Repeat of yesterday's picture, now with more sky texture. You should be at North Bay Python.Entry: 2026-05-23 00:15:02.73056+02 Woohoo Got my first I saw your North by Dan Lyke comments 0
Woohoo! Got my first "I saw your North Bay Python square dancing talk, I want to talk about gender and learning to call" message.
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Entry: 2026-05-01 17:33:32.123376+02 North Bay Python 2026 Recap by Dan Lyke comments 0
Python By Night: North Bay Python 2026 Recap
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Entry: 2026-04-29 21:12:17.159327+02 What is correct? by Dan Lyke comments 0
Lots of stuff I'm struggling with in this, and I need to rewatch it:
[ related topics: Movies Monty Python California Culture Video Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-28 19:15:02.112043+02 Wow So this weekend at North Bay by Dan Lyke comments 0
Wow. So this weekend at North Bay Python, the Apify folks were doing a "try out our API, win something". I'd had a glass of wine, so I fired up my phone, did a few queries to enter myself in the raffle, and carried on.
I'm not sure what I did that's ongoing, but just got the "you hit your $100 intro bonus API cost" email.
So clearly there was something I didn't understand. Another entry in the "I'm scared of cloud billing" bucket.
[ related topics: Wines and Spirits Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-28 19:00:03.183429+02 My talk on Modern Western Square by Dan Lyke comments 0
My talk on Modern Western Square Dancing at North Bay Python this weekend is live...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJVvaz8eFwA
#NBPy
[ related topics: Movies Theater & Plays Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-27 17:53:08.631121+02 An Economy of Empathy by Dan Lyke comments 0
Mario Munoz has put the text of his Sunday morning talk at North Bay Python online. I'm waiting for the recording to experience it again, but it was exactly the Sunday morning angry sermon I needed: https://pythonbynight.com/talks/empathy
[ related topics: Religion Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-27 00:25:03.233021+02 If you believe that the best part of a by Dan Lyke comments 0
If you believe that the best part of a conference is the hallway track, this year's North Bay Python feels like that. The conversations and presentations feel like the sort of thought provoking topics I want from a conference.
#NBPy
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Monty Python California Culture Conferences Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-26 19:20:02.437011+02 Repeat of yesterday's picture now with by Dan Lyke comments 0
Repeat of yesterday's picture, now with more sky texture. You should be at North Bay Python.
#NBPy
[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-25 20:15:02.491541+02 Fantastic talk from Christopher by Dan Lyke comments 0
Fantastic talk from Christopher Neugebauer to open North Bay Python: ""What is Correct?" and is that even the right question any more?"
I'm gonna have to rewatch this to let the lessons sink in.
#NBPy
[ related topics: Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-25 19:20:03.193838+02 You could be somewhere else by Dan Lyke comments 0
You could be somewhere else, or you could be at North Bay Python this weekend.
[ related topics: Photography Monty Python California Culture Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-17 17:34:53.620124+02 Coding with customer support bots by Dan Lyke comments 0
Bwahahahaha: AI token freeloaders are coming for your customer support chatbot
“A normal customer service interaction of ‘Where’s my order? What are your hours?’ runs maybe 200 to 300 tokens. Someone asking the bot to reverse a linked list in Python is generating more than 2,000 tokens easy. That’s roughly a 10x cost multiplier per session,” says Nik Kale, member of the Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI) and ACM’s AI Security (AISec) program committee.
Via.
[ related topics: Software Engineering Monty Python Artificial Intelligence Python ]
Entry: 2026-04-08 18:49:41.169916+02 Medvi and the NYT by Dan Lyke comments 0
Techdirt: The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI.
So to my friends and family members wondering why I haven’t built my own billion-dollar AI company: apparently the missing ingredient wasn’t AI — it was being willing to run a deepfake-powered spam operation selling potentially inert pills to desperate people. The AI just made the lying faster. And the New York Times made one guy appear respectable.
[ related topics: Spam Invention and Design moron Sociology Monty Python Currency Artificial Intelligence New York ]
Entry: 2026-03-24 20:40:03.117618+01 So it kinda seems like we now need by Dan Lyke comments 0
So it kinda seems like we now need to, at a minimum, do Node, Python, and Rust development in a container environment that doesn't have access to anything but the absolute minimum that it needs to operate...
Which also solves the package version problem.
[ related topics: Nature and environment Monty Python Python ]
Entry: 2026-03-24 16:30:28.296762+01 LiteLLM compromise by Dan Lyke comments 0
Fediverse thread from @peter@thepit.social on a supply chain attack on the LiteLLM Python package.
lol oh my god i feel **so fucking smug** right now, it's incredible. my whole body is tingling.
Apparently this is a vibe coded package that provides a switch between LLM API back-ends.
[ related topics: Religion Monty Python Python ]
Entry: 2026-03-22 00:38:02.551321+01 Shy Girl by Dan Lyke comments 0
George Orwell's 1984, Part 2, Chapter 3:
Julia was twenty-six years old. She lived in a hostel with thirty other girls ('Always in the stink of women! How I hate women!' she said parenthetically), and she worked, as he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor. She was 'not clever', but was fond of using her hands and felt at home with machinery. She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.
Hatchette Books cancels release of Shy Girl by US author Mia Ballard over claims of LLM use.
[ related topics: Books Writing Current Events Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Sports Machinery Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2026-03-19 22:55:02.697608+01 Spam from Levi's with the subject line by Dan Lyke comments 0
Spam from Levi's with the subject line "Get the leg opening inspired by cowboys", and frankly, dudes, if I'm gonna spread my legs I don't need cowboys for inspiration...
Mostly.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Spam Monty Python Fashion ]
Entry: 2026-02-18 21:40:45.000698+01 LLM hogwash via blogging by Dan Lyke comments 0
Getting LLMs to repeat hogwash for fun:
I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI – and it only took 20 minutes
I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled "The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs". Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn't exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission, including Drew Harwell at the Washington Post and Nicky Woolf, who co-hosts my podcast. (Want to hear more about this story? Check out tomorrow's episode of The Interface, the BBC's new tech podcast.)
Via Thomas Germain (the author) on Bluesky.
[ related topics: Invention and Design Writing Journalism and Media Monty Python Artificial Intelligence Dogs ]
Entry: 2026-02-18 17:20:08.83168+01 Gatekeeping and AI by Dan Lyke comments 0
A lot of discussion out there about how to create a culture of quality in a world filled with AI slop, especially in Open Source.
Some random links:
Joan Westenberg: The case for gatekeeping, or: why medieval guilds had it figured out
I don't mean you need a certificate to write Python. I mean something closer to what the Debian project has done with its Web of Trust model for decades: existing trusted contributors vouch for new ones. Your vouching carries weight proportional to your own standing. If you vouch for someone who turns out to be a spam vector, that costs you something. The system works because it makes reputation legible without making it bureaucratic.
@Daojoan on the Fediverse, lobste.rs.
Jared White on the Fediverse proposing an end to anonymous contributions, with pushback from David Gerard citing the awfulness of real name policies.
[ related topics: Free Software Interactive Drama Spam Open Source Invention and Design Sociology Law Monty Python Graphics Mathematics California Culture Community Artificial Intelligence Race Python ]
Entry: 2026-01-21 20:55:02.439228+01 LinkedIn spam subject line Youre by Dan Lyke comments 0
LinkedIn spam subject line: "You're invited: Learn how AI can give you an edge"
So... "an edge", huh? You're sending this to people you don't think are very sharp, then.
[ related topics: Spam Monty Python Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2025-12-10 21:45:54.01074+01 A report of abuse by Dan Lyke comments 0
So this morning I woke up to an abuse report from Hetzner. Someone saw my back-link checker in their logs, and because the 2 query a day request that was respecting the 304 was the default Perl package log it triggered iocane (exchange here), and...
When we're at the point that people filing abuse reports are saying:
It wasn't hitting more than that, but "Python/3.9 aiohttp/3.10.6" only hit my site once and is still a bot request from Microsoft. I can't tell from the volume of the requests whether they are malicious or not.
Which... huh, but also yeah, AI scrapers have made everyone paranoid in non-specific ways.
And maybe the web as an experimental platform is kinda over?
I don't know, just all felt weird, and is making me do my usual "why am I even bothering?" whining.
[ related topics: Humor Microsoft Perl Open Source moron Monty Python Artificial Intelligence Python Woodworking hubris ]
Entry: 2025-11-21 22:52:31.284181+01 China buys CIA insurance provider by Dan Lyke comments 0
Just clearing my bookmarked social media pages: A Chinese firm bought an insurer for CIA agents - part of Beijing's trillion dollar spending spree. So, yeah, you wanna know who's working for the intelligence agencies? Why not just get their health records...
Via/
[ related topics: Health broadband Current Events Journalism and Media Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Currency ]
Entry: 2025-11-14 21:34:05.100213+01 Taking responsibility for nothing by Dan Lyke comments 0
Volexity: APT Meets GPT: Targeted Operations with Untamed LLMs. That's "Advanced Persistent Thread", not the package manager. Via.
Kevin Beaumont goes on to note:
If this is the best the entire cyber industrial complex can find for China and Russia GenAI threats.. the reality 3 years into the GenAI "war" is that people are fighting you with water pistols at present.
RandomAccessMusi ngs @rndmamusings.bsky.social
As one of the folks involved in this I can echo it wasn't super advanced at all, and some of the malware contained errors (double TLS header network coms). The challenge the LLM use introduced was quantity to keep on top of - thankfully it was simple enough we could write quick automations to triage
Of course Anthropic was quick to claim credit for the Claude LLM/"AI" being instrumental for the attack... BBC: AI firm claims Chinese spies used its tech to automate cyber attacks and CyberScoop: AI firm claims Chinese spies used its tech to automate cyber attacks.
I actually ran one of the malicious payloads on a real PC this evening. It doesn’t work. Due to an error in the code - almost certainly introduced by an LLM - the network traffic doesn’t actually parse correctly so the attacker can’t do anything remotely.
Edit: Pivot to AI: Anthropic: Chinese AI hackers are after you! Security researchers call BS
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Weblogs broadband History Current Events Work, productivity and environment Monty Python Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2025-10-27 19:20:19.951043+01 AI news sucks by Dan Lyke comments 1
EBU / BBC: News Integrity in AI Assistants — An international PSM study (PDF)
I had to test some features using Gemini this morning, so I was asking pointed questions about this, and, yeah, if people start using LLMs for their news, they're going to get an increasingly skewed view of reality, one that's probably gonna make the internet trolls look sane.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Current Events Monty Python Net Culture Artificial Intelligence Personal Lubricant ]
Entry: 2025-10-25 17:35:02.368453+02 Youve been chosen for a Skin by Dan Lyke comments 0
"You've been chosen for a Skin Trial!" <-- subject line of spam advertising Ulta makeup products, or over-eager Tech-Priest in Warhammer 40k fiction informing a victim of upcoming excoriation?
[ related topics: Spam Consumerism and advertising Monty Python ]
Entry: 2025-10-20 17:25:05.806282+02 Missile strikes on fishermen in distress by Dan Lyke comments 0
BBC: Trump ends aid to Colombia and calls country's leader a 'drug leader'
Posting on social media, he [Colombian President Gustavo Petro] said: "The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure," when it was struck. He added: "We await explanations from the US government."
"Fisherman Alejandro Carranza had no ties to the drug trade and his daily activity was fishing. The Colombian boat was adrift and had its distress signal up due to an engine failure."
[ related topics: Health moron Current Events Journalism and Media Monty Python Boats Machinery ]
Entry: 2025-10-07 19:30:02.616246+02 I have a couple of personal projects by Dan Lyke comments 1
I have a couple of personal projects I'd like to hack together, but I'm kinda stuck because I want to move my own skills forward as I do it. Python is a fucking dependency and performance nightmare, ECMAScript involves package managers, Rust is "what if we made the code endlessly complex because you need to manually manage arenas", and I'm quickly back to choosing between C++ and Perl, and that's just solving my problem, not actually learning anything.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Perl Open Source Theater & Plays Monty Python Education Python hubris ]
Entry: 2025-09-29 20:17:03.797404+02 The perils of letting AI plan your next trip by Dan Lyke comments 0
That's so AI: BBC: The perils of letting AI plan your next trip
"They [showed] me the screenshot, confidently written and full of vivid adjectives, [but] it was not true. There is no Sacred Canyon of Humantay!" said Gongora Meza. "The name is a combination of two places that have no relation to the description. The tourist paid nearly $160 (£118) in order to get to a rural road in the environs of Mollepata without a guide or [a destination]."
[ related topics: Monty Python Travel Douglas Adams Artificial Intelligence ]
Entry: 2025-08-29 17:51:23.966139+02 Sometimes the dice roll 7, but sometimes they roll 12! by Dan Lyke comments 0
Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters.
Taco Bell's Chief Digital and Technology Officer Dane Mathews told The Wall Street Journal that deploying the voice AI has had its challenges.
"Sometimes it lets me down, but sometimes it really surprises me," he said.
[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python Artificial Intelligence Economics ]
Entry: 2025-08-27 18:04:49.226212+02 OpenAI will support you and encourage you by Dan Lyke comments 0
BBC: Parents of teenager who took his own life sue OpenAI
The lawsuit was filed by Matt and Maria Raine, parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, in the Superior Court of California on Tuesday. It is the first legal action accusing OpenAI of wrongful death.
Breaking Down the Lawsuit Against OpenAI Over Teen's Suicide
Ernie Smith @ernie.tedium.co observes "The very algorithm that upset people because it was removed in GPT-5 appears to have played a pivotal role in the teen’s death, and discouraged him from outside help." ❀°。Der Siebenschläfer *.ﾟ✿ ⋆ @sababausa.bsky.social has some particular pull quotes.
I'm tempted to just give this one it's own entry, but I'm also kinda putting all of my "LLMs are a horrorshow" links in common entries, and they seem thematically similar today, so:
The Register — AI + ML — One long sentence is all it takes to make LLMs misbehave
You just have to ensure that your prompt uses terrible grammar and is one massive run-on sentence like this one which includes all the information before any full stop which would give the guardrails a chance to kick in before the jailbreak can take effect and guide the model into providing a "toxic" or otherwise verboten response the developers had hoped would be filtered out.
I'm having trouble finding the publication on the Palo Alto Networks — Unit 42 web site, but there's lots of good interview questions and discussion in that article.
For a giggle: Alexandria Neonakis @beavs.bsky.social has a little video of using Adobe's generative fill
I just wanted to see how bad it really was. perfect, adobe. no notes. great tech.
And: The Dangers Agentic Coding Tools Pose to Open Source, and It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes (Via)
Edit: OpenAI admits ChatGPT safeguards fail during extended conversations, via.
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Entry: 2025-08-20 17:31:00.320649+02 Scotland's first skatepark by Dan Lyke comments 0
I'm just gonna turn to dust and blow away here... BBC: Scotland's first skatepark to be dug up by archeologists
However, concern about maintenance costs and safety led to the park's closure and then burial in 1983, just five years after opening.
[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python ]
Entry: 2025-08-16 01:49:01.967933+02 "Putin is supposed to be in jail, and he just comes to Alaska like that." by Dan Lyke comments 0
What do Alaskans make of the geopolitical circus arriving?
"Putin is supposed to be in jail, and he just comes to Alaska like that."
[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python Alaska ]
Entry: 2025-08-09 17:46:20.611189+02 When is cacio e pepe not? by Dan Lyke comments 0
Sofia Bettiza writing for BBC News, Rome: Cacio e pepe: Good Food pasta recipe sparks fury in Italy
I think there's an interesting phenomenon here about how dumbing things down and creating trash for search engine bait is polluting the infosphere...
[ related topics: Food Writing Current Events Monty Python Machinery ]
Entry: 2025-08-08 18:47:15.515789+02 Sam Altman throws shade on PhDs. by Dan Lyke comments 0
In case you're wondering where some of the current scorn is coming from, it's that Sam Altman said "GPT-5 is the first time that it feels like talking to an expert in any topic — a Ph.D.-level expert".
BBC: OpenAI claims GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to 'PhD level'
Newsweek: Why ChatGPT-5 Denies Launch of ChatGPT-5
NBC: OpenAI releases GPT-5, calling it a ‘team of Ph.D. level experts in your pocket’
And it seems like more of the same bullshit. Maybe? Maybe it's worse... Anyway, as Tara Calishain @researchbuzz.bsky.social observed:
If PhD-level intelligence thinks there are three bs in blueberry, maybe I'm glad I'm a high-school dropout
[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Space & Astronomy Law Current Events Monty Python ]
Entry: 2025-08-05 00:30:55.980074+02 Mothership sucking up donations by Dan Lyke comments 0
How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns.
bet these fuckers are the ones who keep spamming me, too.
[ related topics: Spam broadband Monty Python ]
Entry: 2025-08-04 23:25:32.174939+02 Joke street signs by Dan Lyke comments 1
BBC: The man behind Glasgow's joke street signs
Saw a picture of another one that probably came from this set, but that I can't find now, something to the effect of men in kilts must wear underwear when wind speed is over 25mph...
[ related topics: Current Events Monty Python Clothing Woodworking ]
Entry: 2025-07-29 01:07:55.209965+02 Google AI salesman by Dan Lyke comments 0
Deep dive into how Google's AI overviews are giving bogus reviews, recommending non-existent products, and generally crappifying the online space.
[ related topics: Spam Space & Astronomy Consumerism and advertising Monty Python Marketing Artificial Intelligence Real Estate ]
Entry: 2025-07-28 20:35:02.549917+02 Whoah by Dan Lyke comments 0
Whoah. Made the mistake of scrolling left on my Android phone, got the Google news feed. Saw something on a Stardew Valley update, thought "that's interesting", tapped through, and... they're not even trying with LLM spam any more. Completely made-up article.
[ related topics: Spam Current Events Monty Python Woodworking ]
Entry: 2025-07-26 19:35:03.312889+02 Just deleted a spam from a recruiter by Dan Lyke comments 0
Just deleted a spam from a recruiter with a salary range about half of reasonable for the role, and reading about the Tea debacle, and am reminded that we do not have consequences for bad code, and are pushing the costs of that on to end users.
[ related topics: Spam Work, productivity and environment Monty Python ]
Entry: 2025-07-07 18:33:30.654688+02 AI links of the morning by Dan Lyke comments 1
ADD / XOR / ROL — A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs
I am baffled that the AI discussions seem to never move away from treating a function to generate sequences of words as something that resembles a human. Statements such as "an AI agent could become an insider threat so it needs monitoring" are simultaneously unsurprising (you have a randomized sequence generator fed into your shell, literally anything can happen!) and baffling (you talk as if you believe the dice you play with had a mind of their own and could decide to conspire against you).
Of course that view is carefully curated by a continuous barrage of articles about how the AIs are plotting against us or will consider blackmail or whatever. (Via)
Futurism: Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes — Oopsie. is a riff and rewrite of BBC: 'I'm being paid to fix issues caused by AI'
Is Warner worried about the impact of AI, if – as expected – it rapidly improves?
"Yes and no," she says. "While it seems like a quick and inexpensive option, AI rarely takes into account unique brand identity, target demographics, or conversion-focused design. As a result, much of the output looks generic and can actually damage the brand's reputation or effectiveness."
This is really good: The rise of Whatever
This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history.
Via.
Nikkei Asia: 'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers
Research papers from 14 academic institutions in eight countries -- including Japan, South Korea and China -- contained hidden prompts directing artificial intelligence tools to give them good reviews, Nikkei has found.
(Via)
Careful what's in your code editor, the "can you trust that random package" comes to AI editor plugins: Malware in Open VSX: These Vibes Are Off.
I looked at a single extension Solidity Language by "SolidityAI" (namespace
solidityai.solidity). Analysis of Open VSX-based extensions was just added to Secure Annex, so I looked it up. Immediately, I saw a URLhxxps://angelic[.]su/files/1.txt.
(Via)
GremLLM, a Python object that hallucinates method implementations for you:
A slight upgrade to the Gremlins in your code, we hereby present GREMLLM. This utility class can be used for a variety of purposes. Uhm. Also please don't use this and if you do please tell me because WOW. Or maybe don't tell me. Or do.
... is a Python library that automatically generates code on-the-fly using OpenAI's API. When you try to import a module or function that doesn't exist, AutoGenLib creates it for you based on a high-level description of what you need.
From the thread, Kevin Marks described this as:
Throwing two by fours at the table saw from across the room and hoping for furniture?
And Charles @charles.capps.me wrote:
WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE?!
This is somewhere between amazingly cool and a war crime.
[ related topics: Language Interactive Drama Books Weblogs Bioinformatics History Writing Current Events Monty Python Mathematics Marketing Graphic Design Currency Artificial Intelligence Python Furniture Woodworking ]
Entry: 2025-07-02 18:50:02.803036+02 Slack just popped this threat to by Dan Lyke comments 0
Slack just popped this threat to "Unlock AI for 50% off" in a group that's been migrating to Signal. Which... if their goal is to kick the people who'd set up free social spaces off, this is useful.
Meanwhile, on Facebook, group admins are fighting the Meta spam bot pretty hard.
[ related topics: Interactive Drama Photography Spam Monty Python Artificial Intelligence ]
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