Posts by xgranade@wandering.shop
(DIR) Post #B1wBaECbYFLStZPEa8 by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-04T01:50:48Z
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Look, lots of folks love to compare AI to quantum computing, and I get it — the hype cycles are hyping. But you can learn how to do quantum computing! And we have actual mathematical theorems that prove that what you learn is correct!I can, and do, critique the pedagogical *methods* often used in quantum computing, but that's quite aside from that there's something to engage in pedagogy about, which just isn't true for LLMs.
(DIR) Post #B1wBaF4UJuRlagcGZM by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-04T01:52:40Z
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The closet you get is there being skills about how to build LLMs, but that's really not the same thing. There's actual theory there, math describing how to build LLMs, but none of that translates to whatever the entire fuck hell "prompt engineering" and "vibe coding" are.
(DIR) Post #B1wBaFwj4FpeItza6q by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-04T04:20:30Z
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Two things can be, and in fact are, both true:• AI is unethical whether it works or not.• AI doesn't work.
(DIR) Post #B1wBaKSmH1qaJT1Eci by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-04T04:23:15Z
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I tend to focus on the latter more than I should, including upthread. That's on me.But it's also just absolutely stunning to me that people keep. thinking. they. work. I've kind of priced in people being unethical monsters — I still hate it, but I'm less stunned by it. It's the antiintellectualism of "fuck evidence, LLMs work" that keeps slapping my neurons with lemon juice and salt.
(DIR) Post #B1wBaOkILqEhaxFHU0 by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-04T04:26:36Z
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At the end of the day, people acting unethically is more important than people being wrong on the internet, and it's not like people being wrong on the internet should surprise me by now.But this all has the peculiar thing of watching brains just melt in real time all around me, and fuck if I don't get stuck on that some times.
(DIR) Post #B1zTHmGN4UGngDOoXg by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-05T20:32:13Z
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Of course within-repo dependencies in pyproject.toml are backend-specific. I don't even want a monorepo, it's just a transitory state between "everything is one large wheel" to "there are now a reasonable number of wheels."
(DIR) Post #B1zTHn5Q0h6SEXHa6q by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-05T20:40:06Z
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Me: Python packaging has improved so much!Also me: manages to step on every remaining rake, builds a few new rakes, lays them out carefully, then steps on them.
(DIR) Post #B1zTHnqvA56IbrVW9Q by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-05T20:41:21Z
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Don't get me wrong, the first part is still true and I believe it not a single bit less.But also, wow some if the remaining rakes aren't ideal for stepping on.
(DIR) Post #B24G7TCFSM0h5cLDGK by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-08T01:54:54Z
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This is wild to me in juxtaposition to watching all of corporate tech decide that CSAM is OK, apparently, if it's Elon Musk making it.The cognitive dissonance needed to both believe that what Musk is doing is OK, *and* that anyone making anything even adjacent to sex needs to be chased off the corporate internet is just... it's a lot.https://www.404media.co/github-ban-suspension-adult-modding-games-illusion/
(DIR) Post #B24G7Xe2uwceszNT96 by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-08T02:00:52Z
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I'll admit to finding this one especially worrying, too: it's repos that are related to sexual themes but not in and of themselves sexual — like mod tools for hentai games.How large a space do we need to carve out around sex before corporate infrastructure is OK with it? *checks notes* Oh. I see.
(DIR) Post #B2C2dpBpNRh8TPMEKm by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-12T01:18:25Z
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@aud Hell, even if they stay on there that logic doesn't at all justify *using a single corporate service* instead of running their own infrastructure. No government agency should communicate in a way that you must sign a *specific* third-party terms of service in order to receive their communications.That pretty much mandates setting up their own fediverse instances, or trying to figure out how to use ATProto without depending on Bluesky ToS.
(DIR) Post #B2C2dqM92ZXe5hBz3Q by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-12T01:20:46Z
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@aud If they want to mirror on closed networks like Twitter and Bluesky, I honestly couldn't be arsed for the most part — the CSAM shit definitely hits the bar for "don't even mirror," but we wouldn't have even gotten here if governmental agencies hadn't normalized "use this *specific* third-party to communicate with us or fuck off."
(DIR) Post #B2ONcvcmOggz4htgVU by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-18T00:11:58Z
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Two things I've realized in today's Arcalibre work:• Calibre makes far more assumptions than I'd realized about how the project is laid out on the filesystem. That makes sense for how early Calibre versions were distributed, but breaks a lot of assumptions that were much later made by PEP 517.• Some Calibre features involving fetching updates send an installation-specific UUID to a remote server. It's not the biggest privacy issue, but it's not trivial either.
(DIR) Post #B2Uebalx1evc1FRgMC by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-21T00:53:23Z
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(DIR) Post #B2ixKEGzl9FdyWNwbQ by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-27T22:11:22Z
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On one hand, I don't want to create Discourse again. On the other, the Python Developers Survey has been fuming enough I want to livetoot it.Again, I love the PSF, but I deeply worry about how cozy it is with AI, and wish that more folks in a position of influence to change things at the PSF would spend that power opposing AI. (I know some of y'all already do, and thank you from the bottom of my cold, dead heart.)
(DIR) Post #B2ixKN8SoEm5SfSl3Q by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-27T22:16:21Z
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Since I'm about to critique the fuck out of this survey, let me start by saying I know a lot of good folks worked on putting this survey together. My point is not to level a personal critique, but to complain about where the soup of institutional mandates, corporate pressure, and personal resistance landed.With that caveat firmly in place: we're off to a great start already.(NB: there's a lot more languages listed, too many for a single screenshot.)
(DIR) Post #B2ixKh9uMZoVYwIC5A by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-27T22:18:20Z
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"It's complicated."(This is not a critique, it's a shitpost at my own expense.)
(DIR) Post #B2ixL0I3EWcIthFSue by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-27T22:19:01Z
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Some of my gray hairs are named after Python point-releases.
(DIR) Post #B2ixLNeAOSyPKwlx4q by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-27T22:21:04Z
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This one is legit complicated. The Python Developers Survey is hugely influential, such that asking valid questions can also come off as push polling. Users learning about Python from AI chatbots are in for some very *very* nasty surprises, but wrong or right, that's what some folks do and it's worth measuring that.Really, this one points me towards thinking that sociologists skilled in administering ethical survey methods should enter the chat.
(DIR) Post #B2ixLpKHTzhhBNgSy8 by xgranade@wandering.shop
2026-01-27T22:24:17Z
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What is work, anyway? Like, is open-source maintenance and development "work" if it's unpaid, or is that "personal"? Is it "work" if it's big enough to have dependent projects downstream?The answers to this question *will* get discussed in boardrooms, but it's... I honestly don't know how to answer it even for myself.