Remember the Nokia phones? They were indestructible and the best thing next to a Blackberry before smartphones.

They were doomed. Not because their product was inferior. When the iPhone came out, everyone’s product was inferior. It was because they were slow. It would take a developer 24-48 hours to compile and get changes ready for testing. It could take a week or two (!!) to build the complete software.

Anyone who is a developer is cringing right now at that thought.

Interestingly, at some companies, adding AI to their development process isn’t speeding up the pace of delivering software. This isn’t AI’s fault, of course, it is the result of the bottleneck being somewhere else that hasn’t or can’t be sped up by AI. If you have read “The Goal” (Eliyahu M. Goldratt), you know that any improvement outside of the actual bottleneck is probably wasted effort.

This last concept is an important one. Making developers more efficient is not the goal. Delivering more high-quality faster is the goal.

https://howardyu.substack.com/p/what-nokia-teaches-any-company-bolting

to get your attention. Our sunroom looks out onto our yard and the park behind our house. Luna will sit on my lap from time to time and, when she isn’t sleeping, is looking out the window. We often leave the door open so she can go in and out without us having to get up.

But it also means that when she sees squirrels, or even better bunnies, she may decide she wants to go chase them. Then she launches herself from my lap in a hurry. There is often no warning other than a slight lifting of her ears. Launching requires a forceful push against whatever she is sitting on. These are often sensitive areas.

I enjoy watching her chasing bunnies, but I am not a fan of the launching.

Matthew Yglesias is a political writer. I don’t always agree with his opinions, but he is always thoughtful. This article is about data centers and he frames the debate slightly different.

The water problem is generally solved. The energy problem has known solutions to make it a win/win for everything. The AI data centers are different from the cloud computing data centers that we have been building for a decade, primary around location. Cloud data centers need to be built close to people, AI data centers (mostly used for training) can be built remotely.

https://open.substack.com/pub/matthewyglesias/p/theres-an-awful-lot-we-dont-know

The moon was bright the other night out on the hill. We had some friends over and walked our dogs after dark. The moon was very bright and we could see shadows cast by the moon.

I remember the old Cat Stevens song “Moonshadow”. Every time I listen, that word–Moonshadow–would catch my ear. I’m being followed by a moonshadow.

The moon was bright enough to mess up our night vision, making it hard to see the moonshadows. We had to turn away from the moon and let our eyes adjust to be able to see them well.

This post won’t be very interesting to those that aren’t Rush fans. And if you are a Rush fan, you have already seen this.

Part of the reason that everyone is excited about the Rush tour is that (1) Geddy and Alex are good people, (2) they have dealt with a lot of crap with grace, (3) Anika is an amazing drummer and also seems like a nice person. Therefore, everyone was rooting for her to succeed. And she has.

Most of these clips are of the end of Tom Sawyer when that amazing drum fill comes in. After she nails it, the crowd cheers for her and Geddy & Alex are smiling.

It is a good story about good people and I smile every time I watch it. Sometimes there are happy tears.