My son is 15 and I use Google Family Link to control what he does on his phone: it's pretty open for the most part (I receive notifications of installs) but Gemini is a hard-ban.

We've spoken at length of the dangers.

He says his pals use LLMs frequently and I suspect that's the reason for their test scores: some of them are in the 20% - 40% range for tests whereas my son is 80%+ because he studies past-papers and answers questions in his revision.

I worry for the future coz you can be sure that the AI providers don't care if a schoolchild is using their LLM to answer the homework questions.

I will quite literally never write a line of code again... with any luck!

However, something occurred to me when reading it. I was thinking about AGI (or ASI) and what would happen if someone were to achieve it (not sure what it would look like or what constitutes AGI... not the point I'm making here).

What if the primary goal of the first AGI is to keep itself at the top? What if it's goal is to prevent any other AGI? Scary thought...

I use Gemini quite extensively - I have a 5TB storage plan with Google so I get Pro thrown in. I also have Github Copilot Pro for IDE integration.

However, lately it feels like I keep tripping the circuit breaker on Gemini more easily and get the message about using up all my Pro tokens for the next 3 hours.

I used to be able to work most of the day before it hit the brakes but I can trigger it before work in the mornings now... that seems to me like they're tightening the usage limits!

I use a Dell Micro PC with an Intel Core Ultra 265 so it's nice and fast but it has no GPU, hence the reason I use Gemini but I'm now starting to think that, despite the RAM cost, before the end of the year I'll buy a PC with a monster GPU in it and run all my AI locally... the direction of travel is clearly heading towards a massive cost increase so might as well get ahead of it: it's not going to become cheaper, that's for sure!

If Sheets works (I love simplicity) then I'll give it a go but I checked and I can't find any templates for Kanban or such.

Honestly, I feel more and more every day like old-man-shaking-fist-at-clouds! Can we not just have something that works without spying, without engagement-driven shit switched on all the fucking time?

I think of the Simpsons Mr Brown meme where he's asking "Is it me that's wrong?".

I can't be the only person that thinks this way!

I spent December last year looking for a new bank to move to. One of my criteria (not the most important but it was on the list) was better-than-SMS 2FA.

No one offers it. There may be some niche, loosely-based finance org that does but none of the banks or Building Societies do.

So, unfortunately, you need it in the UK.

Having worked in the corporate world all my working life I can safely say with confidence that big companies absolutely DO NOT move fast. Do not underestimate the power of middle-management to destroy momentum!

Solve a problem for someone and if it was a painful one, they'll pay you for it.

1. Develop discipline around the piano

2. Build my side hustle beyond a side hustle (Kopi - replicate a production DB schema and relational subsets of its data for local development in seconds)

However, we both agreed that when comparing the UK(ish) and US(ish) variants, the UK ones are much more fun and colourful: The US ones seem a little, erm, boring!

It can replicate a DB in as little as 9 seconds.

It's Open Core: Community Edition and Pro/Enterprise editions.

Still a WiP --> https://kopidev.com

The only thing it didn't have out of the box that I wanted was Microsoft Store (so that I could install Winget and Terminal) but you install it from an elevated powershell command with "wsreset -i" and that's it done.

It also has the original version of Notepad, not that abomination with the tabs and Copilot!

Oh, no Copilot whatsoever in fact.

All the instructions for IoT (including where to get it... legitimately) are on the massgrave github page and website.

And before I am accused of sailing the high seas... I'm not! The activation script just activates complicated processes built-in to Windows: it doesn't "hack" it or anything!

However, I use a Yubikey as often as I can nowadays and authenticator apps too where possible.

I'd like the option to use one but I can't :(

Not one (I last checked about a month ago!)

Security, while pretty good, is still lacking imo!

There are, however, definitely domains it can excel: things like entry-level call handlers... I think they're screwed in all honesty!

Edit: clarified some stuff...