Author Archives: Patrick

The Sora Funeral Nobody Showed Up For

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OpenAI shuttered Sora and the only one that didn't see it coming was Disney. I'm sure their invitation to the funeral got lost in the mail. OpenAI is saying that this is just them getting focused, back to basics, blah blah blah.

They are lost. They are led by Sam Altman, a person that will say anything to anyone, as long as it helps him get whatever it is he wants that day. Too harsh? Just read Empire of AI and then revisit that thought.

OpenAI was just throwing spaghetti at the wall, no doubt about that. But this newfound focus, I have my doubts. Nothing has changed about the company. They are still trying to find a way to make money. They are still committing to spending far more than they make or could make. They will start chasing rabbits again. They will have to chase them.

But Pat, they'll print money with ads!

Oh? Maybe, but will they print a trillion dollars? I doubt it. The whole industry is ridiculous right now but not the funny kind...it's the sad kind.

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Weekly Activities: Mar 16-22, 2026

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Activities: Mar 16-22, 2026

Totals: 33.12 mi, 7h 58m — 1 Run, 9 Walks, 1 Hike

Reverse Centaurs Invade Amazon

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What the hell is a "reverse centaur"? Cory Doctorow explains:

In automation theory, a "centaur" is a person who is assisted by a machine. You're a human head being carried around on a tireless robot body. Driving a car makes you a centaur, and so does using autocomplete.

And obviously, a reverse centaur is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine.

Today at Ars Technica we see that Amazon is going to have "senior engineers" review AI-assisted changes after some incidents.

More from Cory's talk:

If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: "Hey folks, here's the deal. Today, you're processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we're going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you've missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you're only processing 98 x-rays per day. That's fine, we just care about finding all those tumors."

If that's what they said, I'd be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market's bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists' job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it's catastrophically wrong.

"And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist's fault, because they are the 'human in the loop.' It's their signature on the diagnosis."

This is a reverse centaur, and it's a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it's what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink." The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes.

Amazon senior engineers are now also an accountability sink for "AI-assisted" changes.

Cool...

Weekly Activities: Mar 2-8, 2026

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Totals: 58.62 mi, 12h 25m — 4 Runs, 10 Walks, 1 WeightTraining, 2 Hikes

People I Respect Have Differing Opinions

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Today I saw two posts that could not be more opposite, and of course it's about AI.

First up is Barry O'Reilly on LinkedIn:

There must have been a point when people in the tobacco industry began to realise what they’d done. One by one, workers must have woken up one day and realised that their industry was bad for the world.

The sloppocalypse just did that for me. The worry isn’t that we’ll be replaced by AI, it’s that ethically we won’t be able to work for this industry anymore.

Next is Charity Majors:

Today, it’s very clear to me that the center of gravity has shifted from cloud/automation workflows to AI/generation workflows, and that the agentic revolution has only just begun. That toddler is heading off to school. With a loaded gun.

I don’t know when exactly that bit flipped in my head, I only know that it did. And as soon as it did, I felt like the last person on earth to catch on. I can barely connect with my own views from eleven months ago.

Having just finished listening to Empire of AI, while I acknowledge Charity is probably right, I am very much leaning towards Barry.

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Weekly Activities: Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2026

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Activities: Feb 23 - Mar 1, 2026

Totals: 55.37 mi, 11h 43m — 4 Runs, 7 Walks, 2 Hikes, 2 Rowings

Rewilding Software Engineering Chapter 6

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Simon Wardley and Tudor Girba have posted the latest chapter to their book, Rewilding Software Engineering, titled "Myths we tell ourselves."

As these posts are on Medium but also licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0, I turned the chapters into a book that you can download in PDF form. The "code", as it were, is freely available as it's just the Medium posts converted into asciidoc format.

I very much appreciate them writing and publishing the book and I hope this format makes it easier for more people to read.

Welcome to My Post Mid-life Crisis

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Three boxes on the floor. A Pioneer DDJ-FLX4, headphones, and a pair of monitor speakers.

Yes, I finally took the plunge and bought some toys that I've been thinking about for much of 2025. I was a radio DJ in college and this is a very different kind of DJ gear...but thinking about how to move from one song to another is quite enjoyable to me and I want to do move of it and do it more like professionals.

Do I plan on making a career out of DJing? No. I can't stay up that late anymore. Do I plan on doing this publically? Eh, if it happens it happens, but it is not the goal. What is the goal? To learn something new and have fun. I'm pretty sure I can do that.

The Gear:

  • Pioneer DDJ-FLX4
  • Eris 3.5TB monitor speakers
  • Sennheiser HD 280 PRO headphones
  • rekordbox (software to control my deck)

This is all "bang for buck" gear, because this is just for fun.

2025 Strava Activity Report

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With a little help from Claude Code, here's my breakdown from Strava. Update: Still a few days left so I'll just update these numbers as they come in.

Hikes

Total Miles: 212.6
Total Hikes: 43

Monthly Breakdown

January: 23.2 miles (4 hikes)
February: 15.4 miles (3 hikes)
March: 22.0 miles (5 hikes)
April: 8.4 miles (2 hikes)
May: 16.2 miles (3 hikes)
June: 19.7 miles (4 hikes)
July: 26.4 miles (5 hikes)
August: 18.2 miles (4 hikes)
September: 14.0 miles (3 hikes)
October: 4.8 miles (1 hikes)
November: 13.8 miles (3 hikes)
December: 20.8 miles (4 hikes)

Runs

Total Miles: 1307.8
Total Runs: 184

Monthly Breakdown

January: 123.2 miles (17 runs)
February: 117.7 miles (16 runs)
March: 111.5 miles (15 runs)
April: 110.6 miles (15 runs)
May: 122.3 miles (17 runs)
June: 110.2 miles (16 runs)
July: 133.5 miles (18 runs)
August: 66.8 miles (10 runs)
September: 106.5 miles (16 runs)
October: 45.8 miles (8 runs)
November: 117.2 miles (17 runs)
December: 119.1 miles (16 runs)

Walks

Total Miles: 774.8
Total Walks: 301

Monthly Breakdown

January: 44.8 miles (19 walks)
February: 46.2 miles (21 walks)
March: 57.4 miles (19 walks)
April: 73.3 miles (28 walks)
May: 58.6 miles (19 walks)
June: 68.9 miles (24 walks)
July: 67.7 miles (35 walks)
August: 94.9 miles (38 walks)
September: 56.3 miles (25 walks)
October: 50.1 miles (24 walks)
November: 50.6 miles (21 walks)
December: 70.8 miles (18 walks)

I have started syncing Apple Fitness rowing workouts to Strava, but they don't have any distance information because I have a Concept 2 rowing machine that doesn't talk to anything.