iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bike East Bay @bikeeastbay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Reposted by Alex Gude

CONSTRUCTION ALERT: the Iron Horse Trail bridge over Treat Blvd will be closed Oct 5 - Dec 31 Cyclists and pedestrians should use the detour along Treat Blvd, with extra caution for car traffic. Drivers should expect additional delays over the next few months, too.

A photo of an adult and child riding their bike across the Iron Horse Trail Bridge over Treat Blvd, with a pedestrian walking in the background. Text reads that the bridge will be closed for rehab Oct 5 - Dec 31

This is a map of the project area-- it's all happening just South of Pleasant Hill BART

043

Reposted by Alex Gude

Alex Gude @alexgude.com · 23h

I went to a talk by qntm. I asked him about what fiction gets at the experience of LLMs the most. He said Douglas Adams with all the objects that can think and talk for no reason and sometimes you have to have a conversation with your elevator to get it to work today. Anyway my IDE is mad at me.

072

Reposted by Alex Gude

Jeremy Diamond ☕️ @dmnd.me · 30/09/2026

A big downside of the top AI guys being deeply influenced by sci-fi is that they don't realize that giving non-organic characters personalities is a narrative requirement and not much more. If Marvin was just an android and not the paranoid android, he would be boring.

67012

Alex Gude @alexgude.com · 23h

072

Reposted by Alex Gude

My friend was visiting when Astra was released. He's a tenured Math professor at a US R1. He has a PhD student graduating soon and their thesis is essentially three papers stapled together. My friend says two of those papers can now be one shot with Sol, and the third just needs a few prompts. 🤷‍♂️

131

He also shared that he asked Astra for the next thing to work on, based on his previous work. Several of the ideas were dumb, one was an obvious extension, and one was a really good idea he hadn't thought of.

020

Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

131

Reposted by Alex Gude

*Interestingly, when I talk to authors, in my experience, Black authors always know that ballad and have thought of it in the context of AI, whereas very few others do. Which is strange because it's likely the best purely American ballad, and possibly one of the best folk songs ever.

61163

Reposted by Alex Gude

Computational Cosmetologist @dferrer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

[GALAXY BRAIN] Once you own the means of production you become a capitalist elite. This is why true communism has never been tried.

141

Reposted by Alex Gude

Andy Masley @andymasley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is the first part of a 2 part post on why I believe that current AI models meet my criteria for really "thinking" and "understanding," and that prohibitions on using these words because they "anthropomorphize" AI seem philosophically confused to me. blog.andymasley.com/p/why-i-beli...

blog.andymasley.com

Why I believe current AI models can really think and understand - Part 1 of 2

How the human mind is different from our conception of it

712317

I am in my DAD ERA! I am making Dad jokes! I am listening to Dad rock! As is my right!

000

Alex Gude @alexgude.com · 28/09/2026

"average person knows 3 chords" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person knows 0 chords. Guitar George, who plays strictly rhythm & knows all the chords, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

242

LLMs really channeling Sagan: If you wish to fix a simple CSS but, you must first invent the universe.

031

Alex Gude @alexgude.com · 28/09/2026

There are no rendering tests? I will need to build a rendering test harness first...

0200

Reposted by Alex Gude

rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

basically anyone who makes a living doing statistics who doesn't know statistics is

312612

Seeing as people who pass Ochem are probably 90-10 Harris voters? I can think of worse requirements... 🤔

110

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Since everything is Glonzo nowadays, I wonder if you could get through water price reform with: "Making data centers (and other industries 😉) pay their fair share for the water they use!"

3678

Reposted by Alex Gude

It is strange how much LLMs turned out to be able to solve such a wide range of hard problems that would not, instinctively, seem to be problems that a model of human language would be able to solve This is from a Stanford project that let Astra drive a robot in a kitchen tml.stanford.edu/homebody/

2339944

System Collapse review: bsky.app/profile/alex...

000

And the next one, which is better thankfully! bsky.app/profile/alex...

000

The 7th Murderbot was a bit of a slump but the 8th, Platform Decay, goes back to its roots. I really like the juxtaposition of Mensah’s and Leonide’s families. Both non-standard, both queer, but one rallies to protect its members while the other reproduces the Corporate Rim’s violence. #BookReview

alexgude.com

Platform Decay

130

You'd think they could find one parent that says "I wish they'd call me, but it's their life to live" and yet... 🤷‍♂️

160

Tommaso Sciortino @sciortino.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Some possibilities in @bill-of-lefts.bsky.social's thread. I obviously don't trust this government, but agents getting fees for signing up fake people would look like people with no usage. (So would normal people who didn't use it of course.) bsky.app/profile/bill...

100

Reposted by Alex Gude

Goalpost moving AI skeptics be like.

Meme of guy talking to a computer:

Guy: "You're not intelligent because you can't XYZ"

Computer: "[Does XYZ]"

Guy: "Actually, that doesn't require intelligence."

1024525

Yup exactly this. At work, we have a skill that spins up an adversarial review with a few models and they build consensus. That *EATS* tokens.

030

I don't have enough experience with 5.5, but 5 Opus and Fable clearly had a "don't be sycophantic, disagree with the user" beaten into them.

Wrong! It's clearly a top 5 behind those 4!

020

What a fantastic "orcs" meme!

Oh no we must be the same-ish age! 👴

Astra is getting PIPed.

2170

Sort of both really? I let it work on a PR in the background for 2 days while my attention was on something else. And when I looked at it, it had built a huge independent test framework, convinced there were a bunch of edge cases we needed to nail down. No actually progress on the code.

2150

Kind of off the opinion 6 is crap. Astra keeps coming up with reasons not to do things. Feels like I keep having to remind it to actually do stuff.

190

Yeah I have never been in an (onsite) interview where we didn't head to the kitchenette and get coffee or snacks... Must just be a tech thing.

Had Luna download it, make a little cover, and shove it into my Navidrome. (Nerd!)

So I have a confession... 😅

Screenshot of my phones media player showing "I'm Upping My p(doom)" playing

130

jake @yetanotheruseless.com · 24/09/2026

Not really a Shibboleth but a crazy story: Had a behavioral interview where the two interviewers spent 90 minutes randomly selecting my LinkedIn connections, and asking questions like "What would they say your greatest weakness was?" I think to make me answer "more honestly"?

0150

Reposted by Alex Gude

What's my advice, as An Old SWE, given <all this>? As a Jr SWE, I think it is in fact, still useful to force yourself to learn good algorithms and data structures and how databases work (like really) and how to code an inverted index by hand and all Stuff Claude can just Do For You. even in: foOM!

6667