Notices by allison (aparrish@friend.camp)

@cwebber at last we have invented the corridor shooter set in space

nearly every article in the popular press I've read about "web3" uncritically discusses "web 2.0" as though it's a historical/technical term (and not, as is actually the case, a marketing gimmick), and then contrasts it with "web 1.0" as though THAT refers to something and isn't just a back-formation demanded by the concept of "web 2.0." and "web3" is presented as the natural (if controversial) successor to these. simply by virtue of its number following in sequence?

(source of screenshot is https://www.bmj.com/content/395/bmj-2026-101029 which i know is paywalled, sorry, but you can find the quote in pretty much any story about that maha conference)

ahhhh, okay, now i get it. when scientists and academics say that they're fine with using AI to do research, what they mean is that they're "doing their own research"

literally every rich asshole fascist, with a megaphone, taking out full page newspaper ads, clapping out each word: we love AI because it undermines people's ability to call out our obvious fascist bullshit

some scientists and academics: I think AI is a good way to get information

some day soon i am going to have (what i'd believed to be) a conversation with someone and feel their attention wander and see their eyes glaze over and i'll say to them "hey are you listening to me?" and they'll answer by pointing at their sleek wristpiece and saying "oh don't worry, keep talking, it's got siri recap." i need to work on my right hook so i can be prepared for when this day arrives

@cwebber Ocarina Holes is my roller derby name

little electronics question that is surprisingly tough to web search: i have a microcontroller dev board (pico 2) where one of the gpio pins is stuck at ground. i don't mean that it always reads as low—i mean my multimeter beeps continuity between the pin and ground when the device isn't even powered. is this a plausible failure mode for a gpio pin (say if i accidentally fried it), or is it more likely to be a bad/weird solder job on the headers, or...?

@thomasfuchs i understand what you're getting at here and i'm sympathetic to it, but code isn't just math, and ultimately i don't think its functioning is any less dependent on context than any other form of language. when i'm talking about correctness, i'm not (just) talking about formal correctness; i'm asking *is this the right way to solve the problem*, which, in the real world code functions in, is not a question that has a formal (or even statistical) answer

the essential limitation with llm-generated code doesn't have anything to do with the capabilities of the model imo. the limitation is epistemological: how do I know if the code is correct? in order to know that for sure, you have to understand what the code is doing. in order to understand what the code is doing, you need to exert at least as much effort as you would have writing the code yourself in the first place. so the llm generation is always strictly a waste

(more directly, what i mean is: during the "learn to code" era, it was easy to get programming students to value craft and care, since as teachers we had the "this will help you get a job" script on our side. in the "dario bought all the ram" era, we need a different script)

then again, the bar is pretty low, seeing as how "actually wanting to know whether or not something works, or is true" is considered a hardcore leftist position nowadays

like there's no way to take the topic seriously outside of a dedication to sustainability, autonomy from capital, and the potential of programming as a liberatory epistemology

ok i'm putting together notes for my intro to computer programming class, and i just don't see a way to teach computer programming in 2026 that isn't explicitly rooted in like... hardcore leftist ideology

@vv @cwebber i was wondering about exactly this! i think "more reasonable and capable of making judgements which are explainable..." made me assume that we were talking about chatbot-style LLMs, since "reasonable" and "capable of making judgments" are things we usually only say about things that are perceived as agents (like LLMs)

@cwebber i think the issue is that i tend to think of those criteria as categorical, not as shades of gray. like i only see value in an ML model if its training data is documented, fully understood, and gathered with consent, full stop—just inching away from "plagiarism machine" doesn't help. likewise, i have no use for a "more accurate" statistical model—I only see value in a model if i can fully understand and contextualize its predictions

"rejecting AI is like rejecting the automobile" yeah i know lol

very much recommend this beautifully written, acerbic, wide-ranging and informative piece about Arabic typography in the web browser https://lr0.org/blog/p/arabic/ "Arabic letters are strongly right-to-left. Latin letters are strongly left-to-right.... Spaces and punctuation are neutral and take their direction from whoever is standing next to them, like guests at a wedding who know nobody."

anyway even if 100% of computer programmers *were* using AI, that wouldn't mean that AI is good or effective or worthwhile. could just mean that 100% of computer programmers are reckless shitheads

i'm still flabbergasted by people who think LLM-generated summaries (whether it's of web searches or source code or whatever) have any meaningful relationship to fact. personally i feel like i have never encountered an LLM-generated summary that seemed trustworthy and withstood an even moderately attentive reading. it's starting to make me feel like a space alien