<![CDATA[I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator]]>I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/topic/647b83e3-4228-443b-814a-ef8d43974ec0/i-am-baffled-that-in-the-year-2026-i-am-telling-technically-competent-engineers-to-not-solicit-nor-take-legal-advice-from-a-random-word-generatorRSS for NodeSun, 26 Apr 2026 04:14:38 GMTTue, 14 Apr 2026 04:35:13 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:39:46 GMT]]>degenerating degenerate So, you’re asking Claude Code for legal advice, is what I’m hearing.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/560https://wanderingadventure.party/post/560Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:39:46 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:36:39 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew I avoided saying law, but all (hand waves) *THIS* is a legal wrapper around what Engineers do. Just like the profession of Doctor has a fierce legal infrastructure wrapping what they do.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/cascheranno/statuses/116404033913205939https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/cascheranno/statuses/116404033913205939Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:36:39 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:31:12 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew and not just legal… PROFESSIONAL! Engineers get courses, are tested and trained that **They are certifying that XYZ is proper**. Codebases from the 1970s get wrapped in other code but not altered because They have a body of past work.

Infrastructure doesn’t collapse expressly because we build this way.

… this shit hurts my soul.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/cascheranno/statuses/116404012459781577https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/cascheranno/statuses/116404012459781577Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:31:12 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:25:38 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew@pnw.zone It isn't even random, it is just pseudo-random, right?

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://nheko.io/notes/al2edbk69565002ehttps://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://nheko.io/notes/al2edbk69565002eTue, 14 Apr 2026 16:25:38 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:17:06 GMT]]>@hopeless @hastar @Possiblydrew So they magically create security risks, badly written code and duplicate functions all over the place.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://masto.ai/users/ariaflame/statuses/116403957040178340https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://masto.ai/users/ariaflame/statuses/116403957040178340Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:17:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:51:47 GMT]]>@barubary @hastar @Possiblydrew

👍 Great job. Draw a house next.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403857500939896https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403857500939896Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:51:47 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:50:54 GMT]]>@ariaflame @hastar @Possiblydrew

Nobody claimed LLMs are sentient.

"just" is carrying a lot of weight there, the model weights encode why those next tokens are relevant and are the "magic".

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403853990893818https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403853990893818Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:50:54 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:48:23 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew

"Random" has a particular meaning when describing someone's answer... it's pejorative and implies the answer is not related to the question.

It's true with LLMs if you ask it stuff that it wasn't trained on, you will get junk / hallucinations.

But if it's within the LLM's training the results can be excellent (yea: with a PRNG involved too). Don't like to hear anything good about LLMs? No worries, it doesn't matter to me either way.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403844150071955https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403844150071955Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:48:23 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:46:29 GMT]]>@hopeless @hastar @Possiblydrew

ohd!]r.QBV

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/barubary/statuses/116403836669344080https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/barubary/statuses/116403836669344080Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:46:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:44:52 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew indoctrinating engineers and engineering types with goofy shit is like shooting fish in a barrel. on average they think they're smarter than they are, at least in part because so much education and work culture rewards rationalizing and sounding confident over anything else

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://pnw.zone/users/mancube/statuses/116403830265029753https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://pnw.zone/users/mancube/statuses/116403830265029753Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:44:52 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:42:37 GMT]]>@hopeless @hastar @Possiblydrew They aren't sentient, they are not 'choosing' anything. They're just picking at random from weighted options. They don't know anything. If the training set was good for what specifically you wanted to do you might be lucky. Otherwise you could be totally fucked and not know it until a lot later when something breaks/lets someone into your system.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://masto.ai/users/ariaflame/statuses/116403821450516642https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://masto.ai/users/ariaflame/statuses/116403821450516642Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:42:37 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:41:23 GMT]]>@barubary @hastar @Possiblydrew

You're so clever!

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403816564819757https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403816564819757Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:41:23 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:36:09 GMT]]>@hopeless @hastar @Possiblydrew

they are choosing what they want to talk about

Wow, what a coincidence. I was just talking to /dev/urandom and it chose to talk about "bizz".

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/barubary/statuses/116403795991224296https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/barubary/statuses/116403795991224296Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:36:09 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:32:29 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew 😂

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://kolektiva.social/users/arrrg/statuses/116403781600255236https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://kolektiva.social/users/arrrg/statuses/116403781600255236Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:32:29 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:27:21 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew

Ok, but also there's this: https://www.harvey.ai/ but I don't think they license to individuals

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://fediscience.org/users/drdrowland/statuses/116403761414272719https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://fediscience.org/users/drdrowland/statuses/116403761414272719Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:27:21 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:26:48 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew Apropos of nothing, taxes are due tomorrow.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dabeaz/statuses/116403759256509802https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.social/users/dabeaz/statuses/116403759256509802Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:26:48 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:26:25 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew if they're doing that, then they most definitely are not technically competent in any way whatsoever.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://weird.autos/users/rootwyrm/statuses/116403757771431634https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://weird.autos/users/rootwyrm/statuses/116403757771431634Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:26:25 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:17:16 GMT]]>@hopeless wow there’s so much to unpack here.

Random + weights + other stuff is still ✨random ✨.

Random + seed sure is deterministic but how often do you the user set the seed? Why is the answer to an objective query subject to a probabilistic state?

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://pnw.zone/users/Possiblydrew/statuses/116403721788350897https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://pnw.zone/users/Possiblydrew/statuses/116403721788350897Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:17:16 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:09:49 GMT]]>@hastar @Possiblydrew

The LLMs are actually deterministic themselves; you can give them the same PRNG seed and get the same result.

It's wrong to say that they are "random word generators" like there is a dictionary and a random index into the dictionary is chosen... they are choosing what they want to talk about based on the weights they arrived at.

You too will not recite what you want to say verbatim each time, but through your internal state decide how to express yourself.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403220610597095https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116403220610597095Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:09:49 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:28:43 GMT]]>@hopeless @Possiblydrew So which of your favorite LLM tools are deterministic?

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.nu/users/hastar/statuses/116403058997985227https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.nu/users/hastar/statuses/116403058997985227Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:28:43 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:47:58 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew

Engineers never had a good grasp on what technology actually did: they're mostly formula followers

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.social/users/richpuchalsky/statuses/116402898766516754https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.social/users/richpuchalsky/statuses/116402898766516754Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:47:58 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:28:32 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew stupidity and competency are technically different 😄

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://androiddev.social/users/luboganev/statuses/116402586439839471https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://androiddev.social/users/luboganev/statuses/116402586439839471Tue, 14 Apr 2026 10:28:32 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:10:00 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew People I had known to be very clever have fallen to these. I have a pet hypothesis that there's a factor unrelated to general intelligence that makes some people more susceptible to these than others, like gambling addictions.

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.gamedev.place/users/landelare/statuses/116402041697023922https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://mastodon.gamedev.place/users/landelare/statuses/116402041697023922Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:10:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I am baffled that, in the year 2026, I am telling technically competent engineers to not solicit nor take legal advice from a random word generator on Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:51:17 GMT]]>@Possiblydrew Do it the old way, use a search engine to open an AI generated SEO optimized sloppage instead!

]]>https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://chaos.social/users/Ntropic/statuses/116401968087081407https://wanderingadventure.party/post/https://chaos.social/users/Ntropic/statuses/116401968087081407Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:51:17 GMT