Notices by Baldur Bjarnason (baldur@toot.cafe)

"Software developers are not okay"

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/05-software-developers-are-not-okay/

The software industry is becoming increasingly hostile to those who work in it. The uncertainty is affecting even those who believe in the promises of tech.

Direct link to the essay: https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/05-software-developers-are-not-okay/#software-developers-are-not-doing-well

“To Dismantle Democracy, You Subvert Public Schools”

https://2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/to-dismantle-democracy-you-subvert-public-schools/

> The subversion of democracy -- at its core, that is what the efforts to undermine public school truly are -- has shifted the burden of changing “the system” onto the individual. Such is goal of the neoliberal fantasy, in which everything is reduced to a market transaction.

“From celebrity intellectual to anti-woke outlaw: how Steven Pinker lost his way”

https://www.thenerve.news/p/steven-pinker-anti-woke-eugenics-race-science-free-speech-epstein-edge-nathan-cofnas-jason-arday?utm_source=www.thenerve.news

I've had several bosses and former coworkers who were major Pinker fans and they all turned out to be toxic dicks. So he's useful as a red flag. See a Pinker book on the shelf: refuse that glass of water and get the hell out of Dodge before you become one of Pinker's statistics of for a "decline in violence"

If the pope released a statement that the world was ending next Tuesday with the rebirth of the Messiah, the job of a reporter isn't to schedule an interview with Jesus H. Christ reborn but to figure out what's wrong with the pope

Media accepting "AI" millenarianism as fact is genuinely disturbing

“I Don’t Want to Interact With Stochastic Parrots”

https://ploum.net/2026-09-09-ai_policy.html

> My AI policy is "I don’t want any kind of interaction with that thing." And this should be all you need to know.

This.

All this engineering and all this money and both tech and software just get less and less interesting by the day. All this energy; so little imagination.

The problem with hoping that we get a "reset" of sorts for software development after the bubble pops is that the shape of LLMs as a tech today is an epiphenomenon of the bubble

Because of the bubble distortions and wildly irrational economics, the post-equilibrium models will inevitably be very different from the current models

This is likely the peak effectiveness of the technology, as right now its backed by the wealth of everything.

There's a good chance that this is as good as the tech will get and, despite being thoroughly dysfunctional, it'll still be the long term future of programming simply because employers would rather pay two dollars for a shitty unreliable model than one dollar for an employee.

Think about outsourcing. There was no "after the outsourcing bubble" for most western factory workers. There was just immiseration and ruined towns.

There was no "after the 2007 housing bubble". We still have housing bubbles pretty much everywhere you look. The finance markets are even less regulated. Fraud was basically legalised.

So, I'm sceptical about the notion that the software industry will "revert" after the bubble.

Unreliable models whose output is massaged into place by overseas labour will just suit them fine, even if the result is largely broken. See outsourcing

I'm guessing there won't be an "after the bubble", at least not for software dev . This might well be the future of coding in perpetuity, just at some point it'll be even shittier

This can only be fixed on a political level. A bubble pop will give the investor class an opportunity to solidify the system into place, much like after 2007

So, the post-bubble equilibrium models will either be increasingly stagnant, built using stale training data, extended and tweaked as best as people can, but get stranger and stranger the more they are fine-tuned

Or the models will be something completely different shaped by the new economics

But whether the tech itself is effective or not ultimately isn't the point which, for the the capital class is less local labour.

One core problem is that the tech is volatile. You can get very different models from training run to run even using the same data. Current models can do what they do is because they keep throwing money at runs and training data

Because of this volatility, this isn't a tech that works like a foundation. It has lottery dynamics

“Bad Vibes Coding – Spectre Collie”

https://spectrecollie.com/2026/09/05/bad-vibes-coding/

> My take on generative AI has pretty rapidly gone from a tentative, “it sucks and I hate it, but after the bubble pops, there might be a few very specific use cases for it, like with programming,” to a vehemently zero-tolerance stance. It’s all garbage, burn it down.

“Six Problems With Talking About the “Ethical” or “Responsible” Use of “AI” • Buttondown”

https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/six-problems-with-talking-about-the-ethical-or/

> Part of what makes that middle ground untenable and uncomfortable is that it requires carrying water for these clearly bad actors.

Why is it so common for payment providers to just not make it possible for you to find out whether your country is eligible for their service without signing up.

I get limiting the countries you service. Regulatory environments vary. But please, for the love of all that's holy, put a fucking list of countries that can use your service somewhere on your fucking website.

As many others have pointed out, one way to think about what’s been happening to tech—software, especially—is that the entire industry is being “Boeinged” (or Jack Welched). And, as with an airplane, a faulty part can sit in a system for a decade before it snaps and brings the whole thing down

Your semi-regular reminder that given the size and extent of the “AI” bubble it’s an absolute certainty that fraud is involved in it somewhere. We don’t know the scale or location of the fraud but you simply do not get a trillion-dollar bubble without fraud, both financial and in information/discourse

And all that fraud is going to be lined up supporting “AI”. Calibrate your scepticism accordingly.

“AI Software Development – What Does The Data Say? – Codemanship's Blog”

https://codemanship.wordpress.com/2026/08/12/ai-software-development-what-does-the-data-say/

> If anything, the average team is taking longer to ship worse software

Anecdotally, this is what I've been hearing a lot too. Higher costs, more volume, worse outcomes. But still “inevitable” for some reason

Had a chat about company "nálykt" ("corpse stench"). I.e. common signs of imminent company collapse employees can spot. We came up with a few:

- Sudden sale that takes all of the employees by surprise
- Office rent agreements cancelled at short notice
- Managers suddenly evasive about previously promised promotions or pay rises
- Execs changing the topic whenever asked a pointed question.
- Execs getting antsy about how last year's acquisitions are performing
- Layoffs, natch

What else?

Even if you disregard, y’know everything, LLM fans are still fundamentally boring. They have the same writing and design style, their illustrations look the same, and their ideas are all predictable

They’re even starting to sound the same on video, even when unmediated by a model