chris Martin is an excellent songwriter. One example of many. www.youtube.com/watch

"Flávio Flávio’s in everything you eat, because everything you eat has got LOSER.” #PublicEnemy

My big takeaway as a developer in the age of AI: the cost of verification approaches zero. Yes, bots can write code, but what they’re REALLY good at is scrutinizing code. They’re so good at finding bugs, before and after you ship them. If you leverage AI for no other reason, this should be it.

It’s horrible to see the early reports of screen cracks with Apple’s iPhone Duo, but this is a company that can withstand challenges like this. If foldable screens are a thing, and if Apple is going to be selling them, you can bet that every defect is being quickly evaluated to mitigate future cost.

I don’t really enjoy the enunciation of words like “Valerie” with endings like “eh-heh” so that turns me off. The original, by the Zutons, pronounced her name perfectly but … it just doesn’t jam quite as well as Amy Winehouse. It’s close, though. www.youtube.com/watch

Amy Winehouse’s rendition of “Valerie” is the best “song that I don’t really like” to be stuck in my head, for days, in a while. It’s a perfect execution of catchiness, I just don’t like all the aesthetics. Anyway, here it is in my brain. www.youtube.com/watch

For our collective mental health, can we just have Obama give speeches year round? He’s the best. www.youtube.com/shorts/f4…

My attitude is that your code base should have zero warnings, and your customer base should have zero crashes. If you’re not aiming for that, what are you even in this business for?

20 years ago or so I configured my crash reporter to convert all customer crash reports directly to support issues. Sometimes I don’t get actionable information, and sometimes I do. But I know that my customers experience very, very, few crashes.

There’s an obvious argument that AI is built on stolen data. It has a huge impact on IP owners, including me. But it’s also a vast liberation of specialized knowledge. Anybody can be anybody now. It’s the greatest information equalizer since the internet, and libraries before that.

I’m always surprised when an Apple News+ crossword includes an obviously PC-based clue, without acknowledging it. But in today’s puzzle the surprising clue’s word intersects with an overtly Apple clue!

Spoken like a man who expects to get another review unit even if he pans the previous one. I never doubted it, because I believe Apple honors honest, merited reviews. Just want to call it out.

The next major updates to most of my apps will include broad, multi-lingual localization for the world's most popular languages. It might not be perfect, but it will understandable. This is thanks to AI. Credit where credit is due.

If we want to compare global impacts, I have many virtues that offset my use of AI. I’m a vegetarian, I rarely drive a car, I work from home. This is not to say the environmental impact of AI isn’t important, but maybe ask yourself how pure you are before you criticize.

But I wonder how many technologies with questionable tradeoffs have benefited these people, and they allow them to pass unquestioned? Maybe because they were born into the tradeoffs? The automobile is probably the worst invention in history, but I still drive one. Sometimes you go with the flow.

With all of the problematic technology in the world, I struggle to understand why AI, in the form of large language models in particular, is met with such unparalleled abject horror by its antagonists. For a significant number of people, including many of my friends, the technology is pariah.

Today’s Apple News+ mini crossword. That’s a pretty elite cohort, comprised substantially of bots.

Black Ink 2.5 for iOS offers new inline clue lists that are particularly striking on iPhone Duo. redsweater.com/blog/4309…

Even the hotel ice makers struggle to achieve Inbox Zero. @hotdogsladies@mastodon.social

I believe that communicating effectively to AI is the most important skill, in all fields, going forward. Good news for literate and communicative folks: you’ve already got it.

Jacob is right, and history shows that making production easier never hurts the manufacturer. People still sell art, despite the fact you can buy paint and “do it yourself.” People value authentic, complete products, and will continue to buy them. x.com/jeiting/s…

I spent my whole life thinking I was one of the best bug fixers in the world. I mean, I am really good. But Claude is better. Every once in a while I give it a human nudge, but … it’s better. I’m glad I learned how to design good apps, too.

In my experience it is unfortunately common for a pizza restaurant’s medium pies to taste better than their large pies.

If you make things, AI is incredible at enhancing your productivity. If you sell things, AI is incredible at tuning your marketing materials. If you buy things, AI is incredible at finding the lowest price. If you just have a cool idea and want to sell it without regard to AI? You’re hosed.

“I wonder if it would be safe to let them talk to each other?” #AIMistakes

Why do we call them photographs and not “portrait slop”?

Just posted MarsEdit 5.4.6 with faster syntax coloring for long posts, lower CPU usage in the rich text editor, and a fix for posts getting stuck in “Publishing.” redsweater.com/blog/4298…

It is kind of funny they named the product, an AI-enabled CMS, after the one punctuation mark that AI can’t resist. emdashcms.com/blog/emda…

Just want to remind everybody that I predicted Apple would use “Apple Intelligence” as a clever spin on “AI”. I know predicting what multinational corporations will do isn’t the coolest thing but I still feel pretty good about this one. bitsplitting.org/2023/05/2…

Listening to “The Decemberists” for the first time in a long while. They lost me at some point but this album, “Her Majesty”, still rocks the house down. www.youtube.com/watch

One of my many hot takes is that people have generally fled to either “AI can’t do anything” or “AI can do everything” and haven’t stopped to consider the middle ground. There is an art to getting AI to do what you want. It will rarely do it by default.

I maintain most people who are stridently against AI have not even tried to appreciate what it can do. I think that being blanket against AI is similar to being blanket against home computers in the late 1970’s. Yes, there are implications, but the problems are inevitably outweighed by the benefits.

As an indie developer who has never completely hired a second developer, working with an AI agent is great training. I get about the same pushback and negotiation that I’d expect from an employee.

I am aware that as amazing as AI is, it can never substitute for a human translator. But AI gives a running start. I’m also including a menu item that only appears in non-English languages, so that native speakers can easily report problems.

For FastScripts 4.0 I’m leveraging AI not only to help me harden security, but also to localize to other languages.

I used Claude Opus to design this amazing (as far as I can tell) system for FastScripts, to control whether outside entities can run scripts on the user’s behalf. Security, yay! I would have had the idea before, but never all the ideas for execution. I think this is going to be good.

Honestly I think AI naysayers are not even trying to embrace it, Maybe with good reason, but to discredit the whole technology is an own-goal. We are in a situation where the technology is coming, and we have to decide by our selves, as a country, and as a world how we’ll deal with it.

The ability to easily localize apps to almost any language is one example of a benefit to developers and their users from AI. I’m working on it now, and I’m impressed by its careful consideration of locale differences. With Apple’s own built-in Xcode guidance, it seems pretty frickin’ good!

AI is powerful enough that if there are significant externalized costs, for example using resources or polluting the environment, we need as a society to decide who gets to use it. Because it’s definitely something that should be used.

I also loooooove that Prusa hosts fully interactive 3d models of their machines' parts.

I’ve had a 3D printer for a few years, but my interest and productivity with it have only shot up recently. Count me among the many psyched Prusa customers who is excited to be able to print his own replacement parts for the printer itself.

I’d like a “Screentime”-like app that just tells me how many times per day I select the Slack app icon when I meant to choose Photos.

Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, deserves some kind of Nobel Peace Prize for American unity by continuing to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces.

“UGH! I can’t break into the sub-20s Rubik’s Cube solving average!” is not a lament I ever expected to express. But here we are.

RE: Donald Trump's announcement of a "military rights deal" with Greenland and Denmark. The first rule of Trump is never believe Trump.

I’m using AI like crazy to build apps that no other human or AI could create.

When an AI says “Honest answer:” it means “I fucked up.”

App developers can’t be replaced by AI. Apps are expressions of human priorities. Like movies, essays, and paintings. And smiles, and hugs, and kisses. The ability of an AI to effectively replace ONE app says nothing about its ability to replace ALL apps. Humanity rules.

My downspout challenge prompted me to buy a telescoping pole, and after its maiden journey, I’m happy with it. It comes with a bunch of attachments, and now I’m excited to 3D print my own attachments. link.amazon/B0d7MNcST (affiliate link)

When I’m 96, I hope I’m in good enough shape to retire.