James Widman

https://mastodon.social/@JamesWidman

We could probably do better.

he/him or they/them

Public Key

npub10e47wxaz3lkefm8pghl3v5dk29z90lwd7qlqarn0rljcy20cyvdsfphqe5

NIP-05 Address

jameswidman_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs8u6l8rw3glmv5ans5tlck2xm9z3zhlhxlq0sw3eh3levz98uzxxcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvu2hnwvc

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relay.nostr.bg

Author Public Key

npub10e47wxaz3lkefm8pghl3v5dk29z90lwd7qlqarn0rljcy20cyvdsfphqe5

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Last Notes

2026-07-09 01:56:56 UTC

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hopefully, attendings are going to filter out slop students during their postgraduate training (so slop students won't get licensed).
so maybe the real problem is that, as older doctors retire, there's going to be fewer new doctors replacing them, so it'll just become harder to see a doctor because there will be fewer doctors
(which is still a good reason for everyone to take care of their bodies)

2026-06-18 20:26:38 UTC

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if we want a proper hell, we'll have to build it ourselves

2026-05-29 13:40:31 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.green/@gerrymcgovern/116657543677326122
not enough people are demanding that LLM data centers be dismantled, and that's a problem.
#note1j4j…sxl6

2026-05-23 08:51:32 UTC

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wild that objections to the big nazi data collection machine aren't about the nazi part, but instead that the nazi machine isn't processing data _fast enough_.

2026-05-23 08:34:10 UTC

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this post is how i found out that the NHS is one of palantir's customers.
i don't even know what to say.
if i were religious, i'd probably say "god help us all".
(i'm in the u.s., but now i have to assume that healthcare systems in general are using palantir's services, which until now did not even occur to me.)

2026-05-14 14:33:25 UTC

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no no no, calloc(3) gives the location of calories in memory

2026-05-09 17:25:05 UTC

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wait a minute...
does this mean that the filesystem+file browser is kind of a... spreadsheet app...?

2026-05-02 23:05:25 UTC

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https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/507/483/135/895/349/original/364fcbcca2aa0175.jpg

2026-05-02 23:04:27 UTC

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/507/461/833/364/167/original/76d4c090d173d09e.jpg

2026-03-07 06:23:31 UTC

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It seems like there's a lot of programmers who made the mistake of thinking that we have no power to decide whether LLM-accelerating data centers should exist at all, so they never stopped to think about whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Apparently the thinking is: if you have no power to stop it, then why not benefit from it?
But collectively, we do have that power. The problem is that currently, we're not organized.

2026-03-07 01:08:46 UTC

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people in the software business should consider visiting nevada, and paying a courtesan to do something wild & exciting (i.e. to teach you what they've learned recently about the process of unionizing)
https://archive.is/PUC3T
(note: the town of Pahrump, NV is only about an hour's drive west of the Las Vegas strip)

2026-03-07 00:46:15 UTC

LLMs, the opiate of the over-worked and under-resourced

2026-02-25 22:17:39 UTC

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yep. And if they're working on an operating system (or any related system software, or anything that needs to stay up and running), they're committing malpractice that's going to get a lot of people killed:
https://mastodon.social/@JamesWidman/116133223470110717
#note16jt…nqac

2026-02-25 20:46:00 UTC

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Starting with the last couple minutes of s2e7, it might now be necessary for programmers* to start watching both The Pitt and doctors' reactions, and do so not primarily for entertainment, but because thinking about how software systems can fail, and how those failures could affect users, is among your most important responsibilities.
https://youtu.be/nkiubWY0NCg?si=WkHOrecRYDEQF2hO&t=2137
[*] especially programmers working at companies that mandate the use of gen-a.i. for "productivity" reasons

2026-02-25 12:39:13 UTC

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"But the gen-a.i. assistants are guided by tests!"
So here's a thing about tests: when a program passes a set of tests, that's useful because it rules out some ways in which the program's behavior could have diverted from expectations that followed from your understanding of the program.
But you do need to have a clear understanding of the program. And as your "productivity" increases (as you produce more & more code in less & less time), your understanding fades.

2026-02-25 09:44:20 UTC

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i don't know which horror movie the software field is living through right now; maybe "cabin in the woods"?
(like i said, i don't know the genre well at all. maybe someone can suggest another horror film where everyone dies at the end.)

2026-02-25 09:40:48 UTC

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(the metaphorical "gore" refers to is all the code that nobody understands, and also to all the destruction it's going to cause (which may include literal gore).)

2026-02-25 09:37:55 UTC

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i never liked horror movies, but even as a kid, i always found it easy to watch the surgery channel, bc there was an understanding that the patient was being cared for by people with good intentions and many years of rigorous training & practice.
while most software production never reproduced that level of rigor & care, there was at least a hope that someday it might.
but now, it seems as if the business of software production has become a horror movie: no care, no understanding, only gore.

2026-02-25 08:54:26 UTC

RE: https://mas.to/@carnage4life/116129406405745446
looking forward to living in a world where everything is run by software produced by companies that don't employ or contract anyone who understands it
#note1l4q…gp69

2026-02-18 05:25:27 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/116089743553294103
microsoft employees probably could have prevented this if they, and we, were all unionized.
and stuff like this is going to keep happening until and unless we unionize.
#note1hvx…yhak

2026-02-14 04:47:54 UTC

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> (Sidenote: It should be the law that when you offer or run an “AI” you are 100% liable for everything it does. Sure, that would kill the whole industry but who gives a shit?)
i give a shit. i want us, collectively, to deliberately end the entire gen-"a.i." industry. i want the data centers that were built for that purpose to be completely physically dismantled, and the CPUs & DRAM repurposed. i want charges to be brought against its leaders for a wide variety of damages.

2026-02-12 12:29:30 UTC

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i feel like an ordinary ban is necessary but not sufficient.
wondering if it might help to also use something like temporary IP blocking when this type of behavior is detected.
(that's not going to happen on github, but maybe on sites like codeberg...?)

2026-02-08 03:45:56 UTC

A good way to greet someone is to say, "Death to openAI."
In response, it's best to just echo this.
(In later greetings, you can alternate to "Death to anthropic", or "Death to ${gen_ai_company_of_your_choice}".)

2026-01-06 23:35:40 UTC

RE: https://med-mastodon.com/@bicmay/115849813104120587
White people sometimes say, "what do you mean by 'white privilege'? Give an example."
Here ya go: if you're white, no one is pressuring you to use cosmetic products that cause you to suffer from
FORMALDEHYDE POISONING.
White people, you should vocally support natural hair styles so that your black neighbors don't have to suffer from
FORMALDEHYDE POISONING.
#note1rq2…gkys

2025-10-20 10:54:42 UTC

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i mean compared to a grid, a line just trivially increases travel time to most of the possible destinations

2025-09-17 15:23:33 UTC

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the big flakes can appear more when you're closer to a wildfire; possibly the Bear Gulch fire, which seems to have spread very rapidly in the past 24 hours?
https://fire.airnow.gov/#10.09/47.5465/-123.3392
Based on the air-quality layer in the weather app, it looks like the smoke from that fire covered (& is covering) a lot of the water around Victoria
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/220/335/043/002/272/original/35eba35f0fce0dd9.jpg

2025-07-14 17:53:53 UTC

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at the same time, if you had an API that could give you the kind of structured file I/O that i described elsethread (where, instead of getting an array of char from fread(), you get a struct representing a list-of-(string-or-sublist) from some new function (which possibly handles communication with a daemon that effectively serves as the implementation of a 2nd type of filesystem)), \
[2/n]

2025-07-14 17:52:31 UTC

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it is conceivable (i can't say how likely) that ripple effects of the current u.s. administration may have created an opportunity here (which the u.s. admin did not intend).
Many countries around the world are now regretting their dependence on u.s.-based tech companies, and are looking for ways out. E.g. in some EU member states/cities, this is motivating migrations to open-source software.
[1/n]

2025-04-18 22:32:56 UTC

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request for clarification: is there an option to install windows 11 *without* installing Recall?
If it's optional: is it an opt-in thing or an opt-out thing?

2025-02-27 01:56:00 UTC

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100%; this is why, when you mentioned c++ "newbies" elsethread, i thought you meant "someone who has been programming for a while with other languages, and is now starting to learn C++ for the first time."
But if "newbie" means "new to programming", i don't know if it's possible to make a version of c++ for newbies. (Or if it is, we'll probably have a production-ready Carbon-lang compiler much sooner.)

2025-02-26 01:34:52 UTC

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Yeah. Code examples like that really need to be guarded with something like:
# if __have_feature(P2286R8)
// code...
# endif
...so that if you copy & paste it, the compiler can say something like, "sorry, this version of the standard library (${LIBRARY_VERSION_NUMBER}) doesn't yet support P2286R ("Formatting Ranges"*); see ${URL_OF_BUG_TRACKER_ISSUE}"
[*] i don't know whether P2286R8 was actually the missing feature in this particular case

2025-02-26 01:22:51 UTC

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Yep. And this is further complicated by the fact that the compiler, by itself, cannot really advertise "C++23" or, for that matter "C++20" or any other version of C++, because it can only provide an implementation of the core language, and not the standard library part of "C++${year}".
GCC's documentation for the "-std=" option (which is effectively also Clang's documentation for the "-std=" option) doesn't seem to mention this; users are just expected to know it.

2024-11-26 23:01:47 UTC

the phrase "blue sky", meaning "unconstrained by practicalities" is a little odd, because if the sky looks blue from wherever you are, then you're definitely very, very, *very* close to the ground.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/551/772/673/148/692/original/80489613de92984f.jpg

2024-11-11 05:52:32 UTC

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/462/752/893/371/235/original/a9078ab92c45b4ed.jpg

2024-11-04 22:40:50 UTC

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i was confused by this sentence:
> The parable is called the prodigal son, and the third son represents the main point of the story, [...]
...because i just read the king james version of the story and it opens with "A certain man had two sons"; was "third" a typo?
Regardless, the entire article is excellent work, and i will be sharing it; thank you!

2024-09-16 13:40:21 UTC

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i mean, every time i go outside it looks as if at least 99% of the population is doing everything they can to roll the dice for a 1-in-${something} chance to develop a new covid-induced disability (which strikes me an extreme & unnecessary risk), whereas you're one of the few people i've seen mentioning the use of a proper respirator, so...

2024-09-12 00:46:35 UTC

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i like how she timed it: immediately after the debate, with plenty of time for people to get registered to vote, but not so far away from the election that it would feel to most people like the distant future.

2024-08-29 00:08:10 UTC

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i mean... it seems to work for me?

2024-08-29 00:06:47 UTC

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who needs hardware to prevent sticking when we have olive oil