larsborn5d ago

I wouldn't necessarily call it a treasure trove but I have a bunch of raw notes on all kinds of technical topics. Some of those are quite obscure and at least at the time I couldn't find any other source on the open web documenting that stuff. Generating form letters in Word on Windows from a web app via protocol handlers and PowerShell — to give an example from to top of my head.

I also run a blog at https://ntf.sh with some friends. So I do have a self-hosted established way of publishing this kind of stuff. And finally, like everyone on the planet, I have limited time. Assuming that I'll simply not publish any of this without help from AI, what does my bubble here think I should do? (I know some of you are quite opposed to using AI for content production).

Also happy to hear alternative solutions as responses here! But just publishing those notes (as is or with some light manual editing) is not an option: They might contain specifics I can't talk about publicly and are also just too much written in my "brain language" to be comprehensible by anyone else.

✍️ Start the Slop Machine
:blobwizard: Keep your Secrets
Poll ends at .
nullteilerfrei – zurückgleiten bitte

Show threadRichard "mtfnpy" Harman (he/him)5d ago

@larsborn this is a *me* problem, not a *you* problem but the whole "I could do this with AI, or not disclose my research/findings at all" is triggering my pet peeve of "don't tell me that you've got a secret that you're not going to tell me" which I think I interpret as attention-seeking or grandstanding.

This is just a really weird vibe to express.

Show threadlarsborn

@xabean I'm sorry that this triggers you. I am happy to compile a list of stuff I would write about (it would just take some time). I was trying to avoid this allegation by giving a very concrete example (the form letter thing, which is also not very haxxor, none of that stuff is BTW) but that didn't seem to have helped.

Can you express what the problem with the vibe is? Is it about the "ask for permission"-aspect of my post? (https://ideophone.org/dont-seek-permission-center-values/ is a great piece on that topic IMHO). Or to even dig deeper a bit: what do you mean with vibe exactly here? Because for my definition of "vibe" you basically called me weird and I would like to believe of myself that I am not ;-).

Don’t seek permission, center values

When you're enamoured of a technology and someone points out important ethical challenges, a typical reflex is to seek permission:…

The Ideophone
Apr 6 at 7:26pmWeb
Show threadRichard "mtfnpy" Harman (he/him)5d ago

@larsborn I'm trying not to be an entitled jerk here which was why I called out up front "this is a me problem not a you problem".

I think overall the feeling I have when I see so many people running headfirst into burnout -- if you don't have the time to do a thing, then simply don't do it? Or do it at a slower pace, when you do find the time to do it? I think people will respect you drawing those boundaries.

I think AI cheapens the work, in comparison to someone putting time and effort into a thing.

Personally, I follow people here on mastodon because they're smart folks, and I want to learn from them. They've got something to share, something they're proud of. Something for me to think about.

When that becomes the output of an LLM, that's ... no longer the person, it's a facsimile. To me there's a bit of a disconnect there.

Show threadRichard "mtfnpy" Harman (he/him)5d ago
@larsborn I think it's entirely okay to release works-in-progress, things that aren't completely suited for someone who isn't in *exactly* the same mindset as you; there may be someone out there who is just adjacent enough to derive value from a half-finished post that you publish and intend to circle back to later as an infrequently updated living document. My thought here is "don't discount your audience", I guess.
Show threadlarsborn5d ago

@xabean I know that I'm quite active and do a lot of things but I'm also very aware of burnout and it's early warning signs and *knocksonwood* I think I can dodge that bullet.

But this is a good segue: I would call myself quite organized, you know GTD, todo lists, checkmarks, weekly reviews, that kind of stuff. And this always helped me a lot setting expectations for myself which IMHO is in important part of avoiding burning yourself out. Because in the end the time you invest into doing $thing is pretty much a zero-sum game: anything you do takes away from you doing something else.

I am a bit extrem in that regard even: if someone tells me they "didn't find the time to do X", it translates to "X wasn't important enough" in my head. That's fine ofc because everyone has different priorities. But it will also mean that I will probably never find the 4-8 hours to write up a post about $thing. Or to phrase it differently: publishing a blog post about $thing is just not important enough for me. And this will lead to "then simply don't do it" from your message.

On the "half-finished post" though: I am a firm believer in prototyping and "putting stuff out there" asap. So one could say I really don't discount my audience, the opposite actually: you'd sometimes need to go through quite a lot of raw-ness.

And to circle back to the beginning of your post: I am interested in the "you problem" here. Otherwise, I wouldn't have asked my initial question. You know, I could have written a blog post instead ;-).

Can we maybe leave the meta-discussion for a sec: what part of AI usage do you (personally) hate? I assess the time save of letting AI generate the text of a post minimal, so certainly wouldn't do that. But there's online research one can automate, review passes, spell checking, todo lists for topics to write about, motivational things like coming up with a challenge/timetable, that kind of stuff. Some of that is probably so invisible to the content consumer, that you wouldn't care but others things (like reviewing for example) would. Feel free to be an entitled jerk :-).

Show threadRichard "mtfnpy" Harman (he/him)5d ago

@larsborn yeah I dislike AI, because I think it cheapens the work or seems "lazy" to me, but the thing that I find most offensive is best described as "cognitive offload".

AI seems like a brain drain through cognitive offload, and in the worst case actively misleading/hostile to learning. I deeply value the smart people around me. I don't want them to stop learning, because they offload to an AI, and I personally don't want to stop flexing my my own brain.

I've been burned by trying to learn something new to me that ended up being a flat out fabrication: https://mojoauth.com/serialize-and-deserialize/serialize-and-deserialize-protobuf-with-dancer2 -- this article references a Perl module that doesn't exist, and there are three or four other sites that have the same look and feel are littered with misleading articles like this (I can only presume they're valuable to someone only for adsense revenue)

I've seen friends use AI coding assistants to help them make a thing, and the coding assistant did something clever that they admitted they didn't have the knowledge/skill to troubleshoot. So now they're stuck with a broken thing, or have to rely even more upon an external (paid!) resources to fix it.

Serialize and Deserialize Protobuf with Dancer2 | Serialize & Deserialize Data Across Languages

Learn to serialize and deserialize Protobuf messages efficiently within your Dancer2 applications. Streamline data exchange and boost performance.

Serialize & Deserialize Data Across Languages