It’s been a while since I immersed myself in SF publishing but I think that older terms like “New Wave” and “cyberpunk” were basically marketing terms riding off the hits that spawned them. I believe they were a collaboration between the fandom, magazines and publishers - not in any structured way, but like in music, a term is used to encompass many different acts.

One slubstack does not a genre name, tho. And it’s broad enough to be meaningless. For example one of the first authors is Scott Alexander, who is not formally a programmer, just someone who hangs out online terminally. Vinge was a CS prof, but Banks afaik didn’t have any formal CS training. Ken McLeod worked as a programmer, as did Charles Stross.

SF is a nerd author paradise and nowadays nerds program, so … chicken and egg?

“It is your moral duty to send as much money as you can to Sam Altman”

Wake up babe new genre definition just dropped

https://stoates.substack.com/p/programmer-science-fiction

Includes all the usual suspects, but notably doesn’t mention Ken MacLeod whose Fall Revolution series is probably too socialist[1]. Also avoids discussing Stross post-Singularity Sky.

[1] MacLeod’s Corporation Wars trilogy has immersive VR, artificial conciousness rebelling against authority, and literal p-zombies but is also very anti-fascist, so no wonder it’s not mentioned (also, it’s unfortunately not very good)

This is a new method of bootlicking: if you as a FLOSS developer don’t use LLMs to fix vulnerabilites identified by LLMs, you’re being unethical

https://lobste.rs/c/5toqqs

This all reads as a very elitist and privileged perspective.

Dude look where you’re commenting

I haven’t experienced the situation you’re describing myself, but it feels very plausible.

Similarly, all developed societies depend on a number of people selflessly working in positions of elected or non-elected authority (local councils, HOAs, school boards) and treating them like people who cannot afford to make any mistakes is not a recipe for increased democratic engagement.

Anyway, so far no-one has commented, negatively or otherwise, and I think most LWers are treating it as harmless fun.

It’s not making me any more interested in coming more than 200 feet from any of these people, and neither is this https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GtZKzWgAqWrE2tXrQ/contra-dance-at-lessonline, but maybe that’s just me being mean.

Are you worried about AI taking over the world and killing everyone? Fear not, the people who can stop it are collecting hats. Surely everything is under control.

someone with a pretty website and a wife who knows statistics mounts an impassioned defence of tridge and the clankers:

https://alexispurslane.github.io/rsync-analysis/

CW M:tG weirdo Zvi’s slobsack + Xhitter references, but he accuses an OpenAI / Palantir-funded PAC boosting a fake “AI doomer” account calling for violence:

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/ai-171-false-flag?open=false#§openai-pac-engaged-in-false-flag-advocacy-for-violence

“seeded ladies” I see what you did there

George Santos got reported(!) for insider trading on Kalshi:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/06/prodigal-son

FWIW, Rsync dev has written this blog post from his point of view: https://medium.com/@tridge60/rsync-and-outrage-d9849599e5a0

brb updating my web source code

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made” - Kant[1]

–

[1] it’s worse in German, weirdly - “Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden”

OK sysadmin question: how can I “pin” a last-known good version in apt?

I am on the same page.

Speaking of HN, here’s the discussion there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48314875

btw, when normal people read that someone has a lien on their income from the state of New York, they don’t assume it’s because she’s a brave truth-talker being oppressed by the Man, they assume she can’t fucking handle her finances and they should be really careful donating money to her.

Hacker News is my favorite place on the web, because it’s the last bastion of curiosity online.

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Haha fair point! I have not read Children… (noted in my comment) but mostly because the premise didn’t interest me, and it got shit reviews.

But Rainbows End is both a compelling story , and the SFnal ideas/page ratio is through the fucking roof.

OK this has hit the chattering technosphere

Lobste.rs - some bad takes on legal theory https://lobste.rs/s/brusu8/protestware_for_coding_agents

HN - submission from Ars Technica, original title “Fed up with vibe coders, dev sneaks data-nuking prompt injection into their code”, editorialized to “Undisclosed addition in jqwik instructed AI coding agents to delete app output” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48319968

read comments at your own risk

My hot take: the clankers know there’s nothing legally they can do about this, and that they will actually have to read release notes going forward and doing actual work to avoid getting their precious vibecoding junked, and they’re MAD