mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06I rewatched A View to a Kill. I had forgotten that its plot is basically that a power hungry psychopath hoards microchips and then tries to create an artificial shortage by destroying chip manufacturing plants.
So ... has OpenAI started buying abandoned silver mines and oil wells yet?
Wondered about a thing, so measured and wrote a post about it.
Everything old is new again: memory optimization
https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2026/03/everything-old-is-new-again-memory.html
Today I realized what AI actually is:
A middle-manager simulator
As a developer you use skill to craft a piece of software (or something else) tuned to solve the problem at hand.
As an AI manager, you handwave a "do something like this" description. Your workers will give you back garbage and lie about its quality. If you care about the end result, you have to micromanage your underlings to death. If not, throw the garbage up and hope something else fails first.
Eventually the latter wins.
Sain sattumalta tietää Susikoira Roin salaisen syntyhistorian, joten kirjoitin sen artikkeliksi. Nyt se löytyy netistä. (Ei, juttu ei pääty Susikoira Roi -vitsiin.)
Yhdyssanojen oikeinkirjoituksella on väliä.
Kirjastofiilikset tänään.
Usvain oppi kakkosta on nyt kasassa yli sata arkkia. Eli yli puolet (toivottavasti). Toivo elää, että kevään aikana saisi tehtyä ensimmäisen varsion valmiiksi asti.
Creating a new class of prime numbers just for the fun of it.
https://nibblestew.blogspot.com/2026/02/discovering-new-class-of-primes-fur-fun.html
Älä tule Wincapita, tule hyvä akku.
On a whim I started reading a book called Title Deleted for Security Reasons, set in the Paranoia universe.
The protagonist has to work with a AI robot called Claude. He finds out that its programming contains malicious directives the bot is not allowed to expose.
How does our hero solve this problem? With a simple prompt injection attack. This might not seem particularly impressive until you realize that the book was published in 1993.
Trust the Computer! The Computer is your friend!
A new style of CAPTCHA coming to an issue tracker near you in 2026:
To prove your vulnerability report is not AI slop, please rephrase its core tenet in a fetish porn short story below.
Are you at #fosdem and want to chat about #mesonbuild or #capypdf? We will have an improptu meeting on Sunday at 13:00 in the main cafeteria in building F, approximately here (real location might vary depending on crowdedness).
Jos Naapurini Totoro olisi tehty Suomessa:
- Perhe muuttaa uuteen taloon, joka osoittautuu umpihomeiseksi
- Äiti kuolee lastensa silmien edessä anafylaktiseen shokkiin
- Mei hukkuu läheiseen jokeen
- Perheen isä ratkeaa ryyppäämään ja jää kännipäissään auton alle
- Loppukohtauksessa yksin jäänyt Natsuki odottaa sateessa pysäkillä bussia, joka ei koskaan saavu, koska haja-asutusalueiden linjat on lakkautettu, lopulta hän paleltuu hengiltä
"Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper. ... it will be seen that [people] go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, 1841
And so The Karate Kommandos have become one fewer.
Safe travels mr Norris.
One of the best talks of Fosdem this year. Funny and horrifying at the same time.
https://video.fosdem.org/2026/k1105/DCAVDC-how_to_make_package_managers_scream.av1.webm
The joy of missing your connecting flight due to delays both when going into and out of #fosdem. I guess there's nothing left to do except drink Leffe at the airport until things sort themselves out.
In today's edition of "Everything Is Older Than You Think" we discover that "crunch culture" so beloved by game companies actually predates Fortran.