Stefan Scherfke

@sscherfke
65 Followers
66 Following
489 Posts

Senior software and platform engineer (Python) at energy & meteo systems

Follow @sscherfke at Pixelfed for nature (and cycling) photography.

Websitehttps://stefan.sofa-rockers.org
GitLabhttps://gitlab.com/sscherfke
GitHubhttps://github.com/sscherfke
Typed Settingshttps://typed-settings.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

The author of @allaboutberlin on how Google AI Overviews are killing independent web publishing, citing a 70% drop in traffic after seven years of steady growth. His work trains the model. The model is replacing his site. There is no credit, clicks, or revenue. This is what the "enshittification" of the open web looks like in practice.

Hard to imagine moving to Berlin without stumbling upon his guides at some point.

https://allaboutberlin.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nicolasbouliane_ai-is-killing-all-about-berlin-when-you-share-7463188284924616705-I3Mn

#AI #OpenKnowledge #Berlin #Google #Enshittification #OpenWeb #IndieWeb

Domain driven design isn’t free. It’s an investment in shared modeling that pays off at certain scales of complexity and underwhelms at others.

For a small CRUD app, DDD overhead doesn’t earn its keep. For a system with multiple integrating subsystems and several years of expected lifetime, it’s the difference between coherence and entropy.

Knowing which side you’re on is the start of using DDD well.

#softwarearchitecture #ddd #softwaredesign
https://blog.bosslogic.com/p/30-minute-guide-to-domain-driven-design

The 30-minute guide to Domain Driven Design: A secret weapon to solve tough problems

Using domain driven design fixes your customer perception problems, aligns technology with business, and defends against complexity.

Customer Obsessed Engineering

#Deepfakes are everywhere, but #DigitalForensics investigators are fighting back:

🌍 https://scim.ag/42dMPBg

TIL crows, starlings and similar birds only *look* black to us — they’re actually very colorful in ways human eyes are unable to perceive. 🤯

Remember that next time people can’t see your “colors”.

Some colors just require different eyes.

Don't worry, Sam, SpaceX won't ACTUALLY launch 7,000 satellites! (There are currently 10,296 Starlink sats in orbit)

Don't worry, SpaceX said they'd get their satellites fainter than magnitude 7! (They have not https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/2025MNRAS.544L..15M/PUB_PDF)

Don't worry, they won't actually start Kessler Syndrome! https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/

Don't worry, they won't actually launch a million AI data centres into orbit!! https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366

This is the fucking worst I-told-you-so https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

In one of the lawsuits, the redactions were faulty and 30 pages of internal documents became public.

What they revealed is hard to read.

TikTok's own research found that “compulsive usage correlates with loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety”.

They knew, they documented it and chose to keep building anyway.

(2/5)

I usually upgrade #macos versions relatively quickly. But for #Tahoe, I waited ~6 months until 26.4.1, which I installed yesterday. 🎉

I am currently reinstalling a fresh copy of macOS 15 Sequoia and waiting for my TM backup to be restored … 🫠

Everything that happens after code is written: reviews, sign-offs, deployment, meetings. Haven't we all been saying this for years? This one by Andrew Murphy is actually well written. I also think it applies to design too, not just dev: https://andrewmurphy.io/blog/if-you-thought-the-speed-of-writing-code-was-your-problem-you-have-bigger-problems

I do not know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it helps new people discover these concepts. Maybe it means we have not done a good enough job sharing this knowledge outside our disciplines.
https://andrewmurphy.io/blog/if-you-thought-the-speed-of-writing-code-was-your-problem-you-have-bigger-problems

If you thought the speed of writing code was your problem - you have bigger problems | Debugging Leadership

AI coding tools are optimising the wrong thing and nobody wants to hear it. Writing code was already fast. The bottleneck is everything else: unclear requirements, review queues, terrified deploy cultures, and an org chart that needs six meetings to decide what colour the button should be.

Debugging Leadership

Engineers sometimes see architecture as bureaucratic overhead with no real value. And they might have a point.

Most architects got where they are because something worked for them in a specific context. Past success creates anchoring bias. What worked before becomes the framework you reach for next, regardless of whether the context is the same.
>>>

My biggest problem with the concept of LLMs, even if they weren’t a giant plagiarism laundering machine and disaster for the environment, is that they introduce so much unpredictability into computing. I became a professional computer toucher because they do exactly what you tell them to. Not always what you wanted, but exactly what you asked for.

LLMs turn that upside down. They turn a very autistic do-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean commmunication style with the machine into a neurotypical conversation talking around the issue, but never directly addressing the substance of problem.

In any conversation I have with a person, I’m modeling their understanding of the topic at hand, trying to tailor my communication style to their needs. The same applies to programming languages and frameworks. If you work with a language the way its author intended it goes a lot easier.

But LLMs don’t have an understanding of the conversation. There is no intent. It’s just a mostly-likely-next-word generator on steroids. You’re trying to give directions to a lossily compressed copy of the entire works of human writing. There is no mind to model, and no predictability to the output.

If I wanted to spend my time communicating in a superficial, neurotypical style my autistic ass certainly wouldn’t have gone into computering. LLMs are the final act of the finance bros and capitalists wrestling modern technology away from the technically literate proletariat who built it.