All the Information You Need is on the Task

I’ve been watching a lot of (some might say too much) Taskmaster lately, and it has seeped into my thinking. It lead to a momentarily epiphany groggily waking up to make my kids breakfast.

Working with the Apple and Google App Stores is like competing on Taskmaster.

• You’re given a task (in our metaphor, successfully submitting an app to the App Store) that is seemingly straightforward, but, actually, fraught with complexity
• The complexity is buried in a task that is written in such a way as to ensure you’re not quite sure what the rules actually are, and enough latitude that the rules could be altered at any point in time
• When you have a question or clarification and reach out to the App Store overlords, just like the Taskmaster’s assistant Little Alex Horne, the response is “All the information is on the task”, ensuring you get no more clarity and are left to just flounder around hoping to figure it out
• With each subsequent attempt, you either get more furious at your lack of success, or slightly more unscrewed and unhinged as you try changing random bits hoping something gets you through the process
• Ultimately, you’re arbitrarily judged by the Taskmaster, and maybe whatever you tried this time was good enough to get you points and published to the store

I don’t think it’s a good thing that the App Store process is reasonably paralleled by a comedy game show whose objective is to drive the contestants crazy and make them look like fools, but it at least the idea that Greg Davies and Alex Horne are overseeing it makes the absurdity marginally more tolerable.

Apple Goes Third Party to Jumpstart Siri →

In December, Apple moved to consolidate its AI leadership under Federighi, completing a transition that had begun earlier in the year when responsibility for ‌Siri‌ was removed from the AI group and brought under Federighi’s software division. In January, Apple announced plans to use Google’s Gemini AI models to power future AI upgrades, including an improved version of ‌Siri‌. In Federighi’s view, integrating a third-party model would allow Apple to finally ship a revamped ‌Siri‌ later this year after controversially postponing the update in 2025.

However, the report also outlines internal concerns about the implications of placing AI under Federighi’s control. People who have worked closely with him described him as highly cost-conscious and skeptical of investments with uncertain returns. This approach stands in notable contrast to rivals such as OpenAI, Meta Platforms, and Google, who invest tens of billions of dollars in data centers, chips, and AI researchers.

Given how AI and LLMs are developing, I don’t think this is the wrong choice in the short-to-mid term, and maybe even in the long run. There’s not a world where we end up with four-or-five-basically-identical-for-general-use LLMs. Every few months, there’s a new leader for general use, and then everybody catches up. It’s a market rapidly heading to commoditization (though on a time scale likely impacted by the insane CPU and power costs). Spending billions of dollars to be at par (or worse) isn’t terribly prudent and also likely wouldn’t be underwritten by investors (meaning they’d be doing it out of cash).

Instead, Apple gets to use a good (or great) LLM without investing billions to build one. Given how easy it is to switch LLMs (even setting aside some of the privacy nits, which any provider would agree to for Apple to pay them a large sum of money each year), it can swap providers very easily. Apple can be aggressive on the M&A front when the market inevitably shakes out and some (many?) of these companies who are valued at 10 to 100 times what they are actually worth are forced to reckon with an unclear path forward when the money tap dries up.

The thing Apple needs to be focused on is how to get ahead on what comes next to consumers, which is probably how to run bespoke, targeted models (rather than the generalized LLMs) and how to get them running on devices with less power and memory than an army of servers. That’s a game Google is certain to be attacking, and one that the larger players in the market (like OpenAI and Anthropic) are not as likely to. Ending up being boxed out by your #1 frenemy when models go small is a much bigger risk.

New Year, New Look

It’s been a while (i.e. almost 8 years) since I updated the look and feel of this here site. I decided this would be a fun job to see what Claude Code could come up with. I’ve done a good bit of work with Claude Code on the command line, but this time I thought I’d try it via the desktop app.

Aside from a few hiccups around using a git worktree and how that made running a local preview a little tricky, it ended up being a pretty easy exercise. I’m a horrible designer, so while I’m sure this looks better, I’m also sure there are plenty of ways that it could look better.

Still, it’s nice to have a fresh coat of paint. It also forced me to update my setup so that I could actually preview my site, as I hadn’t locally installed the gems needed to run this since … (checks watch) … before I got an Apple Silicon mac. 😬

It's been a minute

So, turns out, I haven’t posted in like 5 years. I’ve had some interesting things going on recently, so I thought I’d dump them here for posterity. Some will be useful for me to find later, when inevitably I forget what I fixed to make Time Machine backups work reliably again. Some Most will be useful for no one.

• About 6 months ago, I left my job. I’d been at it for nearly 8 years (after doing my previous gig for nearly 12), and I was just out of gas. My nervous system was basically in perma-“fight or flight” mode, and it was impacting me in ways I noticed (i.e. I was sleeping even less than I normally do), and I’m sure impacting me in ways I wasn’t noticing. It was a pretty big life decision, which my family was incredibly supportive of, as it’s given us lots more time together.
• It’s also given me time to build a shed. I mean, who doesn’t want to build a shed?
• I’ve also used some of the time I’ve had to dig into some technologies a bit deeper than I could day-to-day at the job. I’ve been building toy apps in Claude Code, which have been great for me to learn from (particularly iOS development, which has not been something I’ve spent a lot of my own time on), but also to build out loads of automations for my computer to make my life easier. I think that’s been a pretty big unlock for me—taking some process that used to take lots of steps and loading it up as a Shortcut, or AppleScript, or some automation that now takes less steps. Claude (and, presumably, the other coding tools) are very very good at that.
• One of the things I was playing with was trying to see how far I could get replacing Docker with Apple’s native container. Some stuff worked out of the box, but some other stuff I used (like nearly anything related to Docker Compose) did not. But, it’s been fun to toy around with it to see how far these native containers have come.
• Interestingly, from that experimentation, I learned a hard lesson. Shortly after I started playing with Container, I started having massive problems with Time Machine finishing backups. This was happening both locally and to my NAS backup. It would get about midway through, and then time out and restart. After a while, I finally pumped the logs and some other ephemera into Claude, and Claude helped me pinpoint the issue: the container snapshots that get downloaded for Container to leverage are sparse volumes, and they’re basically all 512GB volumes. Time Machine sees those as 512GB and parses through them, even though they’re actually tiny (maybe just a few MB) on disk. Excluding the snapshot directory for Containers (or, really, the whole directory ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.container/) fixed the backups back to their normal, working state.
• I’ve gotten super into the UK show Taskmaster(I know, late to the party) and have worked my way up to Series 11. It is really quite good.

4 Years of Solar

In February of 2017, we decided to get solar panels. Our city was running a program to give low interest rate loans to get solar. For us, we figured it would be both a good environmental choice, but also a good economic choice.

With the heat wave we’re experiencing, felt like a good time to see how the panels have paid off.

For our home, the install covered about half our roof (a tree covers the other half). The quoted price was roughly $22k for the parts and install. The installer laid out some assumptions and made the case for a 5 year payback.

Well, here we are in year 4:

• Over the first 4 years, we’ve gotten $4373.29 in SREC credits
• Rough justice, after looking at historic electric bills, I think we’ve saved $1000 per year. This is probably conservative, as it doesn’t account for reduced usage in the colder months. But, it makes the math easy. So, $4000 in savings over the first 4 years of our panels.
• We got a $2500 rebate for the purchase.
• And a $6225 Federal Tax credit¹

That puts us at $17098.29, so roughly ~$4900 left to cover.

Over the rest of 2021 through February 2022 (which will bring us to 5 years), we’ll likely pick up:

• Another $700 in SREC credits²
• Another $1000 in electricity savings

This is all without accounting for potential increase in home value.

If my conservative electricity savings is off by, say $250/year, you more or less close the gap on a 5 year payout.

That’s promising for solar, in general. A 5-7 year payback makes an investment far more economical for most people³ and if you assume that there’s some moderate increase in home value, this makes a lot of sense for almost any home owner.

1. This is going to vary year over year, administration by administration, but also might be augmented by a state credit. ↩

2. The SREC market fluctuates, but this is likely to shrink in many geographies, as more alternative energy sources come online. ↩

3. This assumes the privilege of having the means to own a home. Obviously, not everyone has that opportunity. ↩

Interview with Simpsons' Great John Swartzwelder →

John Swartzwelder, writer of some of the greatest episodes of The Simpsons (like “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge”, “Homer at the Bat”, “Krusty Gets Kancelled”, “Itchy & Scratchy Land”, and many many many many more), which contained some of the greatest lines from the show, like:

“Y’ello? You’ll have to speak up. I’m wearing a towel.”

“We are now approaching our final destination, Itchy and Scratchy Land. The amusement park of the future where nothing can “possa-bly” go wrong. Uh, possibly go wrong. That’s the first thing that’s ever gone wrong.”

“My eyes! The goggles do nothing!”

If you like The Simpsons, those make you laugh. And you will like this interview with Swartzwelder, who responded to this interview with the same comedic wit that he wrote his episodes or his insanely funny detective novels.

John Hughes was another writer who was working in Chicago advertising at the time. He has been credited with the famous credit-card shaving test, for Edge. Did you know John?

John and I had a few mutual friends, so I knew who he was, but the only time I ever sat down with him was when he tried to hire me to work for him at Leo Burnett, one of the biggest, richest, and boringest—to me—advertising agencies in town. Charlie the Tuna, Tony the Tiger, that sort of thing. I almost took the job, because the money was good and the view was terrific, but I discovered I wouldn’t have an office of my own. I would have to work in a kind of horse-stall setup, in the middle of a huge open area full of similar horse stalls. See those tragic figures down there? One of them is going to be you.

Well, I’d always had my own office, so I said no. Later, when John was making a million dollars per second directing movies, it occurred to me that maybe I should have taken that job, after all. When he went to Hollywood, I could have hung onto his leg. Nothing wrong with horse stalls, when you think about it. Horses like them.

I agree. I’m looking through your window as I type this next question: What do you make of the compliment “Swartzweldian”?

I guess I understand what they’re driving at, and it all sounds very complimentary, and I thank everybody for that, but I can’t help thinking “Swartzweldian” is about the most awkward-sounding word in the English language. I mean, I thought “Oakleyesque” and “Vittiriffic” [after “Simpsons” writers Bill Oakley and Jon Vitti] were bad, but “Swartzweldian”!

So how would you describe your sense of humor, your comedic sensibility?

Swartzweldian.

Working Through the Backlog

Apropos of nothing, working from home has had a couple of interesting benefits. Well, that and my body’s adjustment to spring (thanks 5am wake up time!)

I find myself keeping up with podcasts more readily, and TV and movies put production (rightfully) on hold due to the pandemic. So, music exists again!

Thanks to my dogged usage of OmniFocus, it turns out that I’ve got stuff on my “to listen” list going back to 2016. It’s a little strange to think “oh, I remember hearing this song and wanting to listen more” and realizing that the hearing this song part was 3 or 4 years ago.

Turns out I missed a lot of good stuff in the past few years.

Fixing The Fridge Water Dispenser (for my future self)

About once a year, I manage to cause the water line to the water dispenser inside my fridge to freeze. This dispenser isn’t in the fridge door, but on the interior wall of the fridge. (This is a Kitchen Aid French Door fridge with an interior water dispenser.)

I then spend a bunch of time googling how to fix it, never find anything, pull the fridge out from its embedded spot in the wall (a giant pain in the ass), and start using a blow dryer on any of the water line I can see.

This year, I even went one step further, and bought this little tube you stick up the dispenser and flush with warm water. Which was able to make a little bit of a mess, but definitely not clear out any of the ice.

And, then, eventually, I stumble upon the fact that there is a coil of water line behind the fruit and veggie drawers, and that’s where the little bit of ice is, and 30 seconds with the hair dryer thaws it out.

So–for future me–don’t move the whole freaking fridge. Just pull out the drawers, hit it with the blow dryer, and enjoy fresh, cold water.

New Music of 2021

A couple of random albums have dropped unexpectedly in January. In a different time, I’d spend a lot of time writing about them, diving into the meaning, comparing to albums of the past. Right now, I have a hard time getting motivated to do that. Someday, that motivation will be back.

In the interim, a couple of quick notes:

Typhoon Sympathetic Magic Apple Music

This album is a grower. I love me some Typhoon. The band creates a soundscape that is both poppy and atmospheric. Kyle Morton’s lyrics are just poppy enough to get you singing along to a song about death. This is a beautiful album with some lush songs that creep up on you, and just when you’re sort of drifting along on some strings or a quiet guitar, you get a stanza like this:

Everybody’s angry

Everybody’s lonely

And maybe it’s hopeless and maybe

Love is not enough

But let’s not rule out the possibility

Weezer OK Human Apple Music

Another “someday list” item is my thesis on Rivers Cuomo and how he’s the closest thing to another Brian Wilson. Weezer’s output is a lot more hit or miss these days (and that comes from someone who can defend a lot of Weezer songs that most people despise). There’s a couple of great songs on this album (the lead track “All My Favorite Songs” is one), but it’s a very light album. There’s a few songs where it feels like you can see the seams (you can tell the lyrics the songs built out of, and how it doesn’t feel like it ever grew from there). That being said, it’s typical modern Weezer: short and poppy.

Optimism

A couple of weeks ago, I said maybe I’d feel more optimistic after January 20th.

I do. I do feel more optimistic. I don’t know if we’re going to get to where we need to as a country. But, for a small period of time, it feels like things are moving in the right direction (enough vaccines to vaccinate all adults and administration actually talking about how to make those supply chains work are both good starts).

We’ll see what it leads to. Maybe I’ll even spend time writing about music again, rather than just how the internet is destroying democracy.

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