Alex Gude
banner
alexgude.com
Alex Gude
@alexgude.com
Machine learning engineer in Silicon Valley! Formerly a particle physicist at CERN and alumni of Insight. He/Him

https://alexgude.com
@alex_gude@fediscience.org
Pinned
Alright, I did it.

Here's my book reviews of Disco Elysium.

Tough to keep it short and focused, there was so much I wanted to cover, but we'll call this good enough.

It is fantastic, give it a read! Or... Play.

alexgude.com/books/disco_...

#BookReview
Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium, written by Robert Kurvitz et al., is a role-playing game produced by ZA/UM. It’s the story of Harrier “Harry” Du Bois, a man who wakes up with no memories and has to solve a murder whil...
alexgude.com
Reposted by Alex Gude
Part of the reason why I’m so insistent about folks understanding AI capabilities is that they’re here to stay and we need to start thinking about what to do in such a world. Putting the genie back in the bottle is a pleasant fantasy that delays serious reckoning
November 9, 2025 at 5:29 AM
I enjoyed the first book in the Honor Harrington series, On Basilisk Station, although it's clear Weber is still trying to find his feet.

I particularly enjoy its depiction of professional competency, especially in... these times. 😅

alexgude.com/books/on_bas...

#BookReview
On Basilisk Station
On Basilisk Station, by David Weber, is the first book in the long-running Honor Harrington series of military science fiction. It introduces Commander Honor Harrington, a brilliant naval officer exil...
alexgude.com
November 9, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
side note: the og:image generator that screenshots the blog post at a readable text size is really neat

screenshots.jamesg.blog?url=https://...
November 8, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
one of these is a mindless machine churning out terrible takes and the other is Grok
if i ever reach this point then just put me down
November 7, 2025 at 3:09 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
This is somehow the fault of the individual AI researchers here.

To compensate, I've been negatively polarized into being even more of an anti-copyright extremist.
Some ppl on this site are negative-polarizing themselves into being more copyright maximalist than fucking Sony.

If we’d Japanese copyright rules, American culture would be vastly poorer for it. As would Japanese culture, b/c Japanese creators routinely use US sites to flout their own insane rules.
November 7, 2025 at 7:13 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
November 6, 2025 at 12:03 AM
Oh so Walter Miller can write huh?

Why didn't anyone tell me this?! (Everyone told me this.)
November 5, 2025 at 4:28 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
FAFO
November 5, 2025 at 4:19 AM
All right I'm putting my marker down:

Prop 50 over 60%
November 5, 2025 at 4:06 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
STATE OF THE ART just literally has Diziet Sma go to Earth, take a quick look at it and endorse socialism while condemning misogyny, looking directly into the camera, it's incredible
The Culture novels are, among other things, anarchist propaganda about anarchist utopia. that is literally what they are. anyone who reads them and does not see that has missed the point bsky.app/profile/real...
There's like two pages in Player of Games saying WE'RE GOING TO USE GENDER NEUTRAL PRONOUNS FOR THESE ALIENS WITH CONCEPTS OF GENDER ALIEN TO YOUR PUNY EARTHLY MIND, DON'T PISS YOURSELF IN FEAR
November 3, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
[2/9] We argue that instead of getting stuck on metaphysical debates (is AI conscious?), we should treat personhood as a flexible bundle of obligations (rights & responsibilities) that societies confer.
October 31, 2025 at 12:33 PM
I've made the same-ish plot using California data!

Be careful out there!

alexgude.com/blog/switrs-...
October 31, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
I am the very model of an ancient trunkless leg of stone,
My shattered visage lies half buried with a sandy sneering frown,
The sculptor carved my arrogance upon these broken lifeless things,
My name is Ozymandias, the self-describèd King of Kings!
October 30, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
I jump into the moderation debate. I agree with @adambonica.bsky.social and @gelliottmorris.com on the methodology, but I want to draw attention to a bigger issue. The collapse of candidate effects generally.
leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-modera...
October 29, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
A fun project here for you to fight over, from @philedwardsinc.bsky.social:

How Midwestern is Each State?!

mostmidwest.com
Most Midwest
How Midwestern is each state? You decide! 🌽
mostmidwest.com
October 29, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
an awful lot of why politics is so deranged now in four easy steps:
1. invent extremely powerful new distributed consensus-forming mechanism called, for some reason, "social media"
2. put it in everyone's pockets
3. pay an army of PhDs high-six-figures to make it more addictive

4. strange new distributed consensuses form
October 29, 2025 at 5:03 AM
😐
Jake, what is happening on twitter dot com??

I could have sworn the #numbers guys used to have a little more heft…
October 28, 2025 at 1:04 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
unbelievbable. i cannot believe you are going after a disabled shepard for his dietary preferences.
Describe a character in Greek mythology the way someone trying to defend a politician would. I’ll start.

Oedipus: Like you’ve never had sex with someone and regretted it later
October 25, 2025 at 2:00 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
In important math news: new shape just dropped (the noperthedron) www.quantamagazine.org/first-shape-...
First Shape Found That Can’t Pass Through Itself | Quanta Magazine
After more than three centuries, a geometry problem that originated with a royal bet has been solved.
www.quantamagazine.org
October 24, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
Rescue the Tilden steam train! Email publiccomment@ebparks.org with the subject line "Public Comment- Tilden Steam Train".
bayareatelegraph.com/2025/10/24/t...
Tilden's Beloved Steam Train is in Danger of Closing, Owner Warns Bay Area Telegraph
SF Bay Area food, news, politics, culture and tech.
bayareatelegraph.com
October 24, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
people saying ai is a fad don't know what they're talking about. i'm definitely not giving up my claude now; the ability to do structural refactors "change this thing to be layered like this thing in this other project" is fantastic. i *do* want the model to be local and hope we'll get there in time
October 23, 2025 at 1:52 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
New: The market for Counter-Strike skins fell $1.75 billion overnight -- that's 25%.

Investors dumped money into the digital item market amid concerns about the S&P 500 and crypto. Then, last night, Valve pushed a market-breaking update to the game
October 23, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
I recorded a ten minute video showing my vibe-coding process for building a tool for sharing formatted terminal sessions via copy and paste using the new Claude Code for web - now available on YouTube here www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQvM...

More notes on my blog: simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/23/...
Using Claude Code for web to build a tool to copy-paste share terminal sessions
YouTube video by Simon Willison
www.youtube.com
October 23, 2025 at 4:17 AM
Reposted by Alex Gude
Skeptical of using AI agents for docs? What about hallucinations?

Join Emma, Senior Technical Writer at Block, next Thursday as she uses goose to write its own documentation, and shares strategies for doc creation and validation with agentic AI.
📆 October 30, 9am PT/ 12pm ET
📺 linktr.ee/goose_oss
October 22, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Alex Gude
And we're live! Starting today, you can use Bounce to migrate from Mastodon to an existing Bluesky, Blacksky, or any other ATProto account! Check it out: blog.anew.social/bounce-beta-...
October 20, 2025 at 7:01 PM