Lorin Hochstein (@norootcause) · DIRTY

Lorin Hochstein

@norootcause

Student of complex systems failures, resilience engineering, cognitive systems engineering. Will talk your ear off about @resilienceinsoftware.org

970 Following2,062 Followers1,545 Posts

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Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 30

San Francisco: a land of contrasts.

A billboard that says “Hire more humans: juicebox.ai”

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 19

Not so sure about this stat, Bluesky

Overall Uptime: 100.000% Last 24 hours

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 1

Anxiously awaiting this writeup:

GitHub search is degraded

This incident has been resolved. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we addressed this issue. A detailed root cause analysis will be shared as soon as it is available.

Apr 27, 16:31 - 22:46 UTC

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Mar 15

Nelson saying to Lisa Simpson: Gotta nuke something

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Feb 22

Dr. Nick saying: “Nothing” means “everything”? What a country!

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jan 14

Dr. Hibbert saying to Homer Simpson, “The best tonic is conic.”

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jan 14

Somebody's already made this joke, right?

Wheel of Fortune. Revealed letters are LINES OF CO_E.
Hint: You'll regret every single one

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Dec 15

Electric menorah in windowsill

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Oct 6

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jul 14

I mean, if it leads to more effective written communication...

Geordie LaForge meme.

Top panel: Writing well to get better results when working with humans

Bottom panel: Writing well to get better results when working with AI agents

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jul 5

Robustness work is about enlarging the system's competence envelope, resilience work is about improving the system's future behavior when it inevitably breaches its competence envelope.

An oval labeled "robustness", and a dotted region that extends the oval's boundary, labeled "resilience".

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jul 4

I'm a fan of good documentation, but I also recognize its limits.

Woman yelling at cat meme.

Woman: You should have documented the behavior!
Cat: You wouldn't have read the docs.

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 29

Every damn time...

Screenshot of the "Your Orders" view of amazon.com website.

An arrow points to the "search all orders" text box, annotated with "I'm supposed to search here"

Another arrow points to the larger "Search Amazon" text box, annotated with "I search here"

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 29

Padme 4 panel meme.
1. I’ve implemented automatic bug…
2. Detection? Elimination?
3. (Blank)
4. (Blank)

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 24

My reaction when I read about Meta trying to poach AI researchers from OpenAI with $100 million signing bonuses.

Bell curve meme.

Left-hand side: Study CS
Middle: AI is eating all the coding jobs!
Right-hand side: Study CS

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 20

Another tempting one...

Screenshot:
nobodywantsthis.ai is available. Get it for your website! $99.99

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 18

Tempting…

Screenshot that says: cleaningupafterthemessleftby.ai is available

$99.99

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 15

My general feelings about counterfactuals.

Principal Skinner saying: gonna, wonna, shonna

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 13

Endorse!

Photo of two book covers:

Database Reliability Engineering by Laine Campbell and Charity Majors
High Performance MySQL by Silvia Botros and Jeremy Tinley

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 8

Two button meme.

1. Be “objective”
2. Find the “root cause”

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 5

Current tech industry status:

Waylon Smithers from the Simpsons opening a crate labeled “Robot workers: 100% loyal” while Mr. Burns looks on.

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Jun 4

Kent Brockman from the Simpsons. Caption reads
"AI: Argle-bargle or foofooraw?"

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 31

The inevitability of future migration, a lesson never learned.

Anakin Padme meme:

Anakin: What a huge pain it was to migrate off the old system
Padme: The new system will be easier to sunset later, right?
Anakin: (no text)
Padme: (no text)

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 26

Grandpa Simpson saying: CAN'T GET A GOOD SARSAPARILLA LIKE THIS
BACK IN SPRINGFIELD.
IT ANGRIES UP THE BLOOD.

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 26

Advertise your account with a Simpsons image

Radioactive Man from the Simpsons screaming: My eyes! The goggles do nothing!

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 15

“Yes, but which hole was the *root cause*?”

Visual depiction of swiss cheese model of accidents, with slices of swiss cheese and an arrow that passes through the holes.

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 13

I never appreciated how funny this Simpsons joke was until I moved to the U.S.

Image of Homer Simpson on television with the text “OUT OF STATE” superimposed

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 11

I’ve never understood the “constitution-in-exile” thing.

Butterfly meme. Above the character’s head, it says “emoluments clause”. Under the butterfly, it says, “$400M jet from Qatar”. At the bottom, it says “Is this constitution-in-exile?”

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· May 8

Evergreen observation, from informationisbeautiful.net/visualizatio...

Text that reads: Simple explanations are often compelling & convincing but not always accurate

Lorin Hochstein@norootcause· Apr 10

This is how I imagine interactions go between GOP members and Trump:

Marge Simpson saying to Bart: It’s good that you made that awful thing, Bart. It’s real good.