ali

Do not become the slave of your model. — Vincent Van Gogh P. S. It's a real quote from his letter to his brother. #ai #aimodels

@addison@nothing-ever.works Indeed. On the accountability, it will get worse and worse, and I'm not sure if anything can stop this. We talk about software, but the accountability concept is getting abandoned everywhere. You've probably seen lcamtuf writings on children's books. It's insane. p.s. When I was reading the writing, at "We build the world we measure" I thought it would be a keynote by Dan Geer.

@addison@nothing-ever.works OK, I get you. For me it's more like a serious text from the history of computing. It's a serious warning from an era closer to the early days of computing, when we were thinking more about the foundations of computing than we are now. Sounds like the outcome of a philosophical discussion.

@pikesley https://mastodon.social/@warandpeas/115084514993243528

@bagder We are destroying software by no longer taking complexity into account when adding features or optimizing some dimension. We are destroying software with complex build systems. We are destroying software with an absurd chain of dependencies, making everything bloated and fragile. We are destroying software telling new programmers: “Don’t reinvent the wheel!”. But, reinventing the wheel is how you learn how things work, and is the first step to make new, different wheels. We are destroying software by no longer caring about backward APIs compatibility. We are destroying software pushing for rewrites of things that work. We are destroying software by jumping on every new language, paradigm, and framework. We are destroying software by always underestimating how hard it is to work with existing complex libraries VS creating our stuff. We are destroying software by always thinking that the de-facto standard for XYZ is better than what we can do, tailored specifically for our use case. We are destroying software claiming that code comments are useless. We are destroying software mistaking it for a purely engineering discipline. We are destroying software by making systems that no longer scale down: simple things should be simple to accomplish, in any system. We are destroying software trying to produce code as fast as possible, not as well designed as possible. We are destroying software, and what will be left will no longer give us the joy of hacking. — @antirez Suno generated musical version: https://infosec.exchange/@alphaville/114007698279892579

RE: https://infosec.exchange/@alphaville/116929531427849762 If I was a musician, I would write a requiem for software.

Thanks to LLMs, Stack Exchange is becoming a cool place again.

TIL: patch pumpkin: A notional token passed around among the members of a project. Possession of the patch pumpkin means one has the exclusive authority to make changes on the project's master source tree. The implicit assumption is that pumpkin holder status is temporary and rotates periodically among senior project members. https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/07/21/10

@wdormann@infosec.exchange wow 🥹

@addison@nothing-ever.works and what happened?