Doug Sartori
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dsartori.bsky.social
Doug Sartori
@dsartori.bsky.social
270 followers 1.3K following 230 posts
Software pro. Community organizer.

Chair: hackf.org, opendatasociety.ca

Owner: p42systems.com
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dsartori.bsky.social
An interesting new technology causes a moral panic stoked by people who perceive their ox to be gored.

I don’t know if it’s a tale as old as time but it’s got a long pedigree: filevillage.info/controversie...
An excerpt from the linked article: The 1970s Copyright Panic: “What Hath Xerox Wrought?” In March 1976, Time magazine ran a now-famous cover story titled “What Hath Xerox Wrought?” – a headline that encapsulated the anxieties of the decade[18][19]. The article invited readers to imagine an all-powerful technology deity offering a miraculous information-spreading device, but at a dire price: “the President resign, stacks of sensitive Government and corporate secrets be made public, and the country be buried in a sea of paper”[20]. This fanciful scenario alluded directly to recent events (President Nixon’s resignation and leaked secrets from the Pentagon Papers), and Time noted that the “hypothetical was actually a reality.” The photocopier, dubbed a “green-eyed deus ex machina,” truly had “helped alter the course of history and changed forever the daily rhythms of white-collar life”[21]. But with its promethean power came chaos: the machine’s detractors claimed it “fostered waste, encouraged sloth, stifled creativity and punched holes in the copyright laws.”[22]
December 9, 2025 at 10:55 AM
dsartori.bsky.social
Genuinely surprised to discover that small models aren’t already the standard for this sort of thing.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff to be done with local models specifically, and hardly anyone is doing it.

arxiv.org/pdf/2506.02153
Small Language Models are the Future of Agentic AI Peter Belcak1 Greg Heinrich1 Shizhe Diao1 Yonggan Fu1 Xin Dong1 Saurav Muralidharan1 Yingyan Celine Lin1,2 Pavlo Molchanov1 1NVIDIA Research 2Georgia Institute of Technology agents@nvidia.com Abstract Large language models (LLMs) are often praised for exhibiting near-human per- formance on a wide range of tasks and valued for their ability to hold a general conversation. The rise of agentic AI systems is, however, ushering in a mass of applications in which language models perform a small number of specialized tasks repetitively and with little variation. Here we lay out the position that small language models (SLMs) are sufficiently powerful, inherently more suitable, and necessarily more economical for many invocations in agentic systems, and are therefore the future of agentic AI. Our argumentation is grounded in the current level of capabilities exhibited by SLMs, the common architectures of agentic systems, and the economy of LM deployment. We further argue that in situations where general-purpose conversational abilities are essential, heterogeneous agentic systems (i.e., agents invoking multiple different models) are the natural choice. We discuss the potential barriers for the adoption of SLMs in agentic systems and outline a general LLM-to-SLM agent conversion algorithm. Our position, formulated as a value statement, highlights the significance of the operational and economic impact even a partial shift from LLMs to SLMs is to have on the AI agent industry. We aim to stimulate the discussion on the effective use of AI resources and hope to advance the efforts to lower the costs of AI of the present day. Calling for both contributions to and cri- tique of our position, we commit to publishing all such correspondence at research.nvidia.com/labs/lpr/slm-agents.
August 20, 2025 at 11:47 AM
dsartori.bsky.social
Drunk guy on Reddit has it nailed completely. It’s wild to see companies issue press releases that every experienced programmer knows are straight-up lies.
Reddit post fragment: Look I'm not saying AI isn't shaping the industry. It's fucking disruptive, it's improved productivity, it's changed the way we develop software. But none of the outlandish promises over the last 4 years have come true. Software engineers are often painted as being the new troglodytes. Stubbornly against AI since it will take their job. Fuelled by pride and fear alone. Let me tell you, that is not the case. I'd love nothing more than to stop writing fucking code and start farming goats. If you think SWE's haven't been actively trying to automate their entire jobs for the last 40 years you simply don't know the tech industry. All we fucking want is to automate away our jobs. Yet, we are still here. The gap between where AI currently sits, and where it needs to be to achieve what the salespeople of our generation are boldly claiming, is far greater than the non-technical "tech" journalists would have you believe. People tout statements from Sam Altman as gospel, showing their complete lack of situational awareness. The man selling shoes tells you your shoes aren't good enough. Quelle fucking surprise.
May 29, 2025 at 11:09 AM
dsartori.bsky.social
Jessica and I representing P42 on Day 2 of the Empowered Kids Ontario Spring Symposium. Great, informative content and these folks know how to throw a party.
Doug and Jessica Sartori standing in front of a standup poster for Empowered Kids Ontario.
April 17, 2025 at 2:05 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
Decline and Fall Vol I Ch 5 “Sale of the Empire to Didius Julianus”
Screenshot of text: nor was there a citizen who did not consider his elevation with horror, as the last insult on the Roman name. The nobility, whose conspicuous station, and ample possessions, exacted the strictest caution, dissembled their sentiments, and met the affected civility of the emperor with smiles of complacency and professions of duty. But the people, secure in their numbers and obscurity, gave a free vent to their passions. The streets and public places of Rome resounded with clamors and imprecations. The enraged multitude affronted the person of Julian, rejected his liberality, and, conscious of the impotence of their own resentment, they called aloud on the legions of the frontiers to assert the violated majesty of the Roman empire.
April 5, 2025 at 10:50 AM
dsartori.bsky.social
Jessica gave me a working VideoDisc player for Christmas. Now that we have rustled up an RF adapter and used the thing, I can report that it is a hilariously dire piece of ‘80s consumer electronics. I love it.
An RCA SelectaVision with a few CEDs on top.
January 2, 2025 at 6:21 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
Sure hope these znic anchors I bought can hagn as much as they claim.
A package of drywall anchors with several misspellings on the package: “Znic” and “Hagn”
December 29, 2024 at 9:25 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
My annual Family Pastimes oddity from @jessicasartori.bsky.social. Never seen box copy using “Kafkaesque” as a selling point before.
A portion of the box cover from the game “The Good Ship Freedom” by Family Pastimes of Perth, Ontario, highlighting the featured text on the cover which includes a description of the game as a “Kafkaesque metaphor.”
December 27, 2024 at 3:46 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
Nifty evacuation map on the back.
A map of southwestern Essex county showing evacuation locations and routes in the event of an accident at the Fermi-2 nuclear plant.
December 23, 2024 at 3:23 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
Found this pamphlet pulling stuff out of storage. I missed the meeting and I’m way behind on my evacuation prep.
A municipal pamphlet produced by the government of Amherstburg, Ontario in 1986: “What to do in case of an emergency at the Enrico Fermi-2 Nuclear Power Plant Monroe Michigan”
December 23, 2024 at 3:19 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
This micro-LLM is a pretty good simulation of an inattentive student who got high at lunch.
chat window with Smollm2:135m. User prompt: "Tell me a random fun fact about the Roman Empire" LLM response: "In ancient Rome, there was a big event called the Punic War. These wars were fought between the Roman Republic and Carthage (another powerful city in Europe). The Romans won these wars because they were better at winning them than the Carthaginians. The Punic Wars took place from 264 to 146 BC and involved a series of battles. The two sides had different strategies, but ultimately, both sides lost. Despite this loss, Rome's military was strong enough that it defeated Carthage in 149BC, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire."
November 25, 2024 at 5:12 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
Could be the Voyager crew's best hope to escape the Delta Quadrant.
An internet headline "For the first time, physicists have transformed a quantum computer into a time crystal, a breakthrough that could be a step toward making quantum computing more practical."
November 25, 2024 at 12:15 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
Looking forward to our first recording session with a live audience!

My approach to conference presentations is to be a demanding brat. Organizers love this because they get to demonstrate how adaptable and unflappable they are.
A promotional image for the live recording of an episode of “Mean, Median and Moose” at the Workforce Windsor-Essex “Growing your workforce” conference.
November 21, 2024 at 2:27 PM
dsartori.bsky.social
After we passed the Hackforge budget at our final 2024 board meeting, a few Hackforgers and board members got together to celebrate our work together this year.

This crew has pulled off 56 events in 2024 so far, and we aren't done yet. Most of our stuff is online. See what's coming up at hackf.org
A group of tech enthusiasts enjoying a relaxing evening inside a cavernous brew pub.
November 17, 2024 at 12:34 PM