Tootfinder

Mick Shots: Maybe the kids will be all right https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mick-shots-maybe-the-kids-will-be-all-right

Maybe you don't need a U-Net: convolutional feature upsampling for materials micrograph segmentation
Ronan Docherty, Antonis Vamvakeros, Samuel J. Cooper
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21529

Maybe you don't need a U-Net: convolutional feature upsampling for materials micrograph segmentation
Feature foundation models - usually vision transformers - offer rich semantic descriptors of images, useful for downstream tasks such as (interactive) segmentation and object detection. For computational efficiency these descriptors are often patch-based, and so struggle to represent the fine features often present in micrographs; they also struggle with the large image sizes present in materials and biological image analysis. In this work, we train a convolutional neural network to upsample lo…

Mick Shots: Maybe the kids will be all right https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mick-shots-maybe-the-kids-will-be-all-right

Oh! The video games I played in October all begin with 'B':
The Biggleboss INCident; Blackwell Unbound; The Blackwell Convergence; The Blackwell Deception; Backpack Battles.
Yep, #pointandclick
I've started the last in the Blackwell series - I'm not finished yet. I know they're older, but maybe I'll write a review of the series when I'm done.
I also played #SteamNextFest Demos: Goblin Sushi (many hours' worth); Nighthawks; Atomic Age; Moon Garden Optimizer; Mystery of Silence; Servant of the Lake; Uncle Lee's Cookbook
There were 5 other demos I played, but I uninstalled them after 10 minutes' play - they weren't for me

This week's #GrindayFriday is a very intense, insane-sounding (but catchy and infectious, and sometimes very groove-laden) one. Grindgroove? This is the new EP 'Absence of Truth' by Sandakan, Malaysia's AGONIZED. 8 very short, riffy tracks of chaos here. I sense some Napalm Death influence maybe and some other things. Also kinda reminds me of this year's Meth Leppard record- thing…

The argument that humans make mistakes too so we should be okay with AI making mistakes is… bizarre. I don't use a calculator for it to be wildly wrong some of the time and not indicate any sort of confidence level. I use a calculator when I want the right answer, ALL THE TIME.

Sure, I also don't ask the calculator to write poems in the style of Mad Hatter… but maybe, just maybe, I can do without that.

Also, again, "AI" is not sentient. It's actually not…

A very good issue of the European Correspondent this morning, nice and clear overview of the new European #defence roadmap, #Readiness2030 , plus where is Western Europe actually? Visualised in a trademark beautiful graphic. Also, problems in Georgia, and maybe some hope from Cyprus.
https://elaine.mayoris.com/go/qx33kj8tcubzccki3dw0q1jjjhxmf8mj4jxck0s8w6mb/2866

From The Georgia Straight
"The Park Theatre is closing and maybe I shouldn’t be taking it as hard as I am
"It’s unknown what will happen to the physical space the Park is set to depart. Figuratively, it will undoubtedly leave a massive hole in the city’s cultural fabric. It’s also a huge loss for Cambie Village.
"The Park’s final day of operation will be October 26. I plan to stop by there before then to smell the popcorn."

The Park Theatre is closing and maybe I shouldn’t be taking it as hard as I am
The Cambie movie theatre is being shuttered by its corporate overlord, Cineplex.

Also... why!?! Well, I like to make weird stuff.
I plan to take this to Maker Faire Milwaukee... and maybe ride it around the neighborhood!?
And I gotta say, pedaling while programming a drum machine is a trip. I used to do it just sitting at a desk but hey, exercise while making beats? It's a win-win!
#bikeTooter

I just ran into a bug with #Tokodon app on Manjaro. The app refuses to launch with `kdbusaddons` version 6.18.
I downgraded kdbusaddons to 6.17 and it works just fine. The app and the library are both from Manjaro repos.
I also tried cloning the repo directly and can confirm the bug. Maybe something's up with kdbusaddons in the latest version.

I work at a university alongside some very smart people. Surely, some of these smart folks could devise a way by which some of the other smart folks who also know how to code could build apps that are even only just a little less shitty than those we buy for astronomical sums from outside consultants??
I dunno, it seems like it'd maybe be worth looking into.

#NowPlaying Is 6-7 brainrot? Maybe. But it’s also a great example of how slang originates in the US. A linguist explains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laZpTO7IFtA

New Gist: No Contest
"There are, perhaps, alternative worlds where lots of things are different. Fianna Fšil maybe decide to run an MEP instead of a MIA. Or one where a fleet of no-hopers got nominated and we spent the whole campaign having to listen to the media asking candidates their opinions on the Latin mass and if cocaine bloat is a positive feature in a President. "
Also, I explain exactly what kind of idiot I have recently been.

Bought a field mic over the weekend. Going to use it to record soundscapes of my favorite parks/restaurants. Also want to lay down some demo tracks.
Ended up going with the Tascam DR-05XP.
Maybe I'll post my soundscapes on peertube or something.
#Tascam #FieldMic

The ref cam is also stupid. The perspective is way too distant and the jostling of video on a running human without stabilizing technology is too ridiculous to actually show anything.
PGMOL can’t even get VAR right with umpteen HD replays, so maybe they’re happy to have a ragged replay as a face-saving charade.
If it was accurately synced to what Simon Hooper saw, large sections of the game would be blank screens. He’s hopeless. I don’t need a camera affixed to his chest to see t…

Seriously, though, USians, before you tell someone from the Middle East to “check your privilege”, why don’t you open up your US passport, have a good look at it, and then check your own goddamn privilege before putting your whole foot in your mouth publicly? Maybe also look up intersectionality while you’re at it and realise that it’s not a fucking pissing contest. I’ll take lessons in privilege from you when every last one of you conscientiously objects to bombing the shit out of our side …

For anyone travelling in Europe by train : these website recommendations from @… are great (much better than #TrainLine)!

Maybe I should mention how well it does.
It's caught some bugs before they're published, some fairly serious. But mostly its hallucinated many problems which aren't really there.
With all the code we write being reviewed by robots now, the code is written slightly differently to avoid it going on about issues that aren't really there.
People imagine that code is written for the computer to run, but really it's always been written for the programmers to understand. Now it's also written keeping in mind it'll be reviewed by an AI that has no context or understanding tasked with nit-picking to review.
Arguably this is ending up with better code. More unnecessary re-validation of everything mostly, but its also taking longer rather than being quicker.
Is that more efficient? 🤷 Sort of maybe?
3/3

Drinking a few beers and playing games to shakedown the NES NESRGB install. Also, I'm 99% I've got the audio stuff sorted maybe...
#nes

I don't understand how people actually enjoy using sway. I live in terminals more than most, but I also enjoy having fancy features available like window controls and maybe a browseable menu of applications installed on my system. Sway's level of asceticism feels performative.

settlement check isn't a tonnnn of money but it's enough to pay off some debts that have been plaguing me and also do a couple fun things like maybe finally get a third tattoo. maybe even a third AND a fourth. waow

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
.
.
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading

So, the new twitter appears to be Mastodon? At least on this topic? I posted exactly same thread (ht
@… ) on both here and blue sky platforms and had considerably more comment and additional input onthere than on there. I don't really get why, the other feels like there may be more users but masto is certainly the #Cybersecurity hang out, maybe there are also more Europeans?
https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/115255377612495056

So this is weird; I picked up a new Bluetooth adapter so I could better test Meshtastic devices and my AAC-only Bluetooth headphones just work with it.
Maybe the root of my issue was just an incompatible radio, though I wouldn't have expected that to make a difference.... I dunno.
Also I think I may try to do a video of the configuration and installation of my next radio, though it'll be a couple weeks for it to be delivered.
Bonus points if I can figure out how the…

Finally started up an account on @… - wish it imported Switch games (I've finished far more of those) - but it's a great site and service, and these are my stats after linking Steam, GOG and Xbox accounts and importing from there. Pretty fucked up 😂 But maybe this will get me to finish more games. Not always for lack of trying. I'm also f…

I had to switch to the milk crate on the back of the bike today to deliver a large package at work, so no "bike light box" today, but I also need to not do a long ride after work as sunset is at 5:56pm today.
Maybe I'll rig up a temporary bike light at work... we've got all the parts!
(I did fix the bike light box but it's at home.)
#bikeTooter

There used to be this deal between Google (and other search engines) and the Web: You get to index our stuff, show ads next to them but you link our work. AI Overview and Perplexity and all these systems cancel that deal.
And maybe - for a while - search will also need to die a bit? Make the whole web uncrawlable. Refuse any bots. As an act of resistance to the tech sector as a whole.

Not only Gmail has been infested with bad AI, but also other Google products. Chrome has a "help me write" feature. You can [disable it in the AI innovations settings](chrome://settings/ai). Unfortunately the intrusive popup is still showing up in Gmail and I can't find any way to turn it off. (See image)
There's also a Chrome setting that allows better browser history search. I've wanted that for years so I've turned that one on for now. Maybe it's better than all the other Gemini crap?

I'm about to go on a work trip for @…. I think I have all the essentials read for packing.
Though maybe I should also bring my laptop and a change of underwear (if I have space of course). 🤔

Genuinely interested in any thoughts as to where to send it next. The subject is Antarctica and influences on observed ice sheet change
#academicchatter

Quarto Manuscript makes me almost want to write scientific articles again. This could potentially change the process quite a lot. But maybe there is also a good use for it in internal project reports. https://quarto.org/docs/manuscripts/

Quarto Manuscripts – Quarto

Placing my plate at the table, I think to myself "I'll sit here" and try to pull out the chair. Instead of weighing 3 pounds, it weighs 20 pounds. Okay, there's a cat sleeping in that chair, I'll just sit at the next chair. Oh, that one also weighs 20 pounds. Maybe I'll just eat on the couch instead?
We have too many cats. 😃

Help requested.
The new MacOS update makes the DVD player (the thing for SuperDrives - surprised they aren't Magic Drives, now that I think about it) janky as hell. This is a well-known issue, according to my perfunctory web searches. Drops to something like 5FPS. Works fine otherwise, but annoying.
Two questions: Does anyone know if this is this likely to be fixed? And if not, and also while we wait, is there a DVD player someone can recommend? VLC needs Rosetta and its UI has always been borderline unusable anyway. Yes, I tried it again, but it switched randomly from German to Spanish and had no navigation menu for the disk itself. I'm looking for something that can read the disk and works like the native DVD player, minus the jank. But maybe the jank is fundamental. That's really what I'm trying to find out.
For now, I'll use a non-updated Mac but I will want to update it at some point. Ironists need not remind me about my recent rant regarding updates.
Thanks all.

Me: I need to reorganize my music and re-do some playlists, make sure I rate some songs
Also me, 5 minutes into rating songs in my library:
HOW DO I RATE SONGS ON A 1-5 STAR BASIS!?!?
WHY WOULD I EVEN *KEEP* A SONG THAT I RATED 1 STAR!?!!?
MAYBE I SHOULD USE A PERSONAL SCALE WHERE 1 ⭐️ MEANS…

going through my months-old screenshots and this motherfucker is a recurring pattern

Speculative politics
As an anarchist (okay, maybe not in practice), I'm tired of hearing why we have to suffer X and Y indignity to "preserve the rule of law" or "maintain Democratic norms." So here's an example of what representative democracy (a form of government that I believe is inherently flawed) could look like if its proponents had even an ounce of imagination, and/or weren't actively trying to rig it to favor a rich donor class:
1. Unicameral legislature, where representatives pass laws directly. Each state elects 3 statewide representatives: the three most-popular candidates in a statewide race where each person votes for one candidate (ranked preference voting would be even better but might not be necessary, and is not a solution by itself). Instead of each representative getting one vote in the chamber, they get N votes, where N is the number of people who voted for them. This means that in a close race, instead of the winner getting all the power, the power is split. Having 3 representatives trades off between leisure size and ensuring that two parties can't dominate together.
2. Any individual citizen can contact their local election office to switch or withdraw their vote at any time (maybe with a 3-day delay or something). Voting power of representatives can thus shift even without an election. They are limited to choosing one of the three elected representatives, or "none of the above." If the "none of the above" fraction exceeds 20% of eligible voters, a new election is triggered for that state. If turnout is less than 80%, a second election happens immediately, with results being final even at lower turnout until 6 months later (some better mechanism for turnout management might be needed).
3. All elections allow mail-in ballots, and in-person voting happens Sunday-Tuesday with the Monday being a mandatory holiday. (Yes, election integrity is not better in this system and that's a big weakness.)
4. Separate nationwide elections elect three positions for head-of-state: one with diplomatic/administrative powers, another with military powers, and a third with veto power. For each position, the top three candidates serve together, with only the first-place winner having actual power until vote switches or withdrawals change who that is. Once one of these heads loses their first-place status, they cannot get it again until another election, even if voters switch preferences back (to avoid dithering). An election for one of these positions is triggered when 20% have withdrawn their votes, or if all three people initially elected have been disqualified by losing their lead in the vote count.
5. Laws that involve spending money are packaged with specific taxes to pay for them, and may only be paid for by those specific revenues. Each tax may be opted into or out of by each taxpayer; where possible opting out of the tax also opts you out of the service. (I'm well aware of a lot of the drawbacks of this, but also feel like they'd not necessarily be worse than the drawbacks of our current system.) A small mandatory tax would cover election expenses.
6. I'm running out of attention, but similar multi-winner elections could elect panels of judges from which a subset is chosen randomly to preside in each case.
Now I'll point out once again that this system, in not directly confronting capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc., is probably doomed to the same failures as our current system. But if you profess to want a "representative democracy" as opposed to something more libratory, I hope you'll at least advocate for something like this that actually includes meaningful representation as opposed to the current US system that's engineered to quash it.
Key questions: "Why should we have winner-take-all elections when winners-take-proportionately-to-votes is right there?" and "Why should elected officials get to ignore their constituents' approval except during elections, when vote-withdrawal or -switching is possible?"
2/2
#Democracy

The mantra of "If you don't have time to do it right, what makes you think you have time to do it twice?" rings true, it *sounds* right.
But the whole point of agility is to see a third option:
If you don't have time to do it (the complete thing) right, maybe you have time to do part of it right, show the value in that, and then do the next part of it right.
I enjoy doing a good job as much as the next craftsman, but we also can't hold customer outcome…

Ok, yeah, I'm not done processing my anger over liberals doing shit like this. So this historian sees a rise in right wing violence, sees the US government carrying out ethnic cleansing, sees a rise in white supremacist terrorism, and then says, "oh yeah... this reminds me of a time right around the 1920s. Hum... yeah, ANARCHISTS fighting the government! Yeah, that's the same thing."
FFS, IT'S THE RED SUMMER! If you want a parallel between today and some horrible time in US history, TALK ABOUT THE RED SUMMER. The point of the language of dehumanization that the right uses, the point of all the anti-black and anti-emigrant rhetoric, is that it leads to genocide. Trump already carried out an act of genocide (#USPol

Hey, one of my favorite living antifascist thinker-writers, Fuck Theory, who also happens to be a queer immigrant in New York, is struggling to hang on to his life in the US. This GFM is in support; imho it is in the best interest of most of us to keep this person going in whatever circumstances are the best for him to work in, but it is certainly in mine, so if you have surplus money maybe chuck him some:

@… maybe you "belong there" :p
also I think it was more of a pray in the song then a statement :p

A friend (who is also a mathematician) sent us feedback that this text is maybe too optimistic and contributes to the general public trusting LLMs to do math. If that is read in there, I have done a terrible job writing it. So let me quote the core of my answer:
On the societal level it is a disaster. Look what it has done to education already and it will not stop there. I think math research as we know it is in big danger.
#llm #math
1/n
https://machteburch.social/@tomkalei/115038889042353525

Headed to #BlueTeamCon tomorrow - excited to combine my powers with all the other cybersecurity defenders. Also maybe play a few games with new friends. Remember, kids, Sparkles says #sharingiscaring

Yet another sensor failure. They send 6 at a time for a 3 month supply. I am on the last from this batch. They are lasting from 4 to 6 days then failing with "Replace sensor" and error code 365. Only good thing about it is I added almost 3 sensors to my stash and maybe more if this one also dies.
But the annoyance and it failing while out sucks. As well as pulling off a really stuck on sensor since the adhesive has not started to break down yet. So yet another arm hickie…

TL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?

> Helldivers 2 takes around 150GB to install on PC - three times larger than on console
We did data duplication on optical drives, but we controlled the layout of the whole disc. Is it also so effective on hard drives? I don't recall duplication for our Xbone launch game, but that was the beginning of mandatory installations to hdd on console so maybe I missed this trend.
A multiplayer game demands faster loads, and this keeps all assets for a map contiguous?

Helldivers 2 developer explains why it's so big to install on PC, and why that won't be changing anytime soon
Helldivers 2 takes up around 150GB to install on PC (three times larger than on console), and the game's deputy technical director has now explained why.

That's a first for me. I own 3 cargo bikes; never broke a spoke before. Somehow my wife broke 5 on one of the #CargoBikes. She was apparently carrying a(n "overweight") coworker in it, so maybe that did it?
Though when I got the bike, it had a broken rear (enviolo) hub and multiple broke spokes. I probably reused the non-broken spokes (and I definitely reused the rim),…

Should we teach vibe coding? Here's why not.
Should AI coding be taught in undergrad CS education?
1/2
I teach undergraduate computer science labs, including for intro and more-advanced core courses. I don't publish (non-negligible) scholarly work in the area, but I've got years of craft expertise in course design, and I do follow the academic literature to some degree. In other words, In not the world's leading expert, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about course design, and consider myself competent at it, with plenty of direct experience in what knowledge & skills I can expect from students as they move through the curriculum.
I'm also strongly against most uses of what's called "AI" these days (specifically, generative deep neutral networks as supplied by our current cadre of techbro). There are a surprising number of completely orthogonal reasons to oppose the use of these systems, and a very limited number of reasonable exceptions (overcoming accessibility barriers is an example). On the grounds of environmental and digital-commons-pollution costs alone, using specifically the largest/newest models is unethical in most cases.
But as any good teacher should, I constantly question these evaluations, because I worry about the impact on my students should I eschew teaching relevant tech for bad reasons (and even for his reasons). I also want to make my reasoning clear to students, who should absolutely question me on this. That inspired me to ask a simple question: ignoring for one moment the ethical objections (which we shouldn't, of course; they're very stark), at what level in the CS major could I expect to teach a course about programming with AI assistance, and expect students to succeed at a more technically demanding final project than a course at the same level where students were banned from using AI? In other words, at what level would I expect students to actually benefit from AI coding "assistance?"
To be clear, I'm assuming that students aren't using AI in other aspects of coursework: the topic of using AI to "help you study" is a separate one (TL;DR it's gross value is not negative, but it's mostly not worth the harm to your metacognitive abilities, which AI-induced changes to the digital commons are making more important than ever).
So what's my answer to this question?
If I'm being incredibly optimistic, senior year. Slightly less optimistic, second year of a masters program. Realistic? Maybe never.
The interesting bit for you-the-reader is: why is this my answer? (Especially given that students would probably self-report significant gains at lower levels.) To start with, [this paper where experienced developers thought that AI assistance sped up their work on real tasks when in fact it slowed it down] (https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089) is informative. There are a lot of differences in task between experienced devs solving real bugs and students working on a class project, but it's important to understand that we shouldn't have a baseline expectation that AI coding "assistants" will speed things up in the best of circumstances, and we shouldn't trust self-reports of productivity (or the AI hype machine in general).
Now we might imagine that coding assistants will be better at helping with a student project than at helping with fixing bugs in open-source software, since it's a much easier task. For many programming assignments that have a fixed answer, we know that many AI assistants can just spit out a solution based on prompting them with the problem description (there's another elephant in the room here to do with learning outcomes regardless of project success, but we'll ignore this over too, my focus here is on project complexity reach, not learning outcomes). My question is about more open-ended projects, not assignments with an expected answer. Here's a second study (by one of my colleagues) about novices using AI assistance for programming tasks. It showcases how difficult it is to use AI tools well, and some of these stumbling blocks that novices in particular face.
But what about intermediate students? Might there be some level where the AI is helpful because the task is still relatively simple and the students are good enough to handle it? The problem with this is that as task complexity increases, so does the likelihood of the AI generating (or copying) code that uses more complex constructs which a student doesn't understand. Let's say I have second year students writing interactive websites with JavaScript. Without a lot of care that those students don't know how to deploy, the AI is likely to suggest code that depends on several different frameworks, from React to JQuery, without actually setting up or including those frameworks, and of course three students would be way out of their depth trying to do that. This is a general problem: each programming class carefully limits the specific code frameworks and constructs it expects students to know based on the material it covers. There is no feasible way to limit an AI assistant to a fixed set of constructs or frameworks, using current designs. There are alternate designs where this would be possible (like AI search through adaptation from a controlled library of snippets) but those would be entirely different tools.
So what happens on a sizeable class project where the AI has dropped in buggy code, especially if it uses code constructs the students don't understand? Best case, they understand that they don't understand and re-prompt, or ask for help from an instructor or TA quickly who helps them get rid of the stuff they don't understand and re-prompt or manually add stuff they do. Average case: they waste several hours and/or sweep the bugs partly under the rug, resulting in a project with significant defects. Students in their second and even third years of a CS major still have a lot to learn about debugging, and usually have significant gaps in their knowledge of even their most comfortable programming language. I do think regardless of AI we as teachers need to get better at teaching debugging skills, but the knowledge gaps are inevitable because there's just too much to know. In Python, for example, the LLM is going to spit out yields, async functions, try/finally, maybe even something like a while/else, or with recent training data, the walrus operator. I can't expect even a fraction of 3rd year students who have worked with Python since their first year to know about all these things, and based on how students approach projects where they have studied all the relevant constructs but have forgotten some, I'm not optimistic seeing these things will magically become learning opportunities. Student projects are better off working with a limited subset of full programming languages that the students have actually learned, and using AI coding assistants as currently designed makes this impossible. Beyond that, even when the "assistant" just introduces bugs using syntax the students understand, even through their 4th year many students struggle to understand the operation of moderately complex code they've written themselves, let alone written by someone else. Having access to an AI that will confidently offer incorrect explanations for bugs will make this worse.
To be sure a small minority of students will be able to overcome these problems, but that minority is the group that has a good grasp of the fundamentals and has broadened their knowledge through self-study, which earlier AI-reliant classes would make less likely to happen. In any case, I care about the average student, since we already have plenty of stuff about our institutions that makes life easier for a favored few while being worse for the average student (note that our construction of that favored few as the "good" students is a large part of this problem).
To summarize: because AI assistants introduce excess code complexity and difficult-to-debug bugs, they'll slow down rather than speed up project progress for the average student on moderately complex projects. On a fixed deadline, they'll result in worse projects, or necessitate less ambitious project scoping to ensure adequate completion, and I expect this remains broadly true through 4-6 years of study in most programs (don't take this as an endorsement of AI "assistants" for masters students; we've ignored a lot of other problems along the way).
There's a related problem: solving open-ended project assignments well ultimately depends on deeply understanding the problem, and AI "assistants" allow students to put a lot of code in their file without spending much time thinking about the problem or building an understanding of it. This is awful for learning outcomes, but also bad for project success. Getting students to see the value of thinking deeply about a problem is a thorny pedagogical puzzle at the best of times, and allowing the use of AI "assistants" makes the problem much much worse. This is another area I hope to see (or even drive) pedagogical improvement in, for what it's worth.
1/2

Compilations and samplers from record labels and such *should* be really great ways of finding new artists in theory. But it's strange, I almost never end up listening to compilations or samplers. I think maybe some of it is because all those artists and recording levels all over the place is a little stressful and overwhelming, and I also think it's because I usually end up focusing on LPs (or EPs or singles) from just one artist at a time. Even splits are supposed to be good for ge…

Day 18: Mark Oshiro
Having just learned that Oshiro is nonbinary, they're an instant include on this list. In veering extremely heavily towards YA, and losing a spot that would have gone to an absolutely legendary mangaka, anime writer, or feminist philosopher, but "Anger is A Gift" and "Each of us a Desert" are just that good, and I'm trying to steer a bit towards towards lesser-known authors I respect.
I already mentioned "Anger is a Gift" above, but to recap, it's a painful, vivid, and beautifully honest story of queer love, loss, and protest against an oppressive system. CW for racist police murder, intergenerational trauma, and police brutality against highschool students. It's a book a lot of Americans could benefit from reading right now, and while it's fiction, it's not fantasy or sci-fi. Besides the themes and politics, the writing is just really solid, with delicate characterization and tight-plotted developments that are beautifully paced.
To me "Each of us a Desert" is maybe even more beautiful, and Oshiro leaps into a magnificent fantasy world that's richly original in its desolation, dark history, lonely characters, and mythical magic. Particularly the clearly-not-just-superscription but ambiguously-important/powerful magical elements of Oshiro's worldbuilding are a rare contrast to the usual magic-is-real-here's-how-it-works fare, and pulling that off a all as they do is a testament to their craft. The prose is wonderful, probably especially so if you speak Spanish, but I enjoyed it immensely despite only knowing a few words here and there. The rich interiority of the characters, their conflicts both with each other and within themselves, and the juxtaposition of all that against origins in cult-like ignorance allows for the delivery of a lot of wisdom and complex truths.
Between these two books, so different and yet each so powerful, Oshiro has demonstrated incredible craft and also a wide range of styles, so I'm definitely excited to read more of their work and to recommend them to others.
I'm also glad to have finally put a nonbinary author on this list; the others I had in mind won't make it at this point because there's too much genre overlap, although I'll include them in my didn't-make-it list at the end. I've now got just 2 slots left and have counted up 14 more authors that absolutely need to be mentioned, so we'll see what happens.
#20AuthorsNoMen

#NowPlaying a truly strange, brutal (but also sometimes gentle) record, the new LP 'Under a Gilded Sun' by Atlanta, Georgia's MALEVICH. They claim to make 'weird, heavy music for the end of the world', and.. indeed. This is like, blackened sludge? It's rad. Dissonant but coherent, chaotic but serene. So many textures and dynamics. Riffs, weirdness, everything. Maybe ffo Sumac, Su…

Mick Shots: Schotty Ball https://www.dallascowboys.com/podcast/mick-shots-schotty-ball