I know two ways to be wrong very well, but people have more ways to be wrong, and I don't know the rest very well at all. But I'd like to. The first way to be wrong - and the most wrong someone can be - is to make a contradiction. People do this when they get their sums wrong, miscounting how much money to give to a …

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Every computer I see up-close has the same sad story. A mess of files sit on the desktop. In 'Pictures', random pictures sit (the user downloaded them before making a half-hearted attempt to organize) with a few folders, some marked 'holiday' (which one?), and others given names by the computer. Renaming the lot would …

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I heard a rumour once that some DNA is just along for the ride. It does nothing, but since the whole system's there to replicate, it replicates along with the rest. Maybe memetics works the same way. Maybe every language has bits of crap, lying around, not doing anything. Perhaps jokes are memetic dross, hanging around …

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Something stinks about 'social contract theory'. They way we live - the philosophers say - has the form of some contract where we relinquish the complete freedom to do just anything our bodies might do, and in return we acquire peace. This thing, where it's all chilled, and we have an understanding, is very much like a …

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Obsidian is a note-taking app with a proprietary licence. This makes it prone to the usual abusive behaviours. But I only hear good things about it: Obsidian is ultimately just a markdown editor, so you can extract all of your notes in plain text any time you want, without fear of lock-in. It sounds like the users are …

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Formal education in programming is surprisingly useless. Some people with a formal education in 'Computer Science' can tell you about set theory, but can't pick an appropriate database for a project. They can tell you when to represent a number with hex, but can't clone a repo. And worst of all, most of the …

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I am a morlock - a naturally technocratic creature, comfortable with the darkness. When the pandemic hit, I heard the shock waves across the internet, and noticed every day how little my life had changed. It was at times, almost a nice excuse to sit and tap on the keyboard, and make dinner slowly to the sound of Nine …

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Can we stop pretending it's the 80's? I like Unix-style programs. I like the expectation of a manual with every program, instead of every programmer coming up with their own way to telling people how something works. I like being able to ignore licences, and there's no better licence to ignore than the GPL - it will …

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Stepping Stones: rocks to step on, to avoid the surrounding mud or water. When crossing a river, the more stepping stones it has, the better. Walking across six stepping stones feels much better than hopping across three, and hopping across three is better than jumping to one stepping stone in the middle of a river, …

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A fascinating article wandered across my feed, arguing that LLMs like ChatGPT replicate the mechanisms of a psychic's con. 'Fascinating' because it's devilishly clever, and quite seductive, but seems like complete bunkum for the most part. 'People get fooled into thinking LLMs are clever', Baldur Bjarnason says, very …

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