Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

I no longer care to work on any Ruby gems so I've archived all my gems' repositories and added a link to a blog post explaining why: https://po-ru.com/2026/10/18/why-im-no-longer-updating-this-repository

Maintainers of open source projects should be mentoring folks to become their replacements. Not just thinking this is about controlling their project.
I have learned this the hard way for gcc.
You can't just think it is your way or the highway. Also gsoc is NOT a replacement for mentoring inside the project. It should supplement the mentoring that is done, just like an internship.

Also this is not unique to gcc, it is many open source projects.
And then there is the gaming of github stats, the one or two commits in llvm and leave issue. Those are used to gain stats for a job.
Seriously open source is broken because of the gaming of the system.

Even inside companies where you have the person with the most open source commits. Or the person who opened the most issue. Or the person who reviewed the most. (What is funny is that i am that person but I am not trying to play the game of counting, I am just trying to push gcc forward).
At the same time I am mentoring folks both inside and outside of qualcomm on both gcc (and even to a less sense llvm) and performance analysis.
But going back to my original point is mentoring and maintainship overlaps. It is not one or the other but rather both in the same role.

By the time you step down you should have at least mentored a few to be able to take you from you. If you have not you partially failed a as a maintainer as the project will no longer can be maintained in the future.

What makes software engineering so challenging - more often than not - is people.

I've worked with a bunch of technically very capable devs who routinely failed because they couldn't do the people part.

You can't learn to do it on your own.

“We spent a billion dollars to build a room where we splash in the water while smoking weed for a couple years, and came up with a plain black and white Apple Music icon. And oh yeah new font.”

Man the farts in that room must smell sooooo good.

https://youtu.be/1XxNXkOHKZw?si=Q_31xRmnjEc8kKpK

“Dreaming Big”

https://lmnt.me/blog/dreaming-big.html

> What is this? Who are we building for now? Who is that app—generated entirely with AI—actually for? How can someone who “makes” such an app dare to think the value of what a computer merely farted out could possibly be worth a $10/month subscription fee?

@brembs
@PeterKraker

The problem is that it's a Prisoner's Dilemma. If we all stopped, we'd be OK. But if one individual stops, they are severely impacted negatively relative to all of their colleagues.

While the postdoc-myth that one needs a GlamourMag to succeed (get a job, get tenure, get grants) is provably wrong, it is not wrong that one needs publications in legacy (generally corporate) journals to succeed.

The problem is that we really do need proxies for "good science work". (As a member of a hiring committee, I can't read dozens of papers from hundreds of applicants, nor can I judge their quality when they are outside my immediate expertise.) To my knowledge, there isn't an alternative to publishing with the legacy (corporate) journals that I or my trainees (as individuals) can do instead.

If not all legacy journals are evil corporations, then one might be able to say "we will publish in journals X, Y, and Z, but not A, B, and C". (Perhaps someone could compile a list for neuroscience? But that list would need to contain journals at all levels of "impact".)

The only way to fully solve a Prisoner's Dilemma is to change the rules of the game (which can change the structure to something else that is not a Prisoner's Dilemma), but this requires societal infrastructure change. Social codes need to be created that say "publishing your work in non-journal X under condition Y" is sufficient.

#AcademicChatter #AcademicPublishing

Framing the actions of an oppressed people trying to regain their stolen rights as acts of terrorism against the oppressor is a classic and repeated tactic of #colonialism—has been for centuries.

The fact that the media remains willfully ignorant of this behavior today is nothing short of complicity with the oppressor.

“If you don’t use AI you’re going to get left behind.”

Gosh, I sure hope so. I see where you’re going and it sucks.

Here's the thing that bothers me most: plenty of blind people are employed, just not at the level they're qualified for. Underemployment is the quieter crisis. Hiring us for the mailroom when we could run the department isn't inclusion. #NDEAM

@JessicaAnnEng My daughter got in trouble at school for calling out a teacher for using AI to generate a poster.

It was the art teacher.

The poster was to promote a student art competition.

Recently met a tech industry friend whose team got hit by significant layoffs in the past few months. The team hired on some (lower cost?) fresh faces who were tasked to work on their code with Claude #AI. One of the new folks prompted Claude to implement some new feature, and Claude extruded a response which recommended first getting advice from one of the engineers who was laid off.

#FunnyAndSad #tech #ai #siliconValley

RE: https://sfba.social/@skykiss/117494104791735233

Elon has even more blood on his hands.

500,000+ dead children and 200,000+ dead adults isn’t enough for him.

#fuckElon

https://www.impactcounter.com/dashboard?view=table&sort=title&order=asc

More than 400 people are expected to gather outside the United States embassy in London on October 31 in the latest act of mass defiance against the British government’s ban on the #PalestineAction group.

During the initial legal challenge back in 2025, it emerged that Trump and Starmer had spoken by phone twice about Palestine Action in the March of that year. Starmer had requested updates from Police Scotland on the arrests about the damage done to his precious golf course. He briefed Trump regularly and that's why we shall be outside the embassy.

On Halloween Day mass defiance and the mass arrests expected to follow will lay bare the fundamental rights to free expression. I may go for a 'hattrick'

WE SHALL WIN

you can be part of this too.

My DMs are open x x

#FreePalestine
#ISupportPalestineAction

My BSidesPDX talk from today: https://www.youtube.com/live/lvJ0_bDFUa4?t=10447

Shocking! People can't just be automated. We speak with Clarissa Redwine and JS Tan, co-authors of Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry. This snippet is from Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000’s latest episode “My Tech Workers Have Unionized”!

(with @emilymbender)

Some marketplaces are mass-ruined.
Ours is artisanally owned & operated by hand.

Shop Artisans: the better marketplace for handmade goods. https://shop.artisans.coop

I Did the Absolute Bare Fucking Minimum For Overall Harm Reduction and Incremental Progress Instead of Succumbing to Despair, or Worse, Apathy

The eternal struggle of trying to maintain an appropriate facial expression throughout a conversation based on heuristics and context clues and having the lag become the main problem

“Oh, no! Sudden tone shift. Abort smiling! Abort! Abort!”