Steve Downey

My pal Danielle Koenig shared that her father Walter Koenig passed away last night at age 90. A performer whose kindness and warmth shone through the screen. He will be well remembered.

RIP to an incredible actor, Alfred Bester is one of my all time favorite Lawful Evil villains

Excellent question from Mazianni here! (Also, watch out for that Tam Lin guy.) @megelison.bsky.social mentioned @jasonsanford.bsky.social and Genre Grapevine, but what are other fandom gossip blogs--I mean, news sources worth reading?

I voted today!

Happy Pythagorean Triple Date Day

I can buy a TV better than anything that existed before for less than the price of a nice dinner out for four.

• Aristotle was not Belgian. • The central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself". • The London Underground is not a political movement.

"President Trump called Elon Musk and asked him to lift restrictions on a military-grade version of Starlink in Ukraine that the SpaceX chief had throttled, U.S. officials said." wat. This part of the business may not have a wonderful 2027Q1.

If you are a Starshield consumer what are you doing this afternoon? USDoD shutting things down was already a massive problem. An erratic billionaire is now your NatSec risk.

C++ Insights - Episode 79: consteval Function Propagation with C++ Insights In this episode, you'll learn about C++23s change to consteval functions and how C++ Insights helps you see that. https://youtu.be/0otZOq_OoT8 #cppinsights #cpp #cpp17 #compile

Ironically, my new hearing aids are better headphones than the first Walkman pair I damaged my hearing with.

OK. TIL that New Mexico was named that in the 1600s. And that the Country of Mexico was named after New Mexico.

This anodyne headline hits very differently in 2026 with our current SCOTUS. Instead, "what fresh hell is this." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

AI code reviews will find some issues with anything, because that's what they are supposed to do. But, not all errors ought to be handled and sometimes the right answer is utter failure rather than handling an unexpected result. Why did that result change? Why check someone else's post-condition?

Hah! IYKYK.

Software companies treating the idea of being legally responsible for their software as an existential risk sort of gives the whole game away.

The most likely outcome of trying to keep AI from using open source software to train on by legal mechanism is finally removing copyright protections from computer code. Never should have been in the first place. Patents, maybe, but only to the extent the idea is. Not because "with computer."

Why do we dream? Or, more to the point, why does the platypus dream so MUCH? You're lucky to get 1.5-2 hrs of dream-rich REM sleep per night, but our duck-billed ballerina here gets >8 hrs. Did you know that spiders, fire ants & cuttlefish dream? (so far as we can tell) Let's talk about it.

2019 video of Heidi the Octopus, captured by Dr. David Scheel, a professor of marine biology at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage & aired on PBS Nature program "Octopus: Making Contact". We think the color changes are the results of Heidi dreaming as she sleeps. Let's talk about it.

Good morning

Careful you trick or treaters!

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

We have just released a new C++Now 2026 Conference Video! Object Oriented Programming in Contemporary C++ - Steve Downey - C++Now 2026 #coding #cplusplus #cpp #programming

Marine Biologist This probably dates me somewhat precisely.

mēnin aeide thea Pēlēiadēō Achilēos Rage (accusative) sing (imperative) goddess (vocative) son of Peleus (genitive) of Achilles (genitive) O Goddess, sing the Rage of the son of Peleus, of Achilles! English uses ordering where Greek could use forms. But order mattered.

Meeting C++ 2026 featured talk of the day: Robert Leahy - Implementing Async RAII meetingcpp.com/mcpp/schedul... #meetingcpp #cpp #cplusplus

When terrible people agree with you, you must stop and check your own reasoning. Ad hominem is disagreeing simply because Bob said it. Finding out that Bob agrees with you because Bob likes the orphan-crushing machine part should give you pause.

The Long Neolithic lives as call to mystery, call to wonder. Whether we respond to those calls as archaeologists, ley hunters or stone pilgrims – we respond with stories. The Long Neolithic tithes in narrative. With typology or folklore, we all pay our dues. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? TeXnician: /flushbottom, but /raggedbottom moved the floating table to the other page.

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Programmer: It's the difference between unix and windows style line endings and your editor isn't handling it correctly.

Effective Altruists now mourning the lives just snuffed out, but remain hopeful in the Eschaton being Immanentized across the Galaxy.

Object Oriented Programming in Contemporary C++ No AbstractFactoryBuilderFactory. Some SmallTalk. Polar opposite of contemporary Value Oriented Programming. Identity, State, Behavior The true core of OO{P,A,D}.