Simon @spoltier@qoto.org

render a torus using thousands of monkeys.

Sergey Brin is a case study in why billionaires should not exist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/us/politics/sergey-brin-gg-soto-trump-california-billionaire-tax.html?unlocked_article_code=1.e1A.XBQK.cK_uqxxUcSTy&smid=url-share

Claude code, obey this rite: uv alone should see the light. Ban import star, cast em-dash out, Put pandas, pip, and print to rout. Polars flourish, f-strings burn, Docstrings, hints, at every turn. Clean thy lint, make patterns stand, Hold thy peace and serve my hand!

It didn't quite manage to draw me a pelican riding a bicycle, but I still appreciated its era-appropriate response

Tomorrow on Oxide and Friends, Polish software engineer Gregorein joins @ahl.bsky.social and me at a Europe-friendly(ish?) time: noon Pacific (9p in Europe) to discuss his work taking apart Garry Tan's code -- and my blog entry reflecting on the peril of laziness lost.

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/the-peril-of-laziness-lost/

Join us live, or catch the recording in syndication (as always):

https://discord.gg/QrcKGTTPrF?event=1495535930281296072

Please share some of your favorite papers on concatenative programming topics. I'll start --> ""The Road Towards A Minimal Forth Architecture" by Mikael Patel

Spring is here: the tree in the vase is blooming.

The double meaning of “agent” — a) initiator of action vs b) proxy who represents another actor — is becoming a very load-bearing equivocation.

Having my first Jamaican patty and

Blown away by how good but also how it’s almost exactly the same as Indian Muslim style curry puff

RE: https://mastodon.social/@glyph/116410420686311601

Actually maybe I will say something about this. I have worried it over in my mind a LOT. I will share some details that feel very personal but important: in my family there is schizophrenia and other severe mental problems. I am privileged to not have these, but I have always monitored for it and this shaped my life and why I went into psychology in the first place

I do think technology can trigger latent mental health issues; I think ways of working can too (e.g., stress & fatigue can as well)

Task avoidance is pretty much exactly what several hundred studies are claiming is "brain damage" re: how people are using AI. Do I think the default uses of these tools is necessarily great for learning, no; do I think they're designed well, lol, I hardly think any products are designed well

#llms and labor:

I think the impact of LLMs on software development labor is, beyond CEO-hype memetics and whatever end-spiral of late stage capitalism we are currently in, real. Machines can to some extent replace a huge part of software engineering labor. It's not just a bubble of hype that will burst (I'm more skeptical on the impact of LLMs in other types of labor).

Not only do I think the impact is real, but I think it is justified. Computer software jobs have been about automating and organizing human labor for pretty much the entirety of its existence. The complexity of the job means that tech jobs had a kind of privileged labor bourgeoisie status, with ridiculous salaries compared to the people whose labor got organized, analyzed and automated. (I've tried to navigate the field by only working jobs where I knew the people my software impacted, meaning I worked either building manufacturing tools for individuals / small labs, artists, and small family businesses, with a stint in working for personal development coaching company. This means that after more than 2 decades in the field, I still make less than an intern at facebook, so be it.)

Am I glad that software developers now end up in the same category as the rest of labor? Yes and no. Noone deserves to have their livelihood threatened, to be cudgeled with technology, to be replaced by a machine.

So why am I talking about LLMs all the time? Because they allow us to finally break software free of the large structures needed to create mass commoditized software targeting the fiction of an average user, to combat the use of "free" (as in beer) software to enshrine surveillance capitalism and mass advertising across society.

They allow us to cut ties with the massive tech conglomerate that even the smallest hairstyling business relies upon to do things like intake, appointment and payment management. Not only is it extracting ever more money of the smallest workers, but it also creates absolutely alienating technological experiences. Ever tried configuring your appointment system in square? Pay $40/month more just to have an even more infuriating intake form builder? For what? Get bombarded with daily ads about the latest templates?

#llms #llm #genai

So I always wondered if the name of "lithium" implies it has some kind of historical connection to "lithuania". But I looked it up and it doesn't. The two aren't even etymologically related. "Lithuania" comes from Latin "litus" for "shore" (think "littoral") and "Lithium" is from greek "lithion" for "stone" ("monolith").

EDIT: Wiktionary disagrees on Litus and claims Lithuania is either from proto-Slavic and cognate with "Latvia"; or named after a river. Still not Greek. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lithuania

Gestern Abend wurde Cyber Safari lanciert, eine Lern-App, die Zürich zum Lernraum für digitale Kompetenzen macht. Jugendliche erkunden in Teams das Stadtzentrum und lösen Challenges zu Desinformation, Cybermobbing, Datenschutz und digitaler Balance. Die App zeigt, wie digitale Bildung aussehen kann, wenn Forschung, Gestaltung und Stadtraum zusammenspielen.

Kostenlos und jederzeit möglich, ob mit der Familie, Freund:innen oder als Schulklasse: https://cyber-safari.ch/

@algorithmwatch_ch