Replace your whole dev team with AI
Front end and back end developers, security experts, social media engagement managers, and marketing. Replace everyone with an AI powered bot and even create/train your own code GPT for your internal code.
Even Portland is ditching the booze
Despite at one time being the microbrew capital of the country, since Covid the city has seen a 10-15% drop in the number of people drinking. This follows a national trend of people giving up alcohol.
When places are charging $15-20 for a drink, and $10 for a pint, it’s no wonder so many breweries in Portland are closing.
Laika’s Wildwood
Local film studio Laika’s new movie Wildwood is set to arrive in theaters on October 23, 2026.
We’ll see how well it matches one of the most popular trails in local Forest Park: Wildwood trail. It’s not the first time there was a reference to something about the local neighborhood in one of their movies.
Life at Amazon
The Pragmatic Engineer shares an interview with Dave Anderson, formerly Tech Director at Amazon, shares an look at Amazon’s engineering culture.
He covers things like levels, the ‘Bar Raiser’ role, oncall, Amazon’s extreme frugality, the need for a strong relationship with your manager, and exiting with financial independence and early retirement.
Colorectal cancer in people under 40
1 in 5 new diagnoses of colorectal cancer now occur in people under 50, and 4 out of 5 of those are sadly not detected until it’s reached advanced stages (stage 2, 3, or 4). Colon cancer screening age has dropped to 45 due to the dramatic increase in rates – but many much younger people need to be aware of the easily identifiable symptoms.
Why? Because Kalei Martin is 28 and had been experiencing a lot of symptoms that should have been red flags for cancer. Sadly, her doctors didn’t recognize it until it had already spread. She was young, healthy, and it was chalked up to changes due to pregnancy and other health issues. But in reality – the signs were very clear.
Sadly, by the time someone did recognize the symptoms, she had stage 2 rectal cancer (T3 tumor) and, one year later, stage 4 with metastasis to her lungs (creating a 13-20% 5 year survival rate).
Her story is becoming increasingly common; and many doctors don’t even think of checking because young healthy people shouldn’t have cancer.
It’s worth listening to how what she thought was simple symptoms were actually progression of disease.
- Changes in bowel habits: Using the restroom more frequently, moving from every other day to multiple times daily (2:53).
- Rectal bleeding: Initially thought to be hemorrhoids due to recent pregnancies, but progressed to darker blood and eventually blood clots (3:50).
- Stomach cramping: Intense, sharp pain, different from menstrual cramps, that would progress to lasting 30-60 seconds (5:05).
- Pressure during intercourse: Experiencing pain and pressure, which led to a red flag for her (6:26).
She (like me) also learned you need to be a strong advocate for yourself and ensure your doctors are getting you in for tests and treatments that will give you the best chances of survival.
Sadly, her cancer had already spread and it became Stage 4 just a year later. Still, there seems to be good prognosis based on her most recent video:
Stalin’s Daughter on Defecting
I never knew Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Allileyua, defected from the Soviet Union – and then gave a interview. It’s a powerful reminder that despite many shortcomings – people under communist rule through the 20th century lived under some of the most horrific, oppressive governments in history.
Hacking the old DOS game Skate or Die
This is how hacking/cracking games used to work back in the old DOS days when all of memory is available in a flat structure and you could look at and change anything. What good times!
How easy mass AI surveillance is – today
If armies of AI spies are not a thing now, they soon will be.
Imagine having thousands and thousands of agents watching every single one of your government and company officials morning, noon, and night. Now, imagine they never get tired and only cost as much as a high-end PC.
Using data that most companies collect on users and a few planted agent employees to give you key access and your leaders data is ripe for the picking and exploiting. Low-tier hackers may hack you to ransom your data – the big guys will quietly watch you to see if you’re vulnerable in ways never before.
Here’s just one simple example of what it might look like:
That’s different
Le ravissement de Frank N Stein is a little art film made in 1982 before computer animation would have made the perspective drawing much easier. Today you could likely make this in an afternoon.
These sort of bizarre art films remind me of going to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The top floor had lots of random video shorts like this. It’s interesting what gets considered ‘art’ – and 99% of it is forgotten by the next year. Maybe that’s why we’re seeing the dramatic collapse of the art world.
One could point to the austere minimalism as an early form of Backrooms, but the Backrooms was inspired by the unease of liminal spaces and not this particular work.
No cuddles
I’ve gotten the same treatment from my girlfriend some days…