Adam DeConinck

10 year old me cried like hell in the theater. #StarTrek

Also, going through the archive, so no idea what I'm gonna post next. Enjoy!

I also have colleagues who are just… not very good writers? Their skills are in other things! But they still need to eg contribute to technical reports.

As long as they check the actual technical data, I’m not going to get grouchy at them for using Copilot or whatnot to polish their prose.

genius is something one must accomplish by means of their works, not because they took a standardized test

“Spock’s World” is in fact excellent, and is especially good if you are a fan of TOS. Duane has such a clear grasp of the voices of all the core characters, it‘s a joy to read.

Ratthi: you…you can’t just call everything “Hostile”

Murderbot, pointing to a bird flying too close for comfort: Hostile One

This reminds me of a quote from Lois Bujold’s Vorkosigan series:

“The trouble with oaths of the form ‘death before dishonor’ is that eventually they sort people into two categories: the dead and the forsworn.”

(May be slightly off, typing from memory)

Formal specs as sets of behaviors Amazon’s recent announcement of their spec-driven AI tool, Kiro, inspired me to write a blog post on a completely unrelated topic: formal specifications. In particular, I wanted to write abou…

New blog post on formal specifications:

surfingcomplexity.blog/2025/07/26/f...

Entirely separate from the rest of your (excellent!) thread:

- Agreed on Fuck Shatner
- I've actually really liked Paul Wesley's Kirk on SNW! Willing to consider him the canonical Kirk at this point

However I can't *stand* video unless it's long-ish form (>20m) and I'm on the couch in a "watching TV" mode.

It's fascinating how different brains process differently!

For example: I can listen to podcasts, but only if I'm *doing* something else, but only if it's not too mentally engaging. Walk the dog, do the dishes, fold the laundry, etc.

One of the fun parts of policy work is that you have a handful of extremely important, esoteric, but load-bearing legal concepts (like fair use) that only ever make it into public consciousness when they're being targeted for destruction, and public opinion about them is entirely outcome-dependent.

Congratulations! That’s a huge milestone and so cool to see

Yes exactly. My own experience, is that these tools are:

- Useful and worthwhile for the careful expert who has reliable ways to ensure quality *outside* the AI tool

- Dangerous for the beginner who doesn’t yet have a full understanding

- Catastrophic for the layperson who sees it as a shortcut

xkcd comic 2347 "All modern digital infrastructure" with one small important block near the bottom replaced with an inclusive pride flag

This feels like the moment at which you reach for the power button. Or potentially a hammer.

Also this. Part of why I really dislike chatbots as an interface to LLMs is because it actively leads people to anthropomorphizing a neural network for generating text.

On the one hand, I’m exasperated that anyone gave their chatbot access to push to prod. I feel like the failure modes of LLMs are fairly well-known at this point, even for business folks if they’re in the AI space.

On the other hand… the product itself is bad and marketed at non-experts.

It’s really worth reading both the linked thread, and the 2-3 days of follow up threads QT’d at the end.

To be clear I don’t think the US would be better off if the Democrats had lost the 2020 election. I just think their 2024 electoral chances would have been.

I continue to subscribe to the (depressing) opinion that the only way the Democrats could have won the 2024 Presidential election…

Would be to not be the party in power from 2021-2023, a period which drove a very high level of backlash against incumbents globally.

Incredible shrinking Cone of Uncertainty! Kartina 2005 vs Helene 2024. Dramatic improvement in hurricane forecasting due to expertise of NOAA scientists at NHC & AOML. Since 2005 forecast error on 5-day track has decreased by ~50%! We often take these accurate forecasts for granted but... 1/

Ha! Today there were only… two hair balls? So it could be worse

I mean I strongly agree. My entire morning was broken up into back-to-back half-hour increments. 😵‍💫

I had 12 meetings today and my brain is completely fried

Wild that the *less* outlandish explanation for this is “the President hates James Comey so much he wants to punish the man’s daughter”

Always the right choice

I think of fossil fuels as humanity’s “black start” — they bought us the ability to figure out renewable energy technologies. But it’s just dumb — expensive, polluting — to keep the diesel generator running once the lights are on.

[last few paragraphs of this]

www.theguardian.com/news/2023/no...

Pity the poor actual physicists who will be getting a whole new breed of crackpot emails from people who think they can skip the actual work and make a breakthrough for the ages.

Also companies really loathe having to go through revisions/iterations of their terms of service, especially if it hints what their next releases are going to be, so they tend to lead with a blanket grant so that they don't tip their hand about what's coming next.

Good explainer thread on why the TOS is really expansive for any kind of online service that touches user data