It was my mother's favorite movie, at least for part of her life. She was 52 when it came out but I think much older when she saw it for the first time.

She said that she was always looking for that feeling of freedom that characterizes Ferris' day off and just watching the movie made her feel free

Not related to web projects, but...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-agent-finds-cleans-unused-code-30-minutes-full-srinivas-ch-xkcuc

https://medium.com/@productikit2046/the-ai-code-cleanup-how-to-find-and-delete-unused-code-in-your-next-js-project-877b591a7786

I think AI could make this design approach easier.

Right now it's uncommon because keeping cost down and being feature rich means off-the-shelf components that often have 100 features only six of which are used on the current project. So there is a huge amount of unused JS and CSS.

I've found you can get pretty good results by asking a chat to build just a minimal feature.  I suspect though I haven't tried, that a coding agent would be able to strip out unused features. That might be hard for an AI though because it requires a large context window.

Of course. I meant just as a prototype to get a sense of whether it truly behaves like a sail. If I understand what you're doing, it seems like unloaded it would just be a couple percent based on the CR tests. And that only at highway speeds

Hopefully you can get something viable

That's nice.

Because, you know, due to massive technological progress, no websites work anymore.

It seems like often the rapid development tools are insanely heavy.

The origin story reminds me of a freelance contract I've mentioned before. They took the low bid and launched a new site and proudly showed the VP of marketing who noted that it took 11-12 seconds to load and during that time it was a plain white screen. It was doing massive JS processing and that came after super inefficient database queries.

For $1200 I had a full analysis and got the apparent load time down to 0.5 seconds. I wish I could have fully rebuilt the site, but they didn't have budget.

One issue was that they loaded three competing JS libraries that did the same things. I told the web guy at the company that the front-end developer was insane for doing that and he said, "Actually he was really good. He didn't want to do that, but it was in the spec because different decision makers had strong opinions about JavaScript libraries."  None of those decision makers had any tech knowledge. They had just been to a webinar or read an article saying a good website had to have [blank]. So the developer complied with the brief.  The web guy at the company was a great guy and really sharp, with a full CS degree, but no decision making power.

Tim Harford has some interesting thoughts on AC

I don't know whether this link gives free access... I suspect the gift link cant be reused but...

https://www.ft.com/content/c5b93045-6d21-44ee-bb74-9c5db2ef2f6e?accessToken=zwAAAZ6x8Fp2kdPFuTBFbSFE7tO7dJxdsu8vbg.MEUCIBThTmhpJQWlv2CjoDqZg3az74CwGKyfWMmzBVU67f25AiEA2yvUfy6PxeEclSER0JursjQUIQ9Y2K8mtbsVDHSFViA&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareId=1ca20f95-c866-4bea-af45-27b436df886e&shareType=enterprise&syn-25a6b1a6=1

CR says 13% drop in fuel economy with fully loaded roof rack on a RAV4. Much bigger impact on sedan. Probably lower impact on a large SUV or van. Probably much higher on a Ferrari or Corvette.

https://www.consumerreports.org/fuel-economy-efficiency/how-rooftop-carriers-affect-fuel-economy/

Maybe. We have tested with and without a large Thule box and it didn't make that much difference.

I wanted to remove it but my wife wanted it to stay. So we drive a couple hundred miles with and without and couldn't see any difference. Contrast that with the small trailer which looks 25-30% off the mileage. As a cheap test, could you put a piece of 1/2" plywood on it and see if it significantly affects performance?

Also, Thule makes some deflectors. There must be a way to handle the drag. 

I wonder if Gem thinks you want to mount it broad side into the wind.

Ah yes. That's my dad. "Those are your problems now." 

But if I have his health, I might be around for another 30-40 years. 45 years ago my programming classes were on mainframes - Harris and DEC.

2.6% off the S&P 500 is a bloodbath?

Right. Let me phrase that better

Maybe put it this way: would those leases have sold if they knew current policies would hold for the life of the lease?

That is, does expensive extraction in the Arctic pencil out even under a favorable administration?

The world still uses a lot of fossil fuel, but last year was the first time new contributions from renewables exceeded the growth in demand. A year doesn't make a trend, but as you say, events of this year are likely to accelerate that process. The whole argument about solar not working on cloudy days looks different when stacked against oil shipments that don't flow for a year

In situations like this, first look to the public schools and blame the teachers.

[that was the playbook in 19th century France anyway]

> choice configures the next page's layout

Reminds me of trying to explain the Monty Hall Problem to a 17yo who just couldn't get why you should switch. I asked Claude to explain it. It started by creating a fully-functional app that let you play the game as many times as you like and keep a tally of wins when you stay and wins when you switch.

Unfortunately, randomness being what it is, over 20 reps it appeared that staying had a slight edge, so the overall experiment was a fail. Good concept though.

I've mentioned this before. Masha Gessen says you know when you have moved from democracy to autocracy when you stop saying, "It can't happen here," and start saying, "It won't happen to me."

The opening of this article makes me think that there is some parallel comment that applies to the Florida Coast and rural much of California. Probably other places as we better see long-term climate impacts.

Something like...
You know climate change has become a problem when you stop saying, "It won't happen here" and you start saying, "We'll probably be okay."