Rainy Day Thoughts on AI: https://third-bit.com/2026/08/04/rainy-day-thoughts-on-ai/ (in which I do the equivalent of tokenmaxxing except it's navel gazing)

The nomination period for the PSF Board and Python Packaging Council elections is open now, closing next Tuesday, August 11th, 2:00 pm UTC 📝🐍 Don't wait until the last minute, though! Nominate yourself or someone else today: https://www.python.org/nominations/elections/ #Python

RE: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/117032105666349731

This is the central truth that makes the bubble collapse inevitable: "... it's not going to replace all economic value to the level at which Anthropic and OpenAI are valued ...".

There are real use cases for LLMs. They're just not significant enough to justify the ridiculous levels of capital expenditure we're seeing, nor to justify the current attitude of throwing out all legal and ethical constraints on their development and deployment.

The Wikimedia Foundation Hired the Union Busters Its Own Encyclopedia Warned About
https://medium.com/regarding-wikipedia/the-wikimedia-foundation-hired-the-union-busters-its-own-encyclopedia-warned-about-42b7142a5cd1 #wikipedia

While indie hacker Twitter debated whether SaaS is dying, our July:

• $22.2k in new MRR, our best month ever
• MRR up 28.5% year over year
• 20,183 paying subscribers

The argument is that AI has made every product easy to clone.

Our code has been open source and free to clone since 2019.

Turns out the code was never the moat.

(funnily enough, I had actually forgotten I contributed to this interview series, so seeing my birth name show up in one of the articles was a genuine surprise)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@ancoghlan/116985208350421152

On the topic of this previous note, an interesting article series looking at similarities and differences between software engineering and other engineering disciplines from the point of view of people that shifted from other forms of engineering work to software development: https://www.hillelwayne.com/tags/crossover-project/ (via @pamelafox)

"A lot of hype and noise is pressing us to extend the cowboy, wild-west phase of the software industry’s expansion. We should set that aside, and take ourselves seriously as a mature industry."

How building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight - Alistair Davidson:
https://www.mohkohn.co.uk/writing/html-first/

Terf’s are really, really afraid we might see and read this major report. It documents UK based anti-trans critical organizations and their funding.

They were able to force the worlds biggest human rights organizations to pull their report down within hours from it’s release, that’s how much they don’t want the world to know.

Here it is. (Share it! Download it! Share it again!)

(Edit. Here’s the 2026 link) https://archive.org/details/report-a-growing-threat-the-anti-rights-movement-in-the-uk-july-2026_20260713

#transrights #humanrights

“We are not alone, and computers truly are magic. Do not mistake lost ground for lost hope. We are the ones who make computers do what they do. We can win this thing if we collectively choose to believe it and bet on it. (…) Our task, as the older generation, is to shield the youth from those who would exploit their naïveté, without infecting them with our own accumulated pain and cynicism.” https://andrewkelley.me/post/dont-take-black-pill.html

RE: https://mastodon.social/@GeePawHill/117023692905718279

The breathlessly approving stories about companies running automated exploit toolkits against online service providers just because those companies dressed up their activities in fancy words is certainly one of the more annoying aspects of this whole sordid market manipulation scam.

A dark day for human rights.

The AI Phrasebook

https://nesbitt.io/2026/07/31/the-ai-phrasebook.html

Thinking about nominating yourself or someone else for the upcoming PSF Board or Python Packaging Council elections? Now's your chance: take a couple minutes this weekend to submit a nomination! #Python
https://www.python.org/nominations/elections/

RE: https://eupolicy.social/@bert_hubert/117013610570019972

I did not expect a wild @gvwilson to appear while reading this...

One rhetorical trick AI vendors & boosters use to steamroll over concerns - like the lack of demonstrable ROI - is to paint the LLM future as "inevitable".

It doesn't matter that the end product is worse, or that productivity gains are elusive.

Go all-in or "get left behind". It is *inevitable*

In reality, what's *inevitable* is that this technology will have to become profitable in the not-too-distant future.

The CFO has entered the chat, and we have no good answers for them.

LOL (in a horrified way), it gets better. This particular form requires the signatory to explicitly state that they have either obtained independent legal advice, or else they have read both the agreement and the associated written advice themselves and declined to seek independent advice. For some strange reason, "I asked the AI to summarise it for me and it didn't tell me not to sign" isn't one of the options.

Today in "You must be really confident you won't ever be held liable for that", *Docusign* offered to use AI to summarise the agreement I had been asked to sign. (I declined, naturally)

An anti-trans activist lied about a trans athlete injuring cis women. Now she has to pay the price.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/07/an-anti-trans-activist-lied-about-a-trans-athlete-injuring-cis-women-now-she-has-to-pay-the-price/

#transgender #trans #LGBTQ #LGBTQIA

What I mean by an "anti-problem solver" is not simply someone who creates more problems. No, that's rookie shit.

The anti-problem solver is someone who makes it impossible for a problem solver to do their job. They make themselves and others believe the problem isn't real, invent imaginary unsolvable problems that consume resources for no purpose, or directly interfere with established problem-solving mechanisms.