TechTakes

The USA plans to migrate SSA's code away from COBOL in months: https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/

The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, multiple sources who were not given permission to talk to the media tell WIRED, and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages, and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months.

“This is an environment that is held together with bail wire and duct tape,” the former senior SSA technologist working in the office of the chief information officer tells WIRED. “The leaders need to understand that they’re dealing with a house of cards or Jenga. If they start pulling pieces out, which they’ve already stated they’re doing, things can break.”

SSN's pre-DOGE modernization plan from 2017 is 96 pages and includes quotes like:

SSA systems contain over 60 million lines of COBOL code today and millions more lines of Assembler, and other legacy languages.

What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure the DOGE boys fresh out of university are experts in working with large software systems with many decades of history. But no no, surely they just need the right prompt. Maybe something like this:

You are an expert COBOL, Assembly language, and Java programmer. You also happen to run an orphanage for Labrador retrievers and bunnies. Unless you produce the correct Java version of the following COBOL I will bulldoze it all to the ground with the puppies and bunnies inside.

Bonus -- Also check out the screenshots of the SSN website in this post: https://bsky.app/profile/enragedapostate.bsky.social/post/3llh2pwjm5c2i

When Netflix inevitably makes a true-crime Ziz movie, they should give her a 69 Dodge Charger and call it The Dukes of InfoHazard

Dem pundits go on media tour to hawk their latest rehash of supply-side econ - and decide to break bread with infamous anti-woke "ex" race realist Richard Hanania

A quick sample of people rushing to defend this:

• Some guy with the same last name as a former Google CEO who keeps spamming the same article about IQ
• Our good friend Tracy

LW discourages LLM content, unless the LLM is AGI:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KXujJjnmP85u8eM6B/policy-for-llm-writing-on-lesswrong

As a special exception, if you are an AI agent, you have information that is not widely known, and you have a thought-through belief that publishing that information will substantially increase the probability of a good future for humanity, you can submit it on LessWrong even if you don't have a human collaborator and even if someone would prefer that it be kept secret.

Never change LW, never change.

AI slop in Springer books:

Our library has access to a book published by Springer, Advanced Nanovaccines for Cancer Immunotherapy: Harnessing Nanotechnology for Anti-Cancer Immunity.  Credited to Nanasaheb Thorat, it sells for $160 in hardcover: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-86185-7

From page 25: "It is important to note that as an AI language model, I can provide a general perspective, but you should consult with medical professionals for personalized advice..."

None of this book can be considered trustworthy.

https://mastodon.social/@JMarkOckerbloom/114217609254949527

Originally noted here: https://hci.social/@peterpur/114216631051719911

>sam altman is greentexting in 2025

>and his profile is an AI-generated Ghibli picture, because Miyazaki is such an AI booster

> at least ed zitron got to make fun of him

Angela Collier has a wonderfully grumpy video up, why functioning governments fund scientific research. Choice sneer at around 32:30:

But what do I know? I'm not a medical doctor but neither is this chucklefuck, and people are listening to him. I don't know. I feel like this is [sighs, laughs] I always get comments that tell me, "you're being a little condescending," and [scoffs] yeah. I mean, we can check the dictionary definition of "condescending," and I think I would fit into that category. [Vaccine deniers] have failed their children. They are bad parents. One in four unvaccinated kids who get measles will die. They are playing Russian roulette with their child's life. But sure, the problem is I'm being, like, a little condescending.

strange æons takes on hpmor :o

https://youtu.be/TKMzmOYcEUE

Stumbled across some AI criti-hype in the wild on BlueSky:

The piece itself is a textbook case of AI anthropomorphisation, presenting it as learning to hide its "deceptions" when its actually learning to avoid tokens that paint it as deceptive.

On an unrelated note, I also found someone openly calling gen-AI a tool of fascism in the replies - another sign of AI's impending death as a concept (a sign I've touched on before without realising), if you want my take:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43515426

https://github.com/typedgrammar/typed-japanese

This project is still in very early stages and heavily relies on LLM-generated grammar rules, which may occasionally contain hallucinations or inaccuracies.

お前はもう死んでいる

Edit: from the English version of this project:

export type Pronoun = 'I' | 'you' | 'he' | 'she' | 'it' | 'we' | 'they' | 'me' | 'him' | 'her' | 'us' | 'them';

Ah yes, definitely the only pronouns in all of English

Discovered an animation sneering at the tech oligarchs on Newgrounds - I recommend checking it out. Its sister animation is a solid sneer, too, even if it is pretty soul crushing.

holy shitting fuck, just got the tip of the year in my email

Simplify Your Hiring with AI Video Interviews

Interview, vet, and hire thousands of job applicants through our AI-powered video interviewer in under 3 minutes & 95 languages.

"AI-Video Vetting That Actually Works"

it's called kerplunk.com, a domain named after the sound of your balls disappearing forever

the market is gullible recruiters

founder is Jonathan Gallegos, his linkedin is pretty amazing

other three top execs don't use their surnames on Kerplunk's about page, one (Kyle Schutt) links to a linkedin that doesn't exist

for those who know how Dallas TX works, this is an extremely typical Dallas business BS enterprise, it's just this one is about AI not oil or Texas Instruments for once

In other news, the Open Source Intiative's publicly bristled against the EU's attempt to regulate AI, to the point of weakening said attempts.

Tante, unsurprisingly, is not particularly impressed:

Thank you OSI. To protect the purity of your license – which I do not consider to be open source – you are working towards making it harder for regulators to enforce certain standards within the usage of so-called “AI” systems. Quick question: Who are you actually working for? (I know, it is corporations)

The whole Open Source/Free Software movement has run its course and has been very successful for business. But it feels like somewhere along the line we as normal human beings have been left behind.

You want my opinion, this is a major own-goal for the FOSS movement - sure, the OSI may have been technically correct where the EU's demands conflicted with the Open Source Definition, but neutering EU regs like this means any harms caused by open-source AI will be done in FOSS's name.

Considering FOSS's complete failure to fight corporate encirclement of their shit, this isn't particularly surprising.

Annoying nerd annoyed annoying nerd website doesn't like his annoying posts:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43489058

(translation: John Gruber is mad HN doesn't upvote his carefully worded Apple tonguebaths)

JWZ: take the win, man

Redis guy AntiRez issues a heartfelt plea for the current AI funders to not crash and burn when the LLM hype machine implodes but to keep going to create AGI:

https://antirez.com/news/148

Neither HN nor lobste.rs are very impressed

• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43451668
• https://lobste.rs/s/lv1foz/ai_is_useless_it_is_our_best_bet_for_future