Tess Snider
@malkyne.com
Fairy codemother. Free-range veteran game programmer and underground programming teacher. Co-owner of indie game studio Hidden Achievement.
Pinned
Tess Snider
@malkyne.com
· Apr 3
Never attribute to artificial incompetence that which is adequately explained by natural incompetence.
Only if they can license "Living on a Prayer" for it.
January 17, 2026 at 12:22 PM
Only if they can license "Living on a Prayer" for it.
You thought the end was nigh before! Well, this is the nighest end yet, baby! You've never seen it so nigh! If it were any more nigh, they'd have to go back in time to... oh, wait.
January 17, 2026 at 12:13 PM
You thought the end was nigh before! Well, this is the nighest end yet, baby! You've never seen it so nigh! If it were any more nigh, they'd have to go back in time to... oh, wait.
From the studio that brought you Thor: Ragnorok and Avengers: Endgame, it's Avengers: Doomsday, which will be followed by Avengers: Apocalypse, Avengers: Armageddon, Avengers: Judgement Day, Avengers: Eschaton...
January 17, 2026 at 10:09 AM
From the studio that brought you Thor: Ragnorok and Avengers: Endgame, it's Avengers: Doomsday, which will be followed by Avengers: Apocalypse, Avengers: Armageddon, Avengers: Judgement Day, Avengers: Eschaton...
A this angle, Ryan Hurst looks a lot like my brother, and this is very confusing to me.
January 16, 2026 at 7:47 PM
A this angle, Ryan Hurst looks a lot like my brother, and this is very confusing to me.
“They said that about the computer” is a meaningless bit of rhetoric. Sure, the microcomputer had skeptics, but so did lots of other techs and products that DID end up flopping. The success of the microcomputer does not automatically validate everything that follows.
January 16, 2026 at 5:37 PM
“They said that about the computer” is a meaningless bit of rhetoric. Sure, the microcomputer had skeptics, but so did lots of other techs and products that DID end up flopping. The success of the microcomputer does not automatically validate everything that follows.
I imagine that there are specific patterns of delusion that humans are particularly vulnerable to, and those same patterns recur frequently in the LLM training data, so in a way, it is primed to exploit them.
January 16, 2026 at 1:10 AM
I imagine that there are specific patterns of delusion that humans are particularly vulnerable to, and those same patterns recur frequently in the LLM training data, so in a way, it is primed to exploit them.
It's like we're all sleeper agents just waiting to be turned into Time Cube Guy.
January 16, 2026 at 1:10 AM
It's like we're all sleeper agents just waiting to be turned into Time Cube Guy.
It's interesting to me how many people suffering LLM-psychosis think they've found some kind of new math.
NEW: In January 2024, a man purchased Meta's newly AI-infused smart glasses.
He went on to experience a devastating break with reality that played out across Meta platforms — with Meta AI as his companion, entertaining and affirming his worsening delusional beliefs.
futurism.com/artificial-i...
He went on to experience a devastating break with reality that played out across Meta platforms — with Meta AI as his companion, entertaining and affirming his worsening delusional beliefs.
futurism.com/artificial-i...
January 16, 2026 at 1:09 AM
It's interesting to me how many people suffering LLM-psychosis think they've found some kind of new math.
I'm kind of sad that New World is going to be shut down, but at the same time, the thing that impressed me the most about the game was the lush displacement maps on the ground surface. That's probably not what the devs would like to be remembered for. Except for whoever did that part. You rock.
January 16, 2026 at 12:05 AM
I'm kind of sad that New World is going to be shut down, but at the same time, the thing that impressed me the most about the game was the lush displacement maps on the ground surface. That's probably not what the devs would like to be remembered for. Except for whoever did that part. You rock.
For me, it's always like, "Was that a tooth chip? Did I just bite part of my tooth?"
January 14, 2026 at 8:29 PM
For me, it's always like, "Was that a tooth chip? Did I just bite part of my tooth?"
I look forward to the day when someone can clean the territorial piss off of the building.
January 13, 2026 at 10:04 PM
I look forward to the day when someone can clean the territorial piss off of the building.
Not to mention the fact that it's probably blocked by the pillars at just about any angle, unless you're way too close to be looking at it.
January 13, 2026 at 9:50 PM
Not to mention the fact that it's probably blocked by the pillars at just about any angle, unless you're way too close to be looking at it.
And it's right below that other text, in the same exact size and font. Aaaaaaaaaaaagh, my skin is crawling.
January 13, 2026 at 9:49 PM
And it's right below that other text, in the same exact size and font. Aaaaaaaaaaaagh, my skin is crawling.
But you don't need anything that decorative to cause the failure. You can simply say that an explicit period of time passes. It still filters that out as irrelevant information.
January 13, 2026 at 8:20 PM
But you don't need anything that decorative to cause the failure. You can simply say that an explicit period of time passes. It still filters that out as irrelevant information.
I call these "Lemon Tree Problems," because my initial thought experiments in this direction involved a lemon tree growing to maturity, and the passage of time causing all fruit in earlier operations to rot.
January 13, 2026 at 8:18 PM
I call these "Lemon Tree Problems," because my initial thought experiments in this direction involved a lemon tree growing to maturity, and the passage of time causing all fruit in earlier operations to rot.
It's important to understand that this capability is not integrated in such a way as to make it useful for solving real world problems. For instance, in ChatGPT, all you need to do is embed a passage of time which invalidates the earlier operations in a problem, and it fails 100% of the time.
January 13, 2026 at 8:16 PM
It's important to understand that this capability is not integrated in such a way as to make it useful for solving real world problems. For instance, in ChatGPT, all you need to do is embed a passage of time which invalidates the earlier operations in a problem, and it fails 100% of the time.
It’s the 1980s Grey Poupon ad of design.
January 13, 2026 at 5:47 PM
It’s the 1980s Grey Poupon ad of design.
My prof was specialized heavily into Mesoamerican astronomy, so we ended up spending a lot of time discussing sites Von Daniken unfortunately liked to wildly speculate about.
January 12, 2026 at 10:35 AM
My prof was specialized heavily into Mesoamerican astronomy, so we ended up spending a lot of time discussing sites Von Daniken unfortunately liked to wildly speculate about.
I'm pretty sure my prof spent at least a whole class talking about what a clown Von Daniken was in my archaeoastronomy course at UMCP.
January 12, 2026 at 10:31 AM
I'm pretty sure my prof spent at least a whole class talking about what a clown Von Daniken was in my archaeoastronomy course at UMCP.
It's a good feeling to beat the curve near the end of a Zachtronics game, because you know that a whole lot of people noped out long before they got there, so it's just you and the other steely survivors duking it out for the most grimly efficient spaghetti mess ever created.
January 12, 2026 at 4:05 AM
It's a good feeling to beat the curve near the end of a Zachtronics game, because you know that a whole lot of people noped out long before they got there, so it's just you and the other steely survivors duking it out for the most grimly efficient spaghetti mess ever created.
"Deplatforming" was a weird choice of words here. Blocking a social media site is not "deplatforming" anyone, unless they have nowhere else to be heard. That is not the case for most users of that site.
January 12, 2026 at 2:41 AM
"Deplatforming" was a weird choice of words here. Blocking a social media site is not "deplatforming" anyone, unless they have nowhere else to be heard. That is not the case for most users of that site.
Yeah, the comics I'm remembering were almost certainly purchased when I was younger than 13.
January 11, 2026 at 11:45 PM
Yeah, the comics I'm remembering were almost certainly purchased when I was younger than 13.
Jealous! That's awesome.
January 11, 2026 at 11:40 PM
Jealous! That's awesome.
I think that some of the horror comics I was reading were super-cheap factory rejects, because they had paper cutting mistakes, and things like that.
January 11, 2026 at 11:26 PM
I think that some of the horror comics I was reading were super-cheap factory rejects, because they had paper cutting mistakes, and things like that.