Software developer and amateur (but published!) ring theorist. Volunteer K-12 math/CS teacher. Haskell enthusiast. He/him.
Joined April 2009
- Tweets 1,796
- Following 153
- Followers 632
- Likes 642
71 Photos and videos
Jun 4
With all the attention I've seen on @flair I feel like I should point out it just doesn't work that well. When part of the home is too hot or cold, Flair's solution is usually to do nothing at all unless you manually set the comfortable part of the house to "Away" mode.
51
May 10
User: Write me a story.
AI: "There once was a girl named Anna. She had purple hair..."
User: No, she shouldn't have purple hair. Try again.
AI: "There once was a girl named Anna. She definitely didn't have purple hair. There wasn't a shred of purple on that head..."
59
Apr 13
This is super cool: the NAND gate of scientific calculator functions. arxiv.org/abs/2603.21852
2
76
Apr 7
I've long had a full paid subscription to the @nytimes but I just just had to navigate four pages of popup ads and interstitials and tell it I don't want to upgrade to a family plan TWICE to access an article. What the hell is going on?
1
179
Mar 13
This game is fascinating to me. willowdale.online/flip Taking the offered "deals" is always mathematically a bad idea, yet often very emotionally comforting.
1
80
Mar 1
Bad UX story: Went out to eat, machine only offers 18/22/25% tip buttons. I hit "custom" but it hides the bill. I hit Cancel to go back so I can calculate the tip. It just charges my card with no tip. I ask the server; they have no way to accept a tip now. They are upset...
1
89
Feb 28
Asked Gemini to plan a basement room renovation concept, and it knocked it out of the park! I'm seriously impressed.
1
94
Feb 7
When talking to AI, one learns to stop reading as soon as it says something wrong. What comes next may not be worth your time. If it is, let AI say it again once it's not wrong. This is exactly the wrong way to interact with people, of course, but I have to remind myself!
1
1
166
Jan 24
"I'll suppose I'll have the pork again."
"Why not try something new, like the wings?"
"When pigs fly!"
2
91
Jan 18
reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comment… is actually a really good idea. Ignore the voting details. The idea is: people can propose ballot initiatives, but the government can add a third option besides Yes or No. Then use any election method that works well with 3 choices.
1
52
Jan 18
Advocacy groups that use ballot initiative processes aren't incentivized to care about practical concerns or compromise. Government is. If an impractical or extreme idea may pass, it's in the gov's interest to offer an alternative that addresses concerns in a better way.
45
Jan 13
Ugh. I just discovered that ChatGPT has started reading its previous conversations when you start new ones, meaning self-reinforcing feedback cycles extend even when you create a new conversation to avoid them. BAD idea, @OpenAI .
48
26 Nov 2025
I'm curious whether people do beam search for self-distillation when pre training LLMs.
70
14 Nov 2025
Extra security is great and all, but maybe @Google's "Find my phone" feature should avoid asking for two-factor authentication through your phone.
1
69
22 Sep 2025
Nov 6 @NYHaskell: Richard Eisenberg, A Tale of Two Lambdas meetup.com/ny-haskell/events… #Meetup via @Meetup
3
238
24 Aug 2025
A poem about my dog visiting London, coauthored with ChatGPT. Just because that's the mood I'm in today.
2
123
10 Aug 2025
Once upon a time, a carpenter had a box of nails.
One of them didn’t look right.
An imposter!
So the carpenter turned it in.
It said, “Wow, you really screwed me.”
2
112