Chris Hanney

Obviously the Gemini search results are trash but I can't believe how aggressive Google is getting about assuming I didn't know what I was searching for and searching for something else.

Going to be funny if the end result of LLMs is companies having to take hardening their systems seriously. All these corps worried they'll go under because AI will out-compete them, when really they're going to go under because they finally have to do their damn jobs properly.

I remember reading in the 90s some guy (sorry guy, don't remember your name) who said if the US ever invades Canada it will be over fresh water. I still think this is unlikely to happen, but at the rate they are consuming their fresh water supplies, well maybe...?

context. sentiment. inferences. People seriously cannot do these things anymore. That’s why they angrily demand you spell out every joke, every reference, super duper promise you mean something only this one prescribed way. They cannot do it for themselves or tolerate the any ambiguity.

Crazy to think back that there was a whole Knight Rider arc where Kitt gets basically destroyed by some weird compacter truck and then they rebuild it(him?) and he's got like PTSD and can't do his slick car moves like he used to. 10 year old me was really worried Kitt would never be okay again.

I hate every interface that makes me search for the search.

One useful thing about taking philosophy is you learn you cannot defeat a determined skeptic. There's no assertion you can make that someone fully committed to not buying your argument can't undercut, even if things get pretty wild. The worst of them wouldn't even concede "I think therefore I am."

Not content with strong positions in Ohio, Florida, and California, LeBron makes a bold gambit for Pennsylvania. Pete Buttigieg rumored to be investigating Embiid's doctors. Does AOC know something about Jaylen Brown we don't? Will 76ers in '27 usher in James '28 for America?

Utilitarianism seemed so clearly correct to me in university and now after years in the real world of being bombarded by galaxy-brained utilitarians I'm become the most basic virtue ethicist. Be kind to people. Be compassionate. Be honest and strive for justice. Be a human being goddamnit.

Maybe we'll build the pipelines really big so the submarines can travel through them, because by the time they're done we won't be shipping oil.

Tech bros want everything to be automated and "scalable" so they can reap all the rewards without pesky employees. But anything (and everything) related to information that is automated can and will be gamed, ultimately destroying its value.

I probably never would have reduced my internet usage of my own accord - but the general experience of almost any online interaction is so terrible now I am moving in that direction - and enjoying life more?

Had the realization today that those of us who spend too much time on the internet and retain some modicum of self-awareness are not "somehow okay." We're functional alcoholics, shaking our heads and saying of others "they gotta get their shit together" before cracking open another tallboy.

Sucks watching the Liberals govern like Conservatives. The only weak silver lining is I get a chuckle every time I think of Pierre Poilievre. He missed his shot and now he's gotta sit on his thumbs until his party gets bored of him. The most pointless man in Canada at the moment.

One pop culture fact I am incapable of keeping in my brain is that Seth Green was in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It somehow surprises me every time. But he was there for like, what, three seasons?!

Guess we're about to find out.

My "favourite" Giorgio Mammoliti memory was when he was pushing for a casino in Toronto and basically referencing problem gamblers was like "They're our gamblers, they should be our revenue, and they're going down to Niagara." Like these people were an oil well for him to tap.

I'm not really an expert in anything but wherever I've worked the greatest shortage has always been "people who even kind of understand what we do here" and if anything AI is going to exacerbate that problem. If I had any advice it would be hone and protect your ability to understand things.

It is pretty crazy that I can type in the explicit name of a 2FA application I require in the App store and Apple will serve me an ad at the top for a different 2FA product. Like... guys. That's not how this works.

The weird thing about video game companies embracing AI is that, if AI boosters are to be believed, eventually these models will be so good you can ask them to write the game you want for you, at which point, why video game companies at all?

I shouldn't be surprised but this dark pattern where you cancel a subscription, go to a page that asks you to confirm again, and then go to a different page that asks a third time to confirm is clearly designed to make people think they've cancelled and navigate away. I hate everything, thanks.

The doc I'm producing recently popped up on Letterboxd and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't extremely stoked by this fact. Add it to your watchlists, nerds: letterboxd.com/film/legends...

Most pies are good. The pie takes on BlueSky are mostly bad. File this one (yet again) under my Old Man Stance that everyone should have fewer opinions.

All fathers should love their sons the way Buck Martinez loves Trey Yesavage.

2005: Your website looks like it was designed by a 3-year-old and barely works, this can't be a trustworthy source of information 2025: Your website looks like it was designed by a 3-year-old and barely works, this is the last bastion of truth on the Internet

Exercising in my 20s: *Do something wrong* Whoops. *Shake it off* Exercising in my 40s: *Do something wrong* Oh God!! *dies*

Coming around to Java having a default toString method for objects. Thought it was heavy handed at first but the number of times I'm like "how can I get a String representation of this?" is changing my mind.

Teaching myself React and like, I'm a JavaScript agnostic, it's fine, but really starting to see why the JS haters lose their minds with these frameworks. "Let's redo the entire architecture of a multi-page website, but all on one page, the user none the wiser, entirely with JavaScript! Muaha ha!"

I hope whoever popularized thin scrollbars has had a lot of minor misfortunes in life. Like I wouldn't wish real calamity on anybody, but this person does need to suffer periodically for what they've done.

I know the correct response is to be slightly exasperated every time you need to use '===' with JavaScript (which is basically all the time), but honestly I crack a little smile. It never stops being a little bit funny to me and you have to find your joy where you can.

The internet will soon be turtles all the way down

2036 is doomsday for baseball writers - the year where you can no longer pump out a Bobby Bonilla contract article when there's nothing else going on.

Audaciously using a semi-colon in my cover letter, because how else will I prove to them that I did an English degree before doing CS?

One thing that's not constantly getting worse? HTML and CSS. Every time I go back to use them things are a little better than before. Of course, it helps when your starting place was people contorting tables with endless <tr><td>'s and manually inserting images of rounded edges for their borders...

Reading the docs, hard! Yuck! --> What if we had resources that nicely summarized the docs --> Brief happy period --> Aggregators and AI churn out bad summaries of the summaries --> Can't find anything useful --> Back to reading the docs

This is the world's least important complaint but I really hate when word processors have multiple ways to insert vertical space after a line and I spend more time than I'd like to admit figuring out which one it is so I can remove it.

Starting my Java journey and I'm trying out Eclipse but it feels very... clunky. Like something Microsoft might have designed in the 2000s.

I've always preferred text over video for learning things but finding decent informative articles on the web has become such a chore that I'm gradually throwing in the towel and using video resources more and more.

Wonder if at some point the world, sufficiently antagonized by the US, will realize all those international property law treaties that benefit America so much might be due for a revisit.

Bummer that capitalist democracy has succeeded in spite of a bunch of middling morons for years, but those same morons believe every success is because of them, and now they're all in charge.

So many applications will pop up with some annoyance and a "Not Now" option when what I desire so fervently is "Not Ever."

The thing that sucks about Ryder is that whenever there's a problem he doesn't figure out what he needs ahead of time, calls the entire Paw Patrol in, and then it turns out he only requires like 2 of them to get the job done. He's like every crappy project manager I ever had to work with.

When I install your app, does it set itself to automatically start up when my OS boots? If so, I kind of hate you. Does your app minimize to the system tray when I hit the X to close it? It does? Okay now I legit hate you.

Spotify's web app is so terrible and unreliable but I don't care you guys can't make me download your native app not in a million years. I'll suffer and seethe instead.

For reasons I'm sure are entirely unrelated to the current political climate, I've really been getting back into Metallica's ...And Justice for All

I don't know if it's a boomer or millennial or what complaint, but widespread legalization of gambling is a colossal mistake and I think we'll be stunned when the bill really comes due. Funny part is intellectually it seems insane for me to have the State say you can't make a bet. But it should.

Also Trudeau claiming he regrets not doing electoral reform when he had a majority government that could have easily done so feels like a trolling move targeted to drive me, specifically, insane.

Been a while since we had a good food fight over prorogation of parliament. Canada's back, baby.