Humancode.us

The recent fiasco involving Linus Torvalds running Linux like the privileged man that he is and entirely missing the central points of the arguments made by people who don’t enjoy his kind of privilege reminds me that there are some OSS projects that have become so large, so important, and so monolithic, that the behavior of their project leadership becomes indistinguishable from a monopoly/monopsony. Turns out, OSS is not immune to monopoly/monopsony after all, and I think one big part of a…

I’m glad to (finally) see some buyer’s remorse in the corporate ranks about their rapid deployment of AI, often at the expense of jobs (or so they claim). Costs are rapidly rising. Software quality is plummeting. Morale is tanking. The workers are getting angry. People are swamped with slop. About the only ones happy with this change are sociopaths who live increasingly solipsistic lives with a sycophantic word extruder (and maybe some jaded senior developers who want to get paid as much as…

Most people who stand against AI Slop are not standing against AI tech itself, but the way that the tech is developed and deployed. Tech is neutral. AI tech is neutral. Burning fossil fuels is neutral. Nuclear power is neutral. Using asbestos for fire resistance is neutral. The tech behind firearms are neutral. Each of these tech can be developed and deployed judiciously to achieve specific things that are good for humanity. But context matters; in fact, context is overwhelmingly important.…

USians often have this notion of themselves as independent free spirits who are self-sufficient and have a who-the-fuck-cares disposition to what others think and that they use some god-given innate value systems to make their decisions and to hustle and get ahead in life. But in reality, we are all relatively weak social primates that depend primarily on norms, systems, and infrastructures to live our lives: things that are built and run and repaired by other people, things that came into…

One of the most off-putting things to me about LLM-based tools is that they encourage you to treat these models like people. You talk to it like it’s sentient, and you assume it has a theory of mind, and you give it tasks like you would another person. If it doesn’t work, you have a “conversation” with it as if you’re trying to explain something to another human being, then encourage it to try again. When they do what you want, you may feel a sense of companionship or collaboration as if you…

I think people forget that reputation has always been a very real thing among software developers. Building a trustworthy reputation takes a very long time and requires a track record of high quality work. One’s claims and assertions are often weighed against one’s reputation in the software community. The amount of reliance that others place on one’s work product is also often proportional to their reputation of trustworthiness and responsibility. When someone of good repute then behaves in an…

People on the left have this bizarre trait of criticizing their candidates for not being left enough, when the current alternative is literally Hitler without a mustache. David Sedaris wrote this quip that stuck with me: To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass…