@davincihmkay

i guess the discussion is also around determinism vs non-determinism

In some cases. But non-determinism isn’t always the problem. There are places where non-deterministic classical machine-learning techniques such as simulated annealing can deliver amazing results for a tiny fraction of the compute budget of a huge feed-forward neural network, for example.

Many applications of LLMs are really state-space exploration. But permuting a text stream based on training data from a load of sampled text and a prompt to try to nudge it into a particular region of the latent space is not usually the best way of non-deterministically exploring a state space if you understand anything about the shape of the space.

My 12yo wanted to be a borb (rotund orb-shaped bird) - specifically a black-capped chickadee. We worked on his costume all month. I had to take him to school Friday cause he couldn’t carry his backpack. He won the costume contest at school for a second year running and was a hit trick-or-treating!

O.K., turning this into a poll...

What might you want to build using Alonzo?
So I have some idea of what to expect.

Initially Alonzo will support modal UIs, but with your help I'm happy to extend to support more than that!

I may create another poll with your "Other" responses.

Serbia just elected the world’s brainiest parliamen

> An astrophysicist who studies galaxy evolution. An electrical engineer who has helped design robots. An organic chemist who, during the pandemic, worked on COVID-19 drugs. An education researcher, a sociologist, several political scientists, economists, physicians, and medical researchers. They have all been elected to what may well be the brainiest parliament in the world.

https://www.science.org/content/article/serbia-just-elected-world-s-brainiest-parliament

#science #Europe #serbia

@jepsen@mastodon.jepsen.io omg, I've never had more fun reading a technical report. They should be publicly shamed, and nobody could do it better. I think your conclusion is spot on: lazy practices destroy credibility, more so today than ever.

More broadly, the use of LLMs erodes trust in documentation, in software, and in the organizations which produce them. Perhaps engineers will begin to treat any new software project with suspicion—the signals we used to rely on as markers of a mature system are now easier to counterfeit.

When does 4 = 5? Why would strings become 8-bit integers? And how could an SQL table have rows with different columns? We don't know, but it's fun to imagine! The latest #Jepsen report covers 96 issues in ParticleDB, Orkes' multi-model database built for and with AI.

https://jepsen.io/analyses/particledb-1.1.4

Before LLM coding agents, it was quite possible for companies in high-income countries to apply the same basic approach to programming: a high-wage software engineer or product manager could hand off issues to an outsourcing company that would randomly assign them to one of many software engineers in a low-wage country.

Nonetheless, even companies that wanted to reduce wages mostly decided they wanted long-term employees working on writing code, instead of a random person with no context working on each issue. So they opened offices in low-wage countries and hired employees there. And there were still plenty of software engineers in high-wage countries.

Why? Because a software project isn't just the source code, it also involves a huge amount of human knowledge and understanding, both explicit and implicit. Some of it is very hard to articulate, and in practice most people don't even try.

A lack of such understanding might be fine for simple projects, where the exposed UI matches the internals enough that product management is sufficient. But beyond a certain level of complexity you need someone to understand the why and how of software in ways that the source code by itself cannot express. Thus, software engineers who were employees.

But now we have LLMs, which can be used for vibecoding without reading the code... with the exact same problems as 100% outsourcing.

And so you get projects like ParticleDB. To quote @aphyr 's assessment:

"ParticleDB was a fractal of correctness errors. LLM tooling repeatedly claimed that bugs had been fixed when, in fact, they had not. ParticleDB also seemed more difficult to understand than typical databases. ... [software engineers working on ParticleDB] seemed unable to explain the causes or resolutions of nearly every issue we found in ParticleDB." (https://jepsen.io/analyses/particledb-1.1.4)

Or, as he put it in a less formal summary: "When does 4 = 5? Why would strings become 8-bit integers? And how could an SQL table have rows with different columns? We don't know, but it's fun to imagine!" (https://mastodon.jepsen.io/@jepsen/117535799639100730)

(This post inspired by a idea from Hunter Madison: if you can replace the word "LLM" with "consultant" and an article still makes sense, it's not an article about programming.)

@0xabad1dea doing things like giving the wrong hash also didn't help.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/s/oQ5WgSmwrH

Packrat habits vindicated!

Our garage door opener was having problems, so after looking at a full logic board replacement or a "repair kit" of three components, I remembered to look on the video site.

Tested the electrolytic capacitors, found one very low. Didn't have any of the right value or voltage, but *did* find one in my junk box from a busted humidifier. Soldered it up and it seems to work!

There'll be no living with me after this.

#hamRadio #rightToRepair #electronics

Really a perfect fall day to go out on a hike! Blue Hills reservation!

Shabu the corgi has short legs. But she conquered (with a little nudge from her human beings) the rocky trail like a champ!

#hiking #hikingadventures #boston #bluehills #foliage #gay #dog #dogsofmastodon #corgi #corgisofmastodon

This is extremely cool spider news: a new species of trapdoor spider on Mauritius that unlike its burrowing cousins makes a home in thousands-of-years-old worm casts in coral bedrock, and seals the door watertight so they can live in there along tidal beaches even when the area becomes submerged.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ck1l32d9l967o

#spiders #arachnids #spider

Sometimes scientists' explanations are poetry. Archaeologists, this time:

the oldest ice is now melting, and with it, some of the oldest archaeological finds are emerging.

For thousands of years, ancient ice has safely preserved unique objects from the past. Now that ice is disappearing.

We have been at the edge of the ice. We have seen it happening. And we are witnesses to a rapidly changing archaeological landscape.

That "We have been at the edge of the ice. We have seen it happening. And we are witnesses" 🫠

https://secretsoftheice.com/news/2026/09/23/year-of-the-arrows-now-the-stone-age-is-melting-out/

#archaeology #stoneAge

Here's a pretty picture of the lander seen from the west with the crater rim in the distance. I have not yet put a scale on that map just posted, but the hills seen here are about 70 km away from the lander.
#china #moon

RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@sinituulia/117535689966809990

Forgot to tag this into the project tag, but yeah. Did finish tacking on the hem facing upper edge and then pressed it. Should have gone for a curvier hem facing gathering the first time, had such a time persuading it onto the swoopiest bits of the flounce hem. But yeah.
Experimented with the blind hem stitch of my new machine, and it's not suitable for such a thin fabric, not unless I want enormous stitches visible, or to fight to get the sideways zag to properly catch onto the facing. Ah well! I was originally planning to do it by hand, and thus I shall.

#Sewing #TheBlueLinenSkirt

Fuck yeah, new FAQ-entry dropped:
"The use of so called AI is not allowed for the Posteo team [...]"
"Posteo is intentionally designed as a product free of AI features."
"Sharing passwords with so-called AI agents and allowing them to directly access our interfaces is prohibited."
http://posteo.de/en/site/faq

[In case it doesn't show up: I'm quoting this post about me being a longtime customer https://fedihum.org/@lavaeolus/117526445601843116]

Forget Halloween, this is actually scary asf :(
https://www.404media.co/archive-of-our-own-ao3-down-maintenance/

"Top Law Firms That Capitulated to Trump Are on the Sidelines
None of the firms that struck deals to avoid crippling executive orders are publicly involved in the major legal efforts to check the Trump administration’s attempts to meddle in the midterm elections, a review by The New York Times shows."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/31/us/politics/law-firms-trump-voting.html?unlocked_article_code=1.M1E.bowW.NQ6OSvZKMZ7b&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Bright spot amongst the ill, but mangroves are stabilized and regrowing. Oyster reefs too, wow!!

"Unexpected expansion and regrowth in Earth’s mangrove forests over the past four decades"

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec9773

#Rewilding #Restoration #ClimateChange

A couple of weeks ago, I turned around and snapped this picture of a Waymo vehicle in front of the coffee shop where I had just eaten breakfast.

This evening, I found myself in conversation with (one of) Waymo's PR firms.

1/?

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xkngkuljerb2mnflvfdolyro/post/3mxyn33z3fc2q

Into the light
#nature #autumn #photography