Paul Ingles

From Outropy.ai's first investor update: using LLMs is racing against the Fail Whale.

Imagine looking at this chart and thinking "yep this looks legit". But naturally, despite it being glaringly wrong and misleading, and despite this having been pointed out to the author, it remains up.

@ctford @davefarley77 Totally true (wonder if @tastapod/@timrgoodwin remembers me telling this on our project in Islington). I found a method with a justPretendToDoIt bool argument; first line of method was if (!justPretendToDoIt) then like 1000 lines of code. 🤯

@davefarley77 Boolean flags. Just create two different methods!

What's the DUMBEST argument in software development? 🙄

@TLRailUK I bought a any time of day ticket this morning, it's now off-peak period and the first train I can use has been cancelled so now have to wait for another hour. Who can I call to get a refund on my ticket to pay the off peak amount?

@pupeno fca.org.uk/publications/m… was the paper

This diagram about tying a bow tie reminds me of the owl illustration

@tastapod @CraftConf Sounds fun. Wish I could see it! Anything that accidentally ends up creating cheese, or penicillin? ;-)

.@FedExHelp I have a parcel that says it’s been delivered but I can see on my Ring doorbell video that the driver came and left with the package. What should I do?

My favourite use of AI art generation is to get pictures of Batman doing mundane office things. The prompt for this: “Batman worries about the reliability of his website”

AI now getting high marks on standardised exams is impressive, but I think it also says a lot about how many exams are a terrible way of assessing human knowledge... 1/

@markdalgarno For tech stuff we’ve used a model similar to this before: pedrodelgallego.github.io/blog/amazon/op…. I'd guess similar could work in other domains/types of work?

@PavelASamsonov Top frustrating moments in my leadership career have been people substituting the problem from figuring out how to solve the constraint with “this doesn’t look like scrum, thats the problem, we should do sprints”.

Scrum became ubiquitous because it answered two questions at once: "What does good look like" -> following Scrum "How do we get to good" -> follow Scrum We need to give product leaders looking for a definition of good for their team a better answer than "following Scrum."

@PavelASamsonov I’d add, I don’t think it’s just that it gave an answer, more that it gave an *easier* answer than trying to diagnose/solve for directly.

XP never had a story about scaling, which limited its reach. I get the feeling that there is a good story to be told about helping 1000s of folks coordinate their efforts & that story starts by reducing team dependencies. tidyfirst.substack.com/p/scaling-extr…

@rhodri I did a corporate wine tasting once with challenges to identify the “better” (and pricier) wines on each round (e.g which has the better nose, which has better length…). I *reliably* got it wrong.

@TLRailUK Thanks. It sped up a bit after St Albans, hope it clears up soon.

@pingles Hi Paul, due to disruption caused by a points failure at Redhill, there is currently congestion in this area. ^Sonia

⚠️ Due to a points failure between Bedford and St Pancras International, services running to and from these stations may be delayed by up to 15 minutes. 📢 Travel as normal but allow extra time to complete your journey.

@TLRailUK I’m on a train that feels like it’s been crawling along for the last 10-15mins (and is close to St Albans now I think); are there ongoing issues on the northbound line?

✅ Disruption caused by a points failure between Bedford and St Pancras International has now ended. Services are no longer affected by this problem. 🕓 If you were delayed by 15 minutes or more, you can claim delay repay here 👇 thameslinkrailway.com/delayrepay

@JulianBirch @venue Funny! I went there a few times for drinks and food (assuming it was there in early 2000s)

Super interesting and have done this same journey today, beautiful coincidence!