balooga's recent activity
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Comment on Job hunting absolutely sucks right now in ~life
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Comment on The spread of solar panels in rural areas has become a divisive issue among Danish voters in ~enviro
balooga LinkThe photos in the article help a lot. I was expecting a lot of NIMBY hand-wringing because I was unfamiliar with the scale and density of the solar panels, but I can totally see their point now. I...The photos in the article help a lot. I was expecting a lot of NIMBY hand-wringing because I was unfamiliar with the scale and density of the solar panels, but I can totally see their point now. I still think the "eyesore" argument is weaksauce when it comes to land one doesn't own, especially when the thing one is complaining about is renewable energy tech. But I absolutely wouldn't want to be the family in that house that's boxed in by panels on every side, either. Not that they have the right to demand clear vistas as far as the eye can see, but a reasonable affordance of breathing room shouldn't be too much to ask.
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Comment on Commonly misspelled words quiz in ~humanities.languages
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Comment on I made a word association game - Noun Sense in ~games
balooga LinkFriend code sharing thread! Here’s mine. The leaderboard’s more fun when you have some rivals to compare yourself against 😉Friend code sharing thread! Here’s mine. The leaderboard’s more fun when you have some rivals to compare yourself against 😉
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 16 in ~society
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Comment on That one study that proves developers using AI are deluded in ~tech
balooga (edited )Link ParentThat's a fun question— solving drift has been a real problem. I've tried a bunch of strategies, with mixed results. My main project right now is a green-field new app buildout with some very...That's a fun question— solving drift has been a real problem. I've tried a bunch of strategies, with mixed results. My main project right now is a green-field new app buildout with some very complicated architectural needs. Codex has been incredible at identifying and defining all of the requirements. I love to have brainstorm sessions with it, presenting a problem I'm having or anticipating, getting its recommendations, iterating on those, optimizing for certain use cases... the problem is that when we finally land on a big, technical design decision, Codex forgets all about it in the next session and starts undermining our plan with naive tacked-on hacks... not good.
So I did what any lunatic would do... I wrote up a giant, technical explanation of how the drift problem was impacting the project and asked Codex to think hard propose a solution. (I also described all the things I had already tried, and some other ideas I was considering but wasn't sure about, and asked it to scour the web for discussions about this category of problem to find solutions that have worked for other people.) What it came up with genuinely surprised me and seems like it might actually have legs.
The actual jumbo-size prompt I gave it, if you're curious.
This project has a real problem... we have been agentically developing a sophisticated, multi-layered architecture of optimized subsystems. The performance gains have been significant. But every time we start work on a new feature, AI drift undermines our prior decisions! New AI sessions never have enough context to understand the way these systems are interconnected, how they're intended to work, the thought processes and long brainstorm sessions that led to their specific implementation details, etc. So the AI ends up just ripping through existing code that was supposed to be locked in and final. Where a task may call for a careful extension of an existing mental model, the AI instead rewrites the whole thing, throwing out our hard-won performance gains because it doesn't know anything about them.
We've tried keeping a formal spec in the project. The AI has been instructed to keep that spec up to date, every time it completes work. But try as I might, I can't seem to make the AI do this well. It will add something new but not clean up old irrelevant or obsolete information. It will make changes in one part of the spec but not the others, so different part are out of sync with each other. Critically, the level of detail it's putting in the spec is not high enough to describe the intricacies of these systems.
The AI has also been instructed to add comments to the code itself, and maintain those comments, so the code is self-documenting. This also has been insufficient to guard against AI drift, and the AI often leaves old comments unchanged even as the code they're annotating has completely been rewritten.
I think one problem is that we have so many interconnected systems, spread among many files in different locations within the project directory. The AI just doesn't know where to look. When it starts to work on something, it defaults to searching the codebase for keywords. When it finds them, it assumes it has identified the correct file to work on, but does not dig deeper to find related systems that interact with it. It's not bothering to follow code paths to discover the totality of the relationships. And it ends up making partial changes that have giant blind spots, and thinking its work is complete.
We've also added a glossary because the AI makes up new terms to describe the same concepts, in every session. The intent there is that if we define our terminology, we can discuss technical concepts with less vagueness or drift over time. And consistently use those defined terms throughout the code itself, so the files will embed a shared contextual nomenclature to keep them on the rails. This is the most recent accommodation we implemented; I don't have enough data yet to know if it will help, but I'm doubtful it will help much either.
I know I can't expect the AI to just... read everything before starting. That worked when the project was in its infancy but there are too many files now, too much complexity. The AI needs an accurate map, and it needs to know how to follow that map, and it needs to ALWAYS keep that map updated and accurate without drifting. Every time I add MORE agent rules, MORE glossary terms, MORE spec detail, MORE docs, MORE comments in files... I'm just increasing the amount of context that the AI has to track, which decreases its accuracy and fills up the available context window too quickly. That's counterintuitive and ends up making the drift problem even worse.
I don't know what to do! At this point, I'm terrified to keep agentically working on this project because of the constant risk of the AI silently destroying previous work.
I think we need to brainstorm a radically new solution for this problem. Here are some things I've been considering:
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Replace the existing spec, docs, and glossary with a single, much tighter spec format that follows a rigid schema instead of being a free-form human-readable Markdown document. It would emphasize tracking design decisions, defining terms (as the glossary does now), and mapping out relationships between subsystems and technical concepts. It would also need to be designed to be searchable. I have no idea how maintaining that format over time would be achieved, it seems like just another target for drift.
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Introduce a second AI agent that is responsible for tracking all the "meta information" we're afraid of losing, perhaps in a completely different project on disk. This agent would be trusted with remembering system architecture and internal conceptual relationships. I have no idea how it would do that without, itself, drifting. But the idea is that the primary AI agent would not be allowed to figure these things out for itself; it would instead be instructed to consult with the other agent before performing any work. This would keep the primary agent's context uncluttered with exploratory noise so it can stay focused on its engineering tasks.
I need your help. Is there anything worth trying in my ideas above? Do you have any ideas of your own? Research the subject online because I know a lot of other people are wrestling with this exact same problem. See what we can learn from their discussions and recommendations. Put together a concrete, actionable plan that is engineered to overcome the drift problems I described. Your solution must account for LLMs' limited context windows and auto-compaction, and the fact that because all new AI sessions are initialized with no existing context they must discover everything they know from scratch. Be mindful of the way Codex's
AGENTS.mdfile works, including its shortcomings. Prioritize information-dense ways to feed an AI agent complex information without overloading its context.What it ended up building is a repo-wide governance system with a very lean
AGENTS.mdthat basically instructs it about how to use that system and mandates strict adherence to it. The governance system has an API (well, a suite of NPM scripts to be executed at specific times) for tracking all architecture and workflow details, which it stores in checked-in, authoritative artifacts, and gating access to the codebase according to task-scoped permission logic. Honestly it's more complex than I really understand.Here's how Codex itself described the system to me.
AGENTS.mdis intentionally thin, so an agent gets routed into the real sources of truth instead of relying on a huge prompt snapshot. The repo-governance subsystem makes that an invariant inspec/subsystems/repo-governance-context-system.yaml(line 61).- Every task starts with
npm run context:task -- "<task>", which generates an active task packet by scoring the task text against subsystem ids, contracts, invariants, and glossary terms, then listing required reads and tests. Seedocs/context-system/README.md(line 16) andscripts/context-system/shared.mjs(line 813). npm run context:checkfails if derived artifacts are stale, there is no active task packet, changes spill outside the planned subsystem surface, a locked subsystem is edited without allow-listing, a touched subsystem record was not updated, or a locked change lacks an ADR update. That logic is inscripts/context-system/shared.mjs(line 1074) andscripts/context-system/shared.mjs(line 1145).- Sensitive seams are marked locked and fail closed by default. To cross them, the task packet must explicitly allow it, and the same change must update both the subsystem record and an ADR. That policy is in
ADR-0002(line 23). - The repo maintains a queryable architecture map in subsystem YAML files, generated repo maps, and explicit import-boundary rules. It also rejects unmapped first-party files, so new code cannot silently appear outside the architecture model. See
spec/subsystems/index.yaml(line 12) andscripts/context-system/shared.mjs(line 972). - It also guards language drift and structural drift:
terms:checkrejects discouraged glossary synonyms,arch:checkrejects forbidden import edges, anddrift:reviewbuilds a bounded review packet around changed files and subsystem invariants. Seescripts/context-system/shared.mjs(line 1192),scripts/context-system/shared.mjs(line 1229), andscripts/context-system/shared.mjs(line 1287).
It's too premature for me to say if it's going to be effective over time, but so far it seems pretty solid. In fact I just asked Codex to split it out into a boilerplate (TypeScript) repo of its own that people can play around with. Should be trivial for an agent to port the concept to another language if TS isn't your bag. Interested to hear how well it works for others.
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Comment on The 49MB web page in ~comp
balooga Link ParentI'm similarly bemused by reports like your own of people using the web without JS in 2026. Unless you've restricted yourself to visiting a very small curated set of sites I've got to imagine...I'm similarly bemused by reports like your own of people using the web without JS in 2026. Unless you've restricted yourself to visiting a very small curated set of sites I've got to imagine that's more frustrating than liberating overall.
I mean, I think you and I are probably in agreement for the most part... I use Firefox's advanced tracking protection in strict mode, and uBlock Origin + Decentraleyes + CanvasBlocker + Bypass Paywalls Clean, and an always-on VPN. I am 100% on board with controlling your own device, protecting your privacy, yada yada. But JavaScript drives the web today, adding a ton of value and frankly I can't imagine the web is even viable without it. Turning it off entirely feels like going vegan but refusing to eat beans.
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Comment on That one study that proves developers using AI are deluded in ~tech
balooga Link ParentI’ve been using Codex (GPT-5.4) extensively for a few weeks and I’m blown away by its sophistication. In just a short time I’ve agent-built… A distributed data vault based on Shamir’s Secret...I’ve been using Codex (GPT-5.4) extensively for a few weeks and I’m blown away by its sophistication. In just a short time I’ve agent-built…
- A distributed data vault based on Shamir’s Secret Sharing
- A human-guided advanced OCR system that overlays font-matched candidate text and finds errors via visual diff
- An AssemblyScript procedural generation engine and TypeScript app to consume it
- The stable release of an unfinished FOSS Rust-based DSL spec and lexer+parser, which was abandoned in alpha a few years ago… I also implemented all of the open GitHub issues and the upcoming features on the project roadmap lol
- Now I’m in the process of porting that entire project to TypeScript
Being able to accomplish all this in the span of a couple weeks is mind-blowing to me. All of these are monumentally complex architectures for me to be working with solo, and I’m brand new to AssemblyScript and Rust.
Note that this is not a hands-off process, it’s iterative and intentionally prompted. Probably half of my prompts were just trying to understand what it had done so I could steer it in the directions I wanted. In most cases its instincts were honestly better than my own. Overall I feel very in control of the process, pleased with the results, and I’m learning a ton.
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Comment on The Wellermen - O Death (2026) in ~music
balooga Link ParentAgreed. I love the deep bass vocals and the harmonies in this version, but there’s a reason Ralph Stanley’s bagged a Grammy for Best Male Vocal Country Performance, beating out Willie Nelson, Tim...Agreed. I love the deep bass vocals and the harmonies in this version, but there’s a reason Ralph Stanley’s bagged a Grammy for Best Male Vocal Country Performance, beating out Willie Nelson, Tim McGraw, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Cash, and Ryan Adams. Like basically all of the O Brother soundtrack, it’s phenomenal! And it set the bar impossibly high for other artists offering their own takes on it.
Also, Ralph Stanley passed away in 2016, so hearing his voice is this song today is particularly chilling.
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Comment on RSS Gizmos: Tools for creating, finding, and using RSS feeds in ~comp
balooga (edited )LinkRSS is a great spec. I built a gizmo of my own ages ago that fetches multiple feeds and stitches them together into one. I built it for podcasts in particular. It has a few extras like regex...RSS is a great spec. I built a gizmo of my own ages ago that fetches multiple feeds and stitches them together into one. I built it for podcasts in particular. It has a few extras like regex filtering of episodes to include, and a “replay” that walks through old episodes, including them sequentially on a custom schedule so you can start listening to a podcast from the beginning and get caught up at your own pace.
Not linking it here because it’s a creaky PHP app I haven’t updated in a decade, but I still use it daily for my own podcast subscriptions.
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Comment on Subnautica 2 publisher Krafton's CEO asked ChatGPT how to void $250 million contract, ignores lawyers, loses in court in ~games
balooga Link ParentThe older I get (and let’s be honest, the deeper into the Trump era this timeline goes) the more apparent it is to me that the power structures of the world are set up to incentivize and reward...The older I get (and let’s be honest, the deeper into the Trump era this timeline goes) the more apparent it is to me that the power structures of the world are set up to incentivize and reward wrongdoing. My moral compass is strong, and it would take a tremendous effort for me to go against it. But if I did, there would likely be riches and opportunities waiting for me on the other side — a sort of compensation for the hard work of killing my own conscience, as I see it. “Of course that was difficult, but here, take this big sack of money to make it worth your while. Some financial stability ought to turn down the volume of your anguishing empathy.”
I don’t think I’m wired to ever be able to cross that rubicon. But the most “successful” people arguably don't think twice. Sociopaths, Ellisons, the Epstein class. The deck is stacked in favor of those who are unfettered by the impulse to be a good person. Conscience is for the plebes. And if I might connect the dots (and think conspiratorially for a moment) the reason our society has so many traditions and institutions about virtue and ethics is precisely because of the need to keep us on one side of that line and them on the other. The system only works for them if the prey are many and the predators are few.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
balooga (edited )LinkI’ve been playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and enjoying it a lot. Aesthetically the game absolutely nails the feeling of the original movies… the pacing, music, cutscene writing and...I’ve been playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and enjoying it a lot. Aesthetically the game absolutely nails the feeling of the original movies… the pacing, music, cutscene writing and cinematography are spot-on. Indy looks and sounds exactly like he should — kudos to Troy Baker for his pitch perfect voice work, you’d swear they went back in time and cast young Harrison Ford for the role.
I don’t think I’m very far into the game yet, but I try to avoid spoilers about that. I’m probably a bit more than halfway through the second major world location after the intro scene and college. So far I think the main plot is pretty ridiculous but it’s a transparent setup for a grand globe-hopping adventure so I’ll go with it. I’m enjoying the cast of characters and the way they subvert some of the more problematic tendencies of Indiana Jones stories, without undermining him or feeling out of place in his world. I think it’s a real balancing act to honor the best parts of Raiders of the Lost Ark and its kin, while keeping the worst parts in check for 21st century gamers. So far I’d say it’s doing that well.
The game’s adherence to 1st person skeuomorphism can get tedious. Want to see where you are? Get out your map. Want to heal? Bandage yourself. Want to unlock skill tree progression? Read books. I don’t like how much of my time is spent eating bread and fruit. The controls are a bit clunky, particularly running, jumping, and climbing down from high places. Bare-knuckle brawling is fun in 1st person perspective though, it’s extremely satisfying to beat up hordes of nazis and fascists. There’s a solid improvised weapon mechanic in the game which is fun though many of the weapons are all basically the same. I love that you can shoot a gun or flip it around for melee use. Baddies stumble around after taking a big hit, sometimes collapsing through destructible furniture or slipping off ledges. Indy’s quick with quips, making fights fun and chaotic.
I’d hoped for better stealth mechanics. You can hide but it’s not always easy to tell if you’re hidden. I’d like some of the “sixth sense” type abilities other games give you to see where enemies are and what’s in their line of sight. Sneaking around is my usual go-to for games like this but it doesn’t really seem viable here. Rushing in and beating everybody up has ended up being the more satisfying path.
I love that the puzzles take some real thinking (some more than others). I wouldn’t say they’re hard but they’re quite a bit less dumbed-down than what you’d find in an Uncharted or modern Tomb Raider game. I appreciate that this game doesn’t shy away from slow, exploratory moments. The environments are beautiful, with lots of things to discover. I enjoy hearing NPCs speaking in locale-appropriate languages, and it’s a nice touch that you can help some of them in little unmarked side quests. On the exploration side, most of the big buildings and catacombs suffer from improbable architecture, designed as labyrinthine video game spaces rather than plausible real-world places. Which I find annoying and immersion-breaking.
What else to say about this game? It’s not perfect but I’m having fun with it, as an Indy fan who grew up with the movies (and the Fate of Atlantis point-and-click adventure). At this point in the game I think I’ll give it a 7/10.
Edit: Oh I meant to say something about disguises, which are genuinely annoying. Each disguise comes with its own main weapon. Meaning if you’re not wearing the regular Indy outfit you can’t use your revolver… for some reason. And disguises are scarce. I’m trying to get into a location that requires a nazi uniform, but I have to go to a specific place to get it. Even though I’ve beaten up dozens of uniformed nazis in the area, I can’t just take one of theirs — even though Indy does exactly that in The Last Crusade… but I digress. I guess I’m spoiled by the way disguises work in Hitman. These limitations feel arbitrary, and frustrating.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
balooga Link ParentThanks for the context. Maybe they'll give him the "Chevy Chase in Community" treatment, lol.Thanks for the context. Maybe they'll give him the "Chevy Chase in Community" treatment, lol.
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Comment on Nathan Fillion says 'Firefly' animated series in development in ~tv
balooga Link ParentI know about Joss Whedon and I’m glad he’s not involved (yet curious about the legal means by which a new group can take control of his creation)… but I’m not familiar with Adam Baldwin being...I know about Joss Whedon and I’m glad he’s not involved (yet curious about the legal means by which a new group can take control of his creation)… but I’m not familiar with Adam Baldwin being problematic. What’s that about?
In general I’m pleased to see a 100% full cast reunion, minus Ron Glass, RIP. It would be fun to hear Mark Sheppard and Christina Hendricks come back as guests too. I’m probably forgetting some of the other side characters, it’s been a while.
I do think the success of this will rest on the strength of the writing, and I share @sparkle’s reservations about the team that’s been announced. Despite everything else, Whedon was very deft with world-building, character development, and witty dialogue. I’m not sure if the new torch-bearers will be able to continue with the same finesse. I’m also curious what it’s going to look like; the quality of the animation is just as capable of making or breaking this.
I hope it’s great.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 9 in ~society
balooga (edited )Link ParentLooks like it wasn't, earlier. Wonder what happened. In old.reddit.com it just says "[removed]". I'm not sure whether I should find that alarming. Ninja edit: Wayback's got it! Not-so-ninja edit:...Post is awaiting moderator approval.
Looks like it wasn't, earlier. Wonder what happened. In old.reddit.com it just says "[removed]". I'm not sure whether I should find that alarming.
Ninja edit: Wayback's got it!
Not-so-ninja edit: Reading it now. Holy crap, it's a bombshell.
What happened
The original version of this investigation was posted to r/linux, where it was mass reported and pulled down pending moderator review (150 upvotes, roughly 15k views before being pulled down some 40 minutes after being posted)
The content that was suppressed names Meta lobbying firms, traces documented payments, cites Senate LD-2 filings, and links to IRS records. It identifies Hilltop Public Solutions as the first confirmed entity bridging Meta's $45M super PAC and the DCA astroturf campaign. This is the kind of content that a well-resourced actor would have reason to suppress.
I cannot prove the mass reports were coordinated rather than organic. That is the point of the tactic: Reddit's infrastructure makes it impossible to distinguish genuine community objections from manufactured ones, and it rewards the behavior either way by automatically removing the content.
I mean, not be all conspiratorial, but the fact that it happened again with this post is pretty damning. Hope this gets Streisanded.
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Comment on Hisense TVs show ads during normal operation in ~tech
balooga Link ParentI have no idea how the economics of this work, but as far as I know all modern cars (at least in my part of the world) are equipped with always-on cell connections. My understanding is that these...I have no idea how the economics of this work, but as far as I know all modern cars (at least in my part of the world) are equipped with always-on cell connections. My understanding is that these are phoning home constantly with location and other data, to sell to brokers and/or insurance companies, and probably hand over to law enforcement whenever asked. Of course that’s also how OnStar-type services, remote start features, remote immobilizers, etc. are deployed. I might have details about this wrong, it’s a privacy nightmare that almost no one talks (or even knows) much about.
No one is paying subscriptions for that connectivity. They might be paying for services that run on them but the basic connectivity is paid by the automakers. Who can presumably pull the plug at any time when it becomes unprofitable for them. I seem to remember seeing headlines fairly recently about an older generation of cell-equipped cars that used a deprecated protocol that carriers were shutting off, leaving all those vehicles disconnected.
Anyway, if it makes economic sense for automakers to foot the bill, because the return is great enough to cover their costs… then surely TV manufacturers, who have been using ad revenue to subsidize their cheap products (usually sold at a loss or break-even with manufacturing costs) for years, could make it work too.
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Comment on Meta to acquire Moltbook, the social network for AI agents in ~tech
balooga Link ParentIt just kills me that there are so many incentives in this world to be a shitty person. I could do that. God knows I need the money. But I'm over here stuck in the grind with my stupid old...It just kills me that there are so many incentives in this world to be a shitty person. I could do that. God knows I need the money. But I'm over here stuck in the grind with my stupid old conscience, trying to keep pushing that rock up the mountain year after year like a loser.
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Comment on Meta to acquire Moltbook, the social network for AI agents in ~tech
balooga Link ParentVibe coded slop that collapsed under its own weight. I didn’t realize there was anything remaining to even sell. It’s got to be the easiest payday that guy’s ever had. How do I do this? I can vibe...Vibe coded slop that collapsed under its own weight. I didn’t realize there was anything remaining to even sell. It’s got to be the easiest payday that guy’s ever had. How do I do this? I can vibe code garbage too but nobody ever offers to pay me for it.
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Comment on The first multi-behavior brain upload in ~science
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Comment on Six months with Zen Browser in ~tech
balooga Link ParentCool, thanks for confirming. Looks like userChrome.css is supported with some kind of live-editing feature, which sounds useful. I’m tempted to switch but it’s hard to overcome the momentum of my...Cool, thanks for confirming. Looks like userChrome.css is supported with some kind of live-editing feature, which sounds useful. I’m tempted to switch but it’s hard to overcome the momentum of my current browser. I use Firefox Developer Edition and have a lot of things dialed in just how I like them. Tons of open tabs I would lose too, but of course that’s part of the problem and the reason why Zen looks interesting.
I was also laid off from my SE job back in October due to "restructuring." I've been in the field for 17 years and I'm just so burned out from repeating this cycle every 1-3 years. All I've ever wanted was long-term, stable employment doing what I love without waiting for the axe to fall. AI has changed my relationship with coding, I still enjoy it somewhat but I sure don't want my job to be babysitting Claude while it makes subtle questionable architecture decisions in customer-facing products I'm supposed to care about. I've always hated the tech interview process. Just looking for a radical change now, because I can't keep spinning in that hamster wheel.