Why am I suddenly getting hundreds of notifications about polls?

Torvalds arguing for LLMs.

'Why bother, he asked, to search for all of the call sites of a function he has just modified, when the tool can fix them all automatically?'

As others have pointed out, IDEs have been capable of this for a long time, using perfectly well understood deterministic search-and-replace.

'But, he said, it took six months to set up the tool to not produce bad responses. If you are a competent developer, he said, an LLM makes a great tool, but only after that effort has been put in to set it up.'

Was that part a joke? Six months of work to set up a programming tool is an absurdly long time.

'He resisted suggestions to post his LLM-training materials, saying that each developer needs to go through that process separately.'

Yeah, why should anyone expect Linus Torvalds to share code?

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1099594/be20382b54a9b4cd/

I just got an email that sounds like an extremely sketchy business proposal and I think it might be someone trying to hire a "meat proxy".

I think the "AI" bubble is starting to collapse, as it must, but we are unprepared for the consequences. We have been in fact actively prevented from preparing for the consequences.

My assumption has been that repositories on Github that list Claude as a contributor are using LLM code.

At this point, almost any repository I look at lists Claude as a contributor. Quite often when I try to look at what's come from what contributor, there's nothing listed from Claude.

This could be my superficial knowledge of git and Github (and FFS I've taken two online classes and read a few books on git and I still don't get it).

So I'm wondering if Github just automatically adds Claude as a contributor, and some people make a point of removing Claude but most don't. Or, are they using LLM code but trying to hide how much?

It reminds me of my partner enthusing over a television series she thought was tremendously optimistic and life-affirming. In the first episode, humanity is almost totally wiped out by a disease. In the second, the point-of-view character is on patrol against rape gangs. I said I couldn't keep watching after that.

I've been trying to read through an anthology of "ecological science fiction", but it's been painful to read. The third story in the collection was, according to its author, optimistic, imagining a town in which refugees were tolerated and economically exploited, rather than murdered.

The fourth story, which I just read, was a fantasy about autophagia.

I'm looking up advice about how to answer the question, and as usual with any question about job searches, it's, "Be honest [no, lie your ass off]!"

Seriously, I've been asked this four times in a week, but not before, so I'm wondering if some software they all use is flagging me or something.

I'm starting to get recruiters demanding to know why I have a long employment gap.

Why are they asking me? It's *their* fault.

Student protests erupt at Cornell over mishandling of gang-rape allegations | US universities | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/05/students-vandalize-cornell-building

Honestly, I'm worried that I'm having such a hard time imagining a kinder society. The anger at the people threatening us all is so overwhelming, but also, they've claimed almost everything.

Nearly all the fiction I read, that I can even find, is about post-apocalyptic survival, but even within that genre, I'm no longer seeing people imagining a better world, just one in which the pain finally stops getting worse on the last page.

I'm not going to feel sorry for him when it all turns on him.
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Sam Altman to Decoded: ‘The world should accept some bad things happening’ for the benefits of AI - POLITICO
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/04/sam-altman-decoded-interview-ai-01106217

How difficult would it be to shift from Debian Unstable to Elementary OS? I feel like switching to NetBSD is unrealistic for me.

I imagine it might be as simple as backing up /home then copying it back.

I suppose the humor in that is something only I'd perceive. Where and when I grew up, having a beard meant you were obsessed with "masculinity" and in the far right. So I've never been able to get used to seeing so many people with beards.

Pete Hegseth has me thinking about growing a beard.

Anyway, I believe relatively few people are actual sexual abusers, but there's a broader problem that people condemn anger at sexual abuse and try to enforce calm. And it astonishes me how many people do that.

So by way of comment on the Cornell situation, one time I got to see firsthand the social machinery leap into action to defend sexual abusers. People were angry, and every part of the social apparatus we were in prioritized stifling the anger over all other considerations.

There were secret grievance processes that were cited as reasons to not discuss the issue further, claiming we were harming the victims who had been through the grievance processes by repeating their demands to expel the abusers.

People tried to minimize the claims. It wasn't abuse, it was rape apology. It wasn't rape apology, it was just sexist negligence. It wasn't actually sexist negligence, it was just rudeness. Actually, they were trying to help. Anyway, the real danger is getting angry. Oh, isn't it interesting how people are trying to tear down our leadership?

I'm often confused by the way our society valorizes anger unless it's real anger at a real threat, in which case suddenly eveyone's a pacifist.

@jgilbert @DeliaChristina I’ll just post this here again. Just remember that these men were somewhere in the middle and women are surrounded by them. No one on the left side showed up.

It's pretty much been known for generations that US college fraternities are about bonding the ruling class together through rape, torture, and binge drinking.