Nick Stenning
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nickstenning.bsky.social
Nick Stenning
@nickstenning.bsky.social
280 followers 790 following 140 posts
Infrastructure, humans, production operations, security. Oh, and dogs.
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nickstenning.bsky.social
Snowy egret friend!
September 8, 2025 at 2:42 PM
nickstenning.bsky.social
Dear urban planners, I am begging you to understand that this is not what a creek looks like.
A wide, shallow, and heavily canalised urban “creek” in Denver. The walls of the are engineered with large rocks and the channel itself is featureless and flat. The whole thing is contained by large concrete flood walls.
September 8, 2025 at 2:18 PM
nickstenning.bsky.social
Reaaaallly wanting to tap the sign today.
“Don’t make me tap the sign” meme, where the sign reads “Async is not a magical salve you can rub on everything to make it better in fact if you do that it usually makes things worse”
July 17, 2025 at 6:20 PM
nickstenning.bsky.social
Remind me of the third colour in the American flag? Oh, right.

Even putting the white dogwhistle aside, this is mindblowingly incompetent framing: “the middle”—in between the far-right fascists and the right-wing fascist-enablers—yes, that’s where we should be!
A screenshot of a tweet. The tweet is from @AmericaPartyX. The text reads: “We’ve tried red. We’ve tried blue. America is ready for something that actually works. America Party — The middle has a voice now.” Below is a poorly photoshopped picture of a stern-looking Elon Musk, arms folded, in front of a waving American flag.
July 6, 2025 at 11:24 AM
nickstenning.bsky.social
"A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST MAKE ALL THE DECISIONS SO THAT THE BILLIONAIRE PLAYBOY CEO CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER"
An image of a slide from a 1979 IBM internal training slide deck, which reads: "A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION"
June 12, 2025 at 10:26 AM
nickstenning.bsky.social
Using a language model to do contract review — in a healthcare context! — based on vague and ambiguous criteria, and using only the first ~10k words of the contract. These are simply not serious people. www.propublica.org/article/insi...
A screenshot of text. It reads: You are an AI assistant that analyzes government contracts. Always provide comprehensive few-sentence descriptions that explain WHO the contract is with, WHAT specific services/products are provided, and WHO benefits from these services. Remember that contracts for EMR systems and healthcare IT infrastructure directly supporting patient care should be classified as NOT munchable. Contracts related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or services that could be easily handled by in-house W2 employees should be classified as MUNCHABLE. Consider 'soft services' like healthcare technology management, data management, administrative consulting, portfolio management, case management, and product catalog management as MUNCHABLE. For contract modifications, mark the munchable status as 'N/A'. For IDIQ contracts, be more aggressive about termination unless they are for core medical services or benefits processing.
June 7, 2025 at 8:01 AM
nickstenning.bsky.social
It does sometimes get this right, but when it gets it wrong (as in the prior post) *boy* does it tie itself in knots trying to explain itself.
PROMPT: In the following scenario, who does the pronoun "he" refer to in the final sentence: "Jim saw his friend Bob skiing on TV. He didn't recognise him, the idiot!" RESPONSE: In this scenario, the pronoun "he" most likely refers to Jim. The situation is that Jim is watching TV and sees his friend Bob skiing, but Jim fails to recognize that it's Bob. The phrase "the idiot!" is self-deprecating - Jim is calling himself an idiot for not recognizing his own friend on TV. This interpretation makes more sense than Bob not recognizing Jim, since Bob is skiing on TV and wouldn't be expected to "recognize" Jim who is just watching from home. The structure "He didn't recognise him" suggests the subject (he) failed to recognize the object (him), and since Jim is the one doing the watching/observing, he would be the one who could fail to recognize Bob on the screen.
June 5, 2025 at 8:14 AM
nickstenning.bsky.social
This is fun: both Sonnet and Opus still get tripped up by a language problem posed way back in the Cyc era of AI development.
A screenshot of a conversation with Claude’s Opus 4 model: PROMPT: In the following scenario, who does the pronoun “he” refer to in the final sentence: “Jim saw his friend Bob skiing on TV. He didn’t recognise him, the idiot!” RESPONSE: In this scenario, the pronoun “he” most likely refers to **Bob**. The key context is that Jim is watching Bob on TV, and Bob didn’t recognize Jim. This makes sense because Bob is the one skiing and presumably being filmed - he wouldn’t be expected to recognize Jim who is just watching at home. The phrase “the idiot!” suggests Jim is calling Bob an idiot for not recognizing him, perhaps because Jim was visible somewhere (maybe in the crowd or elsewhere in the shot) and Bob failed to notice or acknowledge him. The alternative interpretation (Jim didn’t recognize Bob) would be less likely to prompt the “the idiot!” insult, since Jim would be calling himself an idiot, which is less common in this type of casual, critical observation.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
June 5, 2025 at 8:10 AM
nickstenning.bsky.social
A blurry (but visible!) local nightingale.
May 21, 2025 at 10:10 AM
nickstenning.bsky.social
Never change, internet. Never change.
February 25, 2025 at 9:33 PM