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squirrel

644 karma · joined February 2, 2008

Director of Squirrel Squared, where I fix software development teams that aren't working at their best - delivering poorly or not at all, lacking leadership, or struggling to recruit. It typically takes me two months to address these issues and get the team on track to deliver on company goals. By the time I finish, I've recruited or trained a high-performing tech leader and a skilled team that's ready to keep delivering. More at http://douglassquirrel.com .
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squirrel··on Amazon’s “digital pacifier” for toddlers
Maybe not in your country? Here in the UK I see https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/new-amazon-kids-tab... and https://www.amazon.com/b?node=221942402011 which includes the phrase "One for ages 3-5".
squirrel··on How Complex Systems Fail (1998)
The definitive work on this topic is Normal Accidents, with a modern retelling in Meltdown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(Clearfield_and_Tilcs...

squirrel··on The Sylvester–Gallai Theorem
I just thought of another way to restate. Suppose you give me any finite set of points, any finite set at all, and you also tell me that when the 9 year old draws any line through any two of them, she will always hit a third. Then I can immediately conclude all the points lie on a single line, that is, that any line the 9 year old draws will hit all the points.
squirrel··on The Sylvester–Gallai Theorem
Well put. A similar way to say it: ask the 9 year old to draw ALL of the possible lines connecting two points in the set — of course this is possible, just might take awhile. The theorem says that at least one of the lines drawn must hit ONLY the two points the 9 year old used when drawing that particular line, not any others.
squirrel··on Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?
Had been consulting for equity with one startup out of an accelerator, so it was natural to go paid once I went out on my own. For the next few clients, approached investors I knew from that and other startups, who referred me to portfolio companies who needed me. I wish I'd read Alan Weiss's Million Dollar Consulting at the beginning though, I would have avoided many mistakes (like day-rate billing).
squirrel··on The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing
The author replied quickly and described his use of AI as very limited and just for grammar and wording. I believe him, based both on the text of the article itself and what he told me.
squirrel··on The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing
Thanks for writing that up. You convinced me that there was more Claude here than I'd thought, but I didn't see evidence that the author hadn't edited and supplemented, which is what I was suggesting. In fact, your last observation about correcting an erroneous date makes my point, not yours: Claude made a mistake, and the (human) author fixed it, thus improving the essay.

I certainly agree that the author should disclose the use of an AI, how much is human vs silicon, and clarify which ideas are his own and which are not. I've written to him to ask about that.

squirrel··on The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing
The article is well-written and makes cogent points about why we need "centaurs", human/computer hybrids who combine silicon- and carbon-based reasoning.

Interestingly, the text has a number of AI-like writing artifacts, e.g. frequent use of the pattern "The problem isn't X. The problem is Y." Unlike much of the typical slop I see, I read it to the end and found it insightful.

I think that's because the author worked with an AI exactly as he advocates, providing the deep thinking and leaving some of the routine exposition to the bot.

squirrel··on Procedural Tron
Drone view is so high it's unusable. How about an inside-the-blimp view?

Rural areas are trivially easy. May not be anything to do about that.

how about labelling famous locations like Times Square or the Louvre?

Anomaly is misspelt on home page.

squirrel··on I canceled my book deal
This is not true for business books like mine. It's vital to write a proposal first in that world; publishers want to influence the content (as in the OP article).

I think the same is true for tech books but I don't know as I haven't written one.

A novel or other fiction is the opposite; there you do have to write the whole thing first.

squirrel··on Researchers discover molecular difference in autistic brains
Certainly, we're at the "bash it with a hammer" stage not ready for anything nuanced. I just wouldn't want to assume that the right outcome is "less autism"; I suspect most people could do with at least a little more!
squirrel··on Researchers discover molecular difference in autistic brains
As I commented in another thread, there's no a priori reason to believe that the "average" glutamate receptor level is the "right" one. Isn't it possible that there are:

1. "Normal" people with a level of glutamate receptors at 10, say, on a scale I'm inventing for this example

2. "Autistic" (according to the DSM) people with a level of, say, 5, who are hindered by the effects of being at this level

3. "A little bit autistic" people at a level of, say, 8, who aren't hindered and don't meet the DSM criteria, but in fact actually benefit from the effects of being at this level

Some "normals" might then want to inhibit their glutamate receptors somewhat to get the benefits of being at an 8 or a 9 on my made-up scale.

squirrel··on Researchers discover molecular difference in autistic brains
It seems you are assuming that because the majority of people have a certain quantity of glutamate receptors, that they are the healthy ones and that we should be trying to bring autistic people up to that level. Is that right?

Why not consider the opposite, that the most beneficial quantity of glutamate receptors could be somewhere below the typical amount? If that were true, then we could try to help others reduce their glutamate receptor level to become healthier and more successful (and a little more autistic).

If we found, say, an association between a lower level of neurological characteristic X and concert-level piano skill, then those who aspire to play that instrument at an elite level might try to decrease X. The fact that most of us are rubbish piano players would not be evidence that lower levels of X are harmful, but very much the opposite.

squirrel··on Trains cancelled over fake bridge collapse image
Amazingly, no one seems to have actually checked that this picture was really "circulating on social media". I've been investigating for the past hour or so and can't locate a single public post or reference anywhere other than reposts of the BBC article.

Typically, postings that gain traction have many many reposts and though some may be deleted, there's a long tail of reverberation left behind. I can't find that at all here.

I wonder if the hoaxer just emailed it to Network Rail directly?

squirrel··on Damien Hirst: Assistants Make My Spot Paintings
https://archive.is/YOFkY
squirrel··on Be a Potter, Not a Sculptor
Good point! I need to write more about the opt-in/out elements of rapid feedback. Thank you!
squirrel··on Be a Potter, Not a Sculptor
Doing it without your customer's agreement is indeed unhelpful! I'm sorry you're that frustrated by this experimentation.

That's why I advocate using feature flags and beta labels and supervised user research to get feedback. Do those methods work for you, so you can opt in?

squirrel··on Harnessing Embarrassment
Thanks! That's not the positive use I have in mind here, where a manager has a real need and uses a demo to focus the work. Does that ever happen at your large corporate?
squirrel··on Metropolis 1998 lets you design every building in an isometric, pixel-art city (2024)
Roadmap [1] last updated in June 2025, so a reasonable chance that the project is alive. Though the status colours indicate there's a good percentage of development left to do even before early access.

[1] https://yesboxstudios.com/roadmap/

squirrel··on Two things LLM coding agents are still bad at
Yes, the incorrect usage is widespread! See Fowler's original book for the thinking behind the term -- every example therein is a 1-minute job, and many are macros in your IDE.

Good point that LLMs tend to rewrite unless corrected. I have heard (but not tested myself!) that if you tell them to apply a series of small changes they stay on track better. Fowler's list would probably be a good starting place.

squirrel··on Just talk to it – A way of agentic engineering
I have to imagine that like pair programming, this multi-AI approach would be significantly more tiring than one-window, one-programmer coding. Do you have to force yourself to take breaks to keep up your stamina?
squirrel··on Two things LLM coding agents are still bad at
A friendly reminder that "refactor" means "make and commit a tiny change in less than a few minutes" (see links below). The OP and many comments here use "refactor" when they actually mean "rewrite".

I hear from my clients (but have not verified myself!) that LLMs perform much better with a series of tiny, atomic changes like Replace Magic Literal, Pull Up Field, and Combine Functions Into Transform.

[1] https://martinfowler.com/books/refactoring.html [2] https://martinfowler.com/bliki/OpportunisticRefactoring.html [3] https://refactoring.com/catalog/

squirrel··on Axon’s Draft One is designed to defy transparency
Creative lawyers will be all over this. First you get the officer to testify that AI helped write the report, then you call the AI as a witness. When the judge tosses that, you start issuing subpoenas to everyone you can find at OpenAI and Axon.

As others point out, the actual bodycam footage will be definitively probative for the events it records. But there are plenty of cases where the report itself leads to later actions that may be tortious or criminal, and finding out who's to blame for the exact wording used is highly relevant.

Example: AI incorrectly reports that during A's arrest, A made incriminating allegations about B. Based on the report, the police get a warrant and search B's house. When it turns out B is innocent, B sues the department, and when the report turns up during discovery, we're off to the circus.

squirrel··on Linda Yaccarino is leaving X
Shed Simove actually did this, with some funny results: https://www.shedsimove.com/content/i-changed-my-name-god
squirrel··on Generative AI's failure to induce robust models of the world
He cites o3 and o4-mini as examples of LLMs that play illegal chess moves.
squirrel··on Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
Typo
squirrel··on How Uber tests payments in production
Also very interested. I wonder if we could get a comment from a Stripe person or a recently ex (like @patio11 ) to clarify what’s allowed and what’s just ignored.
squirrel··on How I Use "AI"
For about 20 years, chess fans would hold "centaur" tournaments. In those events, the best chess computers, who routinely trounced human grandmasters, teamed up with those same best-in-the-world humans and proceeded to wipe both humans and computers off the board. Nicholas is describing in detail how he pairs up with LLMs to get a similar result in programming and research.

Sobering thought: centaur tournaments at the top level are no more. That's because the computers got so good that the human half of the beast no longer added any meaningful value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_chess

squirrel··on Microsoft technical breakdown of CrowdStrike incident
Telling that there’s no mention of eBPF, which is standard on Linux and available on Windows, but hasn’t been brought into the main Windows OS. Static analysis might or might not have caught the Blue Friday bug, but it certainly increases the protection level over the current do-as-you-wish model for kernel modules.
squirrel··on Fair Chess and Simultaneous Games
Successful moves don’t always commute. Black has just moved his pawn from g7 to g5. White submits what he thinks is an en passant capture, fxg6. Black submits a knight move, Ng6. One order removes a Black pawn, the other a Black knight.
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