Dan Freeman

My thoughts on the current state of AI driven software development, why I'm no longer concerned about a runaway intelligence explosion, and what I think is a far worse outcome we could be walking into maevyn.codes/decoherence

I vote we rename the eMudhra intermediate certificate incident to “Amuse Bouche compromise.” Because the keys are one byte.

i've figured it out

Taco and I encountered a stranger on our lunchtime walk today 👀

The Mysterious Hum Of The Earth And What Scientists Think Is Causing It is one of my favourite Flaming Lips songs

when searching for a GIF leads Google to think you've fallen into AI psychosis and are hallucinating being viciously defamed by Glinda the Good Witch of the North

My Monday afternoon: a story in browser tabs

The UK has really been testing my commitment to delighting in language change this week...

The Fortune’s Weave release date announcement has me contemplating a replay of Three Houses this summer and I’m kind of excited 👀

👣 CSS Strandbeest This one took a while... Somewhere along the way, this stopped being a CSS experiment and became a trigonometry exercise. 😅 But if there was ever a way to find out what CSS trig functions can do, Jansen's linkage is probably it. 🔗 Live on @codepen.io: codepen.io/editor/amit_...

I offer

I GET LOGGED OUT. BUT I LOG IN AGAIN

my precious boy. my moonbeam child, my wave upon the sand. if the only thing keeping people from thinking your writing is LLM-generated is that it has em dashes in it. the problem is not the em dashes

It dawned on me that my two main channels for US and UK news are respectively titled “WTF Just Happened Today?” (@wtfjht.bsky.social) and “Oh God, What Now?” (@ohgodwhatnow.bsky.social). I don’t know whether that says more about me or about the news, but it surely says something about something.

Honestly gutted to learn that Scottish polling stations don’t hand out “I Voted” stickers like they do in the US. How will everyone know I’ve done my civic duty??

Just finished watching Dan Levy’s Big Mistakes. I was enjoying it, but wasn’t sure it needed another season until the last 10 minutes of the final episode. Now I’m thrilled with how it all came together and really hoping it gets renewed 👀

Why. 😩

What a writer thinks ISN’T political is always a huge tell. Even something as straightforwardly man vs nature as To Build A Fire is about toxic masculinity—“Any man who was a man could travel alone.”

But there is hope! The European Commission is currently undergoing a review of the laws that gave us cookie banners. We can get rid of them! And we have the ability to not make the same mistakes in the future as we regulate AI, a place where _actual_ protections are more important than ever. 4/

“What was once heralded as a tool to advance individual autonomy and privacy has… become a daily annoyance that breeds cynicism with the very concept of consent itself. Cookie banners do not empower; they weary. They do not inform; they obscure. They do not prevent surveillance; they normalize it.”

First time on the Glasgow subway today—I never realised it was so petite! Nice, though.

I love @aptshadow.bsky.social’s whole Tyrant Philosophers series, but the first entry, City of Last Chances, had been my favourite to now. Having just finished Pretenders to the Throne of God (and possibly shed a tear at the last scene), I think he may have outdone himself.

Back on the writing horse again, thanks to @edinburghjs.org's Personal Website Jam last month! dfreeman.io/blog/hello-a...

Imagining a Cold War spy thriller set in Stornoway where the agent and their handler meet at either end of a bench and exchange the code phrased "The gurnet is plentiful today", "It is not so plentiful as the dogfish" before sliding across the brown envelope full of photos of the rocket range

The covers for @aptshadow.bsky.social 's Tyrant Philosophers series are maybe the best in the business right now. Joe Wilson is incredible at having these detailed, eye catching and very distinctive designs that whet your appetite for what is inside.

THERE IS NO ANTIMEMETICS DIVISION ebook is discounted to £1.99 for one day only, get in there 🐆

Had the thought "oh I should totally get back into Frightened Rabbit now that I live in Scotland" the other day, which is how I learned Scott Hutchison passed 😔

you’re right! it feels mostly awful to Go Online™, these days. the internet in a sad state, for reason after reason after reason. but there is a way to fix it; to trade the voidful howling for a quiet & joyful song. here’s how to win the war for the soul of the internet, and build the Web We Want.

Feels like we just got finished with 2024 and now I wake up this morning and there’s ANOTHER year? Ngl I could have used a breather

Absolutely floored when it finally clicked for me what this puzzle was doing. Really good. blookerstein.itch.io/showy-homes

It's the season to appreciate the names of Scottish road gritters ❄️ #Scotland #Christmas

🎉 Unison 1.0 has landed! After years of engineering, design, and community collaboration, we’re excited to announce this milestone! Spread the word!

Yes and yet several European countries are embracing a far-right worldview that would burn these policies to the ground, so let’s be not be smug or complacent here - particularly as Mamdani‘s pro-immigration stance is radical by European standards.

Back on my “I bet I can figure out how to build a UI with that” nonsense again. This has been fun to work on!

View transitions are in every browser now ✨

oh its the thing everyone said was going to happen when this got brought in and it immediately happened

Today I thought of sodaconstructor for the first time in probably almost two decades. It was a little 2D mass-and-spring sim that let you build Strandbeest-style walkers and other little automata. Looks like it's gone the way of the dodo now, but wow I really have the itch to play with that again.

Me: *waits on hold for an hour and 45 minutes* Royal Mail customer service: hang on jerk, it’s 6:30; we’re closed *click*

When you were partying (learning Python), I studied the blade (learned Haskell). And now that the world is on fire (null pointer error in prod) and the barbarians are at the gate (test suite takes 1+ hr to run) you have the audacity to come to me for help (develop a gradual typing system).

An excellent game if you like puzzles with many solutions and that don’t punish you for messing around. Also one of the funniest and most charming games. And now: cheaper!

"PhD-level experts in your back pocket" is a completely nonsensical description of AI but a pretty good description of social media if you follow the right people