Our Readers Do Write
Opinions by Ralph Grabowski and readers
Substack, on which this blog runs, lets you support me, but only through subscriptions that renew automatically, and start at $50. If you want to make a smaller, one-time donation to WorldCAD Access, then I’ve set up an account with https://buymeacoffee.com/grabowskif.
When you are in Canada, consider eTransfer to grabowski@telus.net:
Are you accepting subscription payments to WorldCAD Access vis e-Transfer? I read your buymeacoffee method, but suspect they take a cut, like the credit cards. Maybe it’s easier for you to consolidate the subscriptions under this method, but if not, I’d prefer that you get all of the subscription funds.
- Dairobi Paul
Speaking of financial support, thank you to
Dairobi Paul (via eTransfer)
Egil Johannessen
D H Abbott
Re: Recycling Computer Stuff
Here are three organization that may accept old computer hardware, and put it to good use elsewhere in the world, rather than send to a landfill:
There are various ways of donating, and these folks pledge to securely wipe all data.
- Peter Lawton
Re: Tiny Power Supplies (link to article)
Coming from the high voltage power industry, I describe electricity a bit differently. It works a lot like pneumatics.
Voltage is like air pressure. Double the pressure and you double the volume – double the voltage and you double the watts moved. The higher the pressure, the thicker the walls of the pipe need to be. The higher the voltage, the thicker the insulation needs to be.
If you want more flow, you increase the diameter of the pipe or wire. We measure flow as amps. Total energy (watts) = flow (amps) x pressure (voltage)
A resister is like going from a concrete road (copper wire) to a muddy dirt road (resister). I expect someone will provide an even better way to explain.
- Ken Elliott
Further to your recent email about USB configurations, I’m sure you must have heard the oldie about the funeral for the designer of USB-1:
They solemnly lowered the coffin half way into the grave, lifted it out, turned it over, and lowered it all the way in.
- Bill Fane
Re: SaaS CAD Suffers With Other Victims of AI (link to article)
AI is a fancy way to steal from the smart kid’s homework.
- Bonzo via LinkedIn
Nemetschek stocks are down by 41% in the last 1-year span.
- Biplab Sarkar
Didn’t we think that the DWG clones were going to take down Autodesk? That seems to have never happened.
We’ve already seen machine design iterations, but how many firms are actually using that? I currently see AI as a ‘look over the shoulder’ for tasks like code reviews, quantity take-offs, etc.
- Dave Edwards
The editor replies: You are right: the DWG editor alternatives never made a dent in AutoCAD market share, even though AutoCAD LT (priced like a DWG competitor) outsells AutoCAD.
You said “OpenAI won’t be able to go public and won’t find any other way to pay off its monster debt, given its non-existent profits.” You may recall that Amazon started in July of 1994, but didn’t have a profitable year until 2003, almost a decade into operations.
Also, you said “Once this industry (AI) crashes NFT-style, then SaaS firms will be back.” If you are correct, now is the best time to buy SaaS stock, while prices are depressed. As my investment advisor, is this your recommendation?
Thanks, sir, and don’t slow down with the scepticism. Yours is a very necessary voice.
- Peter Lawton
The editor replies : It’s a different setup. Amazon only ever had paying customers, OpenAI claims to have 800 million customers who pay nothing, and so cost the company $$$ in server costs with every inquiry each one makes. It could well be that SpaceX going public at $1.2 trillion valuation might suck dry the funds available this year for investing in IPO’ing firms.
As it turns out, I don’t buy individual stocks; I invest in mutual funds.
Another excellent article - thank you! A common theme among articles that seek to assess the validity of ‘AI threats’ is that they’re based an implicit ‘point in time’ (now). But the landscape is still moving and the peak capabilities are nowhere in sight yet. Each model continuously evolves through training inputs, which reveal logic weaknesses that are addressed with newer model upgrades, or entirely new models.
Long story short: everything that we think of, relating to AI, is quickly outdated. It’s like making an assessment of achievable outcomes of a person while they’re still 3 years old.
- David Stein
LLM-based AI is effective and probably here to stay, until an even better technology stands on its shoulders. Having spent a life in CAD (Autodesk and MCS) and more recently AR/VR (Apple), I can tell you that I can do more with an AI assistant in a shorter time than I could with a small team of mid-level programmers.
That’s not saying that I’m not happy about the reduced demand for young engineers, it worries me, but it’s is real and here to stay.
- Ken J Hill
Re: Two Guys Debate the Beneficence of AI (link to article)
Reading this, I just have to respond. I was a CAD manager, and then IT manager at the local branch of a Fortune 500 company around the year 2000.
At that time in that world, profits came before everything else. The client would never pay for employees to populate the corporate database with lessons learned. The project manager (PM) would not stand for having overhead hours charged to their projects, regardless of the corporate mandate.
PMs are measured on their contribution to corporate profits and corresponding share price increases. It’s not about getting better, it’s about managing scope better to make sure you pick up extra hours to make up for the low bids needed to win work.
It takes time and money to build so-called “expert systems,” and most (not all, but most) corporations are too focused on share price to embrace knowledge capture and transfer. I still keep a pretty close eye on that industry and things have only become more competitive. Plus, top management turns over so often that there is no continuity in the vision.
So while I agree that saving lessons learned can be a valuable resource, most companies will just make the same mistakes again and again and figure out how to back charge the client (scope creep), unless the PM or other senior folks on the project have strong memories of past failures. I know this seems a pessimistic outlook, but don’t see that much has changed honestly.
- Rob Melnyk
If this is Grump versus Chump, the story is always the same. In the short term the Grump is always right. In the long term, the Chump is always right. This time, the ‘long term’ is shrinking rapidly.
- Randall Newton (via LinkedIn)
I’m with you, Ralph.
- Shaun ‘CADjedi’ Bryant (via LinkedIn)
Thank you for the word “entropy”, Ralph.
- Siem Eikelenboom (via LinkedIn)