Move over "this meeting could have been an email"
The new hotness is "this site incident could have been a unit test"
Remote
Jeremy Kahn
@trochee@dair-community.social
mastodon 4.7.3NLP (the nerdy kind). Wrong-half Jew. Privilege-traitor.
Linguist. Empiricist. Rager against machines. formerly #indymedia
Also, #comics, #SFF #scifi, languages, big data, algorithms, software design, and more.
#LLMSkeptic. farm-to-table organic free-range prose only. Don't send me generated text.
#WestSeattle #Duwamish unceded land
This profile is searchable by tootfinder.ch.
2014 Followers
1028 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 14, 2022
twitter (obsolete):
pronouns:
he/him/his
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trochee.61
"MLM" and "LLM" are separated by a Levenshtein distance of one
…and not much else
I have a very senior peer co-worker Donald (not his real name) who's most useful when sent to yell at misbehaving partner teams.
He is also unpleasant when he comes in turn to yell at my team.
I remarked to a (different) peer that Donald should have a T-shirt that reads
THIS SIDE TOWARDS ENEMY
A name I just came up with
The org-chart version of Dead Internet Theory.
Most middle managers… don't really know what's going on "on the ground". They were once a jr mgr who didn't quite get it, so they're pretty sure that the other sr mgrs don't know what's going on either.
& they're pretty sure that *their* managers, the VPs & C-levels, are also doing their own kayfabe
& nobody is willing to name it, bc this naked emperor is paying their salary
Oh no I just found out that one of my favorite Buddhist teachers has just gone all AI grifter
Tara Brach, WYD this is not the dharma
https://lnkd.in/p/gcynwNDX
I see a token famine coming
Centrally planned economies with track records of shooting or rusticating the bearer of bad news (like Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or Zuckerbergian Menlo Park) are always going to have surprise! resource shortages
Every paragraph rings true here, at least WRT my experience at work in the last six months.
We've killed a lot of sparrows.
The AI Great Leap Forward
https://leehanchung.github.io/blogs/2026/04/05/the-ai-great-leap-forward/
Computing before 2000: "a bicycle for the mind"
Modern computing: "a cybertruck for the mind"
all the implications of this metaphor hold up
- public safety
- cardiac health
- availability to ordinary people
- traffic congestion
- home repair
- vendor lock in
- climate change
The Butlerian Jihad famously includes the phrase
"Thou shalt not make machines in the likeness of a human mind"
But if I were starting off today, I would say "thou shalt not force the human mind into the likeness of a machine"
This is a really exciting list of new books
And both Ann Leckie and Martha Wells have entries! Always here for more Radch and Murderbot.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2524887-the-best-new-science-fiction-books-of-may-2026/
Got the book by @rwg@aoir.social , but I have some competition for getting to it
Replying to
We poke & pry & pun our way around and through all the human communication and a fair amount of the non human too (and the non communication).
We treat double-entendres like the taco truck down the street treats spicy peppers — why wouldn't you expect it, and I'd be disappointed without it — and are the first ones to catch on when we're being lied to by omission or misdirection
It's gotta be pretty scary for a normie to interview someone like [Marie]!
(2/2)
(names changed to avoid trouble)
Numismatist alert!
I just found this very old penny in my pocket because it *stuck to my headphone case's magnetic clasp*
Wait, you say. Isn't ol' Abe supposed to be copper (or copper and zinc)?
Apparently not in 1943!
While we're in chaos anyway, why not try a little mutual-aid anarchy, as a treat?
A work friend said this to me today, in the middle of continued reorg chaos
> Piffle. When things blow up I expect you will extend an invitation to build rad slow tech normal ass ML and FST based products for people who need them
Reader, my heart grew three sizes
This @davidgerard@circumstances.run story is wild
Thiel and Balaji attempt to insert forced arbitration into fact-checking AIs
1000% blackpilled cyberpunk dystopia
I survived this morning's public humiliation rituals and I still have a job.
I'm relieved and exhausted by turns.
And a part of me is — as expected — sad about the road not taken
Replying to
@joeycastillo@mastodon.social
also an amazing opportunity for plausible deniability on all parts!
Okay this is a really fun "biowordle" game
Replying to
@mhoye @gabrielesvelto
if this were generally a "hypothesis" then this suggests that perhaps we are ready to adopt the null hypothesis instead
Replying to
@KimSJ
I'm anthropomorphizing, yes. It's a useful tool to talk about interactions among complex systems
I am not attributing actual sentience to the LLMs.
I did not say "LLM training data patterns are biased in favor of the appearance of agreement with the user, even when the user has what would be externally deemed a 'bad idea'"
instead, I chose a shorthand that uses a concept we already have for describing human-to-human communication
"LLMs have a sycophancy problem"
@bibliolater
Excuse me, mister SVP of Engineering?
Have I introduced you to Admiral Potemkin?
He has a wonderful plan to impress the Tsarina
Watching the livestream (twitch) launch of
Layoffs tomorrow at 7am
My boss signed off for the day (he's on Eastern time), and included his contact information "in case I lose my laptop password"
Feels like a riff on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Oates
"I am going outside and may [be some time] lose my laptop password"
That Marc Andreesen interview where he was coked up to his eyeballs and claimed that introspection was a scam by Big Freud to hamstring Great Men
It should have a warning label on there; "pure, concentrated testosterone poisoning ☠️"
Discussing the creeping enshittification of streaming video services with spouse
Them:
"welcome to the Hotel California—"
Me, cooperatively overlapping:
"—n Ideology. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"
Replying to
@notthatdelta@furry.engineer @lexfeathers@tenforward.social
"we don't all feel the same" sorta sounds like "not all men" special pleading in this context, doesn't it?
Replying to
@mhoye @gabrielesvelto @grimalkina
I'm quite sure that's the same "rational" as in Yudkowsky's "Rationalism"
Replying to
@WizardOfDocs
The amazing teams one could make with the phenomenal people discarded by the ai-pillocks.
I'm so sorry
Friends Everywhere Slicers' Cooperative
"slow tech for people who need it"
Replying to
@alex@gotosocial.theonecurly.page @david_chisnall@infosec.exchange @zkat@toot.cat @xgranade@wandering.shop
and the mozilla folks decided to provide a _great_ example of this Cat IV in whatever the hell this is
https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115849251057488746
Replying to
@cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev @xgranade@wandering.shop
I was gonna say "cat v: unicorns" but the *-bros already believe (a) they're real (b) they've caught one
So "cryptids" was funnier
Replying to
@bhtooefr@snack.social
Continuous integration's a b*st"rd, though
@dotjayne@tech.lgbt @xgranade@wandering.shop
Yolo contendere
So I'm off to a little community fundraiser tonight (my kid's school!)
And it sounds like the nerd prom elsewhere is Going Great
Replying to
@inthehands@hachyderm.io
You have put your finger on the weak spot in all the hype:
Mistaking a sigmoid for an exponential
It's behind every bubble and pyramid scheme and End Times Prophecy; variations include whether the speaker themselves believes in the exponential
Replying to
@ireneista@adhd.irenes.space @scottmiller42@mstdn.social
Yeah in those cases, like [is it nature or nurture ?] (or other great questions from a bright nine year old) I usually say, directly,
"You know, that's a really good question and there's not just one answer for it. I can tell you about the different answers people have had in the past, or tell you what I think, or we can work out what the arguments are that make sense to you. Or we could drop the whole thing and come back to a different question."
@paninid@mastodon.world @louis@ingenthron.social
Replying to
@ireneista@adhd.irenes.space @paninid@mastodon.world @louis@ingenthron.social
It honestly might be a latency hack, would not surprise me AT ALL
Replying to
@lina@neuromatch.social @cryptadamist@universeodon.com @davidgerard@circumstances.run
Which they, of course, stole from a time-traveling Tom Lehrer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_(song)
Replying to
@lina@neuromatch.social
Attention @alex@dair-community.social you may have to perform this
Replying to
Replying to
@geoglyphentropy@mstdn.social @tommorris@mastodon.social
We could have had Sinclairs in every garage but you playing
Replying to
