1 guy on a tractor does the work of a whole team of animals and men. But I don't think any commercial farm has ever gone down to 0 men, and I don't think they ever will. Too many things need real eyes on the ground to make decisions and adjust.

Outside context gained through sensory input (eyes, ears) may be hard to fully replace. You'd need a human to at least give the AI that extra context. Help it work inside the bubble it's contained to.

Destructive things like warfare, I think AI will do great. But even if massive armies of land/air/sea robots controlled through starlink satellites become the norm, there will almost certainly still be human soldiers around. Context, working in civilian populated zones where judgement is needed, etc.

I think of bitcoin and all the crypto products the same way I think of baseball cards. The underlying asset is worthless cardboard. Value is pure speculation. Sure you make real money speculating, trading cardboard for real cap gains, but it's cardboard at the end of the day.

Value can vanish in an instant. As old baseball card collectors die off, there's no new wave of young people willing to pay a cool million dollars for a rare card. And exactly that has happened to many crypto products.

Bitcoin has enjoyed the "first wave" effect. But the days of 5000x gains on a "cardboard" underlying asset are going to be harder to find. Bitcoin is not going to 5000x again from it's current price. New crypto products will not either with the flood of new coins and new product fatigue.

The fact I can personally recreate a bitcoin equivalent right now with the effort of a button click should be concerning. I can't duplicate gold with a button click. I can't duplicate a business with high profit margin. I can't duplicate real estate.

I never work in a coffee shop. I never work on a plane. I use computers at my home or work docking stations only. I don't benefit from the laptop form factor.

I'm on team desktop 100%. At home, a mac mini does the job. Arguably just as portable as a laptop if you are simply carrying it from docking station A to B. Fits in a laptop carry bag just fine. It's 2026; a "desktop" doesn't need to be an un-portable massive box that weighs 30 pounds.

My current plan is to ride the Apple M chip wave while avoiding their expensive laptops. Mac mini delivers the goods in a cheaper, just as portable package.

Basline mac mini is $800 and gets you into the M4 tier chips. Overkill for web dev and iOS apps. Enough power to carry you for 10+ years of dev work before your next upgrade. I'm still on the M1 mini and plan upgrade at the 10 year mark (2031) or if I need more power sooner (unlikey).

I feel the mini's are price competitive. They say "apple tax" but go on to some linux machine provider, select similar stats, and see the price tag rocket past the mini.

Replaced with a new set of problems of course. Like no money. And if the startup is successful it will eventually morph into a big fat corporate culture. The circle of life.

For the US stock sleeve of your portfolio you might try

    75% VTI  #core position. cap weighted total US market
    10% AVLV #tilt large cap value
    15% AVUV #tilt small cap value

Don't forget international. A good way reduce your big tech allocations

    80% VEA  #intl developed
    20% VEXC #intl emerging, ex-China

    VTI 45
    AVLV 6
    AVUV 9
    VEA 32
    VEXC 8

VTI is US only.

Exercise. Any kind of exercise, from strength training to walking.

The diet-and-exercise cliche is a cliche because it effects just about everything about us. It may not be the only factor in snoring. Or even the dominant factor. But I'd bet the house it's a factor.

Remember Livescript and early web browsers? It was almost cancelled by big tech because Java was supposed to be the cross platform system. The web and Javascript just BARELY escaped a big tech smack down. They stroked the ego of big tech by renaming to Javascript to honor Java. Licked some boots, promised a very mediocre, non threatning UI experience in the browser and big tech allowed it to exist. Then the whole world started using the web/javascript. It caught fire before big tech could extinguish. Java itself got labeled a security threat by Apple/Microsoft for threatening the walled gardens but that's another story.

You may not like browsers but they are the ONLY thing big tech can't extinguish due to ubiquity. Achieving ubiquity is not easy, not even possible for new contenders. Pray to GOD everyday and thank her for giving us the web browser as a feasible cross platform GUI.

Web browser UI available on all devices is not a failure, it's a miracle.

To top it all off, HTML/CSS/Javascript is a pretty good system. The box model of CSS is great for a cross platform design. Things need to work on a massive TV or small screen phone. The open text-based nature is great for catering to screen readers to help the visually impaired.

The latest Wizbang GPU powered UI framework probably forgot about the blind. The latest Wizbang is probably stuck in the days of absolute positioning and non-declarative layouts. And with x,y(z) coords. It may be great for the next-gen 4-D video game, but sucks for general purpose use.

Sometimes I like to use a very dark theme and crank up the font size. Thick fonts become blinding light. So I need thin variants to dim them down.

This ties into "relaxing". When you zoom in to only ~28 lines on screen you are more focused on the relevant section, present in the moment. Relaxed not worried about the 50+ lines that no longer fit on screen.

It's big enough to clearly see indents. But small enough to preserve screen real estate. And no one needs to agree 3 is best because TAB.

I will try to get 10 years use out of it. 2031 will be time to evaluate the next machine.