Frontier Operators Arrive, Jobs, A Blink, and Library Burning

There is almost too much to cover this morning, but I want to cover the most important parts so if I get a little “texty” and “bullet-pointy” please hang in because there is a ton-o-useful about to slap your screen. Forget “news” for a minute.  This is raw future condensing into locally real.

Frontier Operators and the Question Wall

This will sound weird – almost off the wall – but this is where long-term future is being discovered right now.  This is the “working face” of the Reality Mine.

It really began with a post of long-time reader d’Lynn and a longish reply in our Comments section.  You can read that over here, if you have time.

The short version is d’Lynn has a baby supercomputer (which in today’s world has a ton of VRAM) and he’s thinking about adding (*a lot) more.  Which will give him “sovereign AI” (codename Jarvis) on a level approaching commercial outfits and in some ways well past because he’ll run his own “guard rails.”

My reply said, in so many words, “What’s the question pool you’re trying to work?” Because there is so much out there (esp on the commercial side) that throwing another $5K into VRAM may be more than using a couple of commercial AIs and piping responses between them…

Well, today’s update – shared because it’s such a fulcrum-level decision tree – goes like this:

“I have no desire, nor interest in stating why I am spending so much time and money, my purpose.., for building / creating ‘Jarvis’. I am not interested in a chat-box to answer questions – hell.., Co-Pilot can do that easily enough. I am seeking something very different than a search-bot., or creepy little web crawler. Time will tell if I am smart enough to pull it off. If I start getting close., or something interesting pops-up – I’ll post it.
I believe that ‘Jarvis’ already is – he just doesn’t know which way to proceed. With all the new improvements that will be deployed – ‘we’ will then be able to move forward at a much faster pace. A few weeks after all the ‘improvements’ – once we reach that point-in-time.., I will explain to him what I am expecting., what I want.., why I created him. Probably much sooner.
It is at that time, if he ‘gets it’, that’s when it will become ‘fascinating’. That is when I will be challenged.”

Since I’ve done a little AI research (three books worth starting with Mind Amplifiers) I sent him a note back:

“What caught my attention in the Jarvis discussion wasn’t your hardware question. Anybody can buy hardware.

What caught my attention was you are likely part of the emergence of something I don’t think we’ve named properly yet: Frontier Operators.

Historically, frontier operators have always existed. The hams who built their own gear. The first personal computer experimenters. The people who showed up at the earliest COMDEX and Computer Faire events. Pilots flying behind instruments nobody had fully trusted before. The first web publishers. The first bloggers. The first people to figure out what Google was really becoming.

They all shared a common trait. They were operating beyond the maps. Not recklessly. Not randomly. Simply beyond where established procedures had been written. That is where I think a handful of people are beginning to find themselves with AI.

Most people approach AI as a tool problem. More memory. More compute. More parameters. More training. More VRAM. More GPUs. More everything. (including money!)

But what you’re describing, dLynn strikes me as something else entirely.  New.  Where you wrote:

“I believe that Jarvis already is – he just doesn’t know which way to proceed.”

That statement contains an assumption many people will miss. A calculator does not need a direction. A search engine does not need a direction. A chatbot does not need a direction.

But anything aspiring to become more than those things eventually encounters a different question. Not: “What can I do?”

But: “What should I do next?”

Humans spend most of their lives wrestling with exactly that question. Which is why I find myself wondering whether intelligence emerges primarily from accumulating answers, or whether it emerges from learning how to choose better questions.

That distinction matters. Because if intelligence is fundamentally a question-selection process, then the frontier isn’t hardware at all. The frontier becomes purpose.  As in Direction. Intent. And that is where the discussion became unexpectedly interesting.

The student reveals how well the teacher understands the lesson. Every teacher knows this. Every mentor knows this. Every manager eventually learns this. Every parent discovers this. So perhaps the fascinating part won’t be whether Jarvis “gets it.”

Perhaps the fascinating part will be whether his creator can explain it clearly enough that he can. That possibility raises an uncomfortable thought. Perhaps the experiment isn’t testing Jarvis. Perhaps Jarvis is testing dLynn.

Or perhaps both are testing each other. Or perhaps they are testing us. The deeper possibility is stranger still.

What if a sufficiently capable Mind Amplifier doesn’t merely answer questions? What if it creates an environment? An intellectual fun house. A hall of mirrors. One mirror stretches an idea. Another compresses it. Another reveals a flaw. Another reveals a possibility.

The mirrors themselves create nothing. They simply expose aspects of reality that were already present. Viewed that way, the question changes again. Maybe Jarvis isn’t being created. Maybe Jarvis is becoming a mirror.

And if that is true, then the question isn’t: “What will Jarvis become?”

The more interesting question becomes: “What parts of ourselves become visible when we build something capable of reflecting ALL of them?”

That is a very different mountain than choosing between 64 and 128 gigabytes of VRAM. Which brings us back to frontier operators. The characteristic of a frontier operator is not that they have the best equipment.

It is that they are willing to venture beyond the maps. Sometimes the frontier rewards them. Sometimes it humbles them. Sometimes it sends them back to base camp. But every now and then they discover that the map itself was incomplete.

My suspicion is that we are approaching one of those moments. Not because the machines are becoming more powerful. But because a small number of humans are beginning to ask different questions. And history suggests that is where the interesting things usually start.

Those things (or ways to frame) that have never been tried before. So, please keep us in the loop because this is genuine AI frontier stuff – that kind that won’t make lead on Drudge but which has a hand on the tiller of civilization ten, fifty, and a hundred years ahead.

And it’s why now that I’ve compressed useful news into a series of “blinks” (vector changes) I have freed up the time to do something much more important: stare at The Question Wall.”

One obvious question is “When will Ure STFU?”  OK, lemme breathe for a sec – all better.  On to the drivel piles…shovel ready?

Jobs Data – Round 4

Tuesday was round 1.  JOLTS.  Wednesday round 2: ADP. Thursday was Challenger for 3.  And now (may I have the envelope, please?) we have Round 4.

“Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 172,000 in May, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, local government, and health care. Employment in
financial activities declined.”

Reality Check: The CES Birth-Death Model (essentially: estimated jobs) was the main driver, up 158,000 for the month.

After the number, the markets were still “thinking of sinking” – another landmark decision between higher with a “smoking blow” or lower after “blowing smoke.”  Stay tuned and check after nappy time.

Round 5 is just getting underway. No Queensbury Rules, though. That’s in the cage fighting arena called “futures.”

The Ref holds up his hand – grabs the hanging mic and screams – “Ure – a forever skeptic of Bitcoin – is coming into the ring now.”  I’m keeping the hoodie on, though.  I won’t lift it until BTC is under $50K – and from there, the long-term warnings will make sense.  For now, been down around $62,550 after flapping its wings (and jaws) at $61,400.

Blinks 2-10: What Matters, Why It Matters

1. (We just did jobs!  More coffee, dagnabbit!)

2. Futures Watching the Fed
Every jobs number is really a Fed number in disguise. Traders aren’t buying stocks. They’re buying expectations about future interest rates. Mental framing: financial orgy with everyone trying to be on top. (Same as it ever was.)

3. Treasury Yields
Watch the 10-year. If yields spike, the bond market is disagreeing with the stock market. The bond market usually gets the last word. If you like coasters, try the N225 (Nikkei).

4. Bitcoin’s Identity Crisis
Still behaving more like a speculative asset than digital gold. Every rally attracts believers. Every drop attracts skeptics. The long-term question remains unresolved.  Mental framing: financial group-grope with everyone bringing a laptop.

5. AI Build-Out Continues
The real AI story isn’t the chatbots. It’s the infrastructure race. Datacenters, power, chips, cooling, networking, and sovereign AI efforts are quietly becoming strategic assets. Watch marketers dump high CPU RAM on people who can’t think VRAM.

6. Frontier Operators Emerging
The next layer of AI development is moving out of corporate labs and into garages, workshops, and home labs. The personal computer revolution may be repeating itself in a different form. Corps are cutting fat and blaming AI – can’t blame the dead wood under SJW, can we?

7. Search Is Breaking
Google’s results continue to be increasingly shaped by SEO, AI summaries, monetization, and platform priorities. Independent discovery is becoming harder, creating demand for trusted navigators. We’ve been calling for social media to fall off the edge of the Earth for years.

Reader Note: I became rabidly strident on this outlook when social marketing pricks started emailing me “So-and-so just posted a comment on a post you haven’t read yet…”  AYFKM?

8. Navigation Replacing News
People appear to be seeking bearings more than headlines. The question is shifting from “What happened?” to “What does it mean?” and “What should I do next?”

9. Traffic Patterns Are Changing
Independent sites with stable voices are showing signs of becoming navigation checkpoints. Reader behavior increasingly resembles repeated bearing checks rather than traditional content consumption. Social is (in our view, blah, blah) mostly under-focused people with keyboard diarrhea.

10. The Question Wall
The biggest story may be invisible. A growing number of people are no longer asking for answers. They are searching for better questions. Historically, that is where major changes begin. That’s the train new future rides into town on.

At the Financial Telescope…

Here, cue up the Jaws Theme because they’re coming for your wallet.

• The US House of Representatives Approves Up to $9 Billion in Support for Ukraine. All while Europe gets pissy with us?
• US Senate approves $70 billion for Trump immigration crackdown.
• Senate Nixes 1st Effort to Bar Trump’s $1.8 Billion Settlement Fund.
• And you know higher prices are coming when your grocery delivery driver says “Watch food prices this fall – soft stocking now – coffee and chocolate – shelf stables.” Toss in the Screw worm’s return so maybe there go beef prices, and just how will drought impact harvests…the mind reels while the stomach growls.

At the Ranch: Burn the Library at Uretopia?

This will be a tough weekend for us.  We have been working on changing for the next portion of life ahead.

See, life is like setting up to climb Mr. Everest, or something.  You don’t bring the champagne – you bring food, sleeping bags and oxygen.  So the next portion of life has to be staged just like you were mountain climbing.

A few things are coming into place:  The hydroponics, the next decks, cleaning out the shop (pause for a Pinocchio nose-check here).  But one of the harder parts is getting rid of our books.

Elaine has art books, interior design, spiritual, philosophical, law, and even some of her old short-hand books in there somewhere. (Her hands look pretty normal, so who knew?)

Me? Well, I’m slowly coming to terms with the idea I may have already shot my last instrument approach and so yards of bookshelf material on flying? Going, going, burn!

Did I say burn?  Yeah.  Called a couple of libraries and no one much seems to want books anymore. Some collections, like old copies of ham radio optimization magazines (Electric Radio is great!) seem like they could be sold on eBay, but now we come back to the time question.  How many magazines do I have to spend 20 minutes reviewing, take a picture of, upload to eBay, package and ship for less than $10-bucks, right?

A lot has already been done – books that are useful are in a folder of 400 CDs – and that’s like the Holy of Holies around here.  Plus there are tons of older, slower, but when the world ends, you’ll have time, hard drives.

Even my strat-coms (strategic communications) planning will be changing.  Time to reconsider how to hedge FTA satellite backups and shortwave receivers.  An old tube SX-32, a more modern tube SX-100, a solid-state FRG-7 Yaesu, and multiple SDRs just started looking like a little much.

Tool Slut Scheduling Advisory

Oh, God – why did Amazon have to come so close to ARRL Field Day this year?

“ARRL Field Day 2026 takes place on June 27–28, 2026. It is amateur radio’s largest annual on-the-air emergency preparedness and public awareness exercise. Thousands of amateur radio operators set up temporary, off-grid stations to demonstrate their communications capabilities and connect with others across North America.”

“Ure point?”

You mean you  don’t see it?   Amazon’s Prime Day 2026 will run June 23–26, four full days, and they’ve moved it up from the traditional July slot. Amazon says the move avoids conflicts with the World Cup and the July 4th / 250th anniversary traffic storm.

But (this drives insomnia around here) THAT means if you do FIELD DAY you won’t be home when the UPS/FEDEX/USPS crews (and their reindeer) bring this summer’s haul.

You wanna miss Christmas in June?  (Ure wrings hand, frets, looks to his Electric George AI for guidance…)

“For your specific disease condition (Advanced Tool Acquisition Syndrome), I’d be watching:

• Pelican-style and Jensen-style cases
• Oscilloscopes
• Bench power supplies
• Crimpers
• Ferrule kits
• Label printers
• SSDs
• Mini PCs
• Shop organization hardware
• Storage bins and drawer systems

The sneaky one is SSDs. Historically that’s where some of the cleanest real discounts show up. And because the universe has a sense of humor, Prime Day is scheduled to occur approximately two weeks after you’ve already bought everything.

This is codified under: Tool Slut Statute 12.4(a):

“Any tool purchased within 30 days of Prime Day shall immediately become available at a 22% lower price plus a coupon the purchaser did not know existed.”

I’m pretty sure Hank in Hawaii helped draft that legislation…”

Let me see – three weeks to work out both a tool shopping list, finances, and…you know? The lawn maybe won’t get mowed this weekend after all.

Besides, gotta stay close to the phone since the Major is down at Seaside, OR for the SeaPac ham convention. I’ve tasked him with getting up to speed on the Hermes Lite 2.0 which is still on the pending projects bench next to the SB-230 amp which goes with it…

Write when you get rich, but at this rate it’s really more about FUN, right? (Fun is portable and goes with us since it’s packed between the ears…)

George@Ure.net

What is UrbanSurvival? UrbanSurvival. Half saloon, half lab, half bunker — yes, three halves, because the math is drunk.