He writes about that and many other similar things in his recent autobiography of his younger years, "Source Code" (2025).

> they develop bad sectors so easily

I never had a bad sector on 5.25-inch Double-sided, Double-Density (360K) diskettes, but I did all the time with 3.5-inch HD ones (1.44MB). I'm seeing some references to 8-inch and some to 3.5-inch disks used in the FAA, but I'm not sure what source has reliable information about that.

I've had some bad sectors on a high-desnity 5.25 floppy go away after blowing dust off.

I started using an "engineering notebook" for things like that. They are called other things in other lines of work or school (lab notebook, captain's log, ...). In an actual engineering notebook, you would use a sewn binding where you can't add or remove pages, the pages are numbered, you have an index in the front, entries are made in strictly chronological order, you'd have someone else witness and sign pages, draw a diagonal line across empty areas so you can't remove things, only cross things out with a single line, etc. All that because you might need to prove you invented something and other legal CYA reasons. Most of these requirements, you don't need for personal projects, though. But the things that are useful: keeping track of projects, what settings you've tried, what the results were, and so on. That way you don't have to reproduce it from scratch again later. "What settings did I need use to create the gerber files in kicad for manufacturing? How did I set ___ in the oscilloscope? What parts did I use to make that thing? What things did I wish I had checked last time? Where did I put those files?" You can also print things out and tape them in for reference.

I love the ergonomics of hard bound engineering notebooks. The cost is more than I'm willing to pay for the pedestrian kind of notes I take, though.

I got a few of them, partially-used, from a canceled project and I really enjoyed using and carrying them.

I just use composition notebooks which are like $1-$5 depending on the quality, store, sales, etc. That's also what we used as a lab notebook in chemistry class when I was in high school, which follows a similar discipline, so to me it's fitting.

> I don't think people are ready for the amount of work AI agents are going to be creating for real humans.

Funny story about that. I joined a hackerspace/makerspace called Denhac. A guy wanted to make a prop for a Escape from L.A. costume, Snake's countdown timer on his wrist. ChatGPT told him to go to Denhac (the Denver hackerspace) for help making it!

My friend told him to talk to me since I knew about hobby electronics (think Ben Eater projects etc). At first I thought I was just going to teach him how to multiplex the digits of the 7-segment LEDs but I ended up just doing it all myself for a couple weeks. I sourced and bought the parts (Arduino Pro Micro USB-C, 7-segment displays, and some other small parts; he supply a credit card sized USB-C battery pack to power it). After trying it out on breadboards first, I was going to wire it up on a protoboard but it was giving me trouble, so I designed a PCB, and ended up ordered it from a couple different places, because it wasn't clear when the ones from overseas would arrive due to tariffs. I also designed and 3D-printed a case and spray painted it to look metallic, as well as green lighting gel (clear plastic) for the display. It came out pretty cool! But they totally nerd-sniped me to work on that.

Also, the thing you mentioned about AI creating work for humans instead of humans using it as a tool is what Corey Doctorow's book about "reverse centaurs" is about.

In total fairness, a Denhac membership is basically signing up to be nerd-sniped for live entertainment. (Denhac is wonderful and I wish I made it over more often.)

Have you ever donated to a candidate?

The last Avengers movie was 7.5 years ago. The last Star Wars episode was 7 years ago. (The Mandalorian one is the only standalone one since then.) Avengers are included in the MCU btw. There have only been about 1 to 3 MCU movies per year for the last few years. (2022: 3; 2023: 3; 2024: 1; 2025: 3; 2026: 2). There are tons of other, really good movies to watch. Not just indies either: Did you happen to see Project Hail Mary this year? The Odyssey? I missed Spider-man: Brand New Day (the MCU movie that came out this year so far), but it has 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, so I don't think that drags down the average in terms of quality either.

“Only” 1 to 3 MCU movies a year? This is an absurd amount of junk.

Just found out macOS has it too. Created a .plan file and used finger on my user name and it showed the plan. There's no fingerd or anything listening on the port though, but it worked locally. Neat.

> The Wikipedia page [...] will only work off your current location

You can put the coordinates of any location in the URL. One way to get that is in google maps, when you right click and click on the coordinates. Paste it where the coordinates go in the URL and remove the space after the comma.

It appears to limit itself to 50 results though, which only got me results up to 930 m away from the location I picked near me.

The word "shovel" shows up 38 times in the comments as I write this.

Or the Late Permian Siberian Traps when the crust ripped open, erupted for 2 million years, and "are believed to be the primary cause of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the most severe extinction event in the geologic record": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps

That, too.

Mankind needs to learn before it's too late.