Mastodon Feed: Posts

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

ugh, this is not good to read https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2026/03/13/rei-cut-wages-new-employees-reduce-benefits-all

h/t @dogzilla

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

"With the wave of agentic AI currently sweeping into our lives, taste is shifting from a nice-to-have to a must-have for many."

The number of people that would say Agentic AI is a must-have is so astronomically low outside the 50mile radius of San Francisco, it's almost comical to mention.

So many of my fav tech bloggers now write like they live in the capital depicted in Hunger Games.

Put the matcha down and go talk to real people. 😭

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

"It [Agentic AI] has become less about technical abilities and more about decision-making. And yes, in a way, taste."

lol no it hasn't. It is absolutely still 100% about technical ability. Who could worry about Agentic AI's taste when it still fails at basic tasks 75% of the time?

MG Siegler wants to move the conversation towards the abstract when the technical still very much blows.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Tasty AI:

"I’ve previously written about the fear that our current AI may be incapable of truly original thought, and that anything we’re seeing that may appear as such is really just algorithmic anomalies that we don’t understand."

MG writes about this as if the notion that AI is incapable of original thought is the fringe argument. But we have studies that prove this. It’s the idea that AI can “think” at all that’s the radical, unproven notion. https://spyglass.org/ai-taste/

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

On a post-AI bubble world:

"AI tools that can do a lot of useful stuff, like transcribing audio and video; describing images; summarizing documents; and automating a lot of labor-intensive graphic editing – such as removing backgrounds or airbrushing passersby out of photos. These will run on our laptops and phones, and open-source hackers will find ways to push them to do things their makers never dreamed ... https://micro.fromjason.xyz/2026/03/16/on-a-postai-bubble-world.html

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

Which american city is known as the big apple?

Cupertino?

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

from the "unintended consequences can be a pisser" department:

I have been listening to the Bloomberg "Odd Lots" podcast & their interesting discussion with a Center for Strategic & International Studies person. they have been speaking about our de facto abandonment of any real Pacific defense posture and the rapid depletion of US missile stocks that is going on now in Trump's War. choices have consequences.

"The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it" - Paul Atreides (character in Frank Herbert’s novel "Dune")

Trump's War is slowly strangling the US economy, and has probably killed any chance of an interest rates drop at this Fed Meeting. because of Trump's War sucking up military resources from elsewhere, the PRC is more likely to be emboldened to act against it's neighbors. by this "decapitation" attack against the parent of the next leader, Trump's War has ensured that the remaining Iranian leadership will not want to negotiate.

Iran's leadership knows that it still has the capacity to control passage through the Straight of Hormuz, so why negotiate with the killer of one's Father?

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage:

"Creative workers who cheer on lawsuits by the big studios and labels need to remember the first rule of class warfare: things that are good for your boss are rarely what’s good for you." https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage:

"And in the meantime, it’s bad art. It’s bad art in the sense of being “eerie”, the word that cultural theorist Mark Fisher used to describe “when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something”."

Good read. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur

Boosted by jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein"):
luci@chaos.social wrote:

@sekas

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

more ghetto biryani, this time with mushrooms and kidney beans

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
kurrikage@meow.social ("Kurrikage :deifirev:") wrote:

The birds are back in town.

🦅 @BigPurpleSentri
🐦 @Seiko
🐈🐦 @Kittiara
✂️ Thatsfurredup & Clockworkcreature

#BatPics #Fursuit

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
gimulnautti@mastodon.green ("Toni Aittoniemi") wrote:

"Zuckerberg wants you to think that it is technologically impossible to have a conversation with a friend without him listening in. Cook wants you to think that it is impossible for you to have a reliable computing experience unless he gets a veto over which software you install and without him taking 30 cents out of every dollar you spend. Pichai wants you to think that it is impossible for you to find a webpage unless he gets to spy on you from asshole to appetite."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
ifixcoinops@retro.social ("Dan Fixes Coin-Ops") wrote:

Been fighting off slopbots trying to bring my site down since last Wednesday and man if you thought I was pissed off at AI before, hoo boy, wow

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
skeletor@mas.to ("Inspirational Skeletor💀") wrote:

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

Shout out to Obsidian and iA Writer. Just two queens saving our files in .txt and not looking for new ways to lock us into their apps.

I'm such a big mobile guy and there are so few mobile apps that aren't SaaS-ified to hell.

jsonstein@masto.deoan.org ("Jeff Sonstein") wrote:

amateurs argue strategy & tactics, professionals talk logistics. Whiskey Pete served, but he is still an amateur.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Plato out there saying "what an asshole"

Descartes chuckling knowingly

RE: https://www.threads.com/@perfectunion/post/DV88utRAVov

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
caitp@mstdn.social wrote:

https://www.readthemaple.com/canadas-richest-1-nearly-as-wealthy-as-poorest-80/

its not enough to give the finger to the psychos with cybertrucks

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
jeremiah@tldr.nettime.org wrote:

@glyph Something of a small coda to this. I think you touch on it when mentioning the mistake of assuming on whether someone is fungible based on their level but take a single organization and swap two senior engineers into different parts of the business.

From afar and for a period of time their work is going to look a little similar to what junior engineers usually do because the fastest way to get the business understanding is to go through and do the simple but tedious maintenance tasks.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Fuck this dude

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gregory-bovino-border-patrol-to-retire-sources/

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
preinheimer@phpc.social ("Paul Reinheimer") wrote:

I'm hearing a lot about "Right to compute" acts, which seem to be written by AI lobbyists to protect their interests. Maybe make it easier to build new datacenters.

What about "Right to create" laws. Giving creators the right to make things and not have them be ingested by billion dollar companies.

This very post may soon help train a model that will decide to kill a human being. I think about that a lot.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
benjamineskola@hachyderm.io wrote:

@glyph my title got unexpectedly upgraded to ‘senior’ when I started at my current employer, after trying and failing to get promoted at the previous job. I’ve got ~10 years more experience than some coworkers who had the title before I did. But they had several years more experience with parts of the tech stack (and conversely I’ve done a bunch of other stuff that not everyone else has, which is useful too).

It’s at least taught me not to set too much store by the adjective, anyway.

jscalzi@threads.net ("John Scalzi") wrote:

Three sentences that sound similar but mean different things:

Monday, right

Monday, right?

Monday; right!

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
tante@tldr.nettime.org wrote:

RE: https://tldr.nettime.org/@tante/116239395175554368

So yeah. I am kinda looking for a new job that allows me to make our digital world meaningfully better. If you have any leads or thoughts, ping me.

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

this implements the new feature detection i wrote that blogpost about (the first cut turned out to be completely broken but i'm hopeful about this one).

oh and i added IFUNC support for aarch64 while i was at it.

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

aaaaand that's everything done, aarch64 included.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
chrisjrn@social.coop ("Christopher Neugebauer") wrote:

RE: https://mastodon.social/@CodenameTim/116238965755866425

This touches on a number of thoughts I've been having about the interaction with LLMs and specialist work: LLMs produce "median" work, but no significant functionality in a framework should ever be "median": it's a problem that should be solved once so that multiple people benefit. There will be no prior art; no need for pattern matching.

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

Ultimately in our culture we need to have ways to calculate what people are compensated, and I do not fault anyone for participating in the process of this type of ranking. Some number needs to be written on the offer letter and if you don't have a process for determining that as fairly as you can, then it will be entirely based on implicit biases. So people will have titles and titles will have pay bands. But that's the real, final difference between "junior" and "senior": about $100,000.

glyph ("Glyph") wrote:

"Juniors" can be more than you expect and "Seniors" can be less. A senior engineer who has been in an environment that provides psychological safety, good tools, constant clear feedback, a culture of mutual respect, and strong technical challenges will probably be amazing to work with. Someone who has worked just as long and just as hard in a backbiting constant corporate turf war will be bitter and jaded but will not have the technical chops to match that.