Flutterby™! (short)

Manuel Bustillo: One month without AI

One month ago, in a code review of one of my PRs, a coworker said something like “this test you’ve written doesn’t actually test the scenario that you’re changing in the application code”. I reviewed it, and he was right. But… it was so convincing… And I felt shameful. Because for me, a developer who had been using TDD for 10+ years, failing on something so basic was a bit of a humiliation. I realized I had lost control, and it was not going to get any better. I think It’s worthless to just try harder, be more picky with the AI, demand the quality you’re paying for! Because despite your efforts, the AI ends up convincing you, and making you complacent again.

Via, quoting.

Thinking about the conversation I had with a neighbor on Thursday morning. They were complaining about bike lanes and roundabouts. I pointed out outher places that had experienced tremendous benefits from pedestrian and active transportation improvements. He said "yeah, but they made better decisions in the past".

As though we were precluded from making good decisions because former leaders insisted on auto-oriented sprawl.

Anyway, a good reminder of how we get stuck in our beliefs even when better paths forward are obvious.

The weird thing about dentistry is what if your general practitioner and plastic surgeon were the same person?

Any one got someone they like in Petaluma?

Yowzers, Eric Lucan sure does have the campaign dollars to pay for polling.

Got a request to schedule some calling gigs next year, and I realized that... maybe I'm over square dance calling? Maybe it's time to find something else to do with the voice?

I have a few dances scheduled, I'll renew CALLERLAB, but pondering what I give this community vs what I get back.

NHTSA investigates comma.ai’s openpilot over 5 crashes that killed 3. I did not know that ODB-C on the CAN network allowed control of steering and more. Or that hiding behind selling a "dev kit" on which you run open source software that takes control of your car was this much of an effective moral crumple zone.

Via

Shannon Prickett @Binder@petrous.vislae.town

Something being described as 'decrepit' means that it contains ten holes.

Repeating Elf M. Sternberg @elfsternberg.bsky.social's warning:

I'm very sorry. Please don't read this. But I do intend to share this with ${WORK} tomorrow. It has load bearing seams. It opens up new structural opportunities. It contrasts relevant assumptions with known facts.

It may hurt you if you read it.

That's on me.

Madra David — Claude's load-bearing seams

Now that I have the full picture, the load-bearing seams are much clearer. They are not merely incidental details around the edges. They materially change how the entire situation needs to be understood, and that is the smoking gun I should have recognized earlier.

Elf M. Sternberg @elfsternberg.bsky.social

Holy chao, that's perfect. "Cognitive Kessler Syndrome."

Quote skeeting James Bridle @jamesbridle.bsky.social

Have we called it the cognitive kessler effect yet? Should we? It's not a coincidence that it's the same people filling the sky and our headspaces with junk.

Edit addendum, as I clear out my backlog of bookmarks, from a thread looking at "AI" content as cognitive asbestos: Bruno Dias @brunodias.devM

It's like a suicide shot of cognitive biases. Once you assume that it's smart, confirmation bias comes into play; LLMs give you a *ton* of input for your brain to do confirmation bias on, a sort of semantic overload. It's actually not that different from software fuzz testing...

Dear Google: I definitely don't need more "AI" crammed into my phone, but if y'all could spend a little time making your Bluetooth stack more stable and reduce how often I need to reboot, that'd be awesome.

Valerie Halla @valeriehalla.dicot.moe

it's all just art. "porn" is just art that makes you horny, in precisely the way that "horror" is art that makes you scared and "metroidvania" is art that makes you write video essays

I saw this today as a screencap from March 29, went back to find it on February 25th, and discovered that I had, at some point, given it a heart.