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jacobian

@jacob@social.jacobian.org

mastodon 4.7.3

recovering from a 25 year career in tech. he/him.

4337 Followers

339 Following

50 Posts

Joined October 27, 2022

pronouns:

he/him

web:

https://jacobian.org/

signal:

jacobian.01

jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 2mo ago

Boosted by @trending@homestead.social

The Django Software Foundation is hiring an Executive Director! Main responsibilities: fundraising, managing staff and day-to-day operations, and generally helping the DSF mature. We’re looking for candidates with a history of nonprofit leadership; Python/Django/OSS experience nice but not req’d. Remote, but US-only. Idfeally full-time, possibly part-time. $90-120k/yr, plus bonuses for hitting fundraising targets. Happy to answer questions over DM/email; hit me up! https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2026/aug/06/call-for-applicants-for-a-django-executive-directo/

Call for applicants for a Django Executive Director

Posted by Abigail Afi Gbadago, Jeff Triplett, and the DSF Board on Aug. 6, 2026

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 4mo ago

Clearly, the solution to all of the problems caused by LLMs is to mock, ridicule, and harass the rsync maintainer. That’ll solve it.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

I think it’s worth remembering that nonviolence is a tactic, not some sort of universal moral imperative. There are certain situations where nonviolent activism was effective. And others where violence prevented far worse outcomes.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 9mo ago

Boosted by @angry_drunk@union.place

I keep seeing this joke and it’s quite funny but it elides the fact that Firefox has a long and glorious history of dick-hammering! Every time over the last at least decade they’ve been offfered anything hammer-shaped they’ve gleefully used it to pound wood. Despite many leadership changes whoever’s in charge has been quite consistent about a commitment to chase down new shiny hammers. https://mastodon.social/@TheZeldaZone/114082180124431864

mastodon.social

Zelda: ""Hello, We're Firefox, The Only Browser That Hasn…" - Mastodon

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 9mo ago

Boosted by @ferrix@mastodon.online

For folks who’re interested in 3d printing whistles: https://www.printables.com/model/417238-loudest-emergency-whistle is the best I’ve found. They’ve been tested on canyoneering trips — we use whistles to communicate over the sound of waterfalls; nothing else is piercing enough to cut through the thunder. These work as well as the gold standard Fox 40 Classic. I print it florescent orange PLA, with an 0.6mm nozzle and 0.3mm layer height, and make lanyards out of orange paracord.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

I do believe that people can change, and that there can (and should) be a path back to good standing in a community.

But that path needs to involve taking ownership of the harm they caused — even if, heck especially if, they’re no longer a person who would do those things. And they need to at least attempt to make amends in some way.

Without these things, I’m not going to be able to assume good intentions of someone trying to come back.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@pythonbynight@hachyderm.io @ambv@mastodon.social Ok yes I like this: “explainabibility” (I need a better word but fine) is one reason why code quality matters. Like, if a dam fails, we’d really like to have the blueprints — and for them to be readable! — so we can figure out where we screwed up. “The dam works because the lake holds water” isn’t sufficient.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Rachel Entrekin has won the Cocodona 250 outright in 59:09:48, breaking the overall course record by over 2.5 hours. Second place / M1 is still well over an hour out, and F2 is at least 4 hours behind. One of the most amazing ultrarunning performances in recent memory, simply spectacular!

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@freakboy3742 It’s not fiction, but it sounds like fiction, and it’s what I’d go with: In 1992, the Grateful Dead sponsored the Lithuanian national basketball team — and these are really actually the jerseys they wore. I’ve always dreamed of buying a reproduction (the real ones are collectors items, extremely rare and expensive).

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

I’m far from convinced that this is actually possible. It’s certainly not now — and I’m not talking about models. Testing and verification tools are nowhere near where they’d need to be, regardless of model quality. Today, code quality DOES still matter; even the best-case version of agentic engineering can’t produce code that’ll never require maintenance. But I can see a possible future where code quality might not matter, or will matter a lot less, and that’s FASCINATING. (3/5)

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

Specifically what I find fascinating is: the tooling that would be required to make agentic engineering begin to live up to the hype — much better testing tools, formal business logic specification languages, more powerful and easier to use formal verification tools, better static analysis tooling, etc — would be massively useful to software engineering quite regardless of the existence/utility/quality of LLMs. (4/5)

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

(I am at 6 visits in 3 days and about to head out for what I dearly hope is the final trip. FML.)

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

This more or less sums up my position on genAI. My only quibble is that “the worst thing is the ahitty people”, while true, sort of implies the other shitty things (slop, culture death, data centers in the fucking desert) aren’t pretty goddamn bad too. But the people are truely staggeringly historically terrible. @timbray@cosocial.ca

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

The project was setting up a pump to pull water from our rain tanks into a new paddock, so it involved both plumbing and wiring — the two most fiddly disciplines, you really need the right parts, improvising is bad. Then I ran out of 90° elbows, discovered the pump had a leaky fill plug, cracked the waterproof electrical junction box, and to cap it all off discovered at the last minute that I’d installed the pump backwards.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

Will we actually build them? I sort of doubt it: the history of software development, and of course the current trajectory, suggests we’ll continue to yolo our way through it. I wouldn’t exactly say I’m optimistic, but hope springs eternal. (5/5)

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Holy shit it happened! I genuinely thought it would happen on a stunt setting like breaking2 long before it happened in a real sanctioned race. Amazing! https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/live/cjd9xpmnvj3t

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

I fear the day is coming when I may have to figure out who the fuck Hasan Piker is.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 8mo ago

Better to burn out than fade away… https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/

An Update on Heroku

An Update on Heroku

Today, Heroku is transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and support. Heroku remains an actively supported, production-ready platform, with an emphasis on maintaining quality and operational excellence rather than introducing new features. We know changes like this can raise questions, and we want to be clear about what this means […]

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@glyph@mastodon.social (Tho - I think software engineering would be in a better place if “done” was more common. Like, is 80% of the TCO of a bridge in maintenance? I sort of doubt it. There are times when I think that calling it software “engineering” is a bit of a joke.)

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

Code quality has always been ONE factor; it’s never been always the most important. Eg we often accept complex internals as the price for a clean external API; and we all write sloppy code for one-offs, prototypes, etc. So part of me accepts the “code quality doesn’t matter” argument. I can see a vision of agentic engineering with systems that prove correctness; if an agent produces code that is provably correct, maybe the quality really doesn’t matter! (2/5)

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 10mo ago

Really grateful to get to serve another term, and beyond thrilled to have @ryancheley@mastodon.social and @priyapahwa@mastodon.social joining the board! https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2025/nov/28/2026-dsf-board-election-results/

djangoproject.com

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@EWDurbin Wow, congratulations and HUGE thanks for the team and systems you’ve built there. You’ve done amazing work and the community is in your debt.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

This is also the Ultrarunner’s Creed @mttaggart@infosec.exchange

infosec.exchange

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@glyph@mastodon.social Yeah, that’s one conclusion I’m coming to thanks to this discussion. I was aware of the slipperiness of “quality”, and was kinda doing that deliberately because exploring weather quality matters is (to me) more interesting than defining quality precisely. But what I hadn’t noticed was that “done” was just as slippery — and in order for quality (whatever definition) not to matter, there has to be no maintenance, and that requires “done” to actually be a thing.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@janl@narrativ.es *sigh* If having anything positive to say or any curiosity at all about LLMs means I’ve fallen for a scam than ok I guess. I wish there was room for more nuance here.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@sean@scoat.es Ahh yes! “Done” and “correct” are slippery, I was thinking that, but the idea of their definition changing over time totally matches my experience and is a pretty great way of bringing the strawman back to earth.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@chrisjrn@social.coop Yes of course I already knew about Rice’s Theorem before your toot why would you think otherwise

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@alec@perkins.pub Imagine breaking 2 hours and NOT winning

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@coderanger@cloudisland.nz Why in the world would you do that to yourself!?

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@mistersql@mastodon.social Like, almost literally - my marathon PR is 3:52

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@greg@masto.gregnewman.io It’s crazy fast, almost unimaginable

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@jafo@inuh.net mentioned in myth and song

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@whack@hachyderm.io many swears were swore

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@nostradamnit@mamot.fr I really should read that - it’s been recommended to me a couple of times now

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 8mo ago

Replying to

@lorenipsum 🪦

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@ryancheley@mastodon.social Oh man, I’m so sorry to hear that ❤️ My best wishes for your treatment, I’ll be keeping you in my thoughts. (Also I am incandescently angry at that first doc! That is just terrible, terrible medicine; if he can’t handle that conversation compassionately and professionally he needs a different career!)

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@adriano@lile.cl @frank@frankwiles.social @janl@narrativ.es It’s frustrating because the thing I was trying to discuss about the question of why code quality matters, not yet another “LLMs: good or evil” argument. And for the most part replies have been focused on that — and have really teased out some super interesting points about what “quality” means and why it’s important. And in doing so I think makes a much better case against agentic coding ever working the way proponents claim it might!

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@janl@narrativ.es I don’t know where to start with that. I’m sorry you see me that way. I still think you’re great.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@janl@narrativ.es To be clear - my position is that genAI is on balance probably a net negative and if I could unring the bell I would. But also I would say that about the internet — and “there are good things about the internet” is hardly a controversial option (I think?). I get that The Discourse demands extreme opinions but I don’t think it’s “falling for a scam” to find positive things about AI, and I think it’s dead wrong to approach ANYTHING without a sense of curiosity.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@webology Twice!

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@janl@narrativ.es That’s certainly one narrative. It’s not mine.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@cratermoon@zirk.us I think one of the potential silver linings of the AI hype bubble is that we actually might. I know of a couple of people poking around this area. As with many things around AI, “optimistic” would be a wild exaggeration, but i hold a little hope.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 4mo ago

Replying to

@andrew@fedi.aeracode.org Love this! Strong Tom Scott vibes, right down to the red shirt — was that a deliberate homage or a happy accident?

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@rami@chaos.social I mean probably - but also you could say a similar thing about shifting the maintenance burden from assembly to compiled languages, from compiled to interpreted, etc. Higher level abstracts are A Thing, I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to imagine an even higher level where we’re specifying whole swaths of applications in a few lines. I guess if you want to be charitable you could say “that’s a prompt!” but the fuzziness and nondeterminism of LLMs make it real hard for me to be charitable.

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 5mo ago

Replying to

@Alexerson@mastodon.social Ah I suppose so - I’d missed it, which goes to show how artificial it was compared to what just happened I. London

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@janl@narrativ.es I’m not sure what you mean?

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jacobian @jacob@social.jacobian.org

· 6mo ago

Replying to

@glyph@mastodon.social For one thing - iron rusts, but software doesn’t. Or shouldn’t! I guess that’s the whole problem right there, eh?

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