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mainmailman

31 karma · joined December 4, 2025

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mainmailman··on Why do LLM pelicans look like this?
This is the kind of thing that happens all the time in elementary schools. My mom taught elementary school for a while and her favorite thing was seeing all the students put their own spin on the art assignment(“prompt”, if you will).

Is every kid a Picasso? No, but there definitely is creative diversity among these kids who all have relatively similar shared backgrounds (neighborhood, social class, religion, etc)

mainmailman··on Meta and Microsoft take steps to reduce employee usage of Claude AI
Interesting, thanks for the response
mainmailman··on Meta and Microsoft take steps to reduce employee usage of Claude AI
I’m trying really hard to keep my skills up but it doesn’t feel productive when I’m using it to write code. It feels like I’m slowing down the AI to the point that it’s not as effective as just letting it go. But I don’t get all the learning that comes from that time along the way.

Have you found ways to stay sharp while using it? Or are you relying on other projects outside of work to keep your skills fresh?

mainmailman··on Software engineering is about managing complexity
Hammer and nail still works, it’s just not as fast and strains the builders.

Problem with the analogy is that the strain in software engineering is necessary for an in depth understanding of the code.

The question is whether that depth of knowledge is ultimately more helpful than the speed that we can build with AI.

mainmailman··on The First At-Home Test for Infected Ticks Could Improve Lyme Disease Diagnosis
Another step towards a vaccine, I hope.
mainmailman··on Compression is prediction
Thanks for the recommendations!
mainmailman··on I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program
That’s where I’m at. I really don’t care if an individual business collects usage data like this. I have a problem when that data is used outside of that context.

Try to sell me more burgers and fries? Fine, but don’t tell my doctor, or palantir, or the government etc etc. I don’t believe that’s a huge ask as a consumer in the Information Age.

mainmailman··on Compression is prediction
Have any examples of a blog post that meets your standard?
mainmailman··on Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI
Do you really think they mean they’ve been using mythos
mainmailman··on Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Timeline of the July 2026 Incident
I can’t get over this either, I’d love to get OpenAI’s technical break down and see exactly how the agent hid itself. Or who didn’t set up the SIEM correctly
mainmailman··on Claude Opus 5
Unrelated question, what’s your favorite flavor of Kool Aid?
mainmailman··on Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
So because children were forced to work dangerous jobs it's okay for adult religious leaders to have sex with them? I'm not sure I follow that.

You should research polygamy in the mainline (Brighamite) sect if you haven't already. One of the last marriages to the the mormon prophet Lorenzo Snow was to a 15 year old. Snow was 57 at the time. This was not normal despite any assertion about children working.

Source: www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1c2omo0/the_wives_of_lorenzo_snow/

mainmailman··on Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career
Thank you, it's been all but confirmed that lot of "AI layoffs" are due to reaching a workforce equilibrium from Covid era over hiring.

Saying AI for anything, good news or bad news, is a get out of jail free card for execs who want to appease shareholders.

mainmailman··on Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
What?
mainmailman··on Norway Set to Become Latest Country to Ban Social Media for Under 16s
I could see a scenario where well meaning parents prevent kids from going online, and with the promise of a safer internet through ID laws allows their children to get online more. Total conjecture though, I would like to see data on that too.
mainmailman··on Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th
What is Anna’s?
mainmailman··on Why Is France Moving from Microsoft Windows to Linux
It'll be interesting to see how large microsoft's footprint is in the country after this. The article talks about the government's objectives, but I wonder how the private sector will react.
mainmailman··on Good Sleep, Good Learning (2012)
There are bars everywhere
mainmailman··on An interactive map of Flock Cams
Why do anything at all?
mainmailman··on How OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine
I loved it, I’ve never seen something like it
mainmailman··on An AI agent published a hit piece on me – more things have happened
This is enough to make me never use ars technica again
mainmailman··on Read Something Wonderful
Brave
mainmailman··on The highest quality codebase
Yeah I don't see the utility in doing this hundreds of times back to back. A few iterations can tell us some things about how Claude optimizes code, but an open ended prompt to endlessly "improve" the code sounds like a bad boss making huge demands. I don't blame the AI for adding BS down the line.
mainmailman··on The highest quality codebase
I'm not a C++ programmer, but wouldn't your example be a fairly structured problem? You wanted to improve performance of a specific part of your code base.
mainmailman··on What Happens When an "Infinite-Money Machine" Unravels
You might like Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell. Very eye opening on how groups from religions to crossfit classes exploit humanity's tendency to form groups and follow charismatic leaders, even after the "cult" becomes toxic to the individual members.