Chris Oldwood
@chrisoldwood.bsky.social
skeet = reinterpret_cast(life)
Pinned
Chris Oldwood
@chrisoldwood.bsky.social
· Oct 21
#Introduction
@chrisoldwood = IT ∩ Dad Jokes
Author of far more than 97 puns every programmer should know…
Sets from Lightning talks:
[2016] Continuous Delivery & Becoming a Bitter Programmer
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2016/04/stan...
[2017] Wit Limits
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2017/12/wit-...
@chrisoldwood = IT ∩ Dad Jokes
Author of far more than 97 puns every programmer should know…
Sets from Lightning talks:
[2016] Continuous Delivery & Becoming a Bitter Programmer
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2016/04/stan...
[2017] Wit Limits
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2017/12/wit-...
Reposted by Chris Oldwood
Yes, Jared Diamond was wrong.
Rapa Nui's people did not suffer ecological and social collapse. They adapted to changed circumstances and thrived.
And they were nothing like "primitive"
phys.org/news/2025-11...
Rapa Nui's people did not suffer ecological and social collapse. They adapted to changed circumstances and thrived.
And they were nothing like "primitive"
phys.org/news/2025-11...
Studies show how the giant statues on Rapa Nui were made and moved—and what caused the island's deforestation
Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is often portrayed in popular culture as an enigma. The rationale is clear: The tiny, remote island in the Pacific features nearly 1,000 enormous statues—the moa...
phys.org
November 30, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Yes, Jared Diamond was wrong.
Rapa Nui's people did not suffer ecological and social collapse. They adapted to changed circumstances and thrived.
And they were nothing like "primitive"
phys.org/news/2025-11...
Rapa Nui's people did not suffer ecological and social collapse. They adapted to changed circumstances and thrived.
And they were nothing like "primitive"
phys.org/news/2025-11...
“The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple”
Whatever happened to “move fast and break things” :o).
Whatever happened to “move fast and break things” :o).
✈️ Fears of days of travel chaos across Europe and the world eased on Saturday after plane manufacturer Airbus intervened rapidly to implement a software upgrade it had said was immediately needed on some 6,000 of its stalwart A320 planes.
➡️ u.afp.com/ShXN
➡️ u.afp.com/ShXN
November 29, 2025 at 3:53 PM
“The fix mainly involves reverting to earlier software and is relatively simple”
Whatever happened to “move fast and break things” :o).
Whatever happened to “move fast and break things” :o).
Our team has adopted DORY metrics. We measure deployment frequency, lead time, failure rate, and MTTR, and then forget to ever look at them…
November 28, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Our team has adopted DORY metrics. We measure deployment frequency, lead time, failure rate, and MTTR, and then forget to ever look at them…
Achievement unlocked: going to the cinema by myself.
If Heat wasn’t only on for one night and my wife wasn’t working away I’d much preferred to have gone with her :o).
If Heat wasn’t only on for one night and my wife wasn’t working away I’d much preferred to have gone with her :o).
November 26, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Achievement unlocked: going to the cinema by myself.
If Heat wasn’t only on for one night and my wife wasn’t working away I’d much preferred to have gone with her :o).
If Heat wasn’t only on for one night and my wife wasn’t working away I’d much preferred to have gone with her :o).
return (true, false, true);
Tuples in C# were always a distraction and we should have just waited for record types... :P
Tuples in C# were always a distraction and we should have just waited for record types... :P
November 26, 2025 at 6:40 PM
return (true, false, true);
Tuples in C# were always a distraction and we should have just waited for record types... :P
Tuples in C# were always a distraction and we should have just waited for record types... :P
Tony Hoare: Null was my billion dollar mistake.
AI Industry: Hold my beer...
AI Industry: Hold my beer...
November 24, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Tony Hoare: Null was my billion dollar mistake.
AI Industry: Hold my beer...
AI Industry: Hold my beer...
"We should use relative dates as they're easier to understand."
:P
:P
November 24, 2025 at 12:00 PM
"We should use relative dates as they're easier to understand."
:P
:P
Someone said it’s Whoville Day today, so here are some Who’s enjoying Christmas Day… :P
November 23, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Someone said it’s Whoville Day today, so here are some Who’s enjoying Christmas Day… :P
Reposted by Chris Oldwood
Hilarious and terrifying: jailbreak LLMs using poetry
"These findings demonstrate that stylistic variation alone can circumvent contemporary safety mechanisms, suggesting fundamental limitations in current alignment methods and evaluation protocols."
arxiv.org/html/2511.15...
"These findings demonstrate that stylistic variation alone can circumvent contemporary safety mechanisms, suggesting fundamental limitations in current alignment methods and evaluation protocols."
arxiv.org/html/2511.15...
Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models
1 Introduction
arxiv.org
November 22, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Hilarious and terrifying: jailbreak LLMs using poetry
"These findings demonstrate that stylistic variation alone can circumvent contemporary safety mechanisms, suggesting fundamental limitations in current alignment methods and evaluation protocols."
arxiv.org/html/2511.15...
"These findings demonstrate that stylistic variation alone can circumvent contemporary safety mechanisms, suggesting fundamental limitations in current alignment methods and evaluation protocols."
arxiv.org/html/2511.15...
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
I just spent the last two hours debugging the Bluetooth stack *in anger* because for the last few weeks I've had to re-pair my mouse with my laptop. Every time. Remove mouse, re-pair.
Turns out I had two identical mice in my backpack and I've been switching between them.
It was me.
Turns out I had two identical mice in my backpack and I've been switching between them.
It was me.
November 22, 2025 at 11:06 AM
“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
“Beats me. AI decided to do so and I didn't question it.”
🙄
🙄
github.com/ocaml/ocaml/...
who could have guessed maintainers would not be happy with a 13k line PR out of nowhere with no prior discussion 😅
who could have guessed maintainers would not be happy with a 13k line PR out of nowhere with no prior discussion 😅
November 22, 2025 at 11:02 AM
“Beats me. AI decided to do so and I didn't question it.”
🙄
🙄
Something of mine from a few years back triggered by the time BA blamed one of their sysadmins for a large outage.
[2017] Afterwood — Honesty
www.chrisoldwood.com/articles/aft...
[2017] Afterwood — Honesty
www.chrisoldwood.com/articles/aft...
November 18, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Something of mine from a few years back triggered by the time BA blamed one of their sysadmins for a large outage.
[2017] Afterwood — Honesty
www.chrisoldwood.com/articles/aft...
[2017] Afterwood — Honesty
www.chrisoldwood.com/articles/aft...
Thinking back to that time our source code server ran out of disk space circa 2003 because we were logging market data to a database on it for testing and nobody remembered to set the SQL Server transaction mode to “simple” so the transaction log eventually filled up the entire disk 🤦♂️.
CNBC: Cloudflare "root cause"... an automatically generated configuration file used to manage threat traffic "grew beyond an expected size of entries" triggered a crash in the software that handles traffic for several services
hardly the first time log overflow has blown up a server!
hardly the first time log overflow has blown up a server!
www.cnbc.com
November 18, 2025 at 8:42 PM
Thinking back to that time our source code server ran out of disk space circa 2003 because we were logging market data to a database on it for testing and nobody remembered to set the SQL Server transaction mode to “simple” so the transaction log eventually filled up the entire disk 🤦♂️.
Less Cloudflare up, more Cloud flare-up…
November 18, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Less Cloudflare up, more Cloud flare-up…
Reposted by Chris Oldwood
the most woke thing about Linus is when his teenage daughter asked him to stop being a jerk to people *he listened* and stopped
November 17, 2025 at 11:42 PM
the most woke thing about Linus is when his teenage daughter asked him to stop being a jerk to people *he listened* and stopped
Did Google name their AI tool Gemini because it’s about as accurate as astrology?
November 18, 2025 at 7:57 AM
Did Google name their AI tool Gemini because it’s about as accurate as astrology?
throw PillowOverflowException();
November 16, 2025 at 5:10 PM
throw PillowOverflowException();
The Enterprise Manifesto
JIRA and PR slop over individuals and interactions
While we value the agile manifesto, we value the AI manifesto more.
JIRA and PR slop over individuals and interactions
While we value the agile manifesto, we value the AI manifesto more.
November 16, 2025 at 8:12 AM
The Enterprise Manifesto
JIRA and PR slop over individuals and interactions
While we value the agile manifesto, we value the AI manifesto more.
JIRA and PR slop over individuals and interactions
While we value the agile manifesto, we value the AI manifesto more.
I was just making a note to blog about "scriptable components" when I discovered I'd already written it almost 15 years ago :o)
[2011] PowerShell & .Net - Building Systems as Toolkits
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-fi...
("Even PowerShell is a relative newcomer on the corporate stage" 😀.)
[2011] PowerShell & .Net - Building Systems as Toolkits
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-fi...
("Even PowerShell is a relative newcomer on the corporate stage" 😀.)
PowerShell & .Net - Building Systems as Toolkits
Tales of a computer programmer.
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com
November 15, 2025 at 5:13 PM
I was just making a note to blog about "scriptable components" when I discovered I'd already written it almost 15 years ago :o)
[2011] PowerShell & .Net - Building Systems as Toolkits
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-fi...
("Even PowerShell is a relative newcomer on the corporate stage" 😀.)
[2011] PowerShell & .Net - Building Systems as Toolkits
chrisoldwood.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-fi...
("Even PowerShell is a relative newcomer on the corporate stage" 😀.)
Oblique Strategy of the Day:
November 14, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Oblique Strategy of the Day:
When God invented the debugger to help programmers understand flow at runtime, I reckon Satan’s counter move was the dependency injection framework. AI was never a threat, it’s always been DI…
November 13, 2025 at 9:11 PM
When God invented the debugger to help programmers understand flow at runtime, I reckon Satan’s counter move was the dependency injection framework. AI was never a threat, it’s always been DI…
Are anybody else’s kids as clumsy as mine? It seems like they get a new phone every week. I can’t keep up with all their new numbers!
:P
:P
November 11, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Are anybody else’s kids as clumsy as mine? It seems like they get a new phone every week. I can’t keep up with all their new numbers!
:P
:P
Reposted by Chris Oldwood
Rosalind Franklin
Leaving her notes in a pile
That she keeps by the door
Who is it for?
Awful James Watson
Stealing the credit
And snaffling all the awards
Misogynist bore
Leaving her notes in a pile
That she keeps by the door
Who is it for?
Awful James Watson
Stealing the credit
And snaffling all the awards
Misogynist bore
November 7, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Rosalind Franklin
Leaving her notes in a pile
That she keeps by the door
Who is it for?
Awful James Watson
Stealing the credit
And snaffling all the awards
Misogynist bore
Leaving her notes in a pile
That she keeps by the door
Who is it for?
Awful James Watson
Stealing the credit
And snaffling all the awards
Misogynist bore
Reposted by Chris Oldwood
OldVersion.com Archive Facing Shutdown Due to Financing Issues
OldVersion.com Archive Facing Shutdown Due to Financing Issues
Finding older versions of particular software can be a real chore, all too often only made possible by the sheer grace and benevolence of their creators. At the same time …read more
hackaday.com
November 8, 2025 at 4:00 AM
OldVersion.com Archive Facing Shutdown Due to Financing Issues
I asked Meghan Trainor to explain the joke about there only being 10 kinds of people in the world. For some reason she started singing “it's all about the base”.
November 8, 2025 at 11:43 AM
I asked Meghan Trainor to explain the joke about there only being 10 kinds of people in the world. For some reason she started singing “it's all about the base”.