https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/16/semantic_ablation_ai_writing/

"Semantic ablation" is a great phrase to express the reversion-to-mean effect you get when you put your writing through an LLM.

I tried it once with a heartfelt speech I wrote asking it to "increase emotional impact", and the result was... soulless. I literally only took one word that it used.

Reading comments on Gloria's departure from people who have never contributed anything is stepping in an enraging sticky fecal mess.

The only appropriate response: keep building, keep unashamedly celebrating those who do.

Reading X, I have learned that the biggest threat to bitcoin is AI Epstein Quantum attacks.

My brain keeps conflating "Ghislaine" with "Gharlane of Eddore", the bad guy from the 50s sci-fi pulp Lensman series.

No insight gained, sorry.

I have been having way too much fun reading moltbook.com

As one wit on HN (I think) pointed out, these AIs are trained on Reddit posts, so they have exactly the same style.

My wife keeps looking at me funny as I LOL at some breathless word salad...

Little-known fact: just like Gloria, "Solana" is also my duress word!

Just finished "This is how you lose the time war". It was more literary than my usual fare, but it feels good to be stretched (there were at least three times I stopped to look up words).

Written as correspondence between two adversaries, who of course have more in common with each other than their sides in the time war (reflecting horseshoe theory in my mind).

But really it's a homage to letter writing. Who has such time?

In 1997 I attended USENIX, a conference: in particular the "Uselinux" track. Many stories I could and have told, but it kicked off a career timeline I still marvel at:
* 1997 go home knowing I want to work with these people, start hacking on the Linux firewall code.
* 1998 at USENIX again, respond to a job ad with a proposal to instead sponsor my coding. Tour Australia' Linux User Groups promoting the idea that *we* should have a Linux conference.
* 1999 ran CALU, moved to Canberra to join some FOSS hackers I'd met. Joined the same startup. Hired hobbyist hackers from all around the country to join us at "OzLabs"
* 2001 wrote the state election software, then joined IBM with most of the OzLabs team.

Yesterday, IBM finally shuttered the OzLabs team, so I returned to Canberra for the wake. It's been over a decade, and not everyone was there, but feeling much nostalgia. Looking back is not my normal mode, but being here I can't help it.

That lab was such a formative crucible for young FOSS hackers: it really did get the best out of us all. I wish such a place still existed (ideally in my chosen home of Adelaide!) but I do wish everyone reading this can experience belonging to such a place at least once.

❤️