This week I have learned:
- ending things is hard. Chris and I recorded the last ever WB-40 this week, just about 10 years after we recorded the first. I’ve loved making the show, and it’s given me so many new perspectives on the world around me. But it was becoming a grind, and I didn’t have the spark any more, so it was time to bring it to an end.
- a real sense of pride seeing eldest get his Explorer Belt award on Saturday, to mark his remarkable achievement navigating for 10 days around Bavaria in the summer.
- I keep coming back to the idea of Homeopathic IT, a concept I wrote about back in 2015. I’m hearing all sorts of things about how LLMs can provide simulated users and user panels to aid for faster analysis cycles. But whilst this might be useful in the world of public internet services and consumer apps, I think it’s really flawed in the context of business systems within an organisation. Why? Because the act of going to talk to people isn’t just anodyne data capture. It’s part of the change process. By talking to people you are engaging them in the process of change. Talk to an LLM and you’re not.
- nobody at the moment knows how much it should cost to develop software. A couple of conversations this week poked at this – LLM charges are way below what it costs the vendors to provide them as they desperately try to build market share before the great reckoning. LLM-enabled software delivery is much quicker. But it will rectify at some point in the future. There’s a rush in some places to build as much as possible before the market changes or collapses.
- I’ve been idly wondering if the assets left when the LLM market does crash (it will – all speculative bubbles do). Data centres stuffed with now-old Nvidia chips won’t be worth much, and they employ next to no-one when they’ve been built. But it was suggested to me that maybe the models themselves, which cost an arm and a leg to train, will be the railway tracks left when it all comes tumbling down.
- if you think I’m being negative about an incoming crash, just take a look at the history of the capitalist system.
- getting people to learn whilst they sit in the magic circle of play is interesting. Getting them to learn that circle by being evil for a day is even more fun.
- I’ve realised I completely forgot the rules of Pass the Parcel.
The week in media:
Read
- Started Jon Ronson’s new book The Castle. It is excellent.
Listened
- Jill Scott’s latest album To whom this may concern has been on repeat this week. It’s a work of astounding genius.
- A first pass through the new Fontaines DC album this morning. Yet to make a judgement.
Saw
- the last episodes of Ted Lasso. Felt like it was grinding out by the end.
- the most recent episode of Slow Horses. Some of the best characters in a tv series I know of.
- on Podcast Chris’s suggestion, a couple of episodes of The Man in the High Castle. Interesting premise, but maybe a bit slow.
Next week:
Walking the Victoria Line.
The week in photos:
