iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 4h

If it makes you feel any better, I got rid of the words "day", "week", "month", and "year", but not the (roughly) equivalent time periods. Radiohead sang about this, right?

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 7h

Not at all. I figured you were getting hit. Sorry that's happening.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 7h

And I am reminded that by and large anything people evaluate on an axis is ridiculous anyway. It's fine for statistics, which are abstractions. It's not fine for discussions.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 7h

Can't reply to the thread, but this, to me, is just as problematic as its opposite number, because it plays into the whole idea that knowledge doesn't matter if you feel a thing strongly enough. Which is half the playbook ised to get to fascism of late. I don’t buy either end of the axis here.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 9h

You can say it, but your inability to make the case for what is, in fact, sentience doesn't really inspire confidence in your judgement on the matter. Like, I don't think they're sentient, but I also don't get the confident rebuttals by casual observers either.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 16h

It's so much worse than the quote. He asks how many babies would you kill to save an adult (hypothetically, of course...), asks if saving infants could lead to population growth, which he then questions the morality of, and assigns negative value to government involvement because "big organizations"

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Having recently watched the first few seasons of Friday Night Lights, I do appreciate the football joke

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

As a newish dad, the second scene (army dad shoots apple off of son's head woth a handgun) is also a problem for me. It can only get better from here.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Lanterns starts 30 years ago with a person saying "ten years ago..." I am immediately less than confident in this series

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume? Game programmer: It gives the system time to render a frame before the player has to start controlling their character again.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I read the summary for One Trillion Years, and as someone for whom Greg Egan's novel Diaspora is a formative influence I immediately knew I needed your games. So now you're over your goal line. Here's hoping it helps.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

It's the natural continuation of the electricity episode?

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Reposted by Mike Murphy-Burton

John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

In light of some magazines pulling scummy things on creators lately, I’m doing a little thread on short story rights. I don't want anybody getting taken advantage of. Also, if you're new, this stuff can be confusing!

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

So incredibly tired of seeing folks bend over backwards to defend new oil and gas development, never taking any accountability for how that plays into the future, always insinuating everyone else is somehow worse. Hard to convince a man of something if his paycheck etc.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I never connected the Rifts Coalition APC with this before today.

Black and white illustration of an armored personnel carrier vehicle from the Coalition faction of Palladium Books' Rifts RPG. The vehicle bears a substantial resemblance to the APC from the Aliens franchise.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

What kind of cookies the baby likes: Cookies Favourite Sesame street character is Cookie Monster: Cookies First time browsing the web: LOTS of cookies

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Trump has already laid the groundwork for this, right?

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Money can't buy you happiness, but poverty sure as hell buys you misery.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I need more people to understand how good Scotsburn Udderly Divine is. And I want to know more about Kawartha on the flip side.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

There's something very sad about the fact that US candy and chocolate are dominant in every supermarket in Canada - to the point where several Canadian items have disappeared entirely, at least locally - yet Canadian ice cream manufacturers mostly don't have a national presence.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Oh, and if you feel like using the phrase "stupid tax"...don't. I'm almost 50 and a lottery win is the only life-changing thing that is at all possible for me. I pay $6 a week to dream of a comfortable retirement.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It is funny to see a lotto max ad in which they are trying to sell how much better their lottery is now that they upped the price by a dollar. The jackpot hit this same number twice last year. Not exactly a mind blowing upgrade.

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Reposted by Mike Murphy-Burton

Avi Lewis @avilewis.ca · 08/10/2026

We don’t save Canada by sacrificing our environment and constitutional protections on the altar of private profits. Bill C-39 is an unmitigated disaster, and Canadians will be fighting back.

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Reposted by Mike Murphy-Burton

Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 08/10/2026

I don't believe they are conscious but I also don't believe you should get to do interviews where you say "idk man our business model might be built on enslaving sentient creatures" and still get to be a business.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

HOW WOULD I SEE THE INVISIBLE JET, LEE?

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Youtube has recently decided to start showing me content from a private jet chartering company, and, hoo boy, some of their customers are legitimately the worst stereotypes of people who can afford private jets.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Presumably the USS Abraham Lincoln will be a much more effective deterrent.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Is it just to force people to move tax-deferred money into taxable accounts? Why is it the 95 year olds of the world that get hit with that pressure if so? Not something I'm outraged about, just...interesting.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Today I learned that as you get older, you're required to withdraw more and more from your (tax-deferred) retirement account, which is...interesting. In Canada, by the time you're 95, it's up to 20% annually. Which means you're pretty much empty by 100. I'm not sure what the thesis is there.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I HATE seeing Lee enjoy life like this, so if you've got a project that needs editing, send it his way.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I know I shouldn't use their services anyway in this year of our lord two-zero-and-two-and-six, but Microsoft now requiring me to provide them with an alternate email in order to access my account makes me literally sick to my stomach. I have no big skeletons, but I hate surveillance capitalism.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I think it's relevant, too, to note that it's a little bit fraught to even talk about this in public for someone in the field. Like will the AI (or AI-focused human) recruiters out there have indexed these posts and therefore discard my application out of hand the next time I need to find a job?

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I feel like it'll end up being a split in the field, a la the COBOL situation circa 2000. There will be lots of kids and enthusiastic adopters working with relatively low-risk systems using the AI stuff, but there'll be systems that just don't fit, and they'll need some old hands for those.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

That's a pretty good compromise. I've been mostly using the tools in an advisory capacity, and luckily my current work situation is fine with that, but everyone I know in my local tech community seem to be in full-on Damn The Torpedoes mode, and it's tough not to worry about my own future prospects

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Yep. And more and more the "vibe engineering" crowd are focusing on workflows where there are no code reviews and no code maintainers to speak of. It's spooky to watch. Reminds me of the Star Trekian concept of a parasitic technological species that cannot create or maintain its own tools.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I get wanting to avoid the technology in its totality, I'm just noting why you're seeing what you're seeing. Even as a very reluctant adopter of the tools, I think the small-c "copilot" experience with these tools is pretty solid at this point.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Not only does it have expert-level knowledge of the general technology, it can - if you allow it - examine your specific system and provide insight that would otherwise require exposing sensitive details to randos on the internet.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

To be honest, LLMs are very good at being "your friendly neighbourhood subject matter expert" for software and tech infrastructure. I get not wanting to use it, but that use case is one where the value proposition is actually sky-high.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Hollywood's been accused many times of hollowing out the artistic spirit that should lie at the centre of their business, to the detriment of society at large, but seldom has that been more starkly apparent than in the situation where the business end of things wants to get rid of artists entirely.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

What's ultimately convinced me is: 1. The folks who say the point of art is the way it expresses the spirit of the people making the art are absolutely right; art without that spirit is hollow. 2. Making art is good for you, and never moreso, in my experience, than in collaboration with other people

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Hot take: the uptake of genAI in Hollywood is mostly highlighting how the Hollywood movie making business isn't really an artistic industry anymore. I've said this before, but I've been tempted myself to use genAI to create games. I get that it makes multi-disciplinary work easier/cheaper.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

There are SO MANY data points showing how much "the rest of the world" is doing on this front. It's still not enough, but deciding that's the thing that matters most is making the perfect the enemy of the good. We can be less complicit in climate change, or more. I know which I'd prefer.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Extremely common in the field, unfortunately, especially if you want to remain in the field for the long term. I found it illuminating to realize that Cory Doctorow carves out an exception to his generally AI-negative perspective for software development specifically.

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I won't assume somene is cheerleading just because they're silent, but I'll take anything they do say with a grain of salt (and, again, I'm one of those people, so anything I say should be taken with said grain).

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Mike Murphy-Burton @mikemurphyburton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I tend to agree with this, but as someone in the situation myself (tech worker, mid-late career, family to support), I at least want to know that someone feels unease about the mismatch between the problems the technology raises and the social response to it.

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