Hilarious. Just as when you ask a human to come up with a random number between 10 & 20 they pick 17 very often as it "seems random", if you ask AIs to "write me a story" they write stories about "Elias at a lighthouse" precisely because it isn't something humans do. This was observed across multiple AI models, so it's not just a quirk of one of them.
Implication: whenever you ask AI to be creative it creates the same thing as it has created for everyone else.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.26492

Friday marks the 6 weeks since I left Cloudera, and I've been fairly lazy since then.
- bike, bike + train journeys. Not as many/far as I'd have liked, as my new epilepsy drug is making me more tired
- shoulder physio at the university gym, every day not cycling.
- rereading, all papers I'd printed on databases. Kept the classics (leftmost set in photo). Now doing the same with the real back catalogue.
- rudimentary golang projects

Since last week I've been putting in 2-3h/day setting up hadoop for Apache Repeatable Builds service. Definite sign I'm in need of getting busy.

Suggestions?

My six month freebie claude max sub has expired. I will have to see how I can cope with the withdrawal symptoms.

Claude showed me why it was good on that last day with an extended cross machine agent project making sure mac and x86 ubuntu builds, jar, source and .tar.gz were all identical (excluding native libs)

Then I caught it using sed + regexp to scan xml files in a shell script rather than xmlstarlight + xpath and I remembered that as well as the collected wisdom of all other developers, it contains the majority malpractice of everyone, which now gets reinforced. It writes "common code" rather than correct code
#ai

Reported an issue to apple maps because even though I'm in the UK, the Canadian bit of Lake Ontario was marked (Lake America). At most that should apply to the US side, and I don't see why I should be exposed to it at all.

I know Apple won't fix it, but it'd still be good for everyone to complain by reporting a map issue to them.
#apple #uspol

EE2 taught C on BSD unix 4.2 on pdp+ vax, targeting 6809s and electronics. C lang looks a bit "younger" then.
- int is default return type...no need to state it.
- vars need to be declared at top of each function
- 'register' keyword? I really don't remember that.
https://github.com/steveloughran/edinburgh_cs/blob/main/1985-cs1/1985-ee2-c-programming-language.pdf

Ok, for people who want to study CS back when there was a lot less of it, I'm putting some of the notes up, starting with bits of first year CS1 & EE2 (skipped EE1 as I'd a- level physics).

https://github.com/steveloughran/edinburgh_cs

Currently reading: Edinburgh Uni Computer Science 2h foundations course handouts from 1986/87. Even partway through the mathematical preliminaries chapter and I have a headache.
I am going to scan all of this and put online to share the joy
#computerscience #cs

If you are running an AI coding agent on the CLI
- never be stupid enough to run it in "auto accept" mode, trust it to run python or ruby without you looking at what it has created -no matter how hard it tries to convince
- set up a sandbox around it, even if they claim to have one.

Competitive pressure forces the vendors to focus on features and ease of use over sandbox lockdown and safety/user oversight. You don't want what

Never knew of bubblewrap on Linux, which looks good. I have used macos sandbox in the past.

https://youtu.be/7UCpHzFYF40
#ai #cybersecurity

You can help here @cutting , share the joy.

The hadoop security model says submitters have to be able to explain a CVE in their own words otherwise we give credit to the AI tool and not the meat proxy. I'm wondering if we should pull that up to say "in the initial submission, you, the human being, must be able to explain what the issue is and you think it matters".

- submitter may learn about the system rather than blindly email reports
- submitter may act as a filter on AI slop reports, rather than making maintainers the primary filter here.

I will bounce back the next slop report with a query for more detail rather than immediate rejection, so that they learn for themselves why it's invalid.

#cybersecurity

https://github.com/apache/hadoop/security/policy#for-partlyfully-ai-generated-reports

Kier Starmer street art I got a pic of today, for anyone who wants it. This is at the end of the M32 and I've seen it from a car a few times, remembered to detour on a bicycle to get a photo today as I was nearby, it was sunny -and the value of the work was rapidly dropping

#streetphotography #streetart #bristol

CK-1 tributes tags in Easton, Bristol this afternoon; at River Park there's a mural commemorating someone else.
#streetart #streetphotography #bristol

Street artist Helch has died. Notable for the location of their work (that M4 railway bridge painting must have taken serious commitment)

Here in Bristol, artist CK One died a decade ago but their tag still goes up as a tribute from friends. I wonder if Helch will get a similar homage
#streetart #helch
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/sep/01/helch-dies-uk-graffiti-artist

Logistics planning w/ strava, out of date OS maps and google streetview. Military ranges where risk of unexploded ordnance seems safer than cycling round Melksham or Trowbridge. That's painfully ironic: the fact the military prevented Imber from becoming a sprawling town with commuter suburbs, bypasses and shopping centres means it's a safer area to cycle than nearby.

It's similar to how they're better for nature than intensively farmed agricultural land: in exchange for being occasionally blown up, it's a better place to be a butterfly

FYI, this w/e Imber village is open for public access. Little expedition being planned. As the MoD restrict access to their army ranges the logistics are more complex, with route planning and the complete lack of cafes. The risk of accidentally being blown up if you leave the roads means we have to work out which roads are open
https://www.imber.org.uk/roads-to-imber.html
#cycling

Little 45 mile road and forest trail ride on the Welsh side of the River Wye, with a cycle over the Severn Bridge from England the approach work. Back roads completely empty in the morning, light traffic in the afternoon. Trails empty all day. Only busy spot: Boat Inn, Redbrook -walkers, cyclists and kayakers all eating before us. We had to make do with cider and some crisps, which isn't much for a 6h ride. Good thing I've got body fat to burn.
#cycling #mtb

https://strava.app.link/kYo46XHtQ5b

Portland Square, St Pauls, Bristol, being prepared for a period drama: sand covering the tarmac and no-parking paint, hand-painted store signs hanging over buildings.
#bristol

Murals going up on Dove St Flats, Bristol
Artists include: cheo, silent hobo, sepr and hazard one.
Really nice contribution to the area. I wonder if it'll complicate the attempts by tv drama film crews to use it as an "edgy" inner city housing estate location, or will they find it helps
#streetart #streetphotography #bristol

They've got a point. BP's CEO's criticism of the new UK prime minister for not opening up drilling in the north sea is a case in point. A company whose EV charging network is effectively dead, who are making so much money from fossil fuels they can't imagine investing in any other form of energy-and so have to ignore the consequences of their actions.

On Sunday I will plug the car to charge for £0 off the solar panels for another week's use. We no longer contribute directly to their business model.
#bristol #streetart #climatechange

Felt really old yesterday as I had to explain what the film Alien was to a colleague.
At least my son knows of it, though my parental threat to him as a six year old "I'll make you watch alien then send you straight to bed with the lights not working!" must have been a factor there.

Fwiw a threat like that, or even making your own child watching alien them sending them to bed in a dark room afterwards isn't illegal. Because if it was, many organised religions would have age restrictions on their teachings....