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jkantarek.bsky.social
jkantarek.bsky.social
@jkantarek.bsky.social
17 followers 89 following 3 posts
Ruby engineer and Chicago native
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Reposted by jkantarek.bsky.social
jordanscarroll.bsky.social
the rise of the fascist nerds was anticipated by Ellen Ullman's 1995 essay "Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life."
Real techies don’t worry about forced eugenics. I learned this from a real techie in the cafeteria of a software company. The project team is having lunch and discussing how long it would take to wipe out a disease inherited recessively on the X chromosome. First come calculations of inheritance probabilities. Given a population of a given size, one of the engineers arrives at a wipe-out date. Immediately another suggests that the date could be moved forward by various manipulations of the inheritance patterns. For example, he says, there could be an education campaign. The six team members then fall over one another with further suggestions. They start with rewards to discourage carriers from breeding. Immediately they move to fines for those who reproduce the disease. Then they go for what they call “more effective” measures: Jail for breeding. Induced abortion. Forced sterilization. Now they’re hot. The calculations are flying. Years and years fall from the final doom-date of the disease. Finally, they get to the ultimate solution. “It’s straightforward,” someone says. “Just kill every carrier.” Everyone responds to this last suggestion with great enthusiasm. One generation and—bang—the disease is gone. Quietly, I say, “You know, that’s what the Nazis did.” They all look at me in disgust. It’s the look boys give a girl who has interrupted a burping contest. One says, “This is something my wife would say. When he says “wife,” there is no love, warmth, or goodness in it. In this engineer’s mouth, “wife” means wet diapers and dirty dishes. It means someone angry with you for losing track of time and missing dinner. Someone sentimental. In his mind (for the moment), “wife” signifies all programming-party-pooping, illogical things in the universe. Still, I persist. “It started as just an idea for the Nazis, too, you know.” The engineer makes a reply that sounds like a retch. “This is how I know you’re not a real techie,” he says.
February 22, 2025 at 6:03 PM
jkantarek.bsky.social
Uh oh, kc is known to be a two minute warning team
February 10, 2025 at 3:13 AM
jkantarek.bsky.social
lmstudio.ai on commodity hardware (eg ryzen 3 2200G from 2018) can service a very passable 10-13 tokens per second. It seems like Vulkan accelerated llama.cpp just _works_ out of the box! If you have an old box lying around upgrade its ram and play around!
December 22, 2024 at 3:25 PM
jkantarek.bsky.social
"It's a wonderful life" has the best holiday tropes: drunk pharmacist murderer, alcoholic dad ruining Christmas, drunk driving, hurting an old tree, good diving form and galaxies talking to each other, fun for the whole family!
December 22, 2024 at 3:47 AM