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Boosted by cstanhope@social.coop ("The Luddites were right"):
amoroso@oldbytes.space ("Paolo Amoroso") wrote:

The Computer History Museum remembers Cleve Moler who created MATLAB, LINPACK, and EISPACK.

https://computerhistory.org/blog/in-memoriam-cleve-moler-1939-2026

#matlab #retrocomputing

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“Sérsveitaraðgerðir í Hvera­gerði - Vísir”

https://www.visir.is/g/20262890566d/sersveitaradgerdir-i-hveragerdi

I was at home watching Raymond Burr wheel himself around in Ironside, so... y'know... not me. 😝

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

and the problem is it's convincing.

i suggested the basic structure, right? so when it tells me it's great and it's not, that's confirmation bias, one of the hardest traps to avoid.

if i didn't take an inherent mistrust of algorithms (even the ones i'm designing!) and want to be sure i understand why they are correct, i would have fallen for this. i spent ages trying to pick the hole on the basis of my gut and the cod kept telling me everything was fine until i fingered the exact problem.

like i am very fucking aware i am in fact a human being subject to cognitive biases like anyone else and this is just a machine that actively triggers them to appear more convincing!

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
ielenia@ck.catwithaclari.net ("luna aria ielenia :cascadia:") wrote:

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

and the entire time it was convinced it was totally right as it got key invariants backwards, wrote data races and nullified garbage collection entirely (can't use anything after freeing it if you never free it!)

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

this is for a database, right, so what we're talking about is if i were less good at concurrency, i would have almost certainly just written a data loss into the page reclamation mechanism.

and it's only because i had a gut feeling that i kept probing and realised myself what the problem was.

absolutely fucking useless.

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

NEVER trust the vibe cod.

i think i have finally settled on a design that is correct. this wasn't easy - it sent me down so many rabbit holes that it's a wonder we got here at all.

it's happily written me many ideas that would result in undefined behaviour and told me how correct they are. each time i have to find the bug myself, which is quite difficult and really only possible because i basically sketched the algorithm for it, so it was still my basic idea which i found holes in and it tried to add a bunch more to!

truly the future of development!

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

The year is 2035. Your dishwasher requires a security patch to continue cleaning knives.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
carithlee@laserdisc.party ("words of encouragement") wrote:

I too will be thinking about this for weeks

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
landley@mstdn.jp ("Rob Landley") wrote:

Culture is full of persephone eating pomegranate seeds, beware of greeks bearing gifts, don't eat fairy food, don't accept favors from demons because you'll owe them, monkey's paw wishes...

And then all these "ain't no such thing as a free lunch" fuckers tell you to check in LLM pull requests, and mock the reluctant as fools. STRINGS ARE VERY MUCH ATTACHED. This crap is fucking sticky at nuclear contamination levels. You pivoted from NFTs to this, we watched you do it.

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
parents4future@climatejustice.global ("Parents For Future :verified:") wrote:

Another long read for today, by @ketan

Elon Musks xAI "'Colossus' data centres will emit so much greenhouse gas pollution that, by my reckoning, they’ll likely undo the entire emissions saved by Tesla’s global fleet of electric vehicles."

("AI" is a fossil technology — @tante )

https://ketanjoshi.co/2026/05/13/why-anthropics-ultra-dirty-deal-shouldnt-surprise-you-at-all/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
dpk@chaos.social ("Daphne Preston-Kendal") wrote:

Everyone talks about not having senior devs in the future because we’re replacing the juniors with LLMs, but nobody’s talking about losing senior devs now because people who are competent and care about the quality of their work are leaving this LLM-infested hellscape of a career path to go into carpentry, hostelry, or subsistence farming

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
attoparsec@clacks.link ("Matthew Dockrey") wrote:

@nev @forestine It took me a long time to fully understand the difference between "wanting to be X" and "wanting to *do* X", which let me focus my energy a lot more effectively. That distinction is probably more critical now than ever.

Boosted by brib@bribstodon.xyz ("brib :neofox_floof:​ :Nonbinary:"):
nev@status.nevillepark.ca ("Neville Park") wrote:

@forestine Tangent: this is one thing that gets me about the deluded LLM "physicists". Like, nobody likes the boring stuff like writing grant applications or marking a gazillion exams. But there are people who genuinely find the process of learning physics enjoyable. They took bio or chemistry and were like "nope, physics is for me." They don't want to skip any of the process. They find it rewarding to work through their giant textbooks, their dream is to work at CERN, whatever. If [generic] you don't like doing that, and you want to outsource all the "reading papers" and "hard math" stuff to a chatbot, maybe you don't like physics as much as you think you do! Maybe you should get into something you're wholly and genuinely passionate about!

It is pretty much exactly like "I don't want to learn synths or practice singing or whatever, I just want to have a song with a lot of plays on Spotify."

fribbledom ("muesli") wrote:

The difference between science fiction and reality is that science fiction has to make sense.

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Just realised that one of the reasons why I tend to react differently to things than many around me is because I think you’re defined by what you do and condone, not what you say or write.

“Did you read what he wrote?”

“Yeah, but did you see what he did?”

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“How Anthropic used AI ethics slop to play the pope and eclipse OpenAI”

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-anthropic-used-its-ai-ethicslop

> Anthropic’s opportunism leaves a stain on the entire encyclical, which now, ironically, looks a bit like an accessory to helping the largest and richest AI company yet—not to mention the one aiming to sell the most job automation tools—reach new heights of power.

Boosted by jwz:
kplx ("Kplx") wrote:

The People

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

“How Anthropic used AI ethics slop to play the pope and eclipse OpenAI”

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-anthropic-used-its-ai-ethicslop

> Powerful people enriching themselves at the expense of the poor is only an “unsolved problem” if, I don’t know, you have never seen a Robin Hood movie before.

Boosted by jwz:
davidgerard@circumstances.run ("David Gerard") wrote:

@cstross @resuna @webhat rsync is now Laundry Files fanfic

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
SecureOwl@infosec.exchange ("Mike Sheward") wrote:

that's how i've always done it, Microsoft

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
UncleDuke1969@universeodon.com ("Uncle Duke") wrote:

Possibly the most frightening talent of the brown bear is an uncanny ability to blend seamlessly into the environment in an almost chameleon-like manner, allowing them to easily surprise their unsuspecting prey.

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

jqwik is hotting up

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

This is very well observed, but every time I hear the name "Eric Schmidt" all I can think is "...you mean the guy who was caught colluding with Steve Jobs to suppress the wages of programmers?":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech%5FEmployee%5FAntitrust%5FLitigation

https://youtu.be/tlQ7EoJDTQY

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

shudders

i just read some summary for some tech event in san fran and it's uh... imaginative.

isagalaev ("Ivan Sagalaev :flag_wbw:") wrote:

@glyph I often entertain a "what if" thought about open source maintainers refusing to be voluntary suppliers by offering builds, releases, versioning and all that kind of care about consumers. And instead we go back to "this is a pile of code I wrote, see if you can find anything useful for yourself, but I'm not going to do you work for you".

jwz wrote:

Fluck Flock.

Flock is quietly training police to sway city leaders to buy surveillance tech: As East Bay communities raise concerns about civil liberties and immigration enforcement, the license plate camera company is seeking support from its...
https://jwz.org/b/yk79

Boosted by jwz:
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy ("Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD") wrote:

I have read that we forget 90% of our lives so I’d like to submit 2020-2028 to my brain for consideration of deletion.

Boosted by jwz:
oglaf@socel.net ("Oglaf") wrote:

A selection of classic comic prints now available at our TopatoCo store! https://topa.to/oglaf

Boosted by jwz:
robey@messydesk.social ("Robey ☠️") wrote:

i am here to announce we have reached 100% memory safety by ceasing to produce memory at all