Distributed Git

10 Nov 26

How to redefine git push for an era of distributed code. No canonical source; no platform lock-in. A re-implementation of git push that sends your code anywhere and everywhere. Nice features like branch protection are still possible, but able to defined locally, remotely, or both. Single locations can be defined as "canonical" upstream sources. Or code can have no canonical source, and just spread out and be used and interacted with wherever people like.

Coding Alone

12 Oct 26

In which I show how, over the last few years, the world has rapidly moved from open-source software being produced and maintained by online communities, to software projects being built and maintained in isolation. By single developers, with ever-decreasing input from others. AI coding tools are now dramatically accelerating movement away from code as a collective endeavour to "coding alone". I conclude by describing how such progression need not be considered inevitable. Every step has reflected the collective influence of countless individual human decisions. The fate of open-source software communities is still determined by us.

Machina machista

22 Jul 26

Your AI thinks you're a dude. And that's a problem for everybody who is not. Matching LLMs with decision-making scenarios shows escalatory recommendations are around 10× more likely when actors are identified as male rather than female. And default behaviour in the absence of gender specifiers is overwhelmingly "male". The more such models inform real decisions, the greater the risk of building genuine machina machista — machines whose ordinary use normalises misogynistic and macho behaviour throughout society.

Purposeful joy

09 Jun 26

The current purpose for a select few is to help computer programs replace the purposeful labour of a generation of uniquely idiosyncratic human beings. Yet the relationship of those being replaced to their own intrinsic purpose is categorically indistinguishable to that of those people doing the replacing. The end point of any logic of AI-replaceability is hierarchical collapse, the auto-CEO, and economic death. The saving grace is that, unlike purpose, joy steadfastly resists hierarchical direction. And that makes joy arguably one of the most important non-capturable resources left.

Our goodpractice Package Has New Superpowers

05 Jun 26

We have worked hard over the past few months on major upgrades to our goodpractice package. Checks are now grouped into categories, making it easier to control which checks are run. The biggest change has been adding over 100 new checks, from new lints to many new CRAN checks.

Centralisation, reversibility, and restarting

22 May 26

Technical progress tends toward centralisation: telephone multiplexing made calls easier and centralised the entire telephone industry; GitHub made coding easier and centralised the world of software development. Technical centralisation is mostly reversible. The economic and political centralisation that rides alongside it is not. The real binding force is neither the technology nor the data but the interfaces imposed to make it all work together. One of the best ways to ensure centralising tendencies can be reversed is to find ways to keep those interfaces simple.