Les Orchard <me@lmorchard.com>

That's me!

Links

  • 21 hours ago We are Changing our Developer Productivity Experiment Design - METR
    Based on conversations with study participants, we believe it is likely that developers are more sped up from AI tools now — in early 2026 — compared to our estimates from early 2025. However, because of the selection effects in our experiment, our data is only very weak evidence for the size of this increase. Our raw results show some evidence for speedup. Our early 2025 study found the use of AI causes tasks to take 19% longer, with a confidence interval between +2% and +39%. For the subset of the original developers who participated in the later study, we now estimate a speedup of -18% with a confidence interval between -38% and +9%. Among newly-recruited developers the estimated speedup is -4%, with a confidence interval between -15% and +9%.
  • 21 hours ago Times New Resistance — Abby Haddican
    Introducing Times New Resistance – a Times New Roman impersonator that autocorrects the autocrats. Do you have access to the computer of an ICE apologist, white supremacist, Republican mouthpiece, right wing propagandist, or other morally bankrupt American? Install Times New Resistance and unleash some mischief.
  • 22 hours ago CCC vs GCC - Harshanu
    For Anthropic’s stated goal of demonstrating that Claude can build complex software, CCC is a genuine success. For anyone wanting to compile software to actually run efficiently, GCC (or Clang, or any production compiler) remains the only real option.
  • 1 day ago A.I. Isn't People
    Imagine you have two machines. One you can open up and examine all of its workings, and if you give it every picture of a cat on the whole internet, it can reliably distinguish cats from non-cats. The other is a black box and it can also reliably distinguish cats from non-cats if you give it half a dozen pictures of cats, some apple sauce, and a hug. These machines sort of do the same thing, but even without knowing how the second one works I am extremely confident in saying it doesn’t work the same way as the first one.
  • 1 day ago UNIX99, a UNIX-like OS for the TI-99/4A - TI-99/4A Development - AtariAge Forums
    I’ve been working on developing an operating system for the TI-99 for the last 18 months or so. I didn’t intend this—my original plan was to develop enough of the standard C libraries to help with writing cartridge-based and EA5 programs. But that trek led me quickly towards developing an OS. As Unix is by far my preferred OS, this OS is an approximation. Developing an OS within the resources available, particularly the RAM, has been challenging, but also surprisingly doable.
  • 1 day ago We Are Not Going Back
    I don’t think we will ever go back to how we used to program. And it happened so fast that I didn’t even notice when it happened. One day I was writing code. The next day I was… still writing code, but with AI. And then at some point it flipped. Now I’m mostly directing code. Reviewing. Prompting. Iterating. The AI writes most of it. It wasn’t a dramatic shift. It was subtle. A little bit more capable every week. And suddenly I’m here, doing the dishes, realizing that everything has changed and I don’t know exactly when.
  • 2 days ago Computers can be understood - Made of Bugs
    Computers are complex, but need not be mysteries. Any question we care to ask can, in principle and usually even in practice, be answered. Unknown systems can be approached with curiosity and determination, not fear.
  • 2 days ago On cognitive debt | Nate Meyvis
    Cognitive debt is real, but we can mitigate it by using AI better, and we won't make progress by blaming AI for our own mistakes.
  • 2 days ago The AI Vampire. This was an unusually hard post to… | by Steve Yegge | Feb, 2026 | Medium
    I’m convinced that 3 to 4 hours is going to be the sweet spot for the new workday. Give people unlimited tokens, but only let people stare at reports and make decisions for short stretches. Assume that exhaustion is the norm. Building things with AI takes a lot of human energy.
  • 2 days ago Opinion | The A.I. Disruption Has Arrived, and It Sure Is Fun - The New York Times
    All of the people I love hate this stuff, and all the people I hate love it. And yet, likely because of the same personality flaws that drew me to technology in the first place, I am annoyingly excited.
  • 2 days ago The Hunt for Dark Breakfast – Ryan Moulton's Articles
    “In the manifold of breakfast, are there empty subspaces? Might there be breakfasts that no one has ever had? With a theoretical model of breakfast, can we derive the existence of ‘dark breakfasts,’ breakfasts that we know must exist, but have never observed?” The curtain of reality had pulled back for me, and I could no longer pretend to be ignorant of these eldritch possibilities. I furiously began to map the known breakfasts. If the dark breakfast exists, I must be able to find it in the interstices of the normal familiar world.
  • 2 days ago Rush is a Band Blog: Rush fan uncovers rare, early Presto rough cut demo cassette tape
    Rush fan Mike Z recently acquired an old rough cut demo tape of Rush's Presto that had been discovered amongst the belongings of a former Alex Lifeson guitar tech who passed away (likely Jimmy Johnson). The old TDK cassette tape was labeled RUSH Rough mixes, and included the Le Studio logo and address/phone. With the help of fellow Rush fan Danny de Hoyos, the pair digitized the cassette and made it available on YouTube

@lmorchard@masto.hackers.town

  • 46 minutes ago
    PAKIDGE INTENSIFIES
  • 1 day ago
    This image makes me think it's the lovely neighbor couple at my door with a tupperware bowl of guacamole for the superb owl party https://www.therundown.ai/p/what-openai-and-jony-ive-are-building
  • 1 day ago
    Playing some Unreal Tournament 99 and remembered that the first time I heard System of a Down was because some kid had embedded a WAV of "Toxicity" in a giant level of a bedroom & bathroom where everyone was mouse-sized. #gaming #unreal #ut99
  • 1 day ago
    Installed a doorbell camera a couple months ago, because we are furtive creatures here. It's not a Ring. Tempted to hang a sign that reads "camera not connected to internet"
  • 2 days ago
    This is almost, but not nearly enough, to tempt me to interact on x-dot-com again
  • 3 days ago
    Maybe if the oligarchs send us back to the 1970s in personal computing technology, we can start a new fork of history where RGB vector CRT displays never went out of style
  • 3 days ago
    Pew pew pew pew pew #tempest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK7vRzwG4WI
  • 3 days ago
    Screw language, it's time to train AI on Tempest #atari #tempest #ai #gaming #retro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsa2VokvPuI
  • 3 days ago
    Found these folks maintaining some really slick installers and patches for Unreal, UT99, and UT2004 that work on Linux. Now I've got the UT99 theme stuck in my head and feeling doomed to stay up too late https://www.oldunreal.com/
  • 3 days ago
    In other news, today I learned that Jacob Tierney - co-creator of Letterkenny and actor who plays pastor Glen - also created the sports romance series Heated Rivalry. I think that's just delightful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Tierney
  • 3 days ago
    Yeah, so anyway, I never throw a computer away, so I'll just be over here muttering "my precious" as the world goes to heck
  • 3 days ago
    I know just little enough about the production of ICs to think that building a DIY microprocessor would be akin to when that kid David Hahn tried building a nuclear reactor in his garage in the 90s. But then again, maybe that's what *they* want me to think

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