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Thomas A. Powell

@tpowell.bsky.social
127 followers 156 following 334 posts

Long time web guy. Founder of pint.com, zingchart.com, zinggrid.com, and numerous others. Lecturer at UCSD CSE cse.UCSD.edu specializing in Software Engineering and Web Dev

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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 5h
People waiving away all the “little errors” from AI as acceptable should be cursed to eat only at restaurants where they treat food that way. Hand wash? Refrigerate? Expiration dates? You’re absolutely right, my mistake. Oh you’re barfing 🤮 ? Well not everybody did so stop your complaining
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 9h
Luthen's speech in Andor is quite relatable for many SWEs these days when it comes to AI youtu.be/-3RCme2zZRY?...
youtu.be
Andor | Luthen Rael’s Monologue | Disney+
YouTube video by Star Wars
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Yes let them (Iran) “take out”Los Angeles or San Diego. Seems a bit concerning as a San Diegan. youtu.be/FurUNgg5L7c
youtu.be
'Small Price to Pay': Trump says Iran can 'take out' San Diego, Los Angeles
YouTube video by CBS 8 San Diego
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Come now Andy knowing what one is talking about is solely reserved for people from bigtech or with huge social counts. Now that those folks know the ills of CSS in JS everything said by “little web folks” warning of this is irrelevant as this is clearly an all new discovery. It’s just the law 😏
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
That the US broadcast of the USA-Mexico game missed showing the 3rd goal because they are pulled away and yapping says all you need to know about how much American TV broadcasters understand this sport.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Slopware wasn’t invented by GenAI we’ve had plenty of it before. We just can manufacture so much more now quite quickly & efficiently. It’s actually Slopware Engineering! Note not denying AI use in proper SWE here distinguishing between the creation of useful software and slopware
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I hope you find my AI Slop vs Your Codebase GIF worth a chuckle.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
6+ months ago I'd GenAI whatever webdev silliness I wanted. I hid my shame, but now if you ever find yourself wanting to know how a <blink> or <marquee> tag would be abused in 2026 enjoy. Warning: they get worse as you go profpowell.github.io/blink-wc/dem... profpowell.github.io/marquee-wc/d...
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I have pursued enough outside of CS for decades to to know enough to see clearly we deeply need help from non-STEM folks. CS is objectively not sense making well for the public around these AI changes. I fear we simply ill equipped in CS to handle the moment properly w/o much more collaboration.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
His centrists to me is just a non extreme member of any other class maybe pragmatist would be a better grouping to allow for that? It’s not the academics either those spread all camps. Alert. Where’s our humanities people the CS folks fretting AI need some better sorting and historical frames
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Doomers are the those of a cloth so to speak. The religious. Yes some are zealots but many as history of religion go crave the power and money. Accelorationists is his combo of the king/sword and the merchant class. If he feels that’s one group it looks a lot like a fascism.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Just finished Cal Newport’s pod breaking the AI groups up. Like Cal I would be a centrist aware of the harms, but more focused on present than doomerism and very much aware of the utility but not reckless in claims or usage. However his labeling are euphemisms by modern specific labels
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Just spent 20mins reading a thread about a torture chamber for AI being coded because LLMs supposedly feel pain. I felt mental pain during it, so I stopped.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Gonna ask AI I mean SI tomorrow if we should also rename French Fries to Freedom Fries like we did before under W. Seems only appropriate.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
25% for two orgs? Do they disclose which two? Really want to know because few orgs or even govts can afford billions burnt like that. Me thinks some of this is the old Microsoft, Amazon,… are not just my vendors they’re my customers too kind of shenanigans. If it’s US Gov even more yikes!
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
My sky my sky my sky is on fire 🔥😎
A view on San Diego over the ocean and La Jolla with a red sky
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Oh it is 10ks of AI agent go bezerk incidents. This might explain the absolute hammering of zingchart.com months ago. It was a bot for sure. Used our entire pre allocated host budget in a single day. I modified spend and the traffic passed. Now I want to look again, log retention though 😞
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Strong agree. It’s a long held opinion for me. example in SWE we act as if a group of humans building code together is some unique challenge. Sure the software medium changes some things but it’s the market, incentives, and dev beliefs around that tend to be much stronger difference makers to me.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Ok sure our agent hacked a bunch of sites, but it was good actually because it shows emerging intelligence, not that we are reckless and not on top of things. Oh and we need lots more money to keep a lid on this cuz this stuff might kill everybody, so trust us we got this.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Just finished a causal rewatch and damn does the movie “don’t look up” totally hit hard now. Watch it again and try to view the comet as a McGuffin that can be anything and see how utterly insightful this movie was.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
So we let AI help do our job, write bed time stories for your kid, message your spouse you are thinking about them, buy stuff you want online, get your news, plan your vacation, do fantasy football picks, and make Kalshi bets… So what do we exactly do? Stringing real examples here btw.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
That Kevin Roose thinks he is some neutral tech journalism truth teller is utterly laughable.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Mom: Who did this!?! All our pictures are vacation ruined? Did you do this Timmy? Timmy: I didn’t do it Mom! It was a rogue agent I swear! Mom: Was it your agent Timmy? Did you forget to close the door and not watch it? Tell the truth! Timmy: No! It got smart and did itself! I swear 🤞😏 Mom:🤨
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
It couldn’t happen here is becoming more like it is and has been happening here.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Fred Brooks said something to the effect that it’s not that writing software isn’t hard, it is, but knowing what software to write is even harder... in the 70s! It took most until Senior Dev to admit human intersection with software is the true hard part not tech. LLMs speed that lesson up.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
AI slop potato is a popular office game you play sending slop back & forth with coworkers. Execs love the speed of the game & size of the potatoes. The game is over when management leaves or if something actually has to get done. Be careful if you don’t play the game hard enough execs may fire you!
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Reposted by Thomas A. Powell
Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
The court filing dug up by @kint.bsky.social is the most They Admit It i have ever seen in my life www.404media.co/doom-loop-op...
404media.co
‘Doom Loop’: OpenAI and Microsoft Admits LLMs Are Destroying the Web and Built on Theft
"Millions of people around the world will soon consider large models ‘hoovering up’ all their work to be an astonishing theft of unprecedented proportions."
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Useful Wikipedia article of the day en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_p...
en.wikipedia.org
Moral panic - Wikipedia
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Funny you say that the intern got shown this PNW fixation did their take two and surprise surprise it was a coffee shop! What a coincidence.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Curious that demo sites for tutorials by Claude often pick Pacific Northwest outdoor gear. I wonder if there could be a statistical reason weighting that direction? Could it be it ingested the mountain of 30+ years of Microsoft MSDN and related docs and tutorial content? 😏
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Sssh OSX is telling me something. This is not a new "bug" around since May. See github.com/openai/codex... just one of many "CLOSED" issues on this problem. SWE at its finest I guess? We can "fix" this by bypassing gatekeeper - codexdown.com/en/codex-mac... Also I hate seatbelts don't you?
OSX Dialog saying Codex.app was not opened and moved to trash because it contains malware.  A bit disturbing wouldn't you say?
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
So we’ve “discovered” that an LLM can be used as fuzzer for web app sec attacks. It’s basically a brute force pen tester in a harness. We have not discovered independent intentionality any more than a coding harness does that writing code you asked for. AI script kiddie swarms are bad though.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
If you rather read a version explaining all this here you go - pivot-to-ai.com/2026/09/10/j... Tl;dr - 💯 manufactured AI doom
pivot-to-ai.com
Jacob Coxon: how to run an AI doomsday media campaign
The AI doomsday is the idea that one day, an artificial intelligence will get so smart it takes over the world! And it’ll kill all the humans, just as a side effect! Pretty scary, huh. You might be…
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Worth a watch if you have some suspicions or questions about just how the latest AI is powerful/doom story went absolutely super heated so so quickly. Hopefully Cal Newport picks over these ideas to bring some east coast CS perspective.
youtu.be
we JUST got played...
YouTube video by Wes Roth
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I remember when we hacked websites ourselves the old fashioned way. now you just use an agent that tries things while you play Roblox and come back after it finds which lazy ass dev didn’t sanitize their inputs. Pfft they call that A. I. - I call it Actual Idiot wrote the app claude “hacked” 🤪 or 🧐?
static.klipy.com
The Simpsons Angry
ALT: The Simpsons Angry
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Claims about AI approaching RSI require I don’t know actual evidence. Not SciFi speculation, not see broad trends, but some actual evidence and today we have zero zilch none. Just broad or vague what-if statements. Why are we not stomping & demanding actual specifics? This is not CS this is BS. 😡
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Here is the start of the Asimov inspired stuff that likely is the safety theater we are currently witnessing
Don’t run the bot if you can’t keep it safe 
The softly should not make destructive changes limit resource use and and refuse actions it can’t know the consequences of
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
For giggles I pulled my copy of a 30 year old book on web bots and agents from my library. You might be surprised by its guidelines for bot use are pretty solid on and mostly ignored by modern folk. The laws are modeled on Asimov and from a simpler time of the web
A book on Internet agents from 1996 that people in 2026 might want to pull some gems from on how to behave 6 laws for web bots that are common sense and informed by ai folks basically control your bot and respect the wishes of others
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The (tech) (social) media right now when it comes to AI — DOOOOOMMM!!!!
static.klipy.com
Tonight at 11:00... Doom!
ALT: Tonight at 11:00... Doom!
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
After reading so many posts the last 3 days about AI I am starting to think the most important undergrad classes I took way back that help me make sense of AI esp when talking with others were History of Religion and Philosophy of the Mind and actually not my Math or CS classes.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
A plausible sentence generator trained for agreement and engagement purposefully validates user’s thinking - real or delusional. It creates a filter bubble of one and that is gonna lead a lot of people to bad places. Bad thinking in, maybe worse thinking out. arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
arstechnica.com
Man told ChatGPT he was feeling delusional. ChatGPT insisted he was Jesus.
Man with bipolar disorder sued OpenAI after surviving ChatGPT-linked suicide attempt.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Listen to the puppet youtu.be/85bAHVIyHGk?...
youtu.be
How AI Hype Spread Like a Religion - J. Raptor Show
YouTube video by Cretaceous Vox
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Remember the good old days back on the bird site when we all used to get enraged about various JS frameworks, programming languages, apps, etc and their misuse? Now that AI sucks all tech rage oxygen we should consider we truly didn’t know how good we had it. 😏
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
For folks so concerned with efficiency & optimization we sure are quite oddly ok with making the equivalent of resource gobbling disposable software for markets of 1. Dev: Behold my hands (really Claude) have wrought this amazing app! World: 🤷🏻‍♂️ 💤🦗 Dev: Fine…another app it is!
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
AI loops on your code base can be the “he choose poorly” from Last Crusade. It can accelerate degradation due to addition w/o proper verification. This idea was documented in the 80s in SWE papers. Now with AI we up the change pace so the effects are felt much sooner - Instant Legacy! Be careful
static.klipy.com
Creepy Skeletal Figure with Long White Hair
Alt: Creepy Skeletal Figure with Long White Hair melting into dust from the Last Crusade it’s instant aging just now for your code
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
So is it an intelligent AI swarm or did you put a harness on hacking tools have it loop with an LLM and intersect it with devs being crazy bad at web app security? It’s the later people & it’s still super bad. It’s like the internet worm from the late 80s & things will go 💥 but this is not AGI! 😡
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
AGI is here just like coding is solved. As in no, no it actually isn’t.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
My feed is blowing up because Bernie has bad AI takes from weirdo tech bro connections. Clearly this has exploded people’s priors about Sanders. This is more about tech weasels infiltrating politics so maybe we should check all political tech advisors as few politicos know tech themselves
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Ok a little iphone-stalgia for you #retro nos4.fun
nos4.fun
Introducing nOS4
Everything you remember. Right in your browser.
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Thomas A. Powell @tpowell.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Motor City is a film you can’t like. You can love it or you can hate it. There isn’t much in between I won’t say much 😏 else about it as not to spoil it either way. If you are unsure imagine if Arnold did an art house revenge film. If that sounds intriguing you’ll want to watch it.
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