- An AI company went bankrupt after it came out that its supposed “vibe-coding” AI was a team of 700 Indian software engineers. Even Microsoft fell for it, and threw gobs of money at them. Which brings up an interesting question: How do possible investors (or anyone else) know where (and even what) an AI is?
- Not everyone thinks that vibe coding is slam-dunk easy. A Stanford prof does it, and says it’s intellectually exhausting—just like “manual” coding is. The trick with all AI work is knowing how to create the prompts that will deliver the desired results. Although I’ve not tried vibe coding with an AI yet, my experience with text and images suggests that “prompt engineering” is the real challenge, and to me, prompt engineering looks like programming in yet another English-like language.
- Meta signed a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy, to help fund new nuclear generation capacity, starting with a plant in Illinois. If carbon is indeed the problem, nuclear is the solution. I have had some peculiar experiences with AI over the past months, but I’m willing to root for AI as a way to bring nuclear power back from the grips of those Atomic Scientists who simply can’t force themselves to go fission.
- In case you missed it: Lazarus 4.0 is out. Compatibility with Delphi is high. The 4.0 system was built using FreePascal 3.2.2. Go get it here.
- Here’s a wonderful short-ish article on Mark Twain’s rowdy early years in (bogglingly) rowdy Virginia City, Nevada.
- Today is the semiquincentennial of the US Army. Also the sestercentennial. Oh, and the bisesquicentennial too. Big words rock. I love ’em. And next year will be all those big words for the US itself, not to mention Carol’s and my 50th wedding anniversary.
- Classmates continues to send me nonsense. I supposedly have a private message waiting from a Maria G., who was in De Paul University’s Class of 1971. (The message was posted in 2007.) Well, I have that yearbook, and she’s not in it. (Her name, which I won’t quote here, is very unusual and I have been unable to find her online.) Some years back Classmates asked me if I knew a girl named Linda something, who was in the Lane Tech Class of 1970, like me. Uh…no. Lane was an all-boy school until a couple of years after I graduated. I gave Classmates money once. I won’t be giving them money again. They make up stuff like a…like an AI.
- Well, as far as I’m concerned, the famous TED talks are now over. An Australian prof who did all the necessary research was tossed out of the TED universe for a presentation that cast doubt on the perpetrators of useless COVID reactions like lockdowns, and showed evidence that the not-really-a-vaccine (you can get it and spread it!) caused more harm than good. TED stated right out that criticism of political and health leaders was verboten. Read the whole thing. (H/T to Sarah Hoyt for the link.)
June, 2025:
Odd Lots
Rebus-ish
Long past time for a little silliness here. When I was (I think) five or maybe six, the Latin Mass was the only Mass, and I remember wondering what the priest was saying but especially what the choir was singing. The choir, having a dozen or so members, was louder than the celebrant—and, well, fuzzier. So consider the Agnus Dei, which was one of the numerous things the choir sang during High Mass at our church in that era:
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi
Miserere nobis
What I heard was a little different:
On this day, they told us we got a moonbeam.
We say, “Hey, we know this.”
This was repeated three times. The fourth stanza ended in “Dona nobis pacem,” and in truth I don’t recall what I heard in that. I got a kid missal when I started grade school, and that put an end to the mystery.
But I was thinking of that when a sort of puzzle occurred to me: Using words to encode other words when both sets of words used (mostly) the same phonemes. That’s basically what I did with the Agnus Dei. The encoded version would be nonsense, of course, but if read could suggest the original.
I was reminded of something called a rebus, which you don’t see much anymore: The use of small pictures or icons to represent phonemes. Decades ago, I drew a rebus on a valentine card I gave to Carol. Above my signature, I drew a picture of a bumblebee and a tunnel with tracks running out of it. Carol looked at the valentine, giggled, and said, “Be cave?” It’s been an inside joke between us ever since.
So consider this encoded stanza of a forgettable and mostly forgotten pop song from the early 70s. You don’t need to remember the song to decode the puzzle. (If you do remember the song, well, you’re probably as old as I am, and just as into goofy pop music.)
Hare shawl deer swear bear
Anne eye dried nought two stair
win isle luck tatter tulips.
See if you can decode it. The phonemes aren’t absolutely identical between the uncoded and coded text, which makes it harder to decode and thus more of a puzzle.
I call this sort of puzzle rebus-ish, since it’s a rebus done with language, and not pictures, nor single letters, which are called gramograms, as in the canonical gramogram conversation:
FUNEX?
S,VFX.
FUNEM?
S,VFM.
OK,LFMNX.
I do wonder if somebody else has put forth this kind of puzzle and coined a word for it. I’ve never seen anything of that sort. Independent invention is a thing. I independently invented the blog in the late 90s, having never seen the word nor read one of the (very few) blogs that predated my VDM Diary.
So see how long it takes you to figure it out. And if you’re so inclined, concoct one of your own and post it in the comments. Try it!
