Never do anything on faith or as a handshake deal. Always ensure you get paid (hint: escrow is kryptonite for weasels). Trust everyone, just not the devil inside them.

Also, mandatory: https://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1

> “Starting work without a contract is like putting on a condom after taking a home pregnancy test"

Choice quote from the linked talk (aptly titled "F*ck you, pay me").

Just had to fix an AWS account lock out this morning. Why? Despite having a $0 balance and payment info on file, until I set a budget (a new feature per their UI), all of my Cloudfront-hosted files were just unavailable on my business' site (I Cloudfront all static assets so all images, fonts, etc were just broken all of a sudden).

These are the limits of scale. Too big, too complex, and not enough skilled people to maintain and/or support it. And our hubris as humans prevents us from accepting it. Why? Why can't we accept smaller but more functional things/systems?

We don't have to live like this.

This is a great app. Helped me ID some ink caps growing on a bale of hay in my backyard recently.

Well done. Added to my home screen. Imagine a daily smooth jazz weather report will soothe the soul nicely.

Well said. I'd be lying if I didn't get that little flutter inside watching the launch. It felt like "oh, there's still a flicker in the soul!"

I've had good experiences with gazelle.com for used devices but never tried to load GrapheneOS on anything from them.

Major or regional? This is alarming beyond words.

Major, big big major, not just me either. How is it alarming beyond words? If I said "Im an emt and I just ask the AI everything" now that would be alarming beyond words.

I have a buddy who is a cop and he tells me that they use AI to write reports and even to check if their reason for pulling someone over will hold up later. As annoying as it is in SW, people using AI outside of SW is much more alarming.

Now thats alarming!

Because it's a bank and apparently a big one.

do you think the other big banks arent doing this? Bank jobs are pretty broad, theres a ton of code getting written here.

I'm less concerned about the code and more concerned that you said there's no culture around reading it/reviewing it...at a bank.

If anything screws up, that's people's lives being messed with, potentially in a way none of the engineers on staff know how to fix. If I were an actuarial in that environment I'd blow a valve.

Its a big bank, Im not working on anyones debit account. Me and everyone Ive ever seen here is working on internal tools, nothings going to wipe out anyones savings. Also, yeah, its a bank, I hit the "im going to blow a gasket" line so long okay I cant even remember what things are supposed to be like.

It's alarming because AI produces crappy software, and I would rather not lose money because banks are turning out slop with AI.

well I have bad news for you about probably every bank by now

If you haven't tried it yet, I'd recommend Cline as an alternative (with full support for Anthropic API). Tracks the current token spend on chats so you know when to do a /newchat. Really nice way to budget token spend on a task-by-task basis and your flow isn't interrupted by limits.

> That context is a moon program that has spent close to $100 billion and 25 years with nothing to show for itself, at an agency that has just experienced mass firings and been through a near-death experience with its science budget. The charismatic new Administrator has staked his reputation on increasing launch cadence, and set an explicit goal of landing astronauts on the Moon before President Trump’s term expires in January of 2029.

So, rushing, to fulfill an arbitrary PR schedule dictated by further chasing of the yesteryears of America instead of calmly evaluating "what did we screw up, what needs to be fixed, and what can we do about it in order to bring this into reality, safely?"

"Things of quality have no fear of time" should be carved into the walls at NASA.

"If I don't take care of this, my family will suffer."

In other words: when you accept responsibility and become willing to do what's necessary to uphold your responsibilities (to your family, to yourself, and if you wish your community).