Disqus - Latest Comments for lmorchard

Re: Grief and the AI Split - blog.lmorchard.com

Les Orchard — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:35:58 -0000

What is this... retire? ...of which you speak?

Re: Programming changed forever -

Les Orchard — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:40:22 -0000

Here's a thing: The folks you see prompting and creating stuff will hit walls. The stuff they produce will break. And at that point, they won't know how to move forward or keep things running. And the AI is as likely to make the mess worse, because it got into the mess in the first place without proper guidance from an expert.

You don't need to do it all for yourself, but you do need to know how it's done. There is still a need for fundamentals. You need to know what works and what doesn't, what's feasible and what's a dead end. You should build up your own tech know-how, so that you know how to steer the power tool.

This can be frustrating, because it's starting from basics when you see how far things can go beyond basics. But you can do both - build a little by yourself, build some with AI.

Review what it built and see if you can understand what it did, where that pattern came from, why that pattern works, whether there are better patterns that could have been chosen. The AI didn't invent these things - they came from examples that people made.

That said, ask the AI these questions - it's like a search engine and sometimes will suddenly "discover" a totally different alternative given the right words to activate a different pathway. You'll need to develop "taste" and gut feels for where to take it.

Re: My Blogging in 2025 - blog.lmorchard.com

Les Orchard — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 19:25:24 -0000

Yeah, I'm getting to be less of a Disqus fan these days. I should switch over to something else for comments 🤔

Re: This engine has no horses - blog.lmorchard.com

Les Orchard — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 18:37:36 -0000

I think my brain's in a very dystopian mode, these days: I kind of expect every piece of technology I'm using to be at least partly engaged in attempting to manipulate me on behalf of a big tech company—even if it's just trying to make me feel good about using it more. Definitely shades of the algorithm tricks from social media.

Sadly I almost don't even get mad about it anymore, I just expect it and try to work around it. Maybe a better way to think about "driving the car" is to also remember there's a second driver hiding in the backseat twitching the wheel on you occasionally.

But, I'm also kind of expecting all this stuff to go through a bubble pop like back in the dot-com days. Afterward, we'll still have LLMs around, but they'll be more DIY like blogs were.

Re: Baby steps into semi-automatic coding

Les Orchard — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 17:01:17 -0000

Currently, I'm committing them as text markdown files in a directory in the repo. I'm not sure that's absolutely the best? Some of it might be better for a git commit message - or yeah, maybe an issue tracker.

There are some agentic tools now that will read issues and post pull requests, so working there might get more useful in the future. I'm not sure how effective those agents are yet, but they could get better

Re: Baby steps into semi-automatic coding

Les Orchard — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 12:14:59 -0000

So far, I keep the spec and plan as a record. A few times, I've told the agent in a new spec to reference one of the docs from a previous session as context. That seems handy? I haven't exactly been scientific about whether it's a significant improvement in quality or whatnot, but it does seem to get some hints from that.

Re: Quoting Greg Storey on Minimum Viable Humans

Les Orchard — Tue, 20 May 2025 20:47:29 -0000

Because I dislike myself, I asked Claude to role-play some Hacker News commenters reading this piece:

> Classic navel-gazing blog post that adds zero actual insight to the AI/work discussion. We've all read this "AI is changing work" take a thousand times already, but apparently you think your Starcraft references make it profound?

> The whole "Minimum Viable Humans" concept isn't even your original thought - you're just piggy-backing on Greg Storey's work while adding weak metaphors about funnel clouds and earthquakes. Real substantive analysis there.

> And seriously, ANOTHER tech worker complaining about burnout? Join the club. The Starcraft analogy is painfully strained - we get it, you played video games and have ADHD. How does that contribute anything meaningful to the discourse?

> The whole post reeks of that special blend of tech worker anxiety and privilege. "Fine, I don't need a free lunch or a foosball table, but I do need a health plan and a few days off." Cry me a river while millions would kill for your problems.

> The ending is particularly weak. Random puma reference? Myanmar earthquake? It's like you're trying too hard to be quirky and profound simultaneously but achieving neither.

> This is just recycled tech anxiety dressed up in quirky metaphors without offering any actual solutions or meaningful insights. But hey, I'm sure it'll get plenty of sympathetic nods from other anxious tech workers who also want to feel seen without doing anything about their situation.

Re: I like (reading about) making video games

Les Orchard — Tue, 20 May 2025 17:03:14 -0000

I've heard of that but haven't played with it at all yet, I should check it out!

Re: Foggy Blogging - blog.lmorchard.com

Les Orchard — Tue, 20 May 2025 16:59:44 -0000

Oof, that sucks completely. I wish we had, like, an actual public health response to this shit. I think I've been lucky to have avoided it as far as I can tell, but at the cost of having not left the house much since 2020. Been dragged out for a half-dozen work trips and started trying a neighborhood restaurant lately, but mostly been a hermit.

Re: New blog, a lot like the old blog, but more of it

Les Orchard — Sat, 10 May 2025 20:45:52 -0000

I think I lucked out, because I searched through all my blog posts and never found an instance of "8<---" in the text. This comment will probably bite me someday if I archive comments, though

Re: Dance like the bots aren't watching?

Les Orchard — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:17:31 -0000

Hello, Future Robot Overlord!

Re: Garth's Acquisition - blog.lmorchard.com

Les Orchard — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 13:44:43 -0000

For what it's worth, lest this scene makes me seem sympathetic to a shoplifter at a sci-fi convention, please enjoy this song:

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Re: The 9 year old Google Nexus 7 2013 can now run Android 12L unofficially

Les Orchard — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 22:48:07 -0000

Ours has worked great for years as a kitchen bartop screen for youtube & twitch & the occasional recipe display

Re: Review: Axiom Verge 2 – Destructoid

Les Orchard — Sun, 15 Aug 2021 03:37:39 -0000

The first few areas are ice and snow and pretty desolate. Once you get farther in and especially when you access the Breach, things get real colorful

Re: Why Is Masters of the Universe: Revelation So Divisive Among He-Man Fans?

Les Orchard — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 13:06:29 -0000

deciding, however brief, that the world dying is less important than your grief and anger is something quite unheroic.

Except "refusal of the call" is literally step two of The Hero's Journey, which is overused these days but not like an alien concept.

Re: Monstrum 2 — Is this asynchronous horror game worth it?

Les Orchard — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 11:56:18 -0000

Yeah, I'd imagine asynchronous would be more like a tower defense game - take turns with one team setting up the gauntlet and then another team runs it

Re: Monstrum 2 — Is this asynchronous horror game worth it?

Les Orchard — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 01:31:04 -0000

What's an asynchronous horror game? Do you mean asymmetric horror?

Re: An East Portland Dad Says a Police Officer Gave Him a Concussion Near His House. The City Won’t Release the Cop’s Name.

Les Orchard — Sat, 03 Oct 2020 14:25:34 -0000

Dude's kid gets tear gassed in his own home and you think he should be civil?

Re: Pamplin Media Group - Video shows Clackamas County deputy fueling 'antifa' arson rumors

Les Orchard — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 18:21:19 -0000

Antifa didn't start the fires and antifa didn't put words in this man's mouth.

Re: brain dump writing as interstellar dust coalescing into planets and how to encode that in my computerized notes and published content

Les Orchard — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 17:17:34 -0000

Yeah! Gradual typing! That was a phrase I was fumbling around for

Re: Building Cloudflare TV from scratch

Les Orchard — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 11:50:26 -0000

From how it's described, this is always a live stream. It's just occasionally fed by pre-recorded sources. That is, it's not a playlist. There's no way to support playback speeds on a linear video live stream (i.e. as opposed to video on demand)

Re: StaticRendering - notes.lmorchard.com

Les Orchard — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 01:18:59 -0000

Main thing is whether I managed to give this thread a proper unique ID, so it doesn't show up on other pages

Re: StaticRendering - notes.lmorchard.com

Les Orchard — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 01:18:39 -0000

Let's see if comments work here now!

Re: 57 Buffalo officers resign from Emergency Response Team in response to officers suspension

Les Orchard — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 17:34:49 -0000

Read what I wrote. Stay with him until the medics arrive. That's a human thing to do. Any of them walking by. No, they just left him bleeding on the ground.

Re: 57 Buffalo officers resign from Emergency Response Team in response to officers suspension

Les Orchard — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 16:56:57 -0000

So you're going "la la la" to the part where the officer pushed the man, but you're also ignoring that they left him literally bleeding on the ground and continued off?

Even if it were an accident, the officer directly involved could have a) tried to catch him & help him up and b) stay with him until medics arrived. What he actually did from end-to-end was brutal. So yeah, let that cop find a new career. Let all of them in that footage find new careers.