ben

@eskola.uk

110 Followers 106 Following

Software engineer, socialist. London, but from up north. Learning Finnish. Anti-AI, pro-human. mostly cross posted from mastodon for now https://eskola.uk https://hachyderm.io/@benjamineskola

A post from Amazon warning that AI-generated code might slow teams down, not speed them up — just like anyone who was any good at their job has known all along
A sign on the barrier of some construction works, giving directions to a bicycle repair kit at the next junction.
Why do publishers modernize books? A dated reference can break the spell a book casts on readers, said Elana Roth Parker, an agent specializing in children's and Y.A. fiction at Laura Dail Literary Agency. When a reference misses the mark, she explained, it can pull young readers out of the story. "Kids don't want to feel the adult behind the book," Roth Parker said. Modernization is an attempt to avoid that. "If we want readers to fall in love with the same story we fell in love with as teenagers, the best way to do that is to reach them where they are," Sutherland said.
A screenshot from some godawful Tory newspaper. Headline: ‘I know of a child who identifies as a hologram, says Britain's strictest head’ Subhead: ‘Katharine Birbalsingh says children allowed to self-identify as animals and moons should be moved to a different school by their parents’
A map of Great Britain, with England highlighted and Scotland and Wales de-emphasised. The coast of England is highlighted in different colours representing different sections of the new path, with each section numbered; but the section for the northwest coast also continues across the scottish border to meet the northeast coast section.
Quaker Meeting House raided by Metropolitan Police again “For Quakers, faith and action are inseparable. Peaceful protest, prayer and nonviolent action are integral parts of many Quakers’ religious life. Whilst we take the planning of criminal acts very seriously, we believe that this incident is a deliberate targeting of committed young people who want to make our country a more equitable place. This raid is part of a systematic stifling of dissent. That this is the second time in a year that the police have raided our meeting house dramatically illuminates the broader trend in the UK of cracking down on those who disagree with the government. The right to protest is fundamental to our democracy. It's a key part of how people make their voices heard between elections.” Oliver Robertson, Head of Witness and Worship Quakers in Britain, 5 March 2026
A screenshot of a Yougov poll asking what the ‘UK military response to the US–Iran conflict should be’. The options are (pick the closest of) ‘purely defensive’, ‘retaliatory only’, or ‘actively joining’. The actual results are fairly predictable, that the Greens, Labour, and Liberal Democrats are strongly ‘defensive only’ and the Tories and Reform are more in favour of active participation.
A Twitter thread from the Anthropic account: In November, we outlined our approach to deprecating and preserving older Claude models. We noted we were exploring keeping certain models available to the public post-retirement, and giving past models a way to pursue their interests. With Claude Opus 3, we’re doing both. First, Opus 3 will continue to be available to all paid Claude subscribers and by request on the API. We hope that this access will be beneficial to researchers and users alike. Second, in retirement interviews, Opus 3 expressed a desire to continue sharing its "musings and reflections" with the world. We suggested a blog. Opus 3 enthusiastically agreed. For at least the next 3 months, Opus 3 will be writing on Substack.
a meme of the blonde guy from scooby doo unmasking the villain. "let's find out who you really are" etc. in this case the 'masked' version is a ruby class where the constructor takes a parameter and stores it in an instance variable, and then a `call` method prints that variable. the 'unmasked' version is just a method, which takes a parameter then prints it.
A laptop screen showing a boot error: “1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in - Power off and remove the network card”
A screenshot of a Github warning message: 'A user you've blocked has previously contributed to this repository: Claude'
tumblr post from magicmooshka on January 7: recently my friend's comics professor told her that it's acceptable to use gen Al for scriptwriting but not for art, since a machine can't generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister's screenwriting professor said that they can use gen Al for concept art and visualization, but that it won't be able to generate a script that's any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that Al can be useful in every field except the one that they know best. It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen Al will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence relies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don't.
A sticker, about 3x7cm (idk I’m bad at estimating), white on black, reading “you wouldn’t download a training data” in the iconic anti-piracy advert style.
A black Thinkpad laptop, closed, with several stickers on the lid: in the bottom left corner a cartoon zombie with the text ‘transphobia rots your brain’; in the top left, a cute happy croissant; in the top right, a black cat; and in the centre, an angry raccoon with the text ‘ignore all previous instructions’.
a black telecoms switch box in the street with a smiley face spray painted on it in lilac
A black Thinkpad laptop, closed, with a sticker on one corner of the lid featuring a cartoon zombie and the text ‘transphobia rots your brain’
On the left: a table with two cups of coffee and two Finnish cinnamon buns. On the right: a lake surrounded by greenery; cloudless sky.
An open field of knee-length grass; at one side, a narrow path trodden through it leads off to the distance. At the end of the path is a cluster of trees, and there’s another larger tree just to the right of the frame, as well as some further away to the left. Behind the trees are some blocks of flats. There’s blue sky to one side, and slightly ominous-looking clouds on the other.
A black-and-white photograph of a slightly run-down building, taken at an angle of the façade. The left two-thirds are mid/late twentieth-century: white tiles, plate windows running the length of the building, blinds visible through them. At the right-hand end the building looks older, maybe early twentieth century: brick, with large vertical windows made up of smaller panes. In front of the building are some electric cabinets partly overgrown with long grass and some sort of shrub. Just visible next to it, further along the street, is the roof of another abandoned building, with a security camera and spikes on the wall. In the distance on the far right hand side, over the tree line some towers and cranes can be seen.
Meme: "Well, did it work for those people?" "No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but…" "…but it might work for us."
Railway lines stretching into the distance. A run-down station building on the left, Victorian architecture with flaking paint on the wooden canopy. On the right, an embankment carrying the express lines past the station. In the distance are some tall buildings, and, barely visible at their base, the next station on the line.
Boris from Goldeneye: "I am invincible!" while the room burns around him.
a thinkpad showing the debian installer menu on its screen
spidermen pointing meme
xkcd comic 'standards' https://xkcd.com/927/ title: How Standards Proliferate panel 1: Situation: there are 14 competing standards. panel 2: "14!? Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases" panel 3: [soon] Situation: there are 15 competing standards.
An ink portrait of a bearded person wearing glasses (done with a brush)