I feel like we work at the same place. IT Husbandry/Debt Paying/KTLO whatever you call it is being ground into dust. Especially repetitive stuff that I originally would've needed a week to automate and never could get to the top of the once quarterly DevOps sprint...bam. GitHub Action workflow runs weekly to pull in the latest OS images, update and roll over a smoke test VM, monitor, roll over the rest or rollback and ping me in Slack. Done in half a day.
I've got a couple Claude Code skills set up where I just copy/paste a Slack link into it and it links people relevant docs, gives them relevant troubleshooting from our logs, and a hook on the slack tools appends a Claude signature to make sure they know they weren't worth my time.
That said, there's this weird quicksand people around me get in where they just spend weeks and weeks on their AI tools and don't actually do much of anything? Like bro you burned your 5 hour CC Enterprise limit all week and committed...nothing?
No, Claude Code reads the CLAUDE.md in the root of your project. It's case sensitive so it has to be exactly that, too. Github Copilot reads from .github/copilot-instructions.md and supposedly AGENTS.md. Anigravity reads AGENTS.md and pulls subagents and the like from a .agents directory. This is probably why you have to remind it to re-read it so much, the harness isn't loading it for you.
I got an email update for a very adult kink event recently that was entirely written by Claude with emoji bulleted lists and everything. All that was missing was the EXECUTIVE SUMMARY header.
As someone who started out a GenAI skeptic, I’ve found the truth is in the middle.
I write a TON of one off scripts now at work. For instance, if I fight with a Splunk query for more than five minutes, I’ll just export the entire time frame in question and have GHCP (work mandates we use only GHCP) spit out a Python script that gets me what I want.
I use it with our internal MCP tools to review pull requests. It surfaces questions I didn’t think to ask about half the time.
I don’t know that it makes me more productive, but it definitely makes me more attentive. It works great for brainstorming design ideas.
The code generation isn’t entirely slop either. For the vast majority of corporate devs below Principal, it’s better than what they write and its basic CRUD code. So that’s where all the hyper productive magical claims come from. I spend most of my days lately bailing these folks out of a dead end fox hole GHCP led them into.
Unfortunately, it’s very much a huge time sink in another way. I’ve seen a pretty linear growth in M365 Copilot surfacing 5 year old word documents to managers resulting in big emails of outdated GenAI slop that would be best summarized as “I have no clue what I’m talking about and I’m going to make a terrible technical decision that we already decided against.”
The article pretty clearly lays out it's at least functionally B. The problem is Dell doesn't publish the drivers necessary for the Windows installer on it's website. You can only reinstall windows from the recovery partition or via online download via an EFI program, similar to Apple Recovery's online re-installation. Those install methods include all the Dell bloatware and telemetry settings cranked up to 11.
If Dell really wants, they can use Windows Platform Binary Table (WPBT) to install their bloatware on a clean install of windows too. I think most OEMs don't use that for all of their bloat though.
They seem to have the api base url hardcoded in their firmware[1]. The repo seems to have pretty clear instructions for compiling and flashing modified firmware. From there, it's just a matter of writing a decent server to implement the calls documented in BYOD/S[2] and Private API.[3]
Having RTFA: I think it's an interesting take to centralize zoning at the state level. Houston (which has no zoning ordinances) is a terrible place to live, but it's definitely an affordable place to live.
The incentives at a state level around housing might actually balance differently because at that level economic activity, jobs, etc. matter more than property taxes. Something that isn't often mentioned, because the focus is always on California or the US, is that property values are directly tied to the overwhelming majority of municipal budgets via property taxes incurred as a percentage of that value. Not only do constituents vote for more expensive residential property, local governments want expensive residential property even if their voters didn't.
This is exactly why California has been trying to move some of this power to the state level: local governments are fighting tooth and nail to hold on to their tax revenue.
ETA: The property tax thing is more complex, but still applies. States like Florida and California cap how much tax assessments can increase for property you own that is your primary residence.
This still encourages these states to drive up property values because it tempts you into cashing out via selling. Every state with this sort of cap also immediately reassesses real estate to the price it sells at the following year. A high property value versus the tax assessment is just a deferred revenue stream, so it's a driver to encourage consistent turnover in the market. The only real way to do that is to constantly drive prices up, which drives the cost of living up, which turns over the residents faster.
So capping tax assessments like that, just makes the cycle even more viscous, in my experience living in Florida for a time.
I like the idea of capping tax assessments. I am in central Texas and about 7 years ago the county dropped rates. Then the assessment went up and now I am paying something like 600% more (my bill). I am grateful, in some respects, that the property is worth more but I an not really in a position to gain financially from the price increase.
Adding: I would also like to see more of a tax for subdividing land. The way the taxes are structured, I feel like it is set up for those already living here are paying for the development and then paying the bills for road maintenance, police and fire, schools, etc. Empty land does not need these services.
> This still encourages these states to drive up property values because it tempts you into cashing out via selling. Every state with this sort of cap also immediately reassesses real estate to the price it sells at the following year. A high property value versus the tax assessment is just a deferred revenue stream, so it's a driver to encourage consistent turnover in the market. The only real way to do that is to constantly drive prices up, which drives the cost of living up, which turns over the residents faster.
Many states (like WA) are on the budget system for property taxes: your assessed value effects your share of the taxes, but the overall property tax take is fixed. So if the property market booms or crashes, the amount collected is still the same. Playing around with freezing/capping assessments will only change how the tax burden is distributed (well, if it freezes for everyone then nothing really changes).
WA also pools property tax revenue for schools, which means richer western Washington districts subsidize poorer easter Washington districts. People still move around to be in the better school districts, however, since the advantages of those schools go beyond funding.
> Virtually every affluent residential neighborhood in Houston has strict private deed restrictions — and, remarkably many of those deed restrictions can be enforced by the city. ...
> Some neighborhoods are in effect using historic districts as a zoning substitute. ...
> Several years ago, the city also created a process by which residents and neighborhoods could petition for a minimum lot size or minimum building line, or setback from the street. ...
> This lack of zoning has resulted in Houston using other legal and governance mechanisms, such as ordinances, a building code and deed restrictions to impose rules that function as a form of de facto zoning.
I mean, this also suggests that part of the way out of this is to change that perverse incentive structure.
Fund municipalities more from the state level, through progressive income taxes (and/or potentially other funding sources). Property taxes don't have to go away, but if they're no longer the sole or primary source of funding for the municipality where they're being levied, that removes a very obvious source of problems.
Just as obviously, it will introduce other problems, but in my experience, when you come to recognize that a particular structure in finance/government/rules/etc is causing problems, it is easier to get in a mindset of identifying similar problems in the structures you set up to replace them. This does require a certain minimum degree of competency and a certain maximum degree of willingness to upset everyone else's applecart for one's own benefit among the powers that would be making the decisions, of course, which cannot always be a given.
Not actually. Even if you enabled passkey, you still can login to their phone app via SMS. So it is not more secure. People who knows how to do SMS attacks certainly knows how to install a mobile app. And BofA gave their customers a fake assurance.
Billpay Checks are actually Cashier's Checks and are drawn from account numbers that aren't your account, btw. It's one of the reasons it's far more secure to pay any bill requiring a check this way.
Check fraud is massively on the rise. They don't even need a physical check, just the info. They're printing their own checks now and depositing them electronically. They also hire homeless right off the street to go in and cash the checks for them. Homeless keeps $100, the fraudsters make the rest.
If you're using checks the way you say you are, it's only a matter of time before you have to deal with swapping out bank account numbers.
> Billpay Checks are actually Cashier's Checks and are drawn from account numbers that aren't your account
They are most definitely not cashier's checks. I checked both institutions and both of them issue actual checks on my account. The only difference is their sequence numbers. The money doesn't leave my account until the recipient deposits them. I have, in the past, issued stop payment orders for them.
I've got a couple Claude Code skills set up where I just copy/paste a Slack link into it and it links people relevant docs, gives them relevant troubleshooting from our logs, and a hook on the slack tools appends a Claude signature to make sure they know they weren't worth my time.
That said, there's this weird quicksand people around me get in where they just spend weeks and weeks on their AI tools and don't actually do much of anything? Like bro you burned your 5 hour CC Enterprise limit all week and committed...nothing?
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