- dj_gitmo parentGreat post. I work on two large codebases. One is structured much like the example from the post, and the other is a mess. LLMs care much better at understanding the organized code.
- > It is almost aways a failure of the technical infrastructure previously created in the company. An AI will solve the trivial aspects of the problem, not the real problem.
This is so true. Software that should be simple can become so gnarly because of bad infra. For example, our CI/CD team couldn't get updated versions of Python on the CI machines, and so suddenly we need to start using Docker for what should be a very simple software. That's just an example, but you get the idea, and it causes problems to compound over the years.
You really want good people with sharp elbows laying the foundations. At one time I resented people like that, but now I have seen what happens when you don't have anyone like that making technical decisions.
- > what is definitely not inevitable is the monetization of human attention. It's only a matter of policy. Without it the incentives to make Tiktok would have been greatly reduced, if even economically possible at all.
This is not a new thing. TV monetizes human attention. Tiktok is just an evolution of TV. And Tiktok comes from China which has a very different society. If short-form algo slop video can thrive in both liberal democracies and a heavily censored society like China, than it's probably somewhat inevitable.
- > The real news is that it's also slightly happening in other developed countries too, another rhetoric point towards Steven Pinker's concept that as nations get richer they become more environmentally conscious, cause they can afford to care about it.
I'm not sure it's environmentalism. It's efficiency. From the article.
> In richer countries, where farming has become more efficient, deforestation has slowed or even reversed
You simply don't need as many people living in villages, farming marginal land. New England re-forested because the land was never that good for farming, and it made a lot more sense to work in factories.
- > The other is "meh, just direct them to the call centre".
I worked at a large insurance company and this was definitely the approach. There was a website, but you had to call to realistically get almost anything done.
One product manager's big innovation was to completely remove passwords. Every time you wanted to log in, you had reset the password and be sent a link via email. Of course the didn't announce this, so you would be probably spend 20 minutes frantically looking for your password that didn't exist.
- During the first Trump term, most of the institutions did resist Trump. The fact that he go reelected after his first term was so chaotic and scandalous has basically demoralized everyone. There are other factors, like the utter failure of Biden and the democrats, but its hard to recon with the fact that people are so far gone at this point.
- Check out Gregs Airplanes and Automobiles for really well researched aeronautic docs. He made one specifically about the Wrights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkpQAGQiv4Q
- Do the adjustable lenses work if you have an astigmatism?
This biggest concern I have about VR, especially for work, is that it forces you to spend too much time looking a screen that is very close to your eyes. This is known to cause myopia and digital eyestrain.
Do any VR headsets attempt to address this problem? Can a headset force your eyes to change focal distance either using the display, or more likely, a physical lens? Ideally the headset would slowly, but consistently, force you to change your eyes focal distance. Is that something that Eye Tracking would enable?
Also, does eye tracking work properly if your eyes are slightly misaligned?
- Great answer.
> Of course if it's manned it's reliability has to be so high that you don't have to worry about loss of payload, so building two copies of it was no longer necessary.
I wasn't expecting a space shuttle tie in, but of course there would be. They sure had to promise a lot to get that thing off the ground.
- Do these missions ever build back-up hardware? What if the probe is lost because of a lunch mishap, or there is a malfunction during the deploy (see Viasat VS3 antenna deploy failure).
It is an added cost, but it cannot be that much compared to the overall R&D/tooling/launch/ect cost.
- We should educate people about what questions you should, and should not, be asking LLMs in the first place. You really should not be asking an LLM
> "Did fighters of the Azov battalion burn an effigy of Trump?”
LLMs are horrible at answering questions about small isolated incidents. Part of modern media literacy should include understanding what LLMs can reliably answer.
- I disabled noise-cancelling on my headphones because I actually found it make the sound of my kid crying very uncomfortable.
I honestly think that noise-cancelling is a great idea for a technology, and is basically required from a marketing perspective, but not all that helpful in practice. Sound isolation isn't is sexy, but it works much better.
- One of the reasons that these attempts to increase diversity are such a mess is because it is illegal to have a straightforward quota.
If these agencies could just have a policy like "Group X is %Y of the population. This agency must hire at least %Y/2 from group X", there would be no need to have these sneaky roundabout methods of increasing equity.
- > I’m not sure if anyone could ever “get” one of his movies completely beyond the experience and the narrative.
The plots of his movies are often more concrete than people expect. I'm not saying a movie like Mulholland Drive is easy to follow, but it does have a legible plot. Feel free to read the wiki or something if you are not sure who some character is or what they are doing.
If you are just letting the experience wash over you, you may be missing some plot points that are not meant to be mysterious.
Obviously his movies are weird and not entirely legible, but don't assume everything in them is meant to be inscrutable.