At this point it seems like AI companies could install real spyware and it would go unnoticed amongst all the crying wolf out there.

If the anti-AI movement escalates to anti-reuse we'll know who to blame.

"THREE MEN IN A BOAT" (1975 Jerome K. Jerome TV Adaptation-starring Tim Curry, Michael Palin) YouTube video by Archive Media Vault

for tim curry's birthday, you should watch him in the excellent 1975 BBC version of Jerome K. Jerome's THREE MEN IN A BOAT
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgwk...

people are furious the site where they propose direct action to destroy data centers is ever down

Yeah, I was kind of thinking that the problem is the direct opposite: knowing when to stop doing review cycles and move on.

That's an interesting framing given that others are saying it's coders like me who will be replaced by PMs.

Apparently it's whatever AI isn't capable of.

I'm as much a product of the software development mainstream as anyone, but I'm fairly sanguine about all this. It has to do with breaking path dependencies and the hope of a new Cambrian explosion.

Presumably I'm not the only one finding adversarial reviews surface N issues for every issue you address?

The history of computing is one of being mildly embarrassed about how easy things got.

Seeking common ground with his opponents.

Kauffman's RBNs help provide intuition: 2^N states collapse to ~√N attractors once you add even K=2 connectivity.

Constraints annihilate degrees of freedom faster than combinatorics create them.

Orthogonality is a K=0 fantasy. The moment goals must be pursued by an intelligence, the edges appear.

I agree with all this, and it's unfortunate how normal it is to talk as though we have privileged access to reality.

Dangerous beliefs can spread, but that needs to be dealt with ecologically like tending a garden. It's not in itself an argument for monocultures.

This but more generally. I always thought the way talking robots were treated as mere machines in Star wars was pretty cynical.

As far as I can tell there was real scepticism towards HLLs when they emerged and for a good while after.

The 90s were definitely the very tail end of this period, and no one was going to be on your case for writing C.

Java on the other hand...

If the path to acceptance of high level languages is a guide, you should pace yourselves.

Thirty years after FORTRAN came out, when I started programming professionally, the HLL skepticism was still in the air.

I'm reminded of that line that science doesn't progress by convincing its opponents...

Presumably this is because design and architecture is often done in conversation and on whiteboards and is then deployed from various repositories and scripts with a whole lot of midwifery to get it all connected.

For years @firefox.com on Linux has started with an error, "Sorry, we're having trouble getting your pages back" together with a "Restore" button that gets your pages back without any trouble.

I mean, it works. But why would you have your application appear broken for, like, ten years.

Heard about a spot in Alexandria where they think it's cool to outsource all your thinking. Might know how to slow things down a bit.

Jet airplanes are a proxy for human jumping. The creators of the 747 vastly misunderstood the exquisite and messy nature of human locomotion.

Wikipedia article for Oppstrom: "Oppström är en bebyggelse i Knivsta kommun. Vid avgränsningen 2020 klassades denna bebyggelse som en småort."

Trying my app out at the summer house, and one thing that sticks out is that the neighbour has a Wikipedia page.

I'd also say that people should be encouraged to take responsibility for stuff, and ownership in this context is becoming increasingly moot.

This is tricky. If readers really can't distinguish careful LLM-assisted work from generated slop they will discount all of it.

The people who would produce high-quality work with LLM assistance will either stop sharing, or feel it necessary to participate in a sort of laundering.

Possibly. I really don't know. We've traditionally been bullish about automating other people's jobs, and the appropriate response is Stoicism when automation comes for us.

This won't be news to people here but I'm learning that when you hit a brick wall with coding agents, it's a signal similar to when writing unit tests becomes painful.

The friction is telling you there are deeper structural, design or process issues. The agent will likely tell you which if you ask.

Årstabron in Stockholm with half frozen water below and fog above. Not visible on camera but it is raining.

Foggy and icy and rainy in Stockholm right now

People are really shocked by the politics of pluralism as though it's this evil ridiculous thing instead of a clear foundation for radically different people to be able to live together

I think the key is to see pluralism in terms of symmetry rather than balance or common ground.

didn’t watch the video but this “we’re all one species” line pisses me off bc it’s preemptive surrender

SO WHAT if we *were* different species! that’s still not sufficient basis to create legal categories for different legal rights

if a being rocks up and says it can feel hope, it’s my peer