Polymath, inventor, thinker. Computer Science artist.
Earth, for now.
Joined November 2024
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On AI and The Death of Software Engineering.
Caution: much techno-speak follows. Thinking caps are recommended. 😆
I recently read a couple articles describing how to get AI to author and fully verify software. The articles were well written, but overlooked (ignored?) a couple significant issues.
Writing new software is difficult. Mimicking, copying existing software is pretty straight forward. Where is new software needed? Lots of places.
Porting operating systems to new processors.
Running new sensors, cameras, peripherals.
Driving cars.
Flying airplanes.
Controlling robots. Robots for surgery, for assembly lines, for personal assistants.
Launching rockets.
Landing rockets where you launched them.
These are non-trivial projects, where safety IS CRITICAL.
Verification is essential, as pointed out in the articles. And for safety-critical fields verification must be complete and error-free. In their latest AI training courses, Google emphasizes the need for verification, and emphasizes human involvement.
"But," respond AI enthusiasts, "that is slow, error-prone! So we'll get AI (different agents) to verify the output!" But then, how do you verify the verification? And how do you verify the verification of the verification? Ad Nauseum. Call this "uber-verification."
For simple tasks, it is simple, even trivial. But as task complexity increases, like in the fields mentioned above, verification needed, and associated effort, explodes. The overall write-verify task is a variant of the SAT (Satisfiability) problem in algorithm and complexity theory. Ask @grok to discuss SAT. It's a great read.
SAT is known to be NP-Complete. That means HARD. Extremely HARD in general form. And time to run explodes super-exponentially, a fancy way of saying the variables in your system are in the EXPONENT of the equation describing how long a solution takes to be generated or run. @grok also has much to say about SAT runtime versus problem size.
Humans, trained in the fields, are quite good at spotting errors, better than AI agents. So as the verification problem explodes, the need for human-in-the-loop goes UP, not DOWN.
Examining software creation and verification from another angle reveals the design/verify issue and solution are also a variant of the Turing Halting Problem (THP). You are asking, "Does this program behave correctly, and does the verification system prove it?"
The THP was PROVEN to have NO SOLUTION by the genius Alan Turing in 1936, 90 YEARS ago, long before digital computers existed (sorry, Ada Lovelace & Charles Babbage, close but no cigar.) And @grok could write a novel about Turing, Lovelace, and Babbage, which is also fascinating.
This brings us back around to the core theses of these AI articles and shows that there are fundamental reasons these problems can never be "solved" by AI. We CAN improve on past tools and solutions, but we need to keep the facts firmly in focus:
1. While you MAY have a set of agents/prompts that work great for some, even many cases, there can be no general system to write, verify, uber-verify any problem you give it. This is PROVEN. A CENTURY(ish) ago!
2. The combination of SAT and THP means the field can have many "really good" tools etc, but NONE OF THEM will be the ultimate, universal solution.
3. This does NOT mean "don't try this." Many companies have made fantastic breakthroughs in faster solutions to complex problems. The problem in general remains NP-Complete AND Undecidable. AND ALWAYS WILL BE. But in some cases, a human in the process, in the right place, making the right decisions, yields FANTASTIC results.
Unstoppable retweeted
🚨 HERO ALERT FLORIDA - MEET THE MAN WHO JUST DELIVERED ONE OF THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL BLOWS IN HISTORY TO THE FOREIGN TERRORIST GROUP CAIR
My friend and HERO Charles Cooper.
Charles Cooper of the Washington, D.C. law firm Cooper & Kirk stood up in federal court for Florida and told the judge the plain truth: Florida views CAIR as “Hamas’ largest charitable front.”
Hamas is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. Cooper said it with no euphemisms and no “civil rights” deflection. That is the position no other lawyer in this fight has put on the record so clearly.
Now look at the result.
CAIR-Florida has suspended operations. A neon orange sign on the window of their longtime Temple Terrace office (the one they’ve had for more than 20 years near Tampa) reads:
“We have suspended our operations in Florida because of Governor DeSantis and other state officials’ baseless and unconstitutional enforcement of the state’s unprecedented new ‘domestic terrorist organization’ laws against us.”
The shutdown follows Florida’s designation of CAIR under the new 2026 law. Donations are harder, student affiliation is riskier, and continued operations in the state have become untenable. CAIR’s own website has told Florida residents not to engage with them.
This is the latest development in the nearly year-long battle between CAIR and Governor DeSantis. CAIR has sued and sought injunctions. Florida has continued forward.
HERO Charles Cooper has been the one in court making the state’s case without flinching.
Governor Ron DeSantis drove this from the start. He signed the 2026 law, approved the designation, and refused to back down. Attorney General James Uthmeier has stood with him and supported the enforcement that forced CAIR-Florida to act.
Florida drew a line. CAIR-Florida has now suspended operations. The infrastructure that has operated openly for decades in the state has been forced to stop.
Thank you, Charles Cooper - for delivering one of the most consequential blows in history to this group and for saying the quiet part out loud in court.
Thank you, Governor Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier- for refusing to blink.
Heroic work. Straight facts. No retreat.
America is watching. Do not let them regroup.
🚨 VICTORY AMERICA - A LITTLE GOOD NEWS FROM RED STATE FLORIDA - GOODBYE CAIR!!
Jihadi group CAIR is SHUTTING DOWN in Florida amid ‘terror’ designation.
“We have suspended our operations in Florida…”
After years of report after report, video after video, and relentless pressure from the American people, CAIR-Florida has finally suspended operations.
A neon orange sign on their Temple Terrace office (the one they’ve had for 20+ years near Tampa) admits they can’t keep going because of Governor DeSantis and the state’s new domestic terrorist organization laws.
⚠️PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION, FLORIDA - This is the same Temple Terrace neighborhood where CAIR just suspended operations. It is the longtime base of Magda Elkadi Saleh, daughter of Ahmed Elkadi, a senior U.S. Muslim Brotherhood figure whose own father worked closely with Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. She has built and led a network of Tampa Islamic schools, including the rebranded continuation of the Islamic Academy of Florida tied to Sami Al-Arian, Bayaan Academy, and Hifz Academy. Those schools have collectively pulled in roughly $18 million in Florida taxpayer-funded vouchers. She also serves as president of the Muslim-led resettlement agency Radiant Hands and was publicly honored at Temple Terrace City Hall with a Ramadan proclamation before requesting a formal “partnership” with the city.)
So America THIS is what happens when a red state finally draws a line.
🎉 I would like to give special praise to the INCREDIBLE Charles Cooper - the amazing attorney for the state - stood up in court and told the truth: Florida views CAIR as “Hamas’ largest charitable front.” Tremendous, heroic work. No euphemisms. No “civil rights” deflection. Straight facts. Thank you, HERO!
I’ve been saying this for years: CAIR is not a civil-rights group. It is a Hamas-linked, Muslim Brotherhood political machine. Unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial. Foreign money. Lawfare. Mosque networks turned into political infrastructure. Super PACs. School infiltration. Parallel societies. The same playbook Nihad Awad and the founders laid out.
Florida designated them. Texas designated them. The law makes donations harder and student ties dangerous. And now the Florida chapter is suspending operations.
This is progress. YOU did this by amplifying the evidence and refusing to stay silent.
But do NOT treat this as the finish line. A state designation is not a national ban. Networks do not vanish overnight. Brotherhood-linked operators are still fundraising, litigating, recruiting, and expanding elsewhere. Other red states are still quiet.
Red states must keep the pressure on. Designate. Investigate. Cut the funding. Strip the partnerships. Expose the money and DEMAND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT gets INVOLVED AND SUPPORTS STATES LIKE TEXAS AND FLORIDA!
IT IS TIME TO BAN CAIR. DESIGNATE THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD. NO MORE EXCUSES
America is watching. Do not let them regroup.
This is how we fight back. 🇺🇸
Unstoppable retweeted
Fun fact - Years ago a guy didnt believe that my drawings were one line so he wrote code to re-trace my linework.
It turned out to be one of my favorite accidental collaborations.
Unstoppable retweeted
An MIT math professor taught the same linear algebra course so clearly that the free recordings became one of the most watched university math classes on the internet, and most students who need the subject still never open them.
His name is Gilbert Strang.
The course is MIT 18.06. The Spring 2005 lectures are free on MIT OpenCourseWare and on YouTube as a full playlist. Problem sets, exams, and lecture notes sit next to the videos.
Strang's style is the opposite of a textbook wall. He talks through matrices the way a good coach talks through a play: one idea at a time, with the reason attached.
> What a matrix actually does to a vector
> Why eigenvalues are not a party trick
> How least squares hides inside almost every data problem
> When to stop computing and start seeing the picture
Linear algebra sits under machine learning, graphics, engineering, and economics. People pay for bootcamps to learn a soft version of it.
The original MIT lectures are free.
Most people will never press play.
Are you more of a "watch the lecture" learner or a "read the notes" learner? Reply A or B.
Unstoppable retweeted
I think the internet would improve dramatically if everyone had to spend one week per year using a completely anonymous account with zero followers.
No reputation.
No audience.
No blue checkmark.
Just your actual ability to say something worth reading.
Some very important people would have an extremely difficult week.
Unstoppable retweeted
When I see every county in 21 states shift blue at once, I don’t want the podcast takes.Not “it was the war.” Not “gas prices.” Not “Abbott fatigue.” Not “new voters just happened to all vote the same way.”That’s not analysis. That’s cover. You don’t get uniform movement across 1,799 counties in deep red states without the numbers being manufactured. The math doesn’t lie. The excuses do.
Unstoppable retweeted
Since y'all are helping pay me, I suppose it's only fair that I tell you where that money is going.
I'm not going to share exact numbers, because frankly, I don't think anyone needs to know that much about my finances. But something rather remarkable has happened over the last month and a half.
Every payment I've received from X has come within about 10–25% of a medical bill I've had to pay.
There have been quite a few of those lately.
So, whether you realize it or not, you wonderful people have been helping me through what turned out to be a pretty frightening cancer scare.
I haven't talked about it much because I wanted to know what was happening before I said anything publicly.
About a month and a half ago, I had an MRI for some unrelated health issues. During that MRI, the doctors discovered a nodule in my neck.
That led to an ultrasound.
The ultrasound showed a rather large nodule in my neck with characteristics that doctors considered suspicious for cancer.
I'm not going to pretend I was brave about it. I wasn't.
For about a week and a galf, waiting for the biopsy, I was scared out of my mind. I tried not to dwell on it, tried to go about my life, tried to keep writing the same ridiculous things I always write here.
(Now many of you know the reason why my muse abandoned me for a bit)
In the back of my mind was the possibility that my life was about to change in a very unpleasant way.
Then came the biopsy.
A few days later, I got some of the best news I've received in a very long time.
Benign. No cancer.
Thank the Lord.
I don't think I can adequately describe the relief I felt reading that result.
Now, here's where all of you come in.
Medical care isn't cheap, even with insurance. MRIs, ultrasounds, specialist visits, biopsies... it adds up remarkably quickly.
Thanks to the money I've earned writing here, after accounting for the taxes I'll eventually owe, I've only had to pay about 10% of those expenses out of my own pocket.
The rest came from X.
Which means, ultimately, it came from YOU.
Could I have afforded those bills myself?
Yes. I'm fortunate enough that I could have dipped into savings and taken care of them.
But I didn't have to.
That means more to me than I can really put into words.
I'm under no illusions about why most of you follow me. I write things, sometimes people enjoy them, sometimes people get angry at them, and sometimes I wonder why anyone reads my nonsense in the first place. It might just be the catgirls. Whatever.
I certainly never expected that sitting around writing my thoughts on the internet would someday help pay for medical care during one of the scarier experiences of my life.
But here we are. So I want to thank you.
Thank you to everyone who reads what I write. Thank you to those who share it, reply to it, argue with it, or just quietly enjoy it.
And yes, thank you to X for having a program that actually pays people like me to do this.
You didn't know you were helping me through something difficult. I didn't tell you. And you certainly didn't owe me anything.
But you helped anyway, simply by being here.
I know I'm just some opinionated catgirl on the internet who writes too much and occasionally has something worthwhile to say.
Behind that silly little avatar is a real person, with real worries, real bills, and a very real appreciation for the people who make it possible for me to keep doing something I love.
Y'all have made a genuine difference in my life.
I wanted you to know that.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Unstoppable retweeted
The farmers dog certainly knows how to put on a show!🤩
Happy November 5th to you all!🎇
Unstoppable retweeted
As a Japanese person, I genuinely don't understand this.
Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. So why didn't they even pass a basic law requiring voter ID?
What the hell were they doing?
Unstoppable retweeted
I'm not even sounding the claxon for this it's just horrible.
Any text > 256chars is a valid root password, holy shit
sshhole.com/
Unstoppable retweeted
We didn’t lose the Senate yesterday, we lost it the day @LeaderJohnThune was put in charge.
Unstoppable retweeted
This is election fraud. Finding another candidate with the same name and running him to confuse voters should be just cause for prison and disqualify someone from office forever.
Unstoppable retweeted
I keep hearing Republicans didn’t show up to vote in Texas… not true. Greg Abbot received 100k more votes in 2026 than 2022…
Democrats jumped 1.7 MILLION VOTES… wait wait wait… Im suppose to believe Democrats went from 3.5 million in 2018, 3.5 million in 2022 to 5.2 million in 2026
Wait… has anyone checked these numbers ?
Something seems extremely off
Umm… 400,000 more Democrats showed up for this Midterm Election than Voting for Kamala Harris…
Kamala Harris got 4.8 million votes…
A no named, nobody knew in Texas for Governor received 400,000 more votes…
Than Kamala Harris… umm.. wait what ?
Unstoppable retweeted
🤣
They've gone full gestapo.
They have become what they hate the most and are too stupid to notice.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:
The next two years.
Dun..Dun...DUN!
Unstoppable retweeted
After my session astronaut Doug Wheelock was there to talk about the work, he had a lot to say about it. He also invited me to join his exclusive club of 'People who crashed the HLS VMS simulator' - which at the time had only two members.
Learning to fly a lunar lander in @NASAAmes Vertical Motion Simulator. This is arguably the worlds best flight simulator with 6DOF including 60 feet of vertical motion.
Every space shuttle pilot trained on this simulator!
It has had upgrades since then, in particular a fantastic new collimated display that allows multiple pilots to see the correct perspective from different parts of the cabin.
This was running a generic lunar landing simulation, because this research is looking at more than just control of a specific vehicle, it's looking at things like interfaces, usability and controllability while the vehicle is in motion, something that's hard to do without actually doing it for real.
I've got a full length video in the works, but for now here's a multi angle version showing a subset of what I recorded.
Unstoppable retweeted
I found a $1,200 monthly charge on our IT budget labeled "Legal Document Transmission."
Asked Finance what it was.
"Critical legal infrastructure."
Investigated.
It's a fax machine.
Here's the process.
9:00 AM: Legal receives a contract by email.
9:05 AM: Legal prints the contract.
9:10 AM: Someone signs it.
9:15 AM: Legal feeds it into the fax machine.
9:16 AM: Our fax provider converts the transmission into a PDF.
9:17 AM: The recipient receives the PDF by email.
I asked why we couldn't just scan the signed contract and email it directly.
Legal said faxing provides an official transmission record.
I asked where that record goes.
"To our email."
Of course.
I suggested eliminating the fax machine.
Legal refused.
Apparently some contracts require fax delivery.
I requested a list.
They produced one contract.
From 2007.
The company on the other end went bankrupt in 2014.
Legal said the agreement technically remains active until formally terminated.
I pointed out that the recipient no longer exists.
They said that wasn't IT's determination to make.
So I disconnected the fax machine's telephone cable.
Nobody noticed.
Three weeks later, Legal congratulated IT for maintaining 100% document transmission uptime.
Finance renewed the contract for another year.
We're paying $14,400 annually to preserve the legal right to fax a bankrupt company.
I've classified the machine as a historical monument.