Lorin Hochstein
@norootcause.surfingcomplexity.com
Student of complex systems failures, resilience engineering, cognitive systems engineering. Will talk your ear off about @resilienceinsoftware.org
Software engineering research question I’ve always wondered about (although less relevant in the age of AI): are developers more productive when working in their preferred language compared to working in a language imposed upon them due to business constraints?
In this story about how insufficient brush clearing is making the wildfires in France more dangerous, I can't get over the fact that the fire being written about in this story was started by a spark from a brush-clearing machine! www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/f...
In Area Hit by Blaze, French Officials Failed to Enforce Wildfire Rules
Under French rules, homeowners must clear vegetation within roughly 50 yards of their houses. In the forests affected by France’s worst fire in decades, that didn’t happen.
nytimes.com
Quick little brainstorm-y blog post about traditional versus resilience engineering focuses (foci?): surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/08/02/t...
Traditional versus resilience engineering views
As a fan of resilience engineering, I often differ with people on where we should focus our scarce engineering cycles in order to improve reliability. I thought it would be a useful exercise to bra…
surfingcomplexity.blog
The one nice thing about growing older is that my natural crankiness becomes more age-appropriate
My talk from the inaugural softwareshould.work conference is now online! I got a chance to talk about one of my favorite topics in software reliability: saturation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHYC...
Software Should Work
An independent conference on software reliability in Columbia, MO on July 16-17, 2026
softwareshould.work
The fingers remember their passwords of which reason knows nothing.
New blog post: synthesis is harder than analysis surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/07/03/s...
Synthesis is harder than analysis
Over the years, mathematicians, logicians and computer scientists have developed various calculi. If you have a background in computer science, you’ve likely heard of the lambda calculus, a m…
surfingcomplexity.blog
My years-long streak of never entering the password correctly on the first try continues
hey tangential but i saw this meme the other day and thought you might like it
New blog post, in which I lament how LLMs will be used for writing incident reports in the future: surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/06/19/i...
I am dreading our LLM-written incident report future
The other day, Reginald Braithwaite posted the following toot. For posterity, I’ve also included my own response to it: Braithwaite’s post is dripping with sarcasm, but make no mistake,…
surfingcomplexity.blog
I wrote a column for the Journal of Systems and Software: "Dear researchers: help me deal with incidents!" surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/06/16/d...
Dear researchers column
The Journal of System and Software publishes a regular column called Dear Researchers: The perspective of software practitioners. Each column is an open letter to the software engineering research …
surfingcomplexity.blog
Imagine being a crypto startup founder in 2021, visiting the Oracle, and being told that in five years, companies will IPO at trillion dollar valuations, where their business model is selling increasingly expensive tokens.
I think I could live off of 80% olive oil and garlic if i had to
If you can’t see the constraints imposed on the system, you won’t be able to make sense of the resulting behavior.
why is vanilla synonymous with boring? vanilla is delicious. imagine a world without vanilla. it would be so oregano.
I’m personally not holding my breath on the prose improving, sadly. More being forced to read sloppy PRDs for work, until morale improves I guess www.interconnects.ai/p/why-ai-wri...
Why AI writing is mid
How the current way of training language models destroys any voice (and hope of good writing).
interconnects.ai
Bonus blog post for today about my instinctual revulsion towards AI slop: surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/06/06/i...
I can’t bear to read AI-generated prose
I can’t bring myself to read text if I believe it to be AI-generated. Now, I ask LLMs questions all of the time, and I do read those answers. I frequently use tools like ChatGPT and Claude as…
surfingcomplexity.blog
I’ve never been very knowledgeable about Greek mythology, it’s always been a bit of an Achilles elbow for me.
New blog post: the demon of the gaps surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/06/06/t...
The demon of the gaps
Mephistopheles (a medieval demon from German folklore) flying over Wittenberg, in a lithograph by Eugène Delacroix. Modern software systems contain within them a mind-boggling level of complexity. …
surfingcomplexity.blog
I don’t think I have the strength for another Trump vs Biden election.
Liz@yellingatthesky85.bsky.social · 2mo agoSome day when Don Jr tries his Presidental run Hunter is going to be out there leading the Shit Posting Resistance.
Raw milk is cooked. healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/news/idaho-p...
Idaho Public Health officials are investigating two outbreaks likely associated with raw milk | Idaho Department of Health and Welfare
The Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) is working with local and state partners to investigate a recent increase in illnesses after consumption of unpasteurized (raw) milk. Since May 19, 2026, nea...
healthandwelfare.idaho.gov
