Category: Me Myself&I

Yes, I’m using its version 3 via Bing.

Yes, I see the debates.

Yes, getting an answer like “sorry for your issue with this, here’s what you can do” that makes sense and is pretty much accurate, is a lot more natural and enjoyable than parsing a page of SEO’d blue links.

Yes, it is freaking me out, when I see that version 4 is a lot better than 3 and that the very first LLM only came out in 2018. And that it does almost as well in any language than it does in English.

At that pace, it’s not hard to see what’s going to happen. One example.

ChatGPT is an insanely good coding assistant. Remember how we told kids, “learn to code and you’ll be fine!”. Well now we know that we probably need ten times less programmers, compared to what we thought in 2010. That means ten times less money being saved for retirement of folks born in the 80s/90s, but I digress.

The implications of LLMs are hard to comprehend but it’s about to wash our worlds. I’m afraid of a few things:

• Bots are now going to be so impossible to detect that coupled with folks not being cautious or tech savvy, it is going to fuel a level of scams that we can’t possibly imagine.
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• It’s going to create an absurd, default, strong distrust between all of us in digital worlds. Is it Auntie in the group chat? No way to know for sure. Who’s writing those posts? Me here but otherwise, not sure.
• It’s just frightening how many jobs can be automated or semi-automated with LLMs. Six-figure jobs doing nothing but writing stuff are gone. If they’re not gone now, they are on their way out.
• It’s impossible to see at what pace or how those jobs will be gone, but it’s already happening. We’ll realize it when it’s done. Scary shit.
• Over the past 20 years, we have outsourced like crazy to developing countries. That’s over. Support work is going back home to data centers now. The impact on emerging economies is going to be felt for the next decades. Which means more emigration.
• Remote work exploded with the pandemic but with AI? That’s going to be forever now. There’s a huge brand new Warner Bros office on Venice Blvd. It’s for TV folks, who work from home on their laptops and Zoom constantly. The building is constantly empty. It will stay empty now and that was pretty much impossible to foresee when the building was built, years ago. Repeat that times a million across the country.

Two things that make me happy though: LLMs scan the internet for information and reasoning logic. My 15+ years blog is feeding them too! Second, I hope that this technological progress really makes people understand how we need UBI now and forever.

What a time to be alive has become really accurate to me.

The frame is wood and steel with reinforced concrete walls defining and punctuating the rectilinear geometry. The house is clad in stucco, redwood and glass.

Me:

The structure aspires to sustain a dialogue about the relationship between the natural and the human-made and the joys and wonders of both.

Me:

(I must have a built-in BS repellant in my mind)

I see Waymo cars twice a day now. I’m not sure that we’re ready for the massive upcoming societal changes but also:

• People straight up can’t drive anymore. They’re all distracted by giant dashboards and phones, excellent sound insulation and AC. Attention to the road and surroundings are a third priority now.
• Young people don’t want to drive anymore. Plus, all the 2000-born folks don’t have the analog feel, it’s all Ridge Racer-y and not good for traffic.
• Older people, more numerous than ever before can’t drive anymore, as we all know. 15mph on the left lane, no peripheral vision whatsoever, a mess.

I am left alone focused and sailing through a sea of moronic behavior and I’m tired of it.

Enters Waymo.

I remember the DARPA challenge and how about 20 years ago those robot cars prototypes were getting lost and failing in the desert around a rock and tumbleweeds. Now they’re in traffic driving better than 95% of folks around.

I know, this is purely American-built progress due to the grid infrastructure that I enjoy so much. European small and convoluted streets are not so great for this in-progress disruption of our lives. I mean:

• Codependency almost all based on access to a vehicle? Gone.
• Any emergency 24/7 needing you to move from A to B? Covered.
• Adultery and car sex? Revolutionized.
• Work, commuting and remote work? Reshaped.
• My 103 years old ass wanting to go to the 4D movies, but unable to drive his good old 2CV? Taken care of!
• Suddenly the titanic road system in California becomes a wonderfully automated transportation vessel where one can rest, do stuff, dream.

Now the data collection implications with Google’s vertical integration? Yes. Horrifying.

Architectural observations, I guess.

Single family house is/was the best

It is the best. It provides space, privacy. Indoor, outdoor. Growing up in such environment is fantastic, for that it brings so many layers of understanding about the world, and so many needed skills. I’ll take the recent example of J Dilla’s life. He and his siblings grew up in many apartments and houses, and they preferred apartments because they’re less work and chores. But it’s in a single house, in the basement that the beat producer became the beat producer. Space. Privacy. Growth.

Families are so different now

Tons of divorced couples. Most families don’t have many kids anymore. Tons of recomposed families. What that means is that we don’t need big family homes rather, we need 3-folks structures that can be maintained by said three folks. We’re in a post-servant world. It is also smarter to build multiple small dwellings than a giant house. Not only that allows for more flexibility (living with your partner and their mom or your partner and a kid is very different) but building small units makes them super easy to insulate and orientate perfectly. Climate change, energy prices, etc.

The giant impact of technology

We can comfortably sit somewhere with a laptop sporting 8 hours of battery, and do SOOO many things just like that. Architecturally speaking, this is freeing: no more specific rooms for specific usage. The needs for a game room or an entertainment room or a den or a study are gone. All the questions about how to integrate those rooms in a house, gone. All that matters is creating cozy nooks where we can go on with our digital lives.

We need to build smaller

The most consistent feeling when I analyze homes in books or in real life is how much we always build too much. For instance, dining rooms. Everyone tries to have one, but most of the eating and gathering will take place in the kitchen! Every. Single. Time. It’s like we create spaces “just in case” but that is extremely expensive and an awful waste. Due to climate change and optimizing cooling/heating, we need smaller homes than before. That’s the perfect justification to get rid of the past’s conservativeness.

Less squareness

We build using 90° angles because that made sense and it is easy to create and recreate with material we use to make houses and buildings with. But I’m telling you because I’ve experienced it: walls angled further away from the mighty ninety make the room a completely different experience. Your brain simply feels less imprisoned in a non-square space. The fabulous opportunity here is that we have those great little tools called computers, attached to those great 3D printers and that we are FREE from the 90° tyranny. Use Revit, send your 120° angular or curvy data to firms and machines, done.

Don’t forget: we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.

Reading a ton about Japanese architecture. Completely blown away at their ability to not follow anything but to just be in the now.

Japanese folks build somewhere and for a purpose. Maybe they want a view, maybe they want to mostly live in a big room, maybe they need to alleviate a noisy road. Maybe the lot is 4 meters (13 ft) large.

It’s never about “I need 4 bedrooms, a garage for my F250 and my house needs to look like a 1543 Italian Renaissance retreat”. That’s… Not it.

It’s about building ways for you to enjoy life, and it depends heavily on the site, its surroundings and the owner’s intention.

That means a whole lot of brainstorming.

Feelings first, looks later. Check those out:

Anti Dwelling House, 1972

Built for the architect’s mom. So yeah, a single-person home with a great skylight. Who wouldn’t like that?

Miyamajima Residence, 1973

Built around a 45cm grid, in and out. Conceptual AF.

Mini House, 1998

Tokyo. Ultra-dense and compact lots. Yet this house offers a lot of room, even a roof terrace and a parking space.

House N, 2008

Apertures arranged randomly to preserve privacy, windows designed in accordance with the golden ratio. CRAZY (so, so bold)

Nasu Tepee, 2013

Owners wanted to preserve trees around, so they designed rooms to fit between trunks. Since the interior would be dark when trees are thick with leaves, windows were placed at the top to provide natural light. Simple, yet amazing.

Necklace House, 2006

Built in a region with a lot of snow, most houses there have few openings. This one was completely optimized to provide natural light in every room and situation.

Optical Glass House, 2012

This one faces a 8-lane boulevard so they created a glass wall made of 6,000 glass bricks neatly tied together by stainless steel rods. Right behind the glass wall is a small garden with trees. The effect is that the noise is vastly reduced if not completely taken care of, while traffic and light blur together through the bricks. GE-NIUS

House NA, 2011

Take a tour. Isn’t it amazing? To live in a house like this has to change you deeply. You have to love stairs for sure though.

Just a few examples. There are so many incredible homes out there.

We are so boring with our shoeboxes that leak everything.

Listen,

I’ve tried a bunch of configuration from 13″ laptop to 31″ 4K monitor.

13″ QHD (2K) is a bit small after a few hours.

31″ UHD (4K) is just too big: not only I have to be much further away from the display, but my eyes need to move from diagonal to diagonal, hard. Strain and also, addiction. It’s so clean, my brain keeps saying.

24″ FHD (1080p) is kind of perfect: everything is in my vision, I can open a few windows without issues and I can see the pixels, which is reminding me to go for a walk from time to time.

I keep saying that we have peaked with technology and every day, I have proof of that. That’s exciting to me!

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher stated about two thousand years ago that the only immutable, unchangeable law was the Law of Change.

The response was getting stoned in the streets of Athens.

I understand those people throwing rocks, smart ass Heraclitus.

You went around, talked your shit, made a lot of sense and mfs couldn’t handle the truth. Hence the cailloux in your face.

It’s a vertical phone.

Vertical videos. Vertical photos.

Vertical timeline. Scrolling up and down.

Work, woes, love, public, private, it’s all vertical.

It’s the leaderboard. The pyramid scheme. The “you’re supposed to be on top of everyone”.

It’s the high-rise building. You are supposed to be at the top to exist better.

It’s a taller car to look down others.

Horizontal is head to head. It’s our surroundings. It’s nature.

Horizontal is responsibilities. It’s also cozy, calm and freedom. I’m in love with my horizontal plane.

Yeah, I know that.

The hilarious part for me is that this entire article talks about phones messing up teenagers, as if phones hadn’t and are not fucking up adults at all! Phones fucked up adults first, keep doing so and teenagers simply follow.

Bro. Due to phones:

• Adults have zero attention span compared to 15 years ago.
• Adults drive so erratically despite having 4 GPS in the car.
• Adults walk around without looking around.
• Adults are insanely addicted to notifications.
• Adults play it like “it’s work” and we all know that’s bullshit.

Y’all are all super distracted with your phones. You can’t control it. You hear a ding, you see a bubble and nothing else matters. You are addicted to no end, demonstrating to teenagers that this is acceptable.

Change that. Now.