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alchemism

755 karma · joined September 8, 2011

aiOps hacker | Athens, Philadelphia, NYC https://sxs.io

my public key: https://keybase.io/solipse; my proof: https://keybase.io/solipse/sigs/20xb-Sww-LteQEB1TARSD-xBwiGO64g4ttOk4t7HrLU

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alchemism··on Greece has its own Pompeii: Thera buried Akrotiri in ash 17th-16th century BCE
The famous villages on the rim (like Oia) were the houses of Greek sea captains. The donkeys still there today would have been hired then to carry their wares and treasures up the staircases from the ports when they returned home from sea.

There is an older Chora with a street maze also, but more in the middle of the island, in a much more defensible position.

alchemism··on AI isn't replacing SREs, it's deskilling them
Pretend you are a (SR)Engineering Manager with an offshore Cloud Ops team, or with a devops consulting shop on contract: How would you progress your career? How would you get the job done?
alchemism··on AI isn't replacing SREs, it's deskilling them
I’m a troubleshooter and I’ve managed human troubleshooters. The LLMs are better - if they are grounded in either IAC or api access to the infra.
alchemism··on Surviving "The Graduate"
In Film 101, Birth of a Nation gets deep analysis even though it’s basically kkk propaganda
alchemism··on AI didn't cause the tech jobs bust, but it explains why there's no recovery
Onshoring as the lesser form of offshoring
alchemism··on OpenCode 2.0
My ability to force Anthropic or OpenAi to stop publishing their harnesses because there are too many is far less than my ability to suggest one which is not vendor-locked.
alchemism··on Every AI model has the same "controversial" take on humans
Yes, he is very much not welcome to eat street bones. He knows they are a forbidden pleasure and activates his highest-functioning brain cells in order to snatch one.

The only thing working in his favor is that beagles tend to have an iron gut. A bag of chocolate bars might drop another dog…but probably not a beagle.

alchemism··on Every AI model has the same "controversial" take on humans
My beagle does this with every sidewalk spot where he’s ever found a half-eaten chicken wing in his life - just in case.
alchemism··on OpenCode 2.0
You might look at Block's open-sourced Goose (https://goose-docs.ai) and view it as something of a neutral opinion for a harness application.
alchemism··on Ask HN: What is the current trajectory of a senior engineer?
Well, a colo will typically offer a Remote Hands service for $/mo and do that part for you, but its a human.

I suppose eventually it could be a rack robot instead, why not.

alchemism··on AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software
In the sense that ai-engineering specs (ie an elaborate prompt with skills etc.) can be said to be compiled into code language x maybe.....the spec is the new code?
alchemism··on AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software
The agent could also do that part while its still in draft. If the rigorous tests already exist of course.
alchemism··on AI coding agents generate more code, but not more software
Perhaps spec review in the custom of code review - it can even be via PR - so there is a bottleneck before anything is generated, instead of after. Cheap-to-produce code maybe isn't worth understanding line-by-line anymore.
alchemism··on Strands Harness
The interesting thing about this, if you think about it, is that this is an AWS OSS release.
alchemism··on Strands Harness
Strands is AWS.
alchemism··on No Easy Fix for Bogus Respondents in Online Opt-In Polls
At the time, we ended up with a conference room with the same name, after an office vote.
alchemism··on AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You
Offshoring to Asia began long before it moved into China. What you are describing is the acceleration point of the trend.
alchemism··on Brood War Bench
En taro Adun, Executor.
alchemism··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
Don’t worry, there is nothing inherently “noble” at all about a matriarchy which enforces compliance through liberal permission for rape. Maybe more a matter of scale, a tribal raid versus the siege, sack, and rape of an entire city. The individualist warfare of The Illiad; then later the Roman Legions, then later Mongol Horde.

The hints of egalitarian structures are found deep in enthographic interviews of tribes which have no visible hierarchy: it is invisible, if so how does it operate?

alchemism··on Brood War Bench
On a tangential note, try run Vibe Island (or equivalent) with Protoss WAVs for the agent sound effects.
alchemism··on How to Write with an LLM
If a security report is written for any particular human at all, I’d consider it to be a failure as an enterprise policy document. It should be written for The System, not for the boss; and LLMs are perfect for producing ritual boilerplate.
alchemism··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
I'd like to see the studies which confirm that kingship (i.e. rule by the most mighty hunter or warrior) and violence is universal and did not explode about 5000 years ago, because that all seems to me like a mere extrapolation of the 19th century imagination of the default human condition as being "nasty, brutish, short." =)

Some interesting texts: * The Harmless People (a classic) * Hierarchy in the Forest * Hunter-Gatherers of the Congo Basin * The Foraging Spectrum

alchemism··on How SaaS startup guys get first 100 customers first, make fkn $500k ARR fast?
Yes, it would typically be done under contract and then implemented as compliance policy across the enterprise cloud - it would not be up to a tenant to arrange a ZDR policy.

Also, the models are shipped to big platforms to run as an executable on their hardware. Except in certain cases like Anthropic Fable.

In true enterprise you’d want a compliance office product before an engineering office product…

alchemism··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
Yes I do. In anthropology the surviving “undiscovered” indigenous tribes of the 20th century showed a diverse range of social configurations - matriarchies, patriarchies, everything!

Systemic violence came with the agricultural revolution, food and population stores, the ages of Bronze and Iron. Life was too precious in small bands for intense violence, even against rivals.

[Edit: 100 men armed with wooden clubs is an extremely bloody rugby match. Things generally did not start getting very-very bad until metal weapons were combined with boats or horses.]

Hobbes was a bit wrong it turns out.

alchemism··on AI is breaking our proxies for expertise
Isolated Hunter-Gatherers tended to (and still) coalesce around the person whose opinions were correct more often then not. Violence was not a default until populations grew. The measures may be arbitrary, but can always be defined as “born with the right attributes in the right place at the right time.”
alchemism··on Most people prefer traditional architecture
You might like Athens, in that case.
alchemism··on GPT-5.6 Luna vs. GPT-6 Astra: Is a $1.20 Model Good Enough for Code Review?
I think there is a subtle difference between you-or-I dumping a chat paste into the PR, versus an automated agent directly commenting in a PR. The former carries a human social implication, the latter does not. The weight of them is different.
alchemism··on Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster
They probably like to imagine that they are Mentats from Dune, but the reality is closer to truckers cooking in a motel bathtub.
alchemism··on How SaaS startup guys get first 100 customers first, make fkn $500k ARR fast?
That’s not how enterprise data controls operate in e.g. AWS Bedrock or Databricks - where they use models - sorry to inform you.
alchemism··on Fuck it, make it anyway
Right, in 5 years time the economy will be entirely vibecoded by pension fund and family office bankers. No one will be employed at all
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