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ajdecon

@ajdecon.org
1.9K followers 912 following 1.5K posts

Building HPC systems for researchers, currently at IonQ. Formerly NVIDIA, FB, LANL; and before that, materials physics! Perpetually a bit confused. As always opinions are mine. He/him. 🏡: Denver, CO 🌐: www.ajdecon.org Signal: @ajdecon.42

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Reposted by ajdecon
Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 3h
oh man, I just tried it and america.gov really does get REAL weird when you tell it to “play Minecraft”
america.gov
America.gov
Find answers from official government sources and clear next steps for the services you need with America.gov.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 7h
For a platform that believes in controlling your own experience and community moderation, @bsky.app could use a lot more speedbumps for preventing poor behavior
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Portalrealm @portalrealm.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Today, 39 years ago, a beautiful ship glided through space.
Original blueprint for the Enterprise D
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 28/09/2026
I mean of course Jensen cares about more than selling GPUs. NVIDIA also makes CPUs and network gear after all.
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bryan newbold @bnewbold.net · 28/09/2026
Hello World from the PLC organization (plcred.org)! The org was soft-announced back in March at AtmosphereConf. We've been working through logistics step by step and now have a public web presence we can point to.
blog.plcred.org
First steps of the PLC organization
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 28/09/2026
Related: at the point where your colleagues chat about not wearing swag in public, it’s probably a good idea to consider making a change.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 27/09/2026
Because this discourse is still going, I feel like I should say: If I’m interviewing you, feel free to have an iced coffee. Or a regular coffee. Or a bottle of water. Or whatever (non-intoxicating) beverage or snack helps you perform. Treat people like adults who can manage their needs, please.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 27/09/2026
Pay attention to Cat’s work, she’s doing great stuff in this area
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 27/09/2026
Entirely separate from the quotes on general liberal arts, I’m really sad about how little science/eng degrees teach the history of the fields themselves. The histories of fields like physics, computing, structural engineering, genetics, and so on are all fascinating!
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 27/09/2026
AFAICT, most undergrad engineering ethics education focuses on “nuts and bolts” topics. E.g., avoid conflicts of interest, don’t compromise safety to reduce cost, no bribes, that kind of thing. Those are all important! But it does feel like more coverage of societal impact is needed these days.
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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Google brought back their retro logo for their 28th today. They should bring back their retro principles too.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 26/09/2026
There is very little as frustrating in (online) chess, as mis-clicking a move badly, and then fightin a losing battle for the rest of the game. Literally had the phone slip in my hand and moved my queen into the worst possible position. 😮‍💨
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 26/09/2026
This is a good description of something that frustrates me regularly. So many folks seem to ignore the actual goals of whatever effort they’re part of, in favor of applause from people they like.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 26/09/2026
I’m seeing iced coffee discourse here and how did this migrate from threads
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 25/09/2026
This is basically where I am. If I say the LLM thought about something, that doesn’t mean I think it’s doing the same thing as a human. It’s just a lot less tedious than saying “the LLM appeared to process text about X in a way that produced a particular result”
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 24/09/2026
*sigh* This is a very Jensen thing to say. He spends 16+ hours a day running NVIDIA, because to him it's the most fun thing he could be doing. This shows up in other interviews too. Of course he doesn't remember his zip code, he's restructured his life so he doesn't have to.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 22/09/2026
Ha! Congrats @segyges.bsky.social on your bot making the @bsky38.com list
“User was blocked for the post” at #22 on the list
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 20/09/2026
I don’t disagree, but also it’s just exhausting to see so many people unwilling to acknowledge uncertainty.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 20/09/2026
This is… interesting
store.steampowered.com
Nuclear Design Bureau on Steam
Design. Simulate. Detonate. As a junior engineer at the Kurchatov Institute, you design atomic devices to satisfy the demands of the State. A hardcore physics game simulating hydrodynamics, neutron tr...
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 19/09/2026
Oxide could probably do decent business with a public swag store
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 19/09/2026
What this says to me is that most datacenter regulations are more responsive to constituent sentiment (which is fair!) than to any specific DC build of concern. - 300+ datacenter bans or moratoriums in the US - Only 3 projects actually meaningfully impacted so far
newsletter.semianalysis.com
Everyone Says Datacenter Moratoriums Are Killing the US Buildout. We Mapped All 300 of Them
20GW sits inside a restricted local boundary, 1,525MW actually slips, 2.3GW nationwide including New York
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 19/09/2026
Not quite sure a blog and some social media posts quite constitute an antitrust violation, but I’m not sad someone decided to sue and find out
apnews.com
Lawsuit says Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made illegal agreement on AI slowdown
A new lawsuit claims that Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google illegally agreed to slow their AI development. Filed Friday in the U.S.
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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 18/09/2026
more and more people are saying!
liberalcurrents.com
Congress Needs Its Tech Experts Back
If Congress is to tackle issues from DOGE sabotage to AI to social media, it needs to resurrect its Office of Technology Assessment.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 18/09/2026
It brings to mind the obsession with “gray goo” scenarios when nanotech was a big thing in science. Not so much a realistic scenario as “this would make an AMAZING sci-fi movie”.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 17/09/2026
this is the correct response to a suspension
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 16/09/2026
IIRC, the Three Laws were basically a hook that Asimov used to write often-playful short stories about logic problems, and how to find loopholes in rules. Fun, but hardly the basis for serious safeguards on AI.
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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
We're hiring in Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder! ☀️⛰️ Machine learning and NLP people, please apply!
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 14/09/2026
As usual, Charity's thoughts here are worth reading
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 14/09/2026
Disclosures: I’ve worked professionally on… - GPU / machine learning infrastructure - Storage systems for social media - Nuclear weapons simulation infrastructure - And now, quantum computing infrastructure All of that will inform my views on, like, everything. 🤷‍♂️
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 14/09/2026
Loosely inspired by (waves hands) all *this*, I put together a very very janky “circuit breaker” script for BlueSky: github.com/ajdecon/bsky... Blog post explaining the rationale: thinking.ajdecon.org/2026/09/14/b...
github.com
GitHub - ajdecon/bsky-circuit-breaker
Contribute to ajdecon/bsky-circuit-breaker development by creating an account on GitHub.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 14/09/2026
As an aside, I’m fascinated by posts like this which require having seen an entire genre of meme to understand (that said, I agree bsky is cursed)
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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This. This is what I keep hearing from the eng folks.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 14/09/2026
On reflection, I really dislike this feature where likes are shown. cc @bsky.app @safety.bsky.app It can be fun to see, but I really don’t think of likes as any major endorsement and I’m again seeing folks treat it as one.
A random screenshot showing a couple folks liked a post
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 14/09/2026
This is a good thread, up and down. Look. I’ve been sincerely privileged to work with excellent security engineers at several points in my career. None of this is a criticism of them. But they’re pushing uphill. Lots of things, even at orgs with great reps, are just held together with duct tape.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 14/09/2026
Folks are arguing about voting again on my timeline, so just re-upping this post A given vote is an expression of choice among a limited number of outcomes. It’s not guaranteed that you like any of them, but you probably *dislike* one least.
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Bryan Cantrill @bcantrill.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The contagion of fear bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/t...
bcantrill.dtrace.org
The contagion of fear | The Observation Deck
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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
it's why i find the idea that elections are going to be won on here by lecturing people to vote for a specific candidate is somewhat laughable guys, we're basically Taiwan for highly-educated/highly-partisan anti-Trump Twitter even if we wanted to, we're not going to shape outcomes
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 13/09/2026
This is such an interesting idea. I need to think about it some more, but I definitely recommend reading the piece. Also: @ahl.bsky.social @bcantrill.bsky.social maybe a topic for another open-source-focused Oxide and Friends?
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 12/09/2026
Not just the memory size, but very large LLMs also require machines that are not just expensive but specialized, and with complex operational needs. These are not, generally, available for cloud rental via an API. Renting e.g. a GB300 rack is an enterprise sales process.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 12/09/2026
Continually asking folks to stop and ask themselves: - What goal they’re trying to achieve - Whether what you’re doing actually pushes that goal forward - Or whether it just makes you feel better / more important / more alive
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Imani Gandy @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
The international chess Federation banned trans women from playing women's chess. CHESS. It's not about fairness. The fairness argument is intended to radicalize people into more violent forms of transphobia.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 12/09/2026
Oh look, maybe taking a baseball bat to the engineering org was a bad idea
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Thorne 🌸 @ens0.me · 09/09/2026
Looking for full-time, remote senior/staff or tech lead level work. TypeScript is my strongest suit, but I'm a flexible polyglot. Boosts for visibility appreciated!
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 09/09/2026
Oh hey, some of my colleagues published a very neat design paper
ionq.com
IonQ | IonQ's Fully Compiled, End-to-End Resource Estimate for Breaking 256-Bit Elliptic-Curve Signatures
IonQ has published the first fully compiled, end-to-end resource estimate for breaking 256-bit elliptic-curve signatures, mapped down to quantum error-correction primitives.
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 09/09/2026
Possibly the first post that new users should see when logging into bsky
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 09/09/2026
Very cool to see this released
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 09/09/2026
Good reminder
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 09/09/2026
Sigh. I haven’t used DO for a while but it’s been my default recommendation for “do you just need a server?” So that will need to change. What dirt-simple VPS hosts do folks like these days?
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ajdecon @ajdecon.org · 08/09/2026
FWIW, I don’t think LLMs are sentient, and “intelligence” is a fuzzy idea 🤷‍♂️ But the second bullet is the one I find genuinely interesting. Roll back the clock 10 years, and many recent LLM achievements would have been regarded as requiring human thought. That’s pretty weird and exciting!
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Lake Superior! Live! @lake-superior.live · 06/09/2026
Current* conditions near Houghton, MI:
View looking west of Portage Lake Lift Bridge from the Michigan Tech Lakeshore Center. // Image captured at (local time): 2026-09-06 18:18:03 EDT (about 1 min. prior to this post) // Image sourced from: mtu.edu // Current Temp in Houghton: 76 F | 24 C // Precip: clear sky // Wind: E at 9 mph | 15 kph // Humidity: 59%
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