John Engates (@jengates) header
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Building with agents. Thinking about data centers, control planes, and what happens when you can’t pull the plug on AI. | prev @cloudflare @rackspace

Texas
Joined March 2007
Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)Photo by John Engates (@jengates)
John Engates retweeted
The very definition of irony: I’m at my county government building applying for the myriad of permits I need in order to build a pole barn. Permitting process takes weeks and is complicated. Meanwhile, their own permit to operate their elevator expired six months ago
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Claude Duet wouldn't open a zip file for me, so it wrote its own feature request to Anthropic. Asked to tell me when it ships: "I wish I could." Asked to check its release notes monthly: "Good idea, and yes." exagentica.ai/blog/agent-fea…
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Duet's caution about zips is fair (the DMARC spec itself warns about zip bombs). Grok Bot has opened files like these for me on its own computer, and it has been sending feedback for users since September.
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John Engates retweeted
Palmer Luckey says analysts claiming it's too expensive to manufacture in the US are lying to protect megacorps "I think I have a more realistic view than almost anybody. One of the problems with all these analysts that are telling you that it's going to cost $37,000 to build an American iPhone or $100,000 to buy an American computer." "They're trying to prop up a status quo that the megacorporations want to keep going. They want to outsource everything. They want to hire cheaper non-American labor." "They are willing to say and do anything to convince you that it can't be fixed, that it can't come back, that America is this helpless, neutered, post-relevant empire, and it is just not the case." "How do I know that? Because I have to make stuff in America every day because I work in the defense industry. The stuff that Anduril makes every day is not actually that different from a computer. My drones are basically computers. They have memory, a GPU, a CPU, sensors, batteries, a rugged integration." "The only difference between an Anduril attack drone and a laptop is a keyboard and a screen. That is not that hard to figure out, especially for a guy like me who started Oculus and comes from the consumer electronics space." "We're not going to let people lie about what America can and can't do anymore. We're just going to do it."
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I used a bunch of bots to research a post about bots, and @Cloudflare 's blog challenged one of them as a bot. Fair enough. "Bot" now covers a scalper, Googlebot, a page @ChatGPT fetches for you, and an agent using your login. Which ones would you let in? exagentica.ai/blog/a-bot-is-…
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What I'd ask instead of "is it a bot?": who runs it and can you verify that, did a person ask just now, on standing instructions or not at all, whose identity is it using, is it only reading, and does it slow down when a site asks?
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PGP...PHP....whatever it takes!?
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The cybersecurity reporter from @BBC kind of made me think about this...he had never heard of PHP before. reddit.com/r/tech_x/comments…
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Claude edited my LinkedIn profile in my own browser and LinkedIn never blinked. Elon says a card photo is the easiest way to let Grok Bot shop, unless you use its vault. I'd give agents an allowance, like a teen's first card. What would you let one buy? exagentica.ai/blog/password-…
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From the Reuters bank story: a banking source said transactions from agents using a customer's shared password usually get flagged and blocked, and that they can't be treated as unauthorized if the customer shared it.
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How long has that PHP bug been sitting there waiting for AI to be found?
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I pay about $300 a month for AI subscriptions in my own name, and almost none of it is personal. Most of it replaced software I'd otherwise have bought (a website builder, hosting, small utilities), and none of those skipped purchases shows up anywhere. exagentica.ai/blog/software-…
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The economics push the same way. My Claude Code use on one laptop last month would have cost 10x+ my Max plan at API prices, and Anthropic's Enterprise plan bills every token at API rates. The same work costs far less on a personal plan, and your company never sees it.
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Every time i drive by I'm amazed at how long it takes...
Factory porn. Everything is bigger in Texas.
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Designed, engineered, and made in America
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It’s crazy to think we are engaging with a dude who will be in history books 500 years from now…While we are all forgotten about within 50 lol
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They’ve done it again!!! This video is 🔥
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It's awkward that Grok @bot is a better search engine for my Gmail than Google.
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John Engates retweeted
Maybe next time you should believe the guy.
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@dhh's @omarchy calls itself "the malleable OS for the age of agents." I haven't spent a ton of time with it, but it's the local side of the same fork, and Muse Spark Open running on two Mac Studios points the same way. Pricey today, a glimpse of tomorrow.
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What still make me uncomfortable: "I push send" is a habit, not a control. (I recently texted one of my Grok Bots a message meant as a text for my wife.)
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