Not going to use Elm, nor do I condone trying to treat your type system as a formal specification language. However, there are a lot of data structures I often see that have all sorts of invalid states available. Mostly places where two or more pieces of data have to agree on a value or state. Structures that are begging for some incorrect logic to corrupt things and cause unhandled edge cases.
In almost every case, very simple changes to the structure of the data could completely eliminate the problems. If your familiar with normal forms, this will feel super familiar to you. Relational algebra transcends SQL databases because it started as math, and was later ported to a programming language to try and make it easier to approach. If your familiar with Entity Component Systems (ECS) from game engines, you will start to see how it's all interconnected. When you think in normal forms, both your data and logic improve.
I liked the analogy someone said a while ago, that LLMs would be able to make all texts interactive. One big body of text is a database. Obviously not an accurate mechanism to query the data, but who really cares about accuracy if you can sidestep those who'd thwart your aims at power?
As developers rushed to build the ultimate surveillance apparatus, we felt safe that at least access to the knowledge trapped in the database required some technical expertise. We the priesthood would be able to guard access to the troves of surveillance only for the aims of a better future. We could intervene and prevent sociopaths using the data to enact their control fantasies.
Turns out people with a lot of power really want to get a list of those who'd dare oppose them. Doesn't really matter how accurate it is. A list only 20% accurate works just as well for the goon squads.
This essay came up in a chat I was having with some people at work. It's a real depressing take on the topic, but worth a consideration if you've ever wondered why groups of people don't really exist in the real world anymore outside of capital generation.
There's more too it than capitalism fundamentally exploits everything to death as is portrayed in the piece. Sure that's one of the best modes to kill things. It doesn't fully explain why interest groups don't form much anymore though. This is one entry from the work, Meningness. I'm not fully sold on it all, but I think this presents a good picture of what any shared endeavour seems to experience as it grows and dies.
Recently had reason to briefly explain how Google Spanner works when I was discussing Amazon Aurora Limitless. I have no idea if Limitless implements the same tech as Spanner, but my guess is it's not entirely unreasonable. Again, I'm not talking about Limitless, I really don't know how it works. But someone was explaining it to me and it just sounded like Spanner.
Worth knowing if you're in the market for a job or hiring. The flip side of these scammers trying to get hired to infect your company with malware is running interviews for devs and having a technical interview involving running malware on your machine. They'll say it's something like a web API server you'll build a frontend against or something like that. They're hoping you use your employer's laptop to do it and either have a bunch of credentials on your machine, or if they're really fancy, they'll wait in the background and see what they can do over the next couple days. Even if it's just your personal laptop, expect to get extorted.
