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VecGS

Chaotic good

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joined 2022 September 05 14:41:52 UTC
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User ID: 599

VecGS

Chaotic good

0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 05 14:41:52 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 599

Verified Email

I would argue that a large part of art is connecting with another human being through a shared experience. I think that's why so many artists are up in arms about making art so "easy," because it drops the human connection in many ways. The only human in the loop is prompting.

My view is that things will adapt. The human connection is still needed and there will always be art done the "old fashioned way." People still drag around large-format cameras to take pictures or simply shoot on film. My friend does painting and is trying to make a business of it.

At the same time, things have gotten easier. You don't have to be a "good" photographer to take a good photo with your phone's camera -- because there's already so much AI in that loop making things better. Same with so much other human-made art (and beyond). It's so much easier to get to the joy of creation. With photography, you can be creative with your phone and don't need the traditional thousands of dollars of gear to start creating.

The removal of those gates, both financial and the gate of years of practice, is what allows for that creation. I think we should celebrate that, not regulate it. Why does not "paying your dues" make your contribution invalid?

If your art, regardless of how it's made, helps you connect to others, I say that's a good thing.

I have a lot of other ideas in my head I'm trying to get out and make into a coherent argument, but I'm having trouble. For instance, we've had computer spell-checkers for decades now and no one blinks at that. We've had simple grammar checkers for a while as well, predating the AI everywhere thing we're seeing now, and no one really cares about that. It's only a matter of time before AI does more and people don't care. The only thing that really frustrates me is when people give up their agency to AI and stop thinking for themselves. AI is an amplifier of a human's ideas and abilities. But humans are still important.

That's the thing exactly. If, through using AI tools, you can be the first to prove something, isn't that a good thing? Only through discovery can we reach higher to ask bigger question. It took a lot of work as a civilization to get to the point where we had the language to construct things like the Navier–Stokes equation in the first place; they don't just get written down in a vacuum.

So we've gotten to a step change in the system. The real challenge will be to be the first the ask the question in the first place. Even if that is automated away, you're still left with the pure joy of learning and discovery which is rewarding unto itself.

I'm certainly in the "love of the game" category of programmer. I honestly think that you have as many in math. And unlike computers, few people ever went into math to get rich -- so my internal estimate is even higher for the math side.

Side-topic: I think the programmers who are in it for just money are the ones that are going to get selected out. I've been at this for a long enough that when I started a programmer was a good white-collar job, but not one to get you rich. My experience, and frustration, with how the field has changed over the decades is that the quality of people has become absolutely dreadful outside of a few highly selective places. And even places like Amazon (where I spent some time) are compromised.

I get joy from many things. From tweaking things big and small. I don't think I ever really got joy from the act of writing code. It was always a means to an end. And the end doesn't have to be strictly useful. Something I've been kicking around for the past 35 years (also: crap... I'm feeling old) is an implementation of the Game of Life from John Conway who would fit in with your list perfectly. I came up with what I still think is the fastest way to play it with "normal" code in the general case. Using Claude I was able to get this implemented with a front-end that I can interact with. I get joy from the algorithm. Joy from thinking of low-level optimizations. Joy from learning more about the innards of how the processor I'm on handles cache lines.

I don't get joy from setting up a build system. No joy from setting up a front-end that runs on my Mac. Very little joy from tweaking an unrolled inner loop. Less joy from setting up unit tests.

Having AI lets me get to that joy. And it makes me incredibly happy. And it lets me paper over the parts I consider ditch digging.

My gut says that the folks in math want the same thing. Come up with an idea, and have something else handle the proof. There's joy in simply making something better or pushing the frontier a bit more.

And with AI, you can make bigger leaps. Ask bigger questions. Get more joy from discovery.

In case you're interested: https://github.com/gburgyan/vlife and a technical paper in docs that's more presentable.

People still play chess even though computers have long been better at it than use humans.

I'm in programming, one of the fields that has already been most affected by AI. I can also report that I'm having some of the most fun and being more productive than I've ever been. My key has been to just embrace AI hard and use it as a tool the best that I can.

You also see the culture war starting up in that space. There are several Linux distros that have people pledge that they haven't used AI in the process of doing their contributions. My prediction is either: a) people are just lying about not using AI or b) they'll just lose and people who are using AI will simply outperform them in the marketplace of ideas.

So math people simply need to get on board. The train is leaving no matter their opinion of it.

Hasn't gotten to threats or anything, thankfully. I'm doing what I need to for another month. It's just so disappointing to see the quality of my "replacement."

I'm giving her remedial training on Windows and how to use AI -- despite the selling point from her firm that they are an AI first shop. I told her to install Copilot CLI (because that's what's authorized to be used, not my choice) and she was doing the equivalent of a blank look of "how?" She hadn't even thought to hit up Google and type "install copilot cli," which of course brings back the correct result at the top.

A few months back I was notified that my employer will no longer need my services in around 90 days from the notice. That 90 days will be up October 19th.

I posted here a few weeks ago about my hardware project which is still going strong! I now have a reproducible process to go from a netlist that describes the connections on a board to doing all of the floorplanning and routing: https://imgur.com/a/3BMLd1I. This is some really dense analog for the lock-in amplifier I was talking about.

Doing this basically more than full time is leading to a bit of burnout. (Being realistic, I'm not doing my day job any more -- it's only training my Indian replacements and I'm not that motivated to do that if you can imagine.)

So, I'm about to release my other side project! A full lifecycle API toolkit: aat! Adaptive API Toolkit.

Presenting: https://gburgyan.github.io/aat/

It handles all sorts of things that get in the way of developing, testing, and integrating with APIs. This addresses the pain points that I've continually run into: local testing of services, testing from a CI/CD perspective, sharing those tests with your colleagues, and even supporting AI-led integrations for people using your APIs.

Here's an example of the usage of this for the travel booking service Duffel: https://github.com/gburgyan/aat-duffel

And it's all open source!

The way I'm figuring, I'm a 53-year-old dude. The AI revolution is coming for my profession: software development. I have no chance to land a job when I'm competing in the traditional way with the tens of thousands of programmers out there. If I do exactly the same thing as everyone else I will be nothing but frustrated and still lack a job. This may be better shot.

Assuming I even want a job of course. The hardware project sounds like it might be more fun anyway.

Thanks! The hardware side has gotten so much (relatively) cheaper and accessible than before... I figure not counting my time (which my present company is paying for now), I'll need to sink $20-30k to have a couple spins and enough stock to hopefully sell. I can cover this myself. I figure this is a bet on myself and I can stack the odds as much as I can.

And you nailed it on the "what's already out there" aspect. My working model is that there are cool chips out there that do neat stuff, the challenge is going from a dev board to something that actually works. One of the more esoteric things I'm thinking about is something like a isolated biopotential interface. It's basically doing the design work to wrap an ADS1299 (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/texas-instruments/ADS1299-4PAGR/6590685) with the appropriate front-end and connect it to a processor. There's no genius in that.

The interesting thing is all from the firmware. To do something useful with that in a non-trivial way -- beyond the typical Arduino/Raspberry Pi toy demos -- everything becomes "ok, we'll need to spin up an RTOS and do a bunch of work" and you give up and buy the instrument that's $1k and move on. The firmware side is cool because it's mostly declarative.

Again, this is nothing really new. LabView had that model back to at least the '90s. The idea of a driver having virtual "wires" being connected is right out of SCADE. But I've not really seen this on a firmware level. The thing that I always run into is even configuring a processor is a pain.

My product is basically:

  • A cheap base with the processor -- that can be dynamically configured by the firmware to accept...
  • A family of instrument cards that plug in to the three exposed ports.

You then have a declarative profile that can wire up things to do what you need. The goal is to replace a stack of instruments with all of the scripting glue that runs on the host and have it all run on a cheap, trustworthy instrument.

Something kind of like this:

# How much of your 10 uF capacitor is left at 10 V?
#
#   Instrument Slot A -- B4 lock-in: a 50 mV, 1 kHz probe, and a phase
#                        reference to tell the capacitive current from the
#                        lossy one.
#   Instrument Slot B -- A3 SMU: the DC operating point, held and measured,
#                        with a compliance limit so a shorted part is a
#                        clamp and not a fire.
#
# Neither card is a better version of the other. The SMU has no synchronous
# detector: it cannot pull a microamp of 1 kHz current out of a 10 V DC
# pedestal. The lock-in has no source with compliance: it cannot hold that
# pedestal. The experiment needs both, on the same tick, and the only thing
# composition costs here is a bias tee in the fixture (100 kOhm from FORCE,
# blocking cap from EXC OUT, the far plate into the TIA's virtual ground).

profile:
  name: mlcc_bias_derating
  version: 0.1.0
  schema_version: 1
  tick_hz: 100

ui:
  parameters:
    - { id: f_hz, type: q16, default: 1000.0 }   # test frequency
    - { id: v_ac, type: q16, default: 0.05 }     # 50 mV -- small-signal, on purpose
  surface:
    - { wire: var.cap_uf,       role: readout, label: "C",   unit: "uF" }
    - { wire: sig.v_bias,       role: readout, label: "Vdc", unit: "V" }
    - { wire: smu1.sweep_start, role: action,  label: "Run", key: f1 }

variables:
  - { id: cap_uf, type: f32, initial: 0.0 }

blocks:
  - id: smu1
    kind: smu                        # Slot B
    params:
      mode: source_v
      sense: four_wire_measure       # the bias resistor's drop stays out of the reading
      compliance_i_a: 0.001
      nplc: 10
      sweep: { start: 0.0, stop: 10.0, points: 41, spacing: lin, dwell: 2.0 }
    out:
      v: sig.v_bias                  # the volts actually across the part
      i: sig.i_leak                  # a second curve, free: leakage vs bias

  - id: li1
    kind: lockin                     # Slot A
    params:
      mode:         impedance
      ref_source:   internal
      excitation:   sine
      input_mode:   current_A        # the 10^6 V/A TIA takes the cap's AC current
      coupling:     ac               # the 10 V pedestal never reaches the gain chain
      sensitivity:  auto
      time_constant_s: 0.3
      slope_db_oct: 12
    in:
      ref_freq_hz:  ui.parameters.f_hz
      excitation_v: ui.parameters.v_ac
    out:
      y:         sig.i_quad          # autophase first: the capacitive current lands here
      theta_deg: sig.loss_angle      # and the loss angle comes along for nothing
      overload:  sig.li1_ovld

tasks:
  - id: report
    triggered_by: { tick_periodic: 500ms }
    body:
      - write: { "var.cap_uf": "1.0e6 * sig.i_quad / (6.2831853 * ui.parameters.f_hz * ui.parameters.v_ac)" }

Something like this is obviously "easy" to do if you have both a source-measure unit and a lock-in amplifier and a script. My goal would is to be able to sell something that can do this for maybe $1000, and that leaves a lot of margin.

The other angle I have on this is that something like this is far easier for an AI to write and reason about than normal firmware.

I have an absolute crap-ton left to do. Maybe 60% of the firmware is ready to do this and probably closer to 30% on the hardware side.

Well... a few weeks ago I got laid off. The cool thing is I get 90 days to do "knowledge transfer," then get another five weeks of severance. So, I'm basically set for the year. (Full disclosure: I'm 53. I tried to retire before this, but got sucked back in.) My manager was also laid off and her directive was to basically fuck off and do the bare minimum.

My background is firmly on the software side of the world. Electronics have always been a fascination for me. I've been tinkering with this stuff since the early '80s, but never fully found the motivation to really pursue it for some reason.

So this May rolls around (well before the layoff), and I decide to make a controller board to replace the one in my smoker. It decided to act weird and I got frustrated. This isn't a rational decision because a new one is cheap compared to what I'm doing. I dove in with Claude Code and built a full PCB design platform. (No, I'm not replacing KiCad, et. al. The is the netlist generation side, heavily leaning on SKiDL.) That project grew and grew. Out of control basically. I even laid out a PCB and fabbed it. And it mostly works, amazingly enough. (I also learned to not try to hand-place 0402 parts because that sucks.)

The other side of this is building a complete firmware system from scratch. And now most of that actually works as well. I'm planning on open sourcing this part.

Then, right before I got laid off, I decided to pivot the hardware side. Without getting into too much detail (for fear of abject boredom, not secrecy), the new target is a line of modular, low-cost lab instruments. "Weird" shit. Things that I want to play with. Things like a lock-in amplifier, a source measure unit, precision DAQ (and a bunch of other stuff). That combined with the firmware makes some experiments way easier than the "real" instruments because you have multiple instruments sharing the same core.

Basically, I want to bring down the cost entry for some of this stuff a lot lower. But still have a real calibration story so people can do real science. And to bring the cost of these instruments down in general.

TL;DR: My side project turned into my job (hopefully). Fingers crossed I can pull this off and not lose my shirt too much!


On AI. Without AI this would have been folly to even attempt. My best guess for what this would cost without AI is on the order of $5-10MM to hire a team of experienced devs for a year or two. This is not something I have knocking around in my bank account. If I would have tried to develop this myself (without AI), it would take me the remainder of my life basically. As a bonus I would come off as a crackpot: "I have the perfect way of designing firmware! Just you wait and see!" With AI, I can make this real in a matter of months as an individual.

I've heard of Bad Bunny before, but I've never heard his music before. I'm not a Spanish speaker and I'm not overly big on listening to foreign language music where I'm expected to understand.

The half-time show was... ok. I've seen better. I've seen worse. From what I've read online from native Spanish-speakers, I wasn't missing much and many people are reporting that they couldn't understand it either.

I'll probably never listen to his music again. I didn't find it interesting enough to ever seek out in the future.

(Exceptions to the foreign language music for me include things like German industrial where it's a chill beat for me to program or some classical/operatic music)

A long while back when I was a troll-y 20-something I walked into a drugstore and bought a newspaper. This was back in the days of 50¢ papers, to be clear.

I paid with a shiny new Susan B. Anthony dollar coin I just got as change from a post office.

The poor cashier.

She looked at the coin thinking that it's a quarter and looked up like I was stupid. Then she looked back down and realized it wasn't a quarter. She looked back up at me with a WTF expression. Back at the coin. Rung it up as a dollar. The register opened. She looked down at the drawer. Then back up at me with a "why did you do this to me?" look. Down at the drawer. I think she chucked it with the dollar bills. Back up at me with a scowl. Drawer to retrieve a couple quarters to hand to me.

This was easily 30 years ago and I still have it burnt into my memory.

I expect it would play out the same today.

I appreciate it... Let me take a pass through it again first. While I don't think AI is the be-all end-all, I agree with the conclusions it has on my manuscript:

  1. Restructure Act 1 to introduce the main conflict earlier
  2. Deepen Francis' character with clearer goals and internal conflict
  3. Develop the foundation for Francis and Laily's relationship more gradually
  4. Expand the climax and resolution for a more satisfying conclusion
  5. Create more complex, three-dimensional antagonists

And this is just what it considered "highest priority."

Of course this is what you get when you get a non-writer like me writing something. I didn't even have a full plot in my head before I started writing. I only got a vague idea about the actual ending in the last week. So all the criticism I got from the machine is warranted in my eyes.

Yes it is! But just barely. 50,099 counts.

Post editing, I'm sure it's going to gain some weight.

It's funny you mentioned this. Today was the first time I thought about the novel I wrote in 2010's edition of this thing. I was talking to a friend about it today telling her I should get around to editing the dang thing already.

The weird thing is I have very little recollection of the story I wrote back then -- the whole thing was a blur! I asked AI to give me some suggestions today and it's talking about stuff that, again, I wrote myself, I have no memory of. Maybe I should just read it first. lol

I'm sad to see it go... I'm aware of the controversy, but the idea itself is cool

I finally got the arcade machine that I've been working on complete!

https://imgur.com/a/ISiu0nH

It's built around a MiSTer FPGA plugged into a JAMMIX card that gives me a standard arcade connector. The cabinet is of my own design that I mostly built over a long vacation in December. It looks decent enough, but I know everything I would do differently if I were to built something like this again. The good thing is it's easy enough to service if I ever need to do anything to it.

At some point I might go and mask around the screen, but I'm really not offended by the way it looks right now.

I think the long-form, low-volume nature of much of this forum is probably a turn-off for folks who are used to watching shorts on whatever platform they're using. The other side is that ad hominem attacks aren't really well tolerated here. The fact you can catch a ban for low-effort posting would immediately disqualify much of the net.

I'm not saying the a group of debate nerds can't be compromised. But I agree that the juice here probably isn't worth the squeeze.

They’ve valued deterring or debilitating Russia higher than you.

This is the part that's getting me into some real-life arguments. My friends who say they support Ukraine also seem to hate Putin even more. Their hatred of Russia/Putin vastly overshadows the reality of what's going on to the actual Ukrainians they say they support. Men, both Ukrainians and Russians, are dying in droves. Somehow that seems to balance things out for them. I don't know.

It comes off as "I hate Putin, so I'm perfectly OK with all of you dying to achieve this goal."

It makes me a bit sad, honestly. How can one support Ukraine while at the same time knowing full well that you're just killing off a generation of her men?

Sure, I'm not going to argue with that. I think the argument made elsewhere that I'm just repeating is that it gives at least a deterrent, as well as casus belli if they were literally attacked.

It feels rather different to be nationalized than to be taken by an armed force. In the hypothetical world where US companies were operating on the Ukrainian frontier, I would very much doubt that whoever is running Ukraine would nationalize those operations.

-Did the US-led proposal even involve Western civilians on the border? It didn't specify that from what I can tell, just that the US would have a future investment stake in Ukraine (not that the mines would be operated by westerners, or that they would be built soon, or that they would be near to the front line).

Even having US interests close to the border would serve as quite a deterrent in my opinion. It also gives Putin an out because it wouldn't be troops on their border.

-Is there not a wider possibility space where Russia's negotiated peace comes with official acceptance of its new borders and in exchange Ukraine gets NATO membership? I would think there is give and take to be had here

I'll start by saying I'm not being a mind reader of Putin, but I would be surprised if he went for this. My gut feel it there would have to be a lot more concessions in terms of a DMZ on the Ukrainian side for anything like this to even be considered, and I'm not sure if you could even have an ascension into NATO if you're in that type of agreement. It would be in Ukraine's interest in this case to goad Russia into a conflict so they could invoke Article 5. I think this would apply in the case of NATO or just unaffiliated troops.

...also just a guy on the internet...

We can examine the various scenarios here.

With a security guarantee -- the mere suggestion of having NATO (or even NATO adjacent) troops in Ukraine is one of the things that caused Putin to start this war. If we are trying to negotiate a peace, there's little chance that Russia would agree to this. Honestly, the only way that I think this could happen is if Russia were to actively lose this war and terms could be dictated, as was the case for Germany post WW2. The West doesn't seem to even want Russia to lose, so this is a non-starter, regardless of my opinions.

Without a security guarantee -- this splits into two possibilities. A lasting, if tenuous peace, or a pause followed by more fighting. If there is peace, hooray! If it devolves into more fighting, then you're no worse off than the status quo realistically. If Russia truly wants to destroy Ukraine, then unless the West actually steps up to defeat them, I don't think Ukraine could prevent this outcome. It's exactly the same as the first option of perpetual stalemate wherein Ukraine eventually runs out of men and has to concede.

The US-led proposal that was shot down was a middle ground, IMO. There are no troops on the front line (which is what Russia would never agree to), but there are Western civilians that would be there acting as a sort of trigger. It's far more palatable and could be presented to the Russian people as more of a victory. It would give them an offramp to peace.

The idea that the West can dictate and compel Russia what they must do with only a stern talking to is kind of pants-on-head crazy wishful thinking. The only way to achieve that outcome is to force a defeat. Forcing a defeat requires force, and all the good and bad that could potentially come from that.

I posted my own treatise a few days ago. But the short summary is:

  1. We can continue to do what we have been presently doing, simply providing aid to maintain a stalemate.
  2. We could actually support Ukraine and liberate her from Russia through the involvement of allied nations' troops and/or removal of the restrictions on how Ukraine can use the provided weapons against Russia.
  3. Negotiate peace given the present situation. (with or without guarantees)

My contention is that #1 is maximally bad for Ukraine, it's an attritional war, and Russia can easily out-grind Ukraine over time. #2 may be maximally bad for the world (if it triggers WW3), though it may be the morally correct answer (depends on your morals, of course). By the actions of the aid providers, #2 is off the table because Russia losing is a red line for most. #3 stinks, but given the remaining choices, seems to be better.

I also don't think that a negotiated peace is sucking Putin's/Russia's cock or anything. It's accepting the present reality, especially when considering that we're not letting Russia lose.

Another angle is that saying that one "supports Ukraine," while sending a generation of her men to die is, to me, repugnant. It's treating the Ukrainian people as a pawn to use against Russia to simply tie them down and deplete their resources. While at the same time effectively destroying Ukraine in the process. I don't count that as effective "support." I will concede it's a rational idea if one is solely against Russia at all costs, but I think it's disingenuous to call it supporting Ukraine.

When looking at the statement "I support Ukraine" while simultaneously pursuing a strategy that ensures this is an unwinnable conflict -- I think those statements/ideas very much oppose each other.

From a purely strategic standpoint, yes, it makes perfect sense to treat another country as cannon fodder to occupy your enemy. Why would you have your men die when you can force other men to die instead? But one has to be aware that you're treating that country as cannon fodder. How is that support? With friends like that, who needs enemies?

If you come at this from a purely anti-Russia angle, then yes, endless war is a great use of funds. The ROI is incredible!

While I'm anti-Russian, I find it a repugnant option. Because I support the Ukrainian people.

I'll assume that as true at face value. I admittedly have some biases from times the US has let down other countries in the past and would much rather she make it right.

But still, nothing in my argument changes.

The only moral options pertaining to Ukraine from the ones I listed are B (full support) and C (negotiated peace). From moral grounds, I feel B is the correct action from the start of this conflict. Russia militarily attacked one of her neighbors, in a region where we have many allies. Russia destabilizing the region isn't good for our interests. Seeing that B has been off the table since the very beginning, C it is. A (status quo) is untenable for Ukraine in the long term, and one can easily argue for the short term as well.

The thesis here is simply maintaining the meat grinder status quo is amoral.

I agree -- my point was it's bitter compared to actually equipping them actually fight to win -- with the permission to win.

I know it's a lot of assumptions based solely on conjecture, but I would bet that in a timeline where Harris won the election that the amount of aid and weapons would be proportional to the likelihood of Ukraine losing. Other than the thunder runs around Kharkiv and Kherson, there have been no really large-scale changes in land holdings. Even the incursion into Kursk isn't that significant land-wise -- basically one small town. The reason I make this argument is that every increase in the lethality of aid from the West was made seemingly perfectly proportional to ensure nothing changes.

The core of my argument is that continuing on this path of "just enough for stalemate" is the worst option for Ukraine, despite the fact that everyone seems to be for it based on their actions. Even if Russia doesn't take additional major cities, nothing is gained by not going for peace at this point. Worst still if Russia gains the initiative as you suggested and starts making real gains -- then you just have a smaller Ukraine and still more fighting and death. I don't see how that is a better option for them.

I'm American, born here to Hungarian parents. I've was raised learning what the USSR, now Russia, has done for the past century from very personal stories. To state my biases, I'm really rather anti-Russian.

I come at this from a position of morality -- well, my own personal morality, which is about the best I can do. We've given a commitment to Ukraine in 1994 to provide security assurances, and we've reneged on this several times over. The just and moral thing to have done is step up in 2014 to protect her like we said we would, ideally diplomatically, but militarily if pressed. We didn't do that, so it's water under the bridge at this point.

It's pretty clear to me that we're not going to force Russia to capitulate. The next most moral thing (according to me), is to find peace somehow. Continuing to fight this stalemate is not moral.

I'm not a huge fan of Trump's way of conducting business, but this could well be the US opting out. It's certainly going to be a forcing function if the US stops sending over money and materiel. The best-case scenario is probably the EU doing the negotiating. I doubt that Zelenskyy is going to be on board with that though.

As much as I don't want Russia to get a win on this, losing a generation of men (on both sides of the conflict) is worse.

I agree. The thing I've been seeing is a drip-feed of aid that's perfectly calibrated to maintain the stalemate. My observation is that the collective West doesn't want to put Russia in a position of losing. Personally, I would be more than OK with them losing.

Edit responding to edit...

Yep, still agree. The West has been terrified of even the perception of escalating the conflict. They've gotten a little bit better at it, but still it's a piss-poor performance. We know what the US Military can do when allowed off the leash. The "amusing" battle we had with the Wagner Group in Syria is a testament to that.

The best time to have done that was three years ago. The second best time is now. But no one is doing that, and the option is off the table in reality.

You should either fight to win or devise a way to end fighting.