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Weston Renoud

@theducky.com
263 followers 285 following 207 posts

he/him/they/them 📈 born at 345 ppm CO2 ⛴ hydrographer 💻 software engineer (C++/Python) 🗺 planoterrestrialist, and I'm serious about it 🦮 dad - auntie to my friends' kids 🐘 mapstodon.space/@wrenoud

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Reposted by Weston Renoud
Amadi Lovelace @amaditalks.bsky.social · 11h
Open Office has existed for years and wasn't vibe coded with a shitty AI that some people are worshipping as a deity.
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onion person @junlper.beer · 10/10/2026
this is the ultimate end point of capitalism, ai will completely atomize everyone and there will be zero shared experiences. there will be no culture, only pure consumption. this must be resisted
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 23/09/2026
Sounds like an addict. And this seems very much by design.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 23/09/2026
"I'm not a bad person or worker. I just needed a little boost and turned to AI to help me which eventually led to my downfall," the contractor told 404 Media.
404media.co
People Training OpenAI’s AI Fired for Using AI to Train the AI
OpenAI has thousands and thousands of contractors helping improve the company's AI models. Multiple contractors have been fired for using AI to train the AI.
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Katie Hinde @mammalssuck.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
"The whole “Oh no, our models went rogue” thing … When a bridge collapses, you don’t analyze whether the bridge was ethical or sentient or why it decided to collapse. You ask, who is the person who built this bridge to be so flimsy?" www.wired.com/story/one-of...
wired.com
One of AI’s Fiercest Critics Says All the Doom Talk Is ‘Meant to Distract Us’
Timnit Gebru argues that AI companies are stoking fears of extinction to avoid discussing actual harms, like autonomous weapons.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 12/09/2026
My 2025 talk at #FOSS4G EU is up online! It was a really fun opportunity to share about hydrography. One of the points in my introduction was that hydrographic data is only special to a point, and then more general geospatial techniques can and should be employed. Intersectional geospatial!
youtu.be
FOSS4GE 2025 | Adapting Legacy Code with Boost.Geometry: A Hydrographic Perspective
QPS maintains a substantial legacy codebase of approximately 5.5 million lines of code, developed over the past 35 years to collect, process, analyze, and deliver hydrographic spatial data. Updating this codebase to incorporate new libraries often requires significant refactoring to accommodate new data types. Recently, we successfully transitioned from an in-house solution to `Boost.Geometry` for spatial indexing. This transition required far less refactoring than anticipated, primarily due to `Boost.Geometry`'s ability to adapt to our existing geometry types. `Boost.Geometry`'s geometry types are concrete implementations of "concepts," which facilitate the adaptation of user-defined geometry types to seamlessly integrate with its algorithms and spatial indexing features. In this presentation, I will: - Provide an overview of the unique spatial data we handle in hydrography. - Share our success story of transitioning to `Boost.Geometry`. - Discuss how `Boost.Geometry` enabled us to generalize our spatial indexing. - Demonstrate, through a brief code example, how to use concepts to adapt existing types for use with `Boost.Geometry`. Join me to learn how `Boost.Geometry` can streamline your transition to modern spatial indexing solutions while minimizing codebase disruption. Weston Renoud https://talks.osgeo.org/foss4g-europe-2025/talk/C8EMH7/ Room: SA02 @ 17.07.2025 15:00:00 #foss4ge2025 #GeneralTrack #TransitionToFoss4G
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 04/09/2026
Trump continues to disperse disaster recovery funds based on how states vote, which for any other president or public official, in any other time, in any other country, in any other context would be a morally horrific scandal that would dominate headlines for months.
subscriber.politicopro.com
POLITICO Pro: Trump rejects disaster appeals by four Democratic governors
New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island will have to pay the entire cost of recovery from a major February snowstorm.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 04/09/2026
"no quarter for meat proxies"
reddit.com
Reddit
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
‘You’re just not open minded to listening to how we must teach students to use AI’ No, sir, I am not going to be listening for the ten thousandth time to someone who does not teach/know what havoc gAI is causing to students but feels confident dictating his arrogance to teachers nonetheless
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Tyson @lscpunk.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
If Dolly was our constant reminder that it was Good to be Good, Tim Curry was our reminder that it was Good to be Weird. Embrace your strangeness, sing with Muppets, wear your lingerie with a leather jacket, and fuck with uptight people who hate anything that makes them remotely uncomfortable.
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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.eurosky.social · 21/08/2026
This week, there’s been a lot of chatter here (and doubtless elsewhere, ideas, and apparently social media trends, are hegemonic) about so-called ‘AI’ in education. Specifically: should students be taught ‘AI’ to be ready for.. well, there you have it; ready for what, exactly?
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con questi nuovi ritmi americani (she/her) 🏳️‍⚧️🇵🇸🏳 @racheledini.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
I met Jason Arday in induction week in my first permanent academic job, at the University of Roehampton. We had been appointed during the same mass hiring, and spent a week together in more or less useless training sessions that felt like components of some kind of deranged summer camp. 1/
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Matt Ward 🇨🇦 @mattward.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Who the fuck is this even for. What is Google Earth for if not to be an accurate, bullshit-free digital representation of the planet.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 31/07/2026
Happy birthday Marie Tharp! She was a pioneering cartographer and geologist that produced the first full picture of plate tectonics and their impact on the seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Mug full of coffee, with a picture of Marie Tharp smoking a cigarette in front of her map. Computer screens behind the mug showing various hydrographic data.Back of the mug with the quote: "I had a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to piece together: mapping the world's vast hidden seafloor. It was a once-in-a-lifetime—a once-in-the-history-of-the-world—opportunity for anyone, but especially for a woman in the 1940s."
~ Marie Tharp
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 14/07/2026
More & more of our culture now exists only in digital form … but libraries can’t preserve what they don’t own. As books 📚, music 🎵, film 🎞️, and news 📰 shift from ownership to licensing, long-term access is becoming harder to guarantee. 🔗 www.currentaffairs.org/news/who-wil... 🧵⬇️
Current Affairs quote card with black masthead at top reading "CURRENT AFFAIRS / A Magazine of Politics and Culture." Below, large serif text reads: "Who Will Save the Internet From Disappearing?" Current Affairs wordmark appears at the bottom in pink.Current Affairs quote card with black masthead at top reading "CURRENT AFFAIRS / A Magazine of Politics and Culture." Below, Chris Freeland is quoted in large serif text that reads: "Yes, the news used to be a public good. It has a lot of protections in the Constitution. Now it's treated as just another commodity." Current Affairs wordmark appears at the bottom in pink.Current Affairs quote card. Mark Graham is quoted in large serif text that reads:  "So social media platforms replace the prior primary news sites as destinations, and now AI is quickly becoming an important source, and I think in the near term, the dominant way that we're going to be informed. And so, if these AI systems are only getting their material from these non-paywalled sites that are publicly available, a significant percentage of that material will be produced by authoritarian governments, outright mis- and disinformation, produced by corporate interests that have a particular and strongly biased perspective, hyperpartisan, and it's not going to provide us with a depth and a breadth of an understanding of the balance of perspectives that is required for us to be able to have a true understanding of the world that we live in." Current Affairs wordmark appears at the bottom.Current Affairs quote card. Chris Freeland is quoted in large serif text that reads: "Yes, the news used to be a public good. It has a lot of protections in the Constitution. Now it's treated as just another commodity." Current Affairs wordmark appears at the bottom in pink.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 13/07/2026
Evelyn Uuemaa showed a very similar plot in her talk at #Foss4ge2026 titled "Teaching geoinformatics when tools are no longer the challenge" but with students fully allowed to use AI. talks.osgeo.org/foss4g-europe...
Screenshot
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 13/07/2026
Students are using AI despite being concerned about it's negative impact on their learning.
youtube.com
Before you continue to YouTube
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NPR @npr.org · 12/07/2026
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham died Saturday evening after a "brief and sudden illness. n.pr/4wCsmD4
n.pr
US Sen. Lindsey Graham has died after a brief and unexpected illness, his office says
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham died Saturday evening after a "brief and sudden illness.
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NPR @npr.org · 09/07/2026
The memo from the Smithsonian's secretary, Lonnie Bunch, responded to a White House report that calls the National Museum of American History driven by "a radical, activist ideology." n.pr/4bfEYb4
n.pr
Smithsonian chief emphasizes 'accuracy and integrity' after White House report
The memo from the Smithsonian's secretary, Lonnie Bunch, responded to a White House report that calls the National Museum of American History driven by "a radical, activist ideology."
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 01/07/2026
I love this conference. I get to just be really nerdy with fellow geospatial people.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 30/06/2026
Appreciated this last slide from the Tuesday keynote from Dr Mihai Daniel Niță #FOSS4GE2026
Instead of conclusions...
We are living in a digital
revolution era; it is up to our
generation to keep our
expertise level high and
integrate technology without
loosing our humanity

"Once, men turned their
thinking over to machines in
the hope that this would set
them free. But that only
permitted other men with
machines to enslave them."
- DUNE
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Grantham Research Institute at LSE @granthamlse.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
We regret that our event on Extreme Heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world has been cancelled due to the red extreme heat warning issued by the UK Met Office. Our apologies to everyone who was planning to attend the event.
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
New: Researchers have quantified how easy AI search is to manipulate. Just 13 words buried in a random Reddit comment can poison AI search results. They suggest this is not easy to stop: "The way you can attack these systems is so much dumber than you think it is" www.404media.co/it-is-trivia...
404media.co
It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests
"We show that a tiny snippet—just 13 words—of retrieved text on a UGC website like Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora, or Facebook can change AI agents to output spam / scam content pretty consistently."
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Digital Brain @yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
African wildcat experiences ice for the first time and has the most adorable surprised reaction you'll ever see
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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Started to roll my eyes and say "Here, let me Google that for you" and then remembered that Googling it unlikely to yield a correct answer anymore.
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Leiden Declaration: AI is challenging the core values of mathematics www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2026...
universiteitleiden.nl
Leiden Declaration: AI is challenging the core values of mathematics
In the ‘Leiden Declaration’, an international group of researchers warns that AI is putting fundamental values of the discipline under threat. The rise of AI is forcing mathematics to rethink what mak...
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 26/05/2026
😂
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 23/05/2026
This just gets more relevant.
currentaffairs.org
The Luddites Were Right
Gavin Mueller’s “Why You Should be Breaking Things at Work” makes a persuasive case for the Luddites. So why have so many people—including your favorite Communist philosophers—insisted that they were wrong?
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Juanma is Creating Lightly 🎨🖌😬 @creatinglightly.art · 23/05/2026
The only thing that will stop braindead "LLM is my hammer so everything looks like a nail" usage, is money. Can't wait for people to realise they're renting a subsidised private jet to go to work. The moment they have to pay for token usage will spark "isn't there a cheaper option?" Yes. No LLMs.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 23/05/2026
I really want a pithy name or symbol so I can get it on a shirt. Even knowing the luddites ultimately failed, I’m still quite interested in the comparison. Their message is still being referenced and influencing discussion to this day.
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Got heckled by a guy at a panel today for calling for a Luddite praxis in education so I must be doing something right :)
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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
He shouted something like, "And how'd that go for them?" to which I admitted the Luddites were defeated by the early industrialists and their allies in the government and that I refused to let today's tech bros win and foreclose my future the future of my children.
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WIRED @wired.com · 21/05/2026
GitHub is just the latest victim of TeamPCP, a gang that has carried out a spree of software supply chain attacks that has impacted hundreds of organizations. www.wired.com/story/teampc...
wired.com
A Hacker Group Is Poisoning Open Source Code at an Unprecedented Scale
GitHub is just the latest victim of TeamPCP, a gang that has carried out a spree of software supply chain attacks that has impacted hundreds of organizations.
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Josh Gondelman @joshgondelman.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Hi! This published on Friday afternoon, and I've shared it a bunch over the weekend, but I had a lot of fun writing it, so I'm bumping it another time in case maybe some folks missed it! Okay thanks!
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404 Media @404media.co · 16/05/2026
“Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish?” Someone in the crowd yelled, “AI SUCKS!” www.404media.co/ucf-ai-comme...
404media.co
Students Boo Commencement Speaker After She Calls AI the ‘Next Industrial Revolution’
A commencement speaker at the University of Central Florida was booed, with graduating humanities students yelling out, "AI SUCKS!"
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 16/05/2026
"Every time I reach orgasm, it’s like an agonizing game of Hungry Hungry Hippos."
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Madhusudan 🦉 Katti @leafwarbler.myatproto.social · 09/05/2026
“officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.”
apple.news
A data center drained 30M gallons of water unnoticed — until residents complained about low water pressure — POLITICO
Residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed low water pressure last year. The utility discovered two unaccounted-for water connections at one of the nation’s largest data center campuses.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 09/05/2026
Sawyer Island circa Oct 2008. NOAA Ship Fairweather installed a tide gauge on the island while surveying Endicott.
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Dr Dan Shugar 🇨🇦 @watershedlab.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
This is one of those "wait for it" things: simulation of the #TracyArm landslide tsunami by Pat Lynett for our paper that came out this week in @science.org. This one is from the vantage point of a jetski at sea level. 🧪⚒️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Joanna "Ms. Crow" Blackhart [They/Them] @joannablackhart.com · 01/05/2026
holy shit.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 26/04/2026
That feeling when you think you lost something but then discover you stowed it somewhere responsible... Traveling, and I shoved some stuff in my jacket. Went to move it to my bag and could not find it!!! Was about to backtrack when I saw I'd already popped it in my bag and forgot.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 25/04/2026
been thinking a lot about this 1972 Weizenbaum paper a lot lately, especially when i hear people say things like access to llms reduce inequality by leveling the playing field, solve the mental health crisis & the loneliness pandemic, etc, all of which are problems rooted in very technology itself
a screenshot reads: The structure of the typical essay
on "The impact of computers on so-
ciety" is as follows: First there is an
"on the one hand" statement. It tells
all the good things oomputers have
already done for society and often even
attempts to argue that the social order
would already have collapsed were it
not for the "computer revolution."
This is usually followed by an "on the
other hand" caution which tells of cer-
tain problems the introduction of com-
puters brings in its wake. The threat
posed to individual privacy by large
data banks and the danger of large-
scale unemployment induced by indus-
trial automation are usually mentioned.
Finally, the glorious present and pro-
spective achievements of the computer
are applauded, while the *dangers al-
luded to in the second part are shown
to be capable of being alleviated by
sophisticated technological fixes. The
closing paragraph consists of a plea
for generous societal support for more,
and more large-scale, computer re-
search and development. This is
usually coupled to the more or less
subtle assertion that only computer
science, hence only the computer sci-
entist, can guard the world against the
admittedly hazardous fallout of applied
computer technology.
In fact, the computer has had very
considerably less societal impact than
the mass media would lead us to be-
lieve. Certainly, there are enterprises
like space travel that could not have
been undertaken without computers.
Certainly the computer industry, and
with it the computer education indus-
try, has grown to enormous propor-
tions. But much of the industry is
self-serving. It is rather like an island
economy in which the natives make a
living by talking in each other's laundry.
The part that is not self-serving is
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 25/04/2026
OR JUST WRITE THE THING YOURSELF FOR FUCK'S SAKE IT WILL TAKE LESS TIME THAN WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS IS mashable.com/article/sinc...
mashable.com
Sinceerly is an AI tool to 'un-AI' your writing
A new ouroboros in the tech world has emerged.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 25/04/2026
ditto. Really well written.
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Luna @moonbase.lgbt · 25/04/2026
this echoes so many of the feelings i've been increasingly feeling over the last couple of years
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shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
i’ve worked in tech more than 20 years. it has never been more ridiculous.
exchange on X 

Christoffer Bjelke @chribjel 
We hired a junior developer to write the simple code, so we don't have to spend a ton of money on tokens for those basic/primitive tasks

Sameer goel @sameer_goel
Great, so now we're optimizing LLM costs by inventing employees again.
Full circle innovation.
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Ilhan Omar @ilhanmn.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
You can’t make this stuff up. The most corrupt first family of all time.
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 23/04/2026
Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.
wired.com
USAID Whistleblower Says It Was Even Worse Than People Knew
Political appointees wanted a quiet drawdown, the whistleblower says. DOGE wanted an execution.
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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 21/04/2026
"What is LLM Temperature?!" "That is correct, and oh my gosh you've just hit the Daiky Double." www.ibm.com/think/topics...
ibm.com
What is LLM Temperature? | IBM
Temperature is a parameter for adjusting the output of LLMs. Temperature controls the randomness or creativity generated by LLMs during inference
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Jacob Harris @jacobharr.is · 21/04/2026
Seems like a more convoluted way of saying that people have a lifetime of context vs. my just-spawned instance of word pachinko
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