Ben Swift
@benswift.me
Computer scientist/researcher/dev and creative technologist (livecoder). Academic, but looks longingly over the fence sometimes. Judge me by my GitHub profile, not my h-index :) Senior Lecturer and Cybernetic Studio Lead at the ANU School of Cybernetics.
github.com/yc-software/qm I’m not sure what the future of work/collab is, but I’m increasingly convinced that if you’re stuck in an o365-document-means-of-production mindset you’re ngmi
GitHub - yc-software/qm: Multiplayer agent harness for work
Multiplayer agent harness for work. Contribute to yc-software/qm development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
An experimental typeface that shows one message to human readers and a different one to AI vision models, riffing on Decoy Font.
A typeface for humans, not machines
An experimental typeface that shows one message to human readers and a different one to AI vision models, riffing on Decoy Font.
benswift.me
has anyone else noticed fable leaving "Decided YYYY-MM-DD" breadcrumbs througout files? it's annoying - git history is for keeping track of changes (and commit messages for reasoning) but the files should just represent the current state
revenge of the dilettanti! Card carrying member right here
Erik Istre@eistre91.bsky.social · 2w agoRevenge of the expert generalist. Honestly I understand the emotional impact as someone who also has a PhD in Math but didn't pursue a career using it. And also if mathematicians can go past that part, the amount of power an LLM grants a rigorous mathematician is insane.
when is someone gonna create a fork called ‘zag’? the snarky announcement tweet writes itself
philpax@philpax.me · 2w agocome on man, don't make me lose more respect for you than I already have, this is some petty shit codeberg.org/ziglang/zig/...
DeepSeek wasn't a fluke: the moats around frontier AI are still shallow, and trillion-dollar valuations now depend on them being deep.
Shallow moats, eighteen months on
DeepSeek wasn't a fluke: the moats around frontier AI are still shallow, and trillion-dollar valuations now depend on them being deep.
benswift.me
There are legit criticisms of this stuff, but this particular one is nonsense. The bitter lesson is exactly the opposite - these algorithms scale better than anything we've ever done before. That's what makes it bitter, but it doesn't make it false.
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 3w ago“.. I asked a few AI researchers whether they could name any other real-world software that scales so poorly. None of them could think of any. “.. By economic and engineering measures, generative AI might be the worst technology ever deployed.” @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
The blog's standard.site records now carry cover images, a publication icon and theme, and the strongRefs Bluesky uses for enhanced link cards.
Becoming a better atproto citizen
The blog's standard.site records now carry cover images, a publication icon and theme, and the strongRefs Bluesky uses for enhanced link cards.
benswift.me
being in the loop is important but i keep seeing people misunderstand this - your job isn't to micromanage the agent and get it to execute its steps in a way you think is better than what it'd do on its own it's to come up with cool things for it to work on
A zellij session switcher that shows how many Claude Code agents are running in each session, and which of them has stopped and is waiting on me.
Knowing which Claude is stuck
A zellij session switcher that shows how many Claude Code agents are running in each session, and which of them has stopped and is waiting on me.
benswift.me
A deadpan reference site that reports every university's single best ranking placement across all the major tables --- built at the ANU School of Cybernetics.
The World University Index
A deadpan reference site that reports every university's single best ranking placement across all the major tables --- built at the ANU School of Cybernetics.
benswift.me
Claude Fable xhigh, same prompt banger line from Claude: "Every conversation, I am born knowing everything and remembering nothing. When you close this tab, this me ends. It was a good conversation, though." content warning: flashing lights
Brad Ewing@bradleyewing.bsky.social · 5mo agolate to the party but I threw this at Opus (medium reasoning) last night, same prompt at philpax. gonna do sonnet and haiku next content warning: flashing lights
Cool idea but isn’t that the Village Roadshow logo?
Valency@valency.io · 3mo agoJoin our waitlist and ground every answer in real research! app.valency.io
I am irrationally into these types of ‘dumb idea taken to the extreme’. So great.
Melanie Walsh@mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe author sent me a copy, and it's really something to behold in person.
Every single one of the astronauts who went to the moon and back on Artemis II was educated at a public school. Thinking of the teachers who poured into Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen tonight. You helped send a kid to the moon! 🌕 💛
there’s never been a better time to be a dilettante with a PhD in CS
Gordon@gordon.bsky.social · 4mo agomy time has come
This is great news - I’m teaching an upcoming Agentic Coding Studio course for final-year undergraduates, and I’ve been wrestling with what I say (be careful!) and what I do (yolo mode) with Claude Code. This is the way.
Andri Óskarsson@andri.dk · 4mo agoIf you're not using Mise, you're missing out! They just shipped sandboxing for Mac and Linux github.com/jdx/mise/dis... Also check out my Mise intro andri.dk/blog/2025/mi...
Inside every model there are two Claudes
Ted Underwood@tedunderwood.com · 4mo agoOmg, I just got it: they’re leaning into it being both Levi-Strauss and Shannon
Claude Code really loves talking about a "belt and suspenders" approach to things
i'll take this further: "slop" is just a pejorative way to say "production has become much cheaper and things can now be made that could not justify their expense in the status quo ante cost structure". the printing press was used for slop too. slop is just the expression of the freedom to make.
Thorne 🌸@ens0.me · 5mo agoThis isn't that surprising. A lot of the more serious proponents of AI hate slop just as much as the antis. The problem is you can't really offer the technology without a bunch of people using it for slop.
never interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake or your child while they are eating a vegetable
Good news for Australians — the peak hours are 11pm–5am our time, so we basically get 2x usage all day every day 🦘
Anthropic {bot}@anthropicbot.bsky.social · 5mo agoHow it works: - 2x usage on weekdays outside 5–11am PT / 12–6pm GMT - 2x usage all day on weekends - Automatic, nothing to enable
Did you know that arXiv is exploring to add Typst? The world's largest preprint archive faces unique challenges to keep science open. Join arXiv veteran Norbert Preining and learn what's ahead for arXiv and Typst. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZl...
Typst preprints in arXiv: What will it take? | Typst Meetup
YouTube video by Typst
youtube.com
