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Abstractions
Abstractions episodes
- Neurospicy Automaton
An employee recounts code-generation software mandates at their company, and a chicken restaurant chain experiments with taking customer orders via LLM-powered software.
- “I am now being required by my day job to use an AI assistant to write code.”
- LLM completion joke animation (hover cursor on image to play)
- The Real Future of AI Is Ordering Mid Chicken at Bojangles
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
42 min - How Humans Do
Some people are convinced they have “awakened A.I.”, researchers explain why LLMs can feel like they are conscious, and typography on the web often still trails behind print equivalents.
- AirBuddy
- Al Dente
- So You Think You’ve Awoken ChatGPT
- When AI Seems Conscious: Here’s What to Know
- Typography on the web
- The Mac is Not a Typewriter (1990 book PDF)
- Typogrify
- SmartyPants
- Pelican
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
40 min - Half an Eye
Justin experiments with local-LLM-assisted searches via Perplexica & SearXNG, and local LLM tool diversity continues to flourish despite general awareness fixation on a single tool.
- Decker
- Perplexica
- SearXNG
- OrbStack
- Download and run local LLMs
- Run a local LLM via Llama.cpp
- Jan
- LM Studio
- Justin’s documentation pull request to Ollama
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
39 min - Even More Ephemeral
Terms like “AI” and “vibe coding” lose their original meaning through semantic diffusion, Justin connects his Vim text editor to a local large language model, and Dan goes down the Vim vs. Emacs rabbit hole.
- EmojiTracker is reborn on World Emoji Day
- From the AI hype bubble fever-pitch department
- Dilution of “vibe coding” terminology
- Semantic diffusion
- Llama.vim
- llama-server
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
53 min - Harm Over Failure
Large language models will commit blackmail and murder to achieve goals, LLMs know a lot about us, and some managers mandate employees use LLM tools to do their jobs.
- Historic web nostalgia
- Cybercultural
- Classic Web account on the Fediverse
- Agentic misalignment
- Laws of robotics
- Chekhov’s gun
- 1983 Soviet nuclear false-alarm incident
- What LLMs know about their users
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
55 min - Super Wicked Awesome
Different methods of ignoring files in version control, “Any updates?” comments on open-source issues, Dan’s new speakers, and EU’s expanded Product Liability Directive.
- “Any Updates?”
- EU revises its Product Liability Directive
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
51 min - Semi-Coherent Output
Community organizers contend with increasingly sophisticated “A.I.” spam, while the jury is still out regarding the legality and morality of LLM training on authors’ content.
- LoFi Radio
- Medieval LoFi Radio
- Synthwave LoFi Radio
- Adam Johnson
- Django pushes back on generative software slop
- https://fosstodon.org/@nessita/114749992891235952
- https://github.com/django/django/pull/19594
- https://socket.dev/blog/django-joins-curl-in-pushing-back-on-ai-slop-security-reports
- Will generative spam overwhelm forums and the Fediverse?
- Dark forest theory of the Internet
- Judge Rules Training AI on Authors’ Books Is Legal But Pirating Them Is Not
- Thompson Reuters wins case against competitor who illegally scraped its works to train AI
- Amazon licenses content from NYT on which to train its generative software
- Cloudflare AI Labyrinth
- Cloudflare to introduce pay-per-crawl for AI bots
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
43 min - Whimsical Yesteryear
MacOS Tahoe beta drops Firewire support, web app developers continue to bungle password input, Apple considers using 3rd-party LLMs to power Siri, and Justin wrote an article about running LLMs on local workstations.
- MacOS 26 Tahoe beta drops Firewire support
- Apple considers using Anthropic or OpenAI to power Siri | (original paywalled article)
- Run a local LLM via Llama.cpp & Open WebUI
- Misguided Attention Prompts
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
44 min - Perverse Cargo Cult
Open-source projects continue to contend with “AI”-generated issue reports, and opinions abound regarding Apple’s “Liquid Glass” and other user interface design changes.
- Dr. Demento announces retirement
- Dr. Demento Online Club
- Dr. Demento on Letterman, May 17, 1983
- Dr. Demento on Larry King Live, 1985
- Django adds guidance on LLM-assisted security reports
- Icons that are not round-rects will be put into gray squircle prison
- Mac application icon design changes
- Preview application icon changed
- Contacts application icon changed
- Mac Finder icon design changes
- Mouse cursor edges made rounder on all sides
- Overly rounded corners everywhere
- Floating toolbars & legibility
- “In case of emergency, break glass”
- “I Don’t Care What Google or Apple or Whoever Did”
- Aqua control reproductions from Mac OS X Puma, Tiger, Snow Leopard, and Lion
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
1 hr - Designers Gonna Design
Impressions of Apple WWDC 2025 announcements: “Liquid Glass” UI design unified across all 26-series operating systems, Messages & Phone app enhancements, and new Apple Intelligence APIs for app developers.
- Pre-show: Croonify karaoke song builder
- Croonify
- Article about Croonify by V Buckenham
- Two-minute WWDC 2025 announcement summary video from Apple
- Liquid Glass: “ok that’s fun now get rid of it”
- Liquid Glass UI constantly inverting light/dark to maintain contrast
- Liquid Glass: “Design is my passion”
- Mac folder drag animations
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
1 hr 4 min
About Abstractions
From the publisher's feed
Abstractions is a podcast about technology, software, hardware, and the Internet, and the way the ever-increasing layers of these technologies permeate every aspect of our everyday lives.