iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 15/09/2026

It’s just spectacular hubris on the humans’ part.

001

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 15/09/2026

I can’t understand why this is so surprising. A model’s base training set is human generated and we have literally spent millennia trying to figure out how to teach humans not to do bad things and only partially succeeding, with constant spectacular failures. Why would models be easier?

202

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 03/09/2026

If it's alcohol, Al-Anon would be the way to go.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 03/09/2026

Most 12-step programs have an "-anon" mirror group for those in relation to people with the specific disorder the 12 step program deals with. There's also CoDA which deals with codependency (i.e. being in relation to someone with a compulsive disorder) in general.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 26/08/2026

Man, I just feel so hard for the poor bastards who had to deal with those PRs. It's going to be a new rite of passage for software engineers.

030

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 15/08/2026

I feel like if I explained Hungarian notation to a new grad it would basically sound like we used to use leeches and bloodletting to cure diseases.

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 14/08/2026

Just when you think you are out, they pull you back in!

030

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 13/08/2026

Often so much of an exec's job is cleaning up messes that they themselves created through ignoring the overwhelmingly likely consequences of their own actions.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 12/08/2026

This is exactly what I was concerned about when I read about this. If I have Claude proofread my original work and I accept enough of its suggestions (even though they may be no more than your Word-grade grammar suggestions you'd have gotten pre-AI), now suddenly my work is "generated by AI."

320

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 10/08/2026

Man, where the f**k did "load bearing" come from? Someone had to say it a lot for it to show up in the weights the way it has. Can we track down that person and make them pay?

120

Reposted by Paul Vick

Scott Hanselman 🌮 @scott.hanselman.com · 07/08/2026

Couple weeks ago I had my buddy @ericlippert.com on the podcast to talk about his book Fantastic Adventures in Data Structures and Algorithms, and now the book is out! Manning Publications Co. hubs.la/Q03Q9Q9y0 It's on sale right now in early access

hubs.la

Fabulous Adventures in Data Structures and Algorithms - Eric Lippert

Author Eric Lippert introduces fabulous solutions using uncommon algorithms and data structures. There’s a lot more to algorithms than the useful-but-boring recipes you recite for every interview. Th...

26814

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 04/08/2026

...on the C++ compiler team did a lot of hard work to make the optimizer thoroughly tested and regression free, a lot of which was adding determinisism. And LLMs are anything but deterministic. I'm not saying we won't get there. But I'm saying we're a lot further than the analogy implies.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 04/08/2026

...a bug reproduced on, and if it was "retail" then your first step was always to try it on "debug" and see if it was an optimizer bug. There were specific macros you had to use in certain situations to nudge the optimizer in the right direction. This is the big point of divergence. The folks...

120

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 04/08/2026

I am old enough to remember when compilers' assembly output could NOT be blindly trusted, ESPECIALLY when run with optimizations on. When I started, the product I worked on had "debug" (no opt) and "retail" (with opt) builds, and one of the first things you learned to ask was which build...

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 02/08/2026

What if I go, “I’m not saying that I _want_ someone to hack this bank and transfer a million dollars into my account, and I’m not saying that someone _should_… but, boy, it would be really _nice_ if someone did.” Is that ok? Maybe with a “<wink> <wink>” at the end?

021

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 01/08/2026

I've lived under the direct flight path of the Blue Angels in one way or another for about 25 years now (first Cap Hill, now Seward Park) and I have to say, the bloom is definitely off the rose.

000

Reposted by Paul Vick

Reverend Chapman @wadatahmydamie.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

One nice thing about the Cybertruck is that there’s never a question about who gets it in the divorce

2862123

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 27/07/2026

I learned about all this the hard way...

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 22/07/2026

Fond memories of college. Don’t think I ever made it into the “best of” compilations.

(Not that anyone would bother to download it.)

000

I vibe-coded an iOS app to front a website that I use a lot (and doesn't have an app of its own), but it's been annoying enough to fix the bugs and fit-and-finish issues that *I* notice, there's no way I'd turn it loose in the AppStore and have other people start bugging me to fix s**t.

A.I. ‘Vibecoded’ Apps Are Flooding Apple’s App Store

Beyond the massive problem of being found as a needle in a very large haystack, there's the second-order problem of having to support the app if it actually starts being used. Getting something that works is relatively easy. Getting something that's polished and solid and bulletproof is a huge PITA.

nytimes.com

Mobile apps are easy to make with artificial intelligence. That doesn’t mean people are excited to use them.

There is a half-remembered quote I put in my high-school yearbook (!!!) because I liked it so much: "To be a god of something, you have to be able to DO it." If you claim expertise in something solely because you ask the AI, you are just a false god. It's a very real problem.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 19/07/2026

It’s also quite notable that given all the “fall of Western society” BS related to Lupita Nyong'o as Helen, not a bit of hand wringing about her as Clytemnestra. Hm. Why wouldn’t those boys care as much about that? (And I thought Nyong’o did an even more amazing job as her. She slayed. Literally.)

011

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 19/07/2026

And as a former Latin student that had “Arma virumque cano” burned into his brain, I was a little sad there was no man carrying his father on his back as Troy burned.

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 19/07/2026

Saw it today and it was really good. Even had me at one point worrying that those Greek warriors weren’t going to get the gates of Troy open in time…

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 17/07/2026

"I mean, I'm walking along there and I come to the corner and there's this 'DON'T WALK' sign flashing. How dare they? It's a free country. How does someone in the government have the temerity to tell me I can't walk into traffic if I want to? I can do whatever I want."

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 08/07/2026

Steve Jobs killed the Xbox. I think all of the woes trace back to the disastrous launch of the Xbox One. And most of those bad decisions were driven by MSFTs obsession with defeating the iPhone. All the “three screens and a cloud” BS they were feeding themselves.

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 02/07/2026

Something the flood of Microsoft retirement notices on LinkedIn has reinforced is just how *long* the tech boom has been. Yes, ups and downs. But Microsoft had 12k employees when I started there and it felt big. Now it has 228k. There is a *lot* of just... inertia in the industry.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 28/06/2026

In fairness, execs have made this mistake for longer than AI has existed. The previous iteration was "Mistakenly, we thought that by just hiring a lot of smart people and giving them the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product." Also usually ended in tears.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 27/06/2026

Yes, it’s like: Me, prototyping with AI: Yeah! F**k yeah! Me, trying to ship AI code: Well, this sucks.

150

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 20/06/2026

Mostly they were accurate but one said that I was a former Microsoft executive. I wish?

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 18/06/2026

That's not bad. Drinking the prep is bad.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 16/06/2026

In the words of the inimitable Gordon Gekko, "A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place."

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 04/06/2026

This doesn't surprise me at all. I'm constantly wrestling with the fact that Claude is confused by the Java setup on my machine and will waste untold number of tokens figuring out over and over how to run a test. I noticed and tried to fix it but there's no reason I had to do that.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 30/05/2026

...going to dissuade people from doing what they want to do. (Like my friend who married a total trainwreck and later after the divorce I apologized for not saying so and he just shrugged, saying "I wouldn't have listened to you anyway.")

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 30/05/2026

Everyone complains about AI sycophancy, but I'm wondering who are these people whose friends and families are out here telling them that their ideas suck and they're wrong and they shouldn't do such-and-such? In my experience, most bad ideas go unchallenged because we all know we're not...

100

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 29/05/2026

+1,000,000. If there is any constant that has held true over my career, it is that executives: a) never know when to stop, and b) always go way too far. Just as some companies doubled in size (looking at you, Meta) during the pandemic, this is so going to come back to bite them all in the a**.

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 29/05/2026

The thing is, there's a whole crowd of frogs standing on the bank of the river and every time this f**king scorpion stings one of them, they fish the scorpion out of the river. Then he climbs right on the back of the next frog, who says "This time it's going to be different."

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 29/05/2026

"One day you will come to a fork in the road and you’re going to have to make a decision [...] If you go that way you can be somebody. [...] Or you can go that way and you can do something [...] In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do?"

goodreads.com

A quote by John Boyd

Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road and you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. He raised his hand a...

000

Paul Vick @panopticoncentral.net · 26/05/2026

My anecdotal impression from talking to folks is that companies are definitely on the hire and looking for people but are also being incredibly conservative and bouncing folks for minor imperfections. Maybe because layoffs make them paranoid about needing perfection, maybe "many fish in the sea"?