Notices by Matthew Lyon (mattly@hachyderm.io), page 2

@molly0xfff it’s amazing how much that illustration makes him look less like a cheeto puff

@kevinriggle @iris_meredith @jalcine yeah I don’t know why this post couldn’t have been “here are some things I am doing with this tool”. Like… Simon Willison does that every damn day, like a normal person. And then he says “and here are the fucked up things about the company that makes that tool”. Like a normal person!

One of the times - oh yeah, somehow there was a transaction lock on the database from something else happening. So it wasn't anything I did.

The other time ... Well, let's just say the DBAs got a plate of cookies from me the next day.

It’s marketing that targets executives and investors who are eyeballs-deep in the cost-cutting cult, for whom that these doom narratives are just pure crack.

“Hardly anyone is paying attention?!?” Bullshit. The executive class can’t shut up about this. They send all-company emails about it, with drool visibly running down their chins.

6/

Airlines are like "instead of all those agents, we'll make a sort of assembly line manned by customers. Check in with one machine, drop your baggage off with another."

Then literally anything happens with the computer network requiring an elevated number of customers to need manual intervention, and suddenly you have an enormous immobile line while every single customer lines up before the two (2) remaining agents.

Corporations don't care about "efficiency" they just wanna fire people

@jonny "only crimes are occurring" is an incredible list item

After elaborating that the author had the wit to say, maybe the question isn't, why do they do this. Maybe the real question we should be asking is, why aren't the rest of us doing the same.

I think about that a lot. especially when - after we've been through decades of relentless government penury and abdication of responsibility around social and societal infrastructure - politicians start talking about social isolation as a dog whistle for xenophobia.

https://theconversation.com/britain-is-already-becoming-an-island-of-strangers-but-immigration-isnt-the-driver-256724

I can remember when the argument was that you couldn't trust closed-source software because there was no way to really understand what it was doing.

https://mastodon.social/@serpentroots@hachyderm.io/114561242465978873

I realize now I set up a dunk shot without dunking: Basically, agentic AI involves you consenting to give AI control over your computer, with the idea that instead of actually pressing keys you tell the system what you want it to do and how, and it figures out the most expedient way to comply with your request.

Introducing Bases, a new core plugin that lets you turn any set of notes into a powerful database. With Bases you can organize everything from projects to travel plans, reading lists, and more.

Bases are now available in #Obsidian 1.9.0 for early access users.

Putting it in concrete terms: the reporters who might have complained miserably 10 or 40 years ago about churning out a thoughtless “summer guide” fluff piece with no real probing or craft behind it? Those reporters had good instincts.

…by letting way too much of our work be bullshit even •before• the arrival of current gen AI (fluff reporting, Accenture-style body farm software, teaching exam-and-lectures driven factory-style classes, etc etc)…

Caught up with a colleague this morning who I probably won't talk with ever again, because they said it was "entirely irresponsible" of me to work with a client who had a "zero llm code" policy. For a health care problem that could very well if things went sideways result in the loss of life.

I've been thinking about this post from last week a lot https://hachyderm.io/@mattly/114479058136769142

Final Countdown!

@phil @kerravonsen @maxleibman the sad thing is, AI means "terrible, must be destroyed" to many people and "positive marketing term" to many others. We were turned down because the author *told* them it was "AI", with no distinction between neural networks and GenAI used or even comprehended by either party, and the publishers (quite rightly) had had a policy meeting and decided they were allergic to "AI" in general, rather than GenAI...

teach a person to code and they can do it for a lifetime
teach a person to prompt an LLM and they’ll pay a monthly fee for a lifetime

and you know, the implied message behind these people's "well it's here and it's the future so get used to it" is basically "adapt or die" in more flowery words, which, extending the metaphor, is "hey if you get too loud about the kid in the Omelas hole we might throw you in there as well"

anyway, I've lost respect for a tremendous number of people in the technology field over the past few years, and I can't pin that on *me* changing or even *them* changing, just, circumstances giving us better opportunities to reveal ourselves. And it's very disheartening.

If you're feeling something similar about the people around you, you should know you're not alone. I suspect there are a lot of us feeling this right now

to take a general approach to the ...feeeling... of late, in the metaphor/parable of the kid in the Omelas hole,

it's not much to discover a lot of people you thought would have walked away from Omelas, haven't, because well, you haven't either (there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, no one's an island, the cost of true independence in our society is very high, etc)

what *is* shocking and demoralizing is rather discovering how many people you thought were decent are actually celebrating the kid in the hole's suffering, and how many more are advocating for throwing more kids in the hole to suffer because just imagine how much cooler society could be

Kellan Elliott-McCrea (then CTO of Etsy): Great women engineers aren't looking for a job, and there is a decent chance your company sucks

http://slideshare.net/kellan/more-women-in-engineering-something-that-actually-worked-14630106 by @kellan

#career #careers #values #workCollectives #workCulture #womenintech #diversity #DEI #software #tech

folks, I think it's time to start running think pieces about how AI is going to replace costly, inefficient CEOs