iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 4h

What I can't understand is how the ProJo (owned by USA Today) is both paywalled (I'm happy to pay) but also FLOODED with ads, like some kind of 2010-era slop provider, to the point of being *unreadable* (and makes my laptop spin more than any AI tool can).

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 7h

FTFY, Bloomberg, you're welcome.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I’m just marveling at Brockman’s signature. IYKYK.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

People think only the West Coast hustles, but this tiling in the Brown *gym* is giving me anxiety.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Thanks to GenAI, we can now revive all kinds of ancient, dead, great software. Borning has rebuilt ThingLab in 2026, but we don't need to be him! Some amazing thing from 1978? We can have it work again. (Like I got Claude to write code for the Apollo AGC.) gist.github.com/shriram/4c39...

gist.github.com

Artemis II Tribute Using Apollo Guidance Computer display

Artemis II Tribute Using Apollo Guidance Computer display - README.md

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

BC = Before Claude AD = gli Anni di Dario (Rhymes with gli Anni di Piombo, if you want to take the "existential risks to humanity" seriously.)

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

One of the (additional) issues w/ skin-tone emoji is that they don't make sense if you're using them to refer to others. This message is being sent to 4 people, two of whom most definitely don't have this skin-tone.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

500 years ago this would have been a plate of pure poison created by a rival family whose eldest son was a cardinal and whose younger sons were all actively in the process of buying out the cardinals to rig the conclave, no question. The papacy has come a long ways.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There's something so dystopian about this image, like something out of a 70s evil-villian-in-a-lair flick. You wouldn't at all be surprised if the caption read "A scene from «Doctor Omega Addresses the Nations» showing the mad scientist holding the world hostage".

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Having agents make phone calls to (eg) restaurants a loss. It exposes a lack of an API. Restos will be overwhelmed and buy agents to handle the calls. Two giant software stacks will churn taking OOM more time and energy to imprecisely do what an API call could have nailed. ↵

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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026

I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility

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Global Cricket @somuchcricket.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I apologise for the spelling errors in the previous post, I had told my daughter I would be helping her with her homework in 30 seconds and she was counting down while I typed.

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Domestique @domestiquecycling.com · 27/09/2026

🇸🇰 Slovakia will start its team masseur in today's elite Worlds road race. 🗣️ "Our participation will be purely formal. We will have representation in the form of a person who is here and who formally meets the conditions." 📰 www.domestiquecycling.com/en/news/slov... 📸 Cor Vos

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I have a professional and personal interest in accessibility for the visually-impaired. Matthew Shifrin's "Blind Guy Travels" is an outstanding podcast that is unfortunately way too short. Shifrin does a bunch of amazing stuff, like LEGO for the blind. www.radiotopia.fm/podcasts/bli...

radiotopia.fm

Blind Guy Travels Podcast — Radiotopia

Blind Guy Travels invites you into life without sight. Join host Matthew Shifrin as he experiences a Marx Brothers comedy, creates an online dating profile, collaborates with LEGO to develop instruc...

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is a strange ad (from Frankfurt airport). Is Workday actually promising 100% perfect AIs? Can I have some of what they're drinking? (-:

"[E]ine KI, die zu 99 % richtig liegt, ist zu 100 % ein Problem."
"An AI that's 99% right is 100% a problem."

"[KI-Ag]enten, die die Aufgaben richtig erledigen."
"[AI ag]ents that get the job done right."

"[It's] a new work day."

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Looking at my flight map the other day and remembered that for decades there was a whole panic about the Bermuda Triangle, centered on the Sargasso Sea, and then we just quietly…forgot all about it. Please tell me that there are truthers preserving it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda...

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Rhode Island Current @rhodeislandcurrent.com · 26/09/2026

Want to get paywall-free news about Rhode Island politics and policy at 6 a.m. six mornings a week? All you have to do is subscribe! newsletters.rhodeislandcurrent.com/subscribe

newsletters.rhodeislandcurrent.com

Home | Rhode Island Current

Stories that matter now

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

When I'm asked to do something by scammy conferences/orgs, I reply expressly indicating that I REFUSE to do it. At the very least I want an unambiguous written record of my position. Well, I used to; now I mark them as spam. If enough of us do, nobody will see their messages.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

People say that college doesn't teach you any useful skills. I disagree. For instance, this semester onward I'm requiring my students to reference all variables using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. No "S as in Sam" escapes either. We go hard mode. Plan to add to learning objectives.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I hadn't previously noticed the German convention of using a colon to separate the gender-specific suffix…

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

How long before someone a recipient realizes they're talking to a bot and convinces it to purchase 10,000 lawnmowers (or lorries of rice, for @nameshiv.bsky.social )? Oh wait, it's Gemini, it can't access anything Google — so just get a Google credit card and you should be all set.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Intrigued by Nandakishor m's Laya model (roughly, a FOSS version of Jev). One potential use is for coding in the sense of analyzing texts and assigning codes—something researchers who deal with qualitative data do all the time. So overnight I set off two rough experiments: ↵

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This is a great piece and I deeply resonated it. I've routinely resisted the mindless push towards "interdisciplinarity" while becoming more and more *myself*…This gives me a term, and crystallizes, my views about my own style of thought. HT @lpachter.bsky.social journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

journals.plos.org

“Antedisciplinary” Science

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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026

Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.

apnews.com

https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

After doing balanced binary search trees, I did tries in class on Monday. Introduced it by saying "this is Brown, even our trees are non-binary". Mentioned it at home and my kid cautioned me that if Trump hears that, he'll say we're making trees trans and cut even more funding.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I've never not had an insightful interaction with Quinn Wilton. This talk, "The Graveyard of Good Ideas", is an absolute delight. I can't describe it; just listen to the first 5 mins and if it doesn't grab you…I dunno, you're just not my kind of nerd. (-: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovlQ...

youtube.com

The Graveyard of Good Ideas - Quinn Wilton | ElixirConf US 2026

YouTube video by Code Sync

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razorgirl @razorgirl.diy · 22/09/2026

Now that I'm back from the woods, I'm trying Jev with my datalog engine to tag identifiers with whether they correspond to sensitive data (PII, secrets, etc), to use as part of taint tracing, and it's really promising so far. This is the part of static analysis that always needed a human before

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I used to feel sympathy (and fellow-feeling) for people mad at AI progress, but increasingly I'm just annoyed at folks who use yelling in my replies as their emotional support animal. OpenAI "just produced a proof". Just! Of a Clay Inst problem! And so sure NO understanding will ensue in, say, 6mo?

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

People on Mastodon and Bluesky get hella mad at me for getting my hands dirty with AI. But I believe, as a professor, I have an *obligation to my students* to stay on top of what is happening in the tech world. Sometimes I deeply disbelieve in it, like blockchain, so I mostly just read. ↵

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I suspect a lot of folks speculating on AI solving P/NP have not taken a serious complexity theory class. We should, e.g., treat "relativization" as a shibboleth: if you know what that is, great, I'm *maybe* interested in hearing from you; if you don't, perhaps start learning, stop posting?

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

My poorly-informed take on Jev, which seems pretty impressive, is that it gives us ITTT (If This Then That) on steroids.

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Man in Business Suit Levitating @dfeldman.org · 21/09/2026

New toy project I’ve been having Claude crunch on: bike through real cities using data sourced from OpenStreetMap (with heavy interpretation, not meant to be all that accurate - but you can turn and go anywhere)

Cyclist on a street lined with bollards, a woman is jogging by, two other people on the left, awnings, cream brick, trees

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It boggles my mind that there are this many people on Bluesky who actually understand some of the math behind modern AI, and yet most of the people who respond to me get hella mad if I refuse to act as if that they're mere stochastic parrots and not an iota more. Wrong follow-lists.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

In a first, today I was staring at a piece of AI generated code that had a subtle bug, and then realized the AI had gotten it right and I'd introduced the bug while editing it. DMs are open, AMA about software engineering.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Best argument in favor of Anthony Jeselnik's book club. I found a few essays mildly interesting and sometimes insightful, but then hit a wall when I (a completionist) simply couldn't finish a collection, then realized I was bored and annoyed. Go ahead, cancel me. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/17/b...

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I'm corresponding with a person where I'm certain the writing is AI; they say absolutely not, they spent an hour on it; but the rest of the reply has the same smell. They seem to really want me to respond, so I presume they're telling the truth. Have people ALREADY lost writing?

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Went to buy my kid a gift from this fantastic, beloved institution (Kinderladen Wirth, Mainz) that I've been going to for decades (and my kid has fond memories of too), was confused by the closed doors, and then discovered this. )-: *I'm* heartbroken, and I don't even live here!

After more than 100 years,
WiRTH Der Kinderladen unfortunately had to close
on December 30, 2025
.

On this page, we collect impressions and memories that have accumulated over the decades. Enjoy dreaming!
Warmest regards,
The Demmler-Wirth Family

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Torsten „Teggy“ Grust @teggy.org · 14/09/2026

Listened to the latest episode of the Type Theory for All podcast (www.typetheoryforall.com/episodes/pl-...) which was absolutely great. Now have the following pinned on my office wall, lest I forget. Thanks, @shriram.bsky.social.

"And our goal in life needs to be to be able to beat the averaging machine. To be able to have a thought that the averaging machine could not produce, [...]

If all we're doing is what the averaging machine does, then we might as well be replaced by the averaging machine.

Right?"

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

"Alpha", "Higher Ground", "Fulcrum"… It's becoming increasingly difficult to tell from the names whether something is a Nouvelle Alternate Unschooling School or a Megachurch.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I've been crystalizing some advice for first-year college students: "Advice to the New College Student in the AI Era". Thesis: "the purpose of going to college is to emerge as close to middle-aged as possible". docs.google.com/document/d/e...

docs.google.com

Advice to the New College Student in the AI Era

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Great, the Mastercard I've been using for years with Deutsche Bahn no longer works. Found out the hard way at the airport. But DB takes PayPal, forcing a new payment rail onto my phone. Prolly saves them a % and pushes it on to me (fair) but also eliminates customer benefits of CCs.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

OMG YouTube has this wonderful little easter egg on at least one cricket video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIfw...).

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Fisler, Littman, & I have an upcoming CACM op-ed: "Teaching Novice Computing and Programming in the Agentic AI Era". Based on our experimental course+research. We argue that the «flaky compiler» is a useful metaphor for course design. Details in preprint: cs.brown.edu/people/sk/Pu...

cs.brown.edu

Teaching Novice Computing and Programming in the Agentic AI Era

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Setting up for my DE trip, I spent a chunk of my evening combatting dumb bugs in BOTH the LH site *and* DB app. I really don't like the "…and Europe regulates" meme, but man: every bit of legalese was coded *perfectly*; basic functionality (add a credit card! to PAY YOU!), SOL.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I should say: MY motivation for this was having homework assignments in my PL class asking students to understand iterators vs generators vs goroutines vs async, and realizing I was struggling to understand even just async. Pulled that thread; sweater fell apart.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Super excited to share "A Design Space Exploration of Async/Await". How differently does async/await behave across today's languages? (More than you might expect!) And what *is* "structured concurrency"? Check out our ~interactive~ blog post introducing the paper: cel.cs.brown.edu/blog/design-...

cel.cs.brown.edu

A Design Space Exploration of Async/Await

Every language pitches async/await as synchronous-looking code, and the same two keywords appear everywhere. But behind the shared syntax hide nine independent design decisions, and no two of seven mo...

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Shriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Saw this license plate the other day. Could have been really interesting…but for an off-by-1 error.

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