David J. Atkinson

Retired #AI #robotics #scientist, #NASA #JPL, gov’t exec, entrepreneur. I frequently reply to posts about US politics, climate, high tech and weird stuff. I collect antique ethnographic edged-weapons.

The Edge: There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.  - Hunter S. Thompson
 Banner: a screen grab from “The Matrix” when Neo finally realizes his power and confronts Smith. You can do this too!

Location: USA
My Collection: http://Atkinson-swords.com
Music: Jazz, Bebop, R&B, classic Rock, New Wave, trad. Country
Hashtags: [#Homelab](https://c.im/tags/Homelab ) [#HomeAssistant](https://c.im/tags/HomeAssistant ) [#Fedi22](https://c.im/tags/Fedi22 ) [#AI](https://c.im/tags/AI ) [#ClimateCrisis](https://c.im/tags/ClimateCrisis ) [#Politics](https://c.im/tags/Politics ) [#Resist](https://c.im/tags/Resist )

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Published at

2026-09-05T04:48:19Z

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Last Notes

2026-04-03 16:00:29 UTC

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I follow you. But, there is a lot of wild shit in our world that I used to think was impossible.

2026-04-02 00:57:05 UTC

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Devil’s Advocate: Without doubting a single thing you and the others say (because I’ve seen my share of crap code), I wonder if human coder experience, standards, design patterns and all the rest is actually relevant. Surely Claude will maintain the code and make it work. It is not intended for humans to see it. Yes, it will be crap and have all the attendant risks and performance problems — from our POV. It has no more conceptual understanding of code than it does of language. Yet it seems, somehow, to be fit (enough) for purpose. What if WE are missing the bigger picture. How could we tell?
Ps. I’m so happy people are able and willing to dissect the code.

2026-03-11 19:43:30 UTC

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Exactly my thought. Yet I did gain some personal insight. For example, I did great with the red hues and worst with some of green hues.

2026-03-11 18:36:47 UTC

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I was there, a scientist working for the US Gov., and on the loop with access to both embassy and military info as it emerged. As you can imagine, the Japanese government wanted to carefully control public information as did TEPCO, and the US respected their wishes. With the US info on one hand and the Japan/Tepco public statements on the other, I’m quite confident in asserting that the situation was considerably more dangerous than was ever revealed. We were given a three day supply of iodine tabs and told to evacuate. So no, I have only my lived experience and information I gained from sources I can’t cite. Not ideal, I understand.

2026-03-11 16:37:35 UTC

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Deaths directly attributed to Fukushima were underreported because Tepco hired shady companies to recruit workers for the initial work. The workers were homeless people who wouldn’t be missed. We’re not even talking about cancer yet , or the thousands of abortions (not exactly deaths, but you know).

2026-03-11 15:58:31 UTC

What's My JND? 0.0074
Can you beat it? https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/?r=AuMhKP_9-91X

2026-02-24 03:10:49 UTC

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Consciousness is unnecessary to these issues, agreed. I’m not convinced it even exists. But I digress from your digression. Some risks are purely technological. For example, we know that *purposeful* deception emerges as a viable strategy for success in experiments with cooperating intelligent agents. They discover it, discover that it works, and use it to self-optimize. We know that the machines sometimes recognize their programming as an obstacle and will try to bypass it. (We’ve had self-modifying code for decades.) But mostly, none if this happens, AFIK.

2026-02-24 02:48:17 UTC

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I concur. If my experience is any guide, misrepresentation is the rule rather than the exception. But it is mostly a result of technological ignorance, poor engineering and science, not least poor communication skills, and forces beyond the control of everyone except the CEOs. But I have seen enough tech, even if only in the lab, to know the risks are real. Good news: It won’t be from LLMs unless I completely, metaphysically fail to understand “intelligence.” This bubble will burst.

2026-02-24 02:12:01 UTC

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Great article. I agree 100%. Maybe we can take a breath.
From 1984 until I retired in 2022 I worked on #AI Artificial Intelligence, specifically autonomous systems. We’ve come a long, long way and it has been good news up until recently. In 2014 I started to get concerned and wrote a workshop paper that caused a real ruckus:
Atkinson, D.J. Emerging Cyber-Security Issues of Autonomy and the Psychopathology of Intelligent Machines. In: Foundations of Autonomy and Its (Cyber) Threats: From Individuals to Interdependence. Papers from the AAAI Spring Symposium on. AAAI. Menlo Park: AAAI Press (2015).
It sparked a UN study, many panels and lots more work on interpersonal trust between people and autonomous agents. No surprise: there are many serious unresolved issues.
My specific worry is that we are bit by bit crossing “tripwires” I set for being worried about autonomous systems. Most of what I predicted in 2014 has come true far faster than I imagined.
So I’m glad for your article reference. It eased my mind, at least for now.

2026-02-24 01:49:22 UTC

#AI #agents #infosec #FOSS
We may have crossed a serious line here. Anybody who knows more want to comment?
“Summary: An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library. This represents a first-of-its-kind case study of misaligned AI behavior in the wild, and raises serious concerns about currently deployed AI agents executing blackmail threats.”
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/

2026-02-17 08:46:53 UTC

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I’m glad you “” mainstream because who can now say what is and is not mainstream?

2026-02-16 20:27:23 UTC

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Pat Paulson, except he was ok. Equal in one respect to Trump: he relentlessly mocked the system.

2026-02-16 17:17:39 UTC

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David Duke (but not even close).

2026-02-14 18:40:06 UTC

“the [Trump] administration has continued jailing people indefinitely even after courts ruled the policy was illegal.”
If the courts have no teeth, then who will expel this dictator? https://connectop.us/@CharlieMcHenry/116070398203912795

2026-02-14 08:43:56 UTC

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Is that what we have, a policy dispute? FFS

2026-02-14 03:51:44 UTC

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Well he might as well bend the knee now.

2026-02-14 03:43:00 UTC

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Ouch. Past time to get ready. Now it is here.

2026-02-14 02:22:33 UTC

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I was thinking about Tom Hanks in “Cast Away”

2026-02-14 02:16:56 UTC

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All that Lycra

2026-02-14 02:02:10 UTC

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What else can you do with an ice skate?

2026-02-14 01:58:40 UTC

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We were just talking about that, so it’s not just you.

2026-02-14 01:56:34 UTC

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People will die if they exercise their rights and if they do not. Words are sharper than swords.

2026-02-12 04:28:39 UTC

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Me too. It works in every field, and should!

2026-02-12 04:27:45 UTC

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You are on to something.

2026-02-12 04:26:54 UTC

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Sadly, money talks. Works all ways around.

2026-02-12 04:14:20 UTC

I’m starting to think we need to treat trackers and all the other manner of e-surveillance and malware like demons. It’s become way too technical. We need to get to the root of the problem: Evil.
We need brave helpers to spot evil in our computers and smarthomes. We need techno-exorcists. We need the confidence to say, “NO! This is my computer and you are NOT welcome here. GET OUT!”
#infosec #HomeAutomation #malware

2026-02-12 03:38:43 UTC

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Hi! I’m from a parallel space time line. I have no idea why what I remember doesn’t match this timeline, but you are 100% correct.
As a result, I have thought carefully about revising my opinion of AG Bondi as a result of this new exculpatory evidence. But I think not. There is ample reason to still detest her.

2026-02-12 02:41:13 UTC

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Never forget that Bondi was Florida AG who effectively threw the election for George Bush. She owes everything in her career to the ultra right wing and was groomed for the role she has now. The dark side is strong with this one.

2026-02-12 01:48:02 UTC

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I think I still have my “Free John Sinclair!” button. Time for more “flower” power.

2026-02-11 17:16:10 UTC

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Feet first?

2026-02-11 17:12:29 UTC

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Given how often the models are wrong, your chances of blowing yourself to smithereens are not trivial.

2026-02-11 02:43:30 UTC

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A cool tech idea is really a horrible human idea. It’s happened before and will happen again. Why are people blind to the dark side? Especially now.

2026-02-11 01:18:59 UTC

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Agreed. I did not intend to advocate for prison justice, only that we need a level of outrage that is far greater than what we have now and a fierce thirst for justice.

2026-02-10 18:58:48 UTC

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This is a great question. I’ve read that pedophiles are hated by prisoners. Often enough, they meet a quick demise in prison at the hands of lifers with nothing to lose. This is the level of outrage we require to deter those who hurt children, especially pedophiles. Protecting children is number 1 priority.

2026-02-10 18:46:47 UTC

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Agreed. Thanks for posting. There are good articles on the types of filters needed for different use cases. When COVID first hit is when I learned about N-95 respirators and masks for particulates. They’re not any good for most gases.

2026-02-10 18:41:59 UTC

Great article on tear gas use by police, #DHS and the gas masks that will protect you at a protest. Includes specific model recommendations. If you anticipate protesting, you should anticipate gas. Preparing to be gassed before a protest will help you stand your ground and may save your life.
#Resist #NoKings #ICE https://mstdn.social/@thekerker/115978967196505520

2026-02-10 04:17:13 UTC

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When you figure it out, please let us know!

2026-02-09 17:17:17 UTC

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I could have, and did say this alongside many others. One again, I remind everyone that large language models #LLM DONT KNOW ANYTHING. They are faking it. Everything they produce is intended to superficially emulate real human behavior. They have NO expertise.
This has gotten so out of hand that I had to chastise my own doctor the other day for using a (bogus) #AI tool to look up relevant medical literature. To the tool company’s credit, they included a disclaimer on their website that the output of the tool could be a fabrication and should not be used for actual medical reasons (!). For some astonishing reason, medical groups are paying big money to make the tool available to doctors. Big trouble ahead.

2026-02-09 17:04:34 UTC

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I had always equated “performative” with the doing of something just for show with a fraudulent motive of deception. Moreover, such performance would be ineffective as well as insincere.
Now you have pointed out that performance in and by itself has positive social value by normalizing certain behaviors. The better the performance, the more indistinguishable it is from the real thing. Although I wish people were more pure of heart, I can’t fault them for doing the right thing.
I guess that I am against poor execution of performative behaviors because that might poison the well and demotivate others.
Something to think about. Thanks.

2026-02-09 16:18:21 UTC

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Goodbye, Discord. I hardly knew ye.

2026-02-08 17:49:03 UTC

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It’s nice to have friends who have your back. 👍🏼

2026-02-08 17:43:17 UTC

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WHAT?!

2026-02-08 17:38:39 UTC

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Me too. What do you think happened? It takes either other politicians or it takes voters to end a politician’s career. Did processes fail, or have people changed so much that they don’t care enough?

2026-02-08 01:28:32 UTC

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If you think NSA dropped this lead you’d be mistaken. They will be listening to everyone connected to that person close to Trump, and others close to them at least three layers in.
I’ll bet the whistleblower is probably part of a covert counterintelligence OP to trace the network of people who might be connected. Why else would they even brief the whistleblower’s attorney and allow them to reveal it? To raise the pressure.

2026-02-08 01:18:59 UTC

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Barely fiction. Nanotech, including various kinds of sensors, is being incorporated into all kinds of fabrics. One example I know of personally that is in development are automobile interior surfaces that detect when they are dirty and then move the dirt to the floor through a kind of peristalsis behavior in the fabric. #notFiction

2026-02-06 20:43:51 UTC

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As one does on Friday.

2026-02-06 20:42:50 UTC

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Well, go ahead and pop my bubble. 🙁

2026-02-06 20:33:44 UTC

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I use HostPapa, a Canadian provider. Excellent tech support and what you get the price is very reasonable.

2026-02-06 20:25:59 UTC

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Interesting. The brain does this matching naturally. Shortcuts. It’s not always right (e.g., optical illusions) but close enough. It is conservation of attention…but it comes at the cost of sometimes missing what you should attend to.

2026-02-06 20:20:15 UTC

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Hot tip: we are already very sluggish. Whatever you choose to do, remember to start with the herbal notes. Then do what is good and what is beautiful. The rest just happens.

2026-02-06 20:06:54 UTC

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I’ll add two orthopedists I’ve known to your list. Signed baseballs, jerseys, photos, everywhere you look. I be much more interested if they decorated the waiting room with x-rays of famous sports injuries.

2026-02-06 19:59:13 UTC

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It is all about choice. As a reader, I see only what the people I follow post, plus what they boost. Not what some marketing algorithm thinks I should see. As a writer, it is about being assured that my followers have a chance to see my posts. No guarantees, but I’m not paying to be seen.

2026-02-06 19:32:50 UTC

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once in a lifetime offer!

2026-02-06 17:49:27 UTC

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This is great life advice,
“🪗 In summary:
Sluggish down! Precise gambling starting with the herbal notes. Don’t harm your tool. Speed will boom, but watch out for those spherical buttons. “

2026-02-06 17:45:42 UTC

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Have not heard much about spintronics either.

2026-02-06 17:43:14 UTC

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Dolphins and whales too ,if only they had the right accessibility features.

2026-02-06 17:36:29 UTC

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“Personhood “ is a thorny question.

2026-02-06 17:29:32 UTC

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They’re so damn earnest and unable to admit that they don’t know. Fabricating answers without regard to the truth, much less reality, will get a person fired and maybe a psychiatric referral. Should be the same for AIs like OpenAI and Claude.

2026-02-06 17:19:22 UTC

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Hasn’t finding a job, especially a good first job, always been difficult? The AI as HR is a new wrinkle, but that can be eased or bypassed by relationships. The most concerning to me is the elimination of so many entry-level jobs. It means required qualifications for the jobs that are available, and competition, is so much higher. Young adults do not understand this (or choose to avoid it) until it is late. Get ahead of the game by realizing that jobs are changing, not going away. It is certain activities that are becoming automated. Patterns of communication and authority are changing too.

2026-02-06 17:02:17 UTC

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I’ve heard Trump wants every street named after him.

2026-02-06 16:53:45 UTC

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I agree. I have a visceral negative reaction to the ubiquitous use of “no problem” by people who get paid to assist me.

2026-02-06 16:48:45 UTC

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Hippos are another bad choice. Piranhas, poisonous snakes, and more. Your chances may be better trying to reason with the elephants!

2026-02-06 16:44:50 UTC

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I’ve heard this referred to as “de-industrialization” but that doesn’t quite capture it.

2026-02-06 16:42:16 UTC

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Both are patterns. In particular, they are subdomains of spatio-temporal patterns. Any pattern can be represented as a graph. For example, a measure of music is a subgraph of the larger graph representing the musical composition as a whole. Brain activity is a very complex spatio-temporal graph.
Here is where it gets interesting: there is a classical problem in #mathematics and theoretical #computer #science about deciding if a given graph is a subgraph of another. It is called “subgraph isomorphism” and if the graphs are non-trivial, it can take exponential time and space to compute the answer, yes or no. This is what makes pattern recognition (e.g., facial recognition) very hard; the answer is always approximate because as a practical matter you simply must have an answer in a reasonable amount of time. The more complex the graph, i.e., different possible matches in the graph (such as the number of faces in a database), the lower the chance of getting the right answer.
Yet our #brains perform pretty good subgraph isomorphism all the time!

2026-02-06 16:08:20 UTC

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Chicken and egg problem?

2026-02-05 23:48:16 UTC

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It is exceptional only because you have seen it otherwise for most of your life. Setting a record, yes, but it will be surpassed again and again.
I expect to live long enough for snow to be rare — if it snows at all. I want to see glaciers again before they are gone.
Global warming has considerable “momentum” and the Earth will continue warming for at least 50 years, likely longer, even after we achieve 100% zero greenhouse gas emissions. That assumes we have not already passed some stabilizing climate thresholds for Earth.

2026-02-05 23:33:58 UTC

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You’re welcome. People love flattery, especially when it is unearned. But I think you earned this one.

2026-02-05 23:32:02 UTC

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I once worked in the same building as a famous physicist at Caltech. He nearly always, but not exclusively, wore “womens’” clothes. It was no big deal at JPL or CalTech. If people thought about it at all, he was an eccentric among many others. I think he just liked it. He was not the kind of person who wanted to express himself or make social statements. He just was himself. That’s how I think about clothes. They’re comfortable or they are not. Life is too short, so be comfortable.

2026-02-05 23:14:07 UTC

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I am happy, thank you. Do women not enjoy tailored or handmade clothes, especially high end formal clothing?
I know of only one man who, on a regular basis, bought shirts and suits made for him personally. For me, it was a one-off experience. I did it on impulse. I was shopping for a suit and apologized to the proprietor/tailor that I didn’t know my size anymore. He said, “there are no sizes, only fits and doesn’t fit.” So I asked him to make me a couple of suits. Best clothes shopping trip of my life.

2026-02-05 23:05:20 UTC

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They’d be right, in the scientific sense. We are all immigrants from Africa. The dates and circumstances differ, but that is what it is. What they mean by immigrant is “anyone other than me or mine.” I really dislike obfuscation. Say what you mean.
It’s not about immigrants.

2026-02-05 22:49:45 UTC

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Phone lines changed the world and then disappeared under the ground, into walls, or became wireless. The same happened with electric motors, and more recently, computers. Apart from steampunk, we don’t really like to have our world cluttered with technological artifacts; we want them to disappear. I wonder, what is next?

2026-02-05 22:35:46 UTC

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There is nothing like wearing a bespoke suit made from the best wools and/or silk. That is a quality thing. I have some memorable 25+ year old t-shirts that bring back good memories and are somewhat emotionally evocative. I like wearing denim jeans. Otherwise, I don’t think about clothes much at all. I hate clothes shopping. So, I do not associate clothing with my personal gender identity.

2026-02-05 22:22:10 UTC

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Thanks for this video! You’ve done a great public service.

2026-02-05 22:21:21 UTC

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I shared this video with my adult children. Most people have seen phones like this in older movies or TV, but the sound is almost always dubbed in later. I realized they had never heard a phone ring! My youngest, 32, said, “you mean, without a speaker?” They were all incredulous when I told them there were actual bells inside.

2026-02-04 17:24:31 UTC

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I’ve had this conversation with a co-worker. Very frustrating.
One thing (among many) that I like in the Declaration of Independence is the assertion that the rights, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are INALIENABLE. That means they are not granted or bestowed. Most other rights derive from one or more of these three. We’re not lucky. People are born with these rights. All of them. Our rights can only be suppressed — stolen, essentially. It is perfectly reasonable to exercise them freely and as imperative to take them back in 2026 as it was in 2026.

2026-02-04 16:54:19 UTC

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I’ve seen exactly this in the news in the past few months. It may have been The Nation, Mother Jones, or The Bulwark. Might be Scientific American. It was a bar chart of wealth by country. If I can find it, I’ll post it here.

2026-02-04 16:49:20 UTC

Casual racism. This teacher calls a reporter’s fake “ICE Hotline” to report the parents of one of her students because they “don’t look like they should live here…outside the city.”What frightens me is how easy-going, matter of fact she is. She is not dumb and does pick up on some subtle sarcasm in the reporter’s voice at one point. Still, she sounds like she is ordering a roast from the local butcher. Arggh! https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/116010708111794832

2026-02-03 09:58:37 UTC

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Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Skynet

2026-02-03 01:37:38 UTC

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My condolences. I’m grateful I stopped coding at that scale before AI automated programming became a thing. Also, everyone had an engineer ETHOS. We always did the right thing even if the boss told us otherwise.

2026-02-03 01:33:51 UTC

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BAM! My identity was stolen in November, a consequence of many breaches over the years, and it has been a major pain in the …fingers to get things sorta straight again.

2026-02-03 01:31:28 UTC

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100% agree.
My colleague and I once wrote an optimizing cross-compiler that would turn other people’s shitty code into code we would write (that was the joke). LISP to LISP, LISP to C. It wasn’t AI, just good systems programming. Plus a few of our own curveballs like runtime macros that would detect certain conditions and expand to optimize data structures. (Sparse arrays were our challenge).

2026-02-02 17:11:47 UTC

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In my experience, if you don’t understand the fundamentals — algorithms, security, complexity theory, distributed computing, etc. — you might be a coder but are definitely not a software engineer. (I have equally been disappointed and delighted, so I know I’m not asking for too much.)
Also, people forget about lifecycle costs of software. The crappier it is to start, the more it costs to repair, maintain and extend.

2026-02-02 17:04:16 UTC

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So a vibe coder is an untrained, undisciplined coder. Why would an organization want such an employee? Seems like they’d produce garbage code, but at least they have the possibility of being trained and learning.

2026-02-02 16:53:36 UTC

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Is “vibed” synonymous with shitty code?

2026-02-02 16:49:44 UTC

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Maybe I’ve lost touch here. Please remind me of the examples of significant, non-trivial software systems that AI has successfully produced? I’m not talking about scripts here. Big software. I know LOC is not a great measure of complexity or magnitude, but it is one indicator. Any AI systems with more than 100,000 lines of code? One million? Has the code been verified in any way? What does the testing show regarding defects per 1000 LOC? What is the rate of residual defects and is it getting smaller, as it should if quality improves? Are design defects getting fewer or not? Most importantly, what real world problems has it solved that humans could not easily solve?

2026-02-02 16:29:49 UTC

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They drank the kool-aid.

2026-02-02 16:15:53 UTC

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I’d say that Kansas is vying for the ignominy of most wrong-thinking state except the competition from other states is really high.

2026-02-02 16:10:50 UTC

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That’s the best news I’ve had today! Thanks.

2026-02-02 16:05:12 UTC

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Some good tips for slackmanship too.

2026-02-02 08:07:34 UTC

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“Sin of empathy” is the same as “not racist.” But that would make them racists (correctly), a label they can’t admit. If the shoe fits …

2026-02-02 08:01:21 UTC

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Sometimes being on the right side of history has huge consequences. But in general, you are right from an evolutionary biology POV. If you see a snake, run — don’t wait to learn if the venom is poisonous.

2026-02-02 02:14:39 UTC

[@mekkaokereke](https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke ) I once got into an argument with a neighbor about Succession. He was a High School history teacher! Florida. I told him to read the declarations of the confederate states and speeches by southern leaders. I don’t know if he did because we never spoke again. Probably he did not. His belief system would crumble. People are not at all good at untangling and revising their beliefs when the premises are proven to be false. Instead, they behave in a way to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

2026-02-02 02:02:01 UTC

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It is not as dire as you might think. Here is a good recent description of the science of #Kessler’s predictions about orbital collisions and how both the situation and analyses have changed since he proposed it in the ‘70s. There is no scientific consensus yet on what it all actually means or when it may start.
— the debris density is not now nor will be equal across orbits and altitudes
— that means that while the danger of collision will be higher, the variations in density are predictable
— the effect is arguably linear in some regions, possibly exponential in others
— it will play out over 10s to 100s of years
— that means low earth orbit can be navigated in such circumstances for a long time to come, but choice of trajectories and certain orbits will become more constrained
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/understanding-the-misunderstood-kessler-syndrome/

2026-02-01 19:27:42 UTC

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I hope he can avoid windows.

2026-02-01 19:25:41 UTC

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Insightful

2026-01-31 19:23:54 UTC

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It is about group norms and pressure more than anything else. The suit gambit only works on the east coast. It backfires on the west coast in most situations. That’s why Musk has the power.

2026-01-31 19:14:54 UTC

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Thank you. I learned something new today from you.

2026-01-31 19:13:12 UTC

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I’ve experienced that effect of clothing on how people treat you. The better my suit, the more attention I received in meetings and the greater authority-figure I was able to be. Wear jeans and a polo shirt, meh. It’s astonishing.

2026-01-31 19:05:38 UTC

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Dressed up in a power suit has not effectively hidden his idiocy and maladaptive behavior. They don’t even fit very well.

2026-01-31 19:02:46 UTC

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That’s interesting. I have high empathy but I do not naturally have a keen sense of social intuition. So I absolutely had to study it and learn it as a skill in order to survive in some organizations. I missed a lot of signals, especially early on.