Liam O'Connor
@liamoc.net
Senior Lecturer at ANU, Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country. he/any. 한국어도 할 수 있다. I leave these posts, I do not know for whom, I no longer know what they are about.
No AI-generated content, please.
https://liamoc.net
No AI-generated content, please.
https://liamoc.net
Pinned
Liam O'Connor
@liamoc.net
· Oct 22
liamoc.net – PhD Position (Foundations)
liamoc.net
I have PhD positions available at the ANU! Includes a stipend, open to students from overseas. See this page for more details. Please contact me if interested and forward to those who might be!
liamoc.net/work_with_me...
liamoc.net/work_with_me...
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
Today, we're launching SlopStop: Community-driven AI slop detection in Kagi Search.
Join our collective defense against AI-generated spam and content farms:
blog.kagi.com/slopstop
Join our collective defense against AI-generated spam and content farms:
blog.kagi.com/slopstop
November 13, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Today, we're launching SlopStop: Community-driven AI slop detection in Kagi Search.
Join our collective defense against AI-generated spam and content farms:
blog.kagi.com/slopstop
Join our collective defense against AI-generated spam and content farms:
blog.kagi.com/slopstop
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
We created a machine that makes bullshit at scale and have effectively DDOS'd our information environment if not reality itself
This is why we can’t have nice things
arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review.
This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month.
Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.
This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month.
Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.
November 2, 2025 at 4:52 PM
We created a machine that makes bullshit at scale and have effectively DDOS'd our information environment if not reality itself
One thing I find odd is that I don't have a "primary language". I am skilled at writing Rust, Haskell, ML, Lean, Isabelle and Agda, yet if I am faced with a new project I might choose any of these or none. The most recent programming I was doing was in Kotlin.
August 15, 2025 at 4:40 AM
One thing I find odd is that I don't have a "primary language". I am skilled at writing Rust, Haskell, ML, Lean, Isabelle and Agda, yet if I am faced with a new project I might choose any of these or none. The most recent programming I was doing was in Kotlin.
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
But they’ll still shove it into everything, force-feed it to everyone (unwanted integration into software, unproven edtech etc), externalize costs, induce unpaid work. …
So many billions spent on the build out of infrastructure for a product that hardly anyone is willing to pay to use.
pivot-to-ai.com/2025/07/04/o...
pivot-to-ai.com/2025/07/04/o...
August 2, 2025 at 4:44 PM
But they’ll still shove it into everything, force-feed it to everyone (unwanted integration into software, unproven edtech etc), externalize costs, induce unpaid work. …
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
Ult The whole point of "AI" is that there is no apparent way to correct it when it goes wrong. Rather, we the humans are to blame for our failure to conform to its stupidity. The people who are doing this to us, I promise you, can survive without oxygen.
July 31, 2025 at 11:54 PM
Ult The whole point of "AI" is that there is no apparent way to correct it when it goes wrong. Rather, we the humans are to blame for our failure to conform to its stupidity. The people who are doing this to us, I promise you, can survive without oxygen.
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
I tweet about this so much but it just kills my soul a little bit. I will tweet "AI stuff is boring trash" and get comments like "Yeah I totally agree but not in the case where I use it' and then they post their boring trash.
"i asked chat gtp" is the laziest form of content and it has infected so many spaces. "Can it color match? Can it make a cocktail? Can it summarize these words?"
it's so boring and i hate it.
it's so boring and i hate it.
June 25, 2025 at 3:48 PM
I tweet about this so much but it just kills my soul a little bit. I will tweet "AI stuff is boring trash" and get comments like "Yeah I totally agree but not in the case where I use it' and then they post their boring trash.
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
AI is useful for tons of bad stuff though. Generating bombing targets? Check. Automating managerial oversight? Check. Political surveillance? Check. Suppressing wages? Check.
None of these depend on the model working well, just well enough to be well above chance. Which they are.
None of these depend on the model working well, just well enough to be well above chance. Which they are.
People who don’t like AI aren’t in denial about how useful it is. People who like AI are in denial about how useful it is
June 17, 2025 at 5:41 PM
AI is useful for tons of bad stuff though. Generating bombing targets? Check. Automating managerial oversight? Check. Political surveillance? Check. Suppressing wages? Check.
None of these depend on the model working well, just well enough to be well above chance. Which they are.
None of these depend on the model working well, just well enough to be well above chance. Which they are.
Holbert-NG will be the largest piece of software I've written in an ML dialect (ReScript). I'm quite happy with it as a language so far.
June 16, 2025 at 5:54 AM
Holbert-NG will be the largest piece of software I've written in an ML dialect (ReScript). I'm quite happy with it as a language so far.
Does @kagi.com take other people's de-ranking of pages into account when ranking results for other users? Because I think it would be a good feature to implement -- if we all start deranking AI-generated slop it will stop showing up so prominently in our results.
June 13, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Does @kagi.com take other people's de-ranking of pages into account when ranking results for other users? Because I think it would be a good feature to implement -- if we all start deranking AI-generated slop it will stop showing up so prominently in our results.
I use Orion+ as my daily driver. The only thing it's missing is Arc-like auto-disposal of tabs.
"There are several features that help make Orion stand out."
Find out what they are 👇
www.zdnet.com/article/i-fo...
Find out what they are 👇
www.zdnet.com/article/i-fo...
I found an iPhone and Mac browser that's faster, safer, and easier than Safari
Looking for a Safari alternative? This browser for iPhone and Mac beats it in every way.
www.zdnet.com
June 7, 2025 at 5:04 AM
I use Orion+ as my daily driver. The only thing it's missing is Arc-like auto-disposal of tabs.
I wrote up my thoughts on an as-yet hypothetical redesign of Holbert. liamoc.net/forest/loc-0...
liamoc.net
June 5, 2025 at 1:30 PM
I wrote up my thoughts on an as-yet hypothetical redesign of Holbert. liamoc.net/forest/loc-0...
Society is less human now. Social media replacing in-person socialisation, LLM slop replacing authentic media, online commercial megacorps replacing human-oriented in-person commerce, economic indicators having little-to-no relation to citizen's experience of the economy, global enshittification..
June 5, 2025 at 3:39 AM
Society is less human now. Social media replacing in-person socialisation, LLM slop replacing authentic media, online commercial megacorps replacing human-oriented in-person commerce, economic indicators having little-to-no relation to citizen's experience of the economy, global enshittification..
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
I’ve got so much respect for @kagi.com and it’s only enhanced by posts like this.
I suspect that many Kagi customers feel that their support for the company equates to taking a stand against big tech, but even if you don’t feel inclined to rebel, their service is simply *better* than Google Search.
I suspect that many Kagi customers feel that their support for the company equates to taking a stand against big tech, but even if you don’t feel inclined to rebel, their service is simply *better* than Google Search.
Kagi turns 3!
To our amazing community: thank you for your trust and support. Here's to many more years of building a web that works for you, not advertisers.
Read more about our journey to date and what’s to come:
blog.kagi.com/first-three-...
To our amazing community: thank you for your trust and support. Here's to many more years of building a web that works for you, not advertisers.
Read more about our journey to date and what’s to come:
blog.kagi.com/first-three-...
June 3, 2025 at 8:10 PM
I’ve got so much respect for @kagi.com and it’s only enhanced by posts like this.
I suspect that many Kagi customers feel that their support for the company equates to taking a stand against big tech, but even if you don’t feel inclined to rebel, their service is simply *better* than Google Search.
I suspect that many Kagi customers feel that their support for the company equates to taking a stand against big tech, but even if you don’t feel inclined to rebel, their service is simply *better* than Google Search.
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
This was a profoundly disappointing article to read, and I'm surprised that you wrote it. I'm even more surprised that Kurt insisted you post it on the company blog. I will revise my expectations of fly.io going forward.
But out of respect, I will spend some time and tell you why I am disappointed.
But out of respect, I will spend some time and tell you why I am disappointed.
June 3, 2025 at 2:25 AM
This was a profoundly disappointing article to read, and I'm surprised that you wrote it. I'm even more surprised that Kurt insisted you post it on the company blog. I will revise my expectations of fly.io going forward.
But out of respect, I will spend some time and tell you why I am disappointed.
But out of respect, I will spend some time and tell you why I am disappointed.
I also became a Kagi customer recently and highly recommend it. I have no interest in their LLM products but they never force me to use them like Google does. The Orion browser is also good.
Still a very happy Kagi subscriber ~two years in. Not sure that having a simple foundation for the customer-vendor relationship should feel so refreshing, but I’ll take it. blog.kagi.com/first-three-...
Kagi status update: First three years | Kagi Blog
Three years ago, Kagi officially launched with a splash on popular technology forum Hacker News (to which we are eternally grateful for helping put Kagi on the map).
blog.kagi.com
June 3, 2025 at 1:40 AM
I also became a Kagi customer recently and highly recommend it. I have no interest in their LLM products but they never force me to use them like Google does. The Orion browser is also good.
It used to be that every piece of text you read, everywhere, was text that *someone* thought about and wrote down, to communicate to you. This was a fundamental property of human language. It is now irrevocably destroyed, which is dreadful.
The ChatGPT summer book reads list in the Chicago Sun-Tribune fills me with dread about how much we’ve already lost and how much we will lose to AI slop. I think about all the little pieces of human writing I care about but maybe most people don’t—museum placards, book flaps, photo captions
May 20, 2025 at 4:21 PM
It used to be that every piece of text you read, everywhere, was text that *someone* thought about and wrote down, to communicate to you. This was a fundamental property of human language. It is now irrevocably destroyed, which is dreadful.
Reposted by Liam O'Connor
The ChatGPT summer book reads list in the Chicago Sun-Tribune fills me with dread about how much we’ve already lost and how much we will lose to AI slop. I think about all the little pieces of human writing I care about but maybe most people don’t—museum placards, book flaps, photo captions
May 20, 2025 at 1:52 PM
The ChatGPT summer book reads list in the Chicago Sun-Tribune fills me with dread about how much we’ve already lost and how much we will lose to AI slop. I think about all the little pieces of human writing I care about but maybe most people don’t—museum placards, book flaps, photo captions
At first I was put off by the fairly high price of the @play.date but the hardware is clearly amazingly high quality, with a lot of attention put into the design of every component. I will have fun developing games for this I think!
April 28, 2025 at 5:46 AM
At first I was put off by the fairly high price of the @play.date but the hardware is clearly amazingly high quality, with a lot of attention put into the design of every component. I will have fun developing games for this I think!
@play.date your shipping provider for Australia is the worst courier on the planet. I'm pretty sure they've lost my playdate :( Just thought I'd let you know in case you're considering switching providers.
April 25, 2025 at 6:50 AM
@play.date your shipping provider for Australia is the worst courier on the planet. I'm pretty sure they've lost my playdate :( Just thought I'd let you know in case you're considering switching providers.
i don't like the bots. i pay money to use a text editor that doesn't try to get me to use the bots. I use a browser that doesn't try to get me to use the bots. /butlerian
April 3, 2025 at 8:34 AM
i don't like the bots. i pay money to use a text editor that doesn't try to get me to use the bots. I use a browser that doesn't try to get me to use the bots. /butlerian