Product, policy grab bag

A smattering of intriguing products and some thoughts on policy.

Technology and Products

Every week I find myself using AI products more and more. I have not tried the Replit Agent yet, but it sounds fantastic.  I have used Deep Research on ChatGPT Pro, which is very good.   I signed up for one month of ChatGPT Pro to try it out, and now I wonder if I can let it go.  It is good enough that I am going to see what other subscriptions I can drop so that I can justify keeping it.  Microsoft 365 is on the chopping block.

As I encounter more Markdown files (for instance, output from Deep Research), this little MacOS extension is super helpful for quickly viewing rendered Markdown in the finder. I use other editing tools, but this is way quicker for viewing. Why can't my OS watch what I am doing and just suggest tools like this, or even just install them?

Researchers are applying AI to wifi signals to recognize human activity in the area. They are grabbing wifi channel state information, performing some FFTs and wavelet transforms on it, and then running the frequency domain series through a transformer to extract features.  Very cool.  Frequency transforms have always seemed kind of magical to me. Continuous AI inspection of our wifi signals, electrical use, water use, etc seems like it could generate many fascinating insights. Shwetak Patel at the UW did work in this area years ago pre generative AI; it seems like it is time to look at again.

We switched to ceramic-coated pans years ago.  If you believe your product is toxic to birds but somehow OK for humans, you probably need to think a little harder.

SideOut Pickleball is coming to the Rainier Ave area of Seattle.  Very excited about this.  I’d love to see some padel courts in Seattle, too.

DOGE

I read and write about DOGE because I care deeply about economic growth in our country — growth is the way to raise the standard of living, the way to give back to the world, and growth is what the USA is great at.  All the DOGE cost-cutting hand-waving is a misguided use of our best resources — cost-cutting is fine, but we are ultimately not going to find the discipline to really cut much, so we need to overfocus on growth.

Anyway, the big DOGE activities this week:

• The Trump administration continues to push ahead with its DOGE implementation.  It is great to look hard at government expenditures; it is pretty strange to do it with a bunch of cowboys who don’t know much about the domain.
• For instance, no 150-year-olds are collecting Social Security.  There are incomplete records with holes in the data.  A more sophisticated team would comprehend this before running to the press.
• Mark Cuban on DOGE transparency — “…i absolutely want to see @Doge reduce wasteful spending.  But i want the process to be transparent.”   Right on, I am a massive fan of cost-cutting and sunsetting obsolete programs.  Let’s just be open and transparent about both goals and results.  
• USAID outlays in 2023 are .66% of federal outlays. This is a tempest in a teacup.
• Parochial self-interest is the force that always grinds down government cost-cutting efforts. This is why cost-cutting is a complete misdirection of Elon and DOGE’s energy. They will spend large amounts of time to save peanuts. Instead, they should focus on economic growth and the levers that control it.

Other Executive Orders

As with DOGE, executive attention on these can either be an accelerant or a drag on growth.   I want the White House to be overfocused on sustainable growth.

We continue to shake the tariff stick at our closest allies — Aluminum tariffs, steel tariffs, and Progress with Canada.  I understand the strategic need to rebuild our industries to eliminate supply chain threats from countries that are hostile to our interests; I don’t get attacking our friends.

The WSJ on sovereign wealth — Government doesn’t create wealth, and a sovereign wealth fund would merely be one more way for the government to commandeer private wealth for political purposes. It will destroy more wealth than it creates.  In complete agreement with this, we do not need some centralized entity trying to steer large amounts of investment.  The government should get out of the way, not insert itself even more deeply.

This smells like projection — Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — the only people who want to quit enforcing bribery statutes are either taking bribes or handing out bribes.  

Protecting our second amendment rights — we are awash in guns in this country, it doesn't seem like we've impeded second amendment rights at all. 

Establishing the White House Faith Office, and initial appointments — Trump earlier got rid of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, but now he has just replaced it.  We don’t need the White House to spend any time on this issue; separation of church and state is a core tenet of our nation.

Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias — It is a bold claim that this country has any kind of anti-Christian bias — Christianity is far more favored than any other religion.  We do not need the White House to spend time on this issue.