Category: Technology

writing code, making web pages, or creating apps, by just telling an AI program what you want, and letting it create the product for you. In vibe coding the coder does not need to understand how or why the code works, and often will have to accept that a certain number of bugs and glitches will be present.

– Merriam Webster online

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November was, for me and many others in tech, a great surprise.
Before, A.I. coding tools were often useful, but halting and clumsy.
Now, the bot can run for a full hour and make whole, designed websites and apps that may be flawed, but credible.
I spent an entire session of therapy talking about it.

The tech industry is a global culture — an identity based on craft and skill. Software development has been a solid middle-class job for a long time.
But that may be slipping away.
What might the future look like if 100 million, or a billion, people can make any software they desire?
Could this be a moment of unparalleled growth and opportunity as people gain access to tech industry power for themselves?
– Paul Ford writing in a guest essay for the New York Times

Off the top of my head I can think of a few things I would like to vibe code:
A bot that can search Ebay and the half dozen online stores for me to find postage stamps that I am looking for (Ebay’s new terms ban the use of AI bots for searches— but my bot will outsmart Ebay and elude detection);
A bot that can teach me to speak a little bit of a foreign language before I travel to that country (Duolingo and AI chat bots can just about do that already);
A PC housekeeping app that can learn how I use the directories on my computer and organize my files accordingly, especially ones I download and have to forever —aargh— retrieve from the Download folder and move elsewhere, or remember to go and delete them;
An all-in-one weather app that will tell me at the end of the day what the day’s high and low was (in both the international standard unit of measure called Celsius and Fahrenheit), what the precipitation was (if any), high wind speed & direction, UV index, atmospheric pressure, sky conditions (cloud cover) and hey, throw in phase of the moon, so that I have a heads-up for when the full moon is coming;
A sports app that will track where and exactly when Carlos Alcaraz (world No 1 tennis player) is scheduled to be playing next, and alert me.

Happy Friday.
I checked in at the Seattle International Auto Show today.
Here is a sample of the dream machines that were on display.

Here is a very interesting analysis that appeared in the New York Times recently.
(Whoah! Electricity is very expensive in the Golden State.)

How Much It Costs to Drive an E.V. and a Gas Car in Every State
Charging an electric car battery is usually cheaper than going to the gas pump. But it depends on where you live.

– Report by Francesca Paris in the New York Times of Oct. 8

The federal subsidy for electric cars has ended, which means E.V. sales will probably fall because of simple math: Electric cars are generally more expensive than comparable gas cars. (Some automakers are offering discounts to get around that.)

But there’s one place where E.V.s are usually cheaper: the cost of filling up.

Driving 100 miles in a typical gas car that gets 25 miles per gallon costs about $13 on average.

In an E.V. you’d pay just $5, if you recharged at the average home electricity rate. (Stopping at a fast-charging station — if you couldn’t charge at home, or had to travel far — would cost quite a bit more.)

There’s also a big difference between a standard gas car and a hybrid. A typical hybrid (not the plug-in kind) is essentially a highly efficient gas car — a Toyota Prius can get more than 50 miles per gallon — and so its fill-up costs can be roughly on par with an E.V. charged at home.