Current status

Oh, man. Tom Noonan died? His performance as Francis Dolarhyde in Manhunter is one of the most terrifying, mesmerizing I've ever seen in a film.

This is blackout poetry to me

Read “AI For Good” from @abeba.bsky.social: When people say “AI for Good” - who is this AI really good for? And who gets hurt in the process? ainowinstitute.org/publications...

JFC

a movie that looks the way depression and insomnia feel

One thing I'm excited about with The Consensus is giving you a hub to find interesting 1) jobs and 2) events going on in systems programming.

If you've run seaweedfs, versity, juicefs, beegfs, or rustfs—permissively-licensed s3-compatible storage systems— and are open to chatting about your experience, I'd like to chat with you for The Consensus.

The Utah Historical Society just produced a new, excellent map of "The Peoples of North America in 1776." Great resource for anyone teaching, writing, presenting about Native peoples as part of their 250th work. america250.utah.gov/power-of-pla...

I wrote a short article about the major companies behind the most recent release of Postgres. Also mentioned interesting commits by smaller contributors, including a first-time contributor who fixed a bug involving ctid scans that might have dated back to 1999. theconsensus.dev/p/2026/02/02...

You can find us in the B.

The OP found manually approving Claude Code’s actions to be a hassle, so he built a physical approval stamp to authorize commands in a traditional East Asian style.

The kind of thing that makes me wish I came up with it

Middle schooler’s band singing Imagine before the walkout

Current status. Trying to convince folk that using an agent to interpret anything where the data is the adversary is ill advised.

“Melania” is truly the worst experience I’ve had in a theater” -Abraham Lincoln

You can’t tell me we have a functioning economic system when the richest man in human history is one of the most profoundly stupid people in human history

Today is a great day to remember Wilhoit's law: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Thinking we need a ./THIS.md file in our git repos that allow LLMs to quickly discover the right library, CLI, MCP server, or framework for a task. It would declare the purpose of the project, declare how to install, and reference example and documentation pages. #llm #claude

Thinking we need a ./THIS.md file in our git repos that allow LLMs to quickly discover the right library, CLI, MCP server, or framework for a task. It would declare the purpose of the project, declare how to install, and reference example and documentation pages. #llm #claude

My new book — Clearing the Air — comes out in the US on February 19th 📚 Goodreads is running a giveaway, in case you want to enter and have a chance of getting a free copy! @mitpress.bsky.social www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

Fascinating pic from @cip.org. People show surprisingly high levels of trust in AI systems. Low trust in AI companies. Full report here static1.squarespace.com/static/631d0...

Cole Valley

Added quite a few updates to Arcaneum to maintain consistency between the semantic and full-text indexes, esp if they were created independently. github.com/cwensel/arca...

Created a branch in Arcaneum supporting full text search in tandem with semantic search. Give it a spin github.com/cwensel/arca... Arcaneum is for giving your LLM full fidelity access to your project support files and dependencies via RAG. It will index PDFs (including OCR), git repos, and .md

My wife just told me that for her 60th birthday she wants a pool party and wants to hire GWAR to play. 😳 GWAR covering Pink Pony Club is possibly to blame. youtu.be/I5XR48KLE8I?...

The OSTEP book club reading is starting in a week! A few updates. 1) Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau is in the book club! May not be super active because he's got a lot going on but he'll be there.

In case you missed it, you need to recreate your Reserve California account. They wiped them all out intentionally. And there isn’t any notice on the site except OAuth errors. I of course missed that and also the site i’d been coveting.

2015: "Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return." 2026: "We plan to test ads at the bottom of answers in ChatGPT when there’s a relevant sponsored product or service"

I think I’m gonna do this. www.maragu.dev/blog/my-ai-g...

Finalky got my copy, the best book I read in 2025, and a forever favourite, if you like the happy tingling you brain does when it discovers an original concept, this book is for you. @qntm.org

seems every site has a "are you human" gate in front of it.

2026 vibe check www.lbc.co.uk/article/dani...

Everyone's got their "oh shit, DEFCON 1" skeet storm ready to go, right? Remember you'll have about 40 minutes before you are vaporized with your family, but only 20 until the EMPs go off in LEO and kill the Internet. Hey it was this or elect a chick, right?

‼️ Colleagues: If you're teaching this semester, please let me know how I can help you. Happy to recommend reading or talk about immigration, free speech/association, Cold War/McCarthyism, ideological exclusion/deportation, "Threat of Dissent." 🗃️ @iehs.bsky.social www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...

📣 NEW w/@udbhav-tiwari.bsky.social Mapping the technical reality & privacy/security perils of pushing AI agents into our infra We offer palliatives, but the core issues are paradigmatic: 'agency' relies on pervasive data access + ability to act w/o explicit consent www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ANE...

In case anyone needs it for their syllabi, my statement in gen-Ai from the minicomic I made as a syllabus for class last semester. All online and printable here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...

The gap in support available to women in Canada compared to the United States is significant. For Canadian women, "freedom" seems to be more about financial security and physical safety than about owning a gun or freedom of expression. Universal HealthcareNow PaidPay Office Child careForAll

🚀 Java HTML Sanitizer 20260102.1 has been released! https://github.com/OWASP/java-html-sanitizer/releases/tag/release-20260102.1

If you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

It’s already January 1st in UTC+1 which means two things: 1. Happy New Year! 2. I’m officially on the market for my next gig

Belonging Uncertainty Load I just made this one up but finally! A version of stress that recognizes social cognition not just cognition-cognition (is what I imagine you saying). Distinguishes background radiation of uncertainty and identity threat as a feature. Bonus shows you read psychology

Proposals for new types of "Cognitive Loads" for us to talk about in Software in 2026 because I'm tired of seeing the word Cognitive:

Look at this pic of Roxy Music:

I've been refining a specification first model of LLM development. I introduce it here - chris.wensel.net/post/recomme... working out the kinks here - github.com/cwensel/rdr

I’ve recently seen multiple, unrelated instances of people referencing Bf-trees. Good job, @benjdd.com.

Anyone have recs for good Discord communities about AI coding?

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a thing I proposed on discord which I’m super excited about: one-chapter-of-nonfiction-you-own book club. so: once a week (or more, I’m not your boss), pick up a nonfiction book you have on hand and read 1 chapter. doesn’t have to be sequential, doesn’t have to be the same book week to week.