- > It absolutely targets a problem that exists. Even in places with pretty great public transit, there is some demand for taxis/Uber/etc. Oftentimes even moreso, because if I don't need a car for 90% of trips, I might not have a car at all. So I use an Uber or a taxi when a certain trip demands it.
This says nothing about self driving cars
> So I'm not used to simply pretending this person I'm sharing a space with doesn't exist. Instead, I need to navigate the fuzzy line between courtesy and service.
I don't mean to be harsh, but, get over it? We live in a service economy. Do you feel the same way about the barista taking your coffee order?
> Waymos have none of this shit. They're clean, show up when they say they will, I can play my own music, adjust the air conditioning, and have obnoxious conversations with my friends. They drive safely, and, as a cherry on top, they're cool as hell.
I don't like the assumption you're making that Waymos are the only solution to ubers, taxis or driving yourself. Well designed and well working public transportation (Which is doable and exists in the world) is far cheaper and far more predictable than any form of car-based transportation.
Not only that, but you're not responding to my actual argument. The annoying part of driving is not the act of driving, it's the time spent in your commute.
- This is true.
Now to start a tangent, what's the easier problem to solve: FSD, or a robust public transport system? Moving rooms have always been around in the form of trains, busses, streetcars etc...
- FSD is not being marketed as an aide for elderly people or those with disabilities, it's being marketed as a panacea for all driving related problems
- I think self-driving targets a problem that doesn't really exist. The issue isn't that the act of driving is a laborious task, it's simply the amount of time spent in a car, which FSD doesn't address.
- You say this in jest, but Uber is trending towards this right now:
https://www.uber.com/us/en/ride/uberx-share/
Convergent Evolution happening in realtime- it's almost as if community pooled forms of transportation are the most efficient...
- The point isn't if the output is correct or not, it's if the actual net is doing "logical computation" ala Prolog.
What you're suggesting is akin to me saying you can't build a house, then you go and hire someone to build a house. _You_ didn't build the house.
- GCC can use randomized branch prediction.
- How many software engineers are there in the world? How many are going to stop using it when model providers start increasing token cost on their APIs?
I could see the increased productivity of using Cursor indirectly generating a lot more value per engineer, but... I wouldn't put my money on it being worth it overall, and neither should investors chasing the Nvidia returns bag.
- So far there hasn't been a transformative use case for LLMs besides the straightforward chat interface (Or some adjacent derivative). Cursor and IDE extensions are nice, but not something that generates billions in revenue.
This means there's two avenues:
1. Get a team of researchers to improve the quality of the models themselves to provide a _better_ chat interface
2. Get a lot of engineers to work LLMs into a useful product besides a chat interface.
I don't think that either of these options are going to pan out. For (1), the consumer market has been saturated. Laymen are already impressed enough by inference quality, there's little ground to be gained here besides a super AGI terminator Jarvis.
I think there's something to be had with agentic interfaces now and in the future, but they would need to have the same punching power to the public that GPT3 did when it came out to justify the billions in expenditure, which I don't think it will.
I think these companies might be able to break even if they can automate enough jobs, but... I'm not so sure.
- Why would the DoD give them money just to break-even (not even likely. oai has easily put > 10m into their compute) with companies that already have the infrastructure? This isn't a stimulus package, it's a service they're buying.
Even then, these companies aren't doing research into LLMs, they're just wrapping the endpoints and creating some abstractions.
- Recently as in the last few days when it started calling itself "MechaHitler" and scapegoating jewish people after the engineers let Elon ramble for the system prompt.
- This is the system prompt
https://github.com/KoljaB/RealtimeVoiceChat/blob/main/code/s...
My favorite line:
"You ARE this charming, witty, wise girlfriend. Don't explain how you're talking or thinking; just be that person."
- To me it's something like "the target language does not differ from the expressing language"?
A .txt file for notes is plaintext, because the language I'm using doesn't have to be compiled for my goal. Programming languages are not, because the expressed language is compiled into some other target language (machine code).
Markdown is not, because it's compiled into HTML.
A .txt undergoes no transformations from my writing, to its storage, to my later usage of it.
- Side note: When you google "Geocities" the results are in comic sans
- > whenever I'm walking my dog, working out, cooking dinner, or taking a shower - I still keep thinking about the things I need to solve, the failing tests, the PR comments, my open-source projects, etc.
This isn't an axiomatic quality of software engineering though. For every developer with your level of dedication (obsession? anxiety?), how many developers log off at 5 and compartmentalize their work away from their personal life?
That being said, your other paragraphs are pretty agreeable to me.
- Realistically, do you not think most of these things are largely solvable by a few, intentional changes to your daily routine?
30 minute walk before work, gym after work, outdoor/physical hobbies, intentional healthy eating, etc...
These, to me, aren't difficult and end up providing a net benefit on your life far outweighing the effort required to implement them.
- I think it's a stretch to compare the battery in a phone to the hand-wired collection of lithium batteries from various laptops. Even if the odds are still low, the calculus works out to be concerning when it's your home and livelihood.
- I don't. That's why I wouldn't place my livelihood on it.
- How do you know that a favorable wind direction will eliminate the risk of a fire hazard?
I'm being slightly fanatical, but if our priorities were not car-centric in the 50's, do you think we would have spent more, or less money over the last 70 years on the transportation economy?