mcv

A compiler is a deterministic algorithm. Clause is not.

Of course Claude is an algorithm, but it's a very vague, fuzzy and complex one, where you have no way to determine what's going on inside, and no way to know up front what's going to come out.

You've got to start somewhere. Even a small UBI, like the one Alaska has, is better than nothing. Replacing welfare with a UBI at the same level would already be a massive improvement because you'd get rid of the poverty trap. From there you can grow it as much as the economy demands.

I think the idea is that all companies should be designed to be employee owned for at least a significant part.

Yes, but the US bribes too. In fact, I'd say that corruption is more common in the US than in much of Europe. The article's claim that the US worships Adam Smith is only nominally true; in practice, they love nothing more than monopolisation and market domination.

Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for?

Any advantage that they can exploit. It's no great secret that the US government often acts on behalf of its major corporations and vice versa.

I think now would be an excellent time for an EU directive that all government documents must at all times be stored in an openly standardised format. So no OOXML Transitional.

He does employ a lot of hyperbole. Some of his previous blog posts have titles like "I Will Fucking Dropkick You If You Use That Spreadsheet" (https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-dropkick-you-...) and "I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again" (https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you...).

He's not a big fan of polite, corporate speech, I suspect.

But I like his style and he often has some insightful points that go against some popular industry practices.

There have been courts that have voided unreasonable EULAs, I believe. I suspect this can be fought too. But getting actual meaningful consequences for the manufacturers to make them stop doing this, may be a different matter.

This makes sense. So my two questions are the answer to each other. Interesting.

Wasn't that already implicitly the case? Aren't there laws against deceptive advertising?

It sounds like an incredibly sensible rule. But is this something a mayor can just declare? Isn't this something aa legislative body has to decide?

Companies consist of people.

Is Linux certain to be safe from this sort of thing? I used to use lots of Dell monitors.

Are there any brands that are known not to do anything like this? I'd like to reward them with my patronage.

I've heard so before: that USB is a massive security hole. At least in Windows; I don't know if other OSs are also vulnerable.

Better to just never stick strange USB sticks in your computer.

In my family we use the Glorious Model O. My son wanted one ages ago (I got him a mini), and it was so nice, I got one for myself. Now my oldest has a big one, and my youngest uses the mini.

We've had them for years. The mini has lost the button that lets you select speed, but other than that they're still great. For better than the various Logitechs I had before.

The only real downside is the bright flashing led patterns. I've gotten used to them.

I don't understand how this is legal. Isn't this malware? Isn't it illegal to install malware on someone's computer without their permission? Or is this very illegal, but nobody cares about that anymore?

Of course not everybody is like that. But I totally believe him that he's met people who lose all reason when confronted with AI. I've met them too. We've all read articles about leaderboards to waste as many tokens as possible, companies burning through insane AI budgets in a month, the ridiculous scale of investments by AI companies. I've seen many articles explaining how they're never going to get that money back.

Nobody is denying it's a useful tool, but there are absolutely people completely losing their minds over it. Often people who don't really understand it, but do control a lot of money.

It'd better happen sooner than later. This bubble is distorting everything and turning many executives insane. See https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-glo...

I absolutely would. Let the bubble burst.

A few months ago, I heard a keynote speaker claim that LLMs did not give any measurable productivity gains, except in two fields: customer support and software development, where they resulted in about 30% productivity improvement. I forgot if he presented any sources, and if he did, I forgot those, but it sounds plausible to me.

But instead of productivity, I'm much more interested in using it to improve quality. You've got a tireless reviewer who is always ready to review your code and catch any gaps.

LLMs can also be used to improve quality. The approach I tend to encourage, is to write the thing yourself, but let the LLM review your work.

I think that's a far better and more enjoyable way of working than letting the LLM write it and letting users review it. Partially because writing is more enjoyable than reviewing, and I think people are inherently bad at reviewing while LLMs with their infinite patience are much better at it. But also because the writing itself shapes our thinking and we learn much more from it; it makes us better in ways reviewing the LLM's work does not.

That said, I do let AI write a lot for me, because I'm tackling issues that would otherwise be way too big for a single person. Is this a good idea? Maybe not in general, but iny particular context I think it is.

I'm not sure to what extent I'm fooling myself about that last bit.

16 used to be the minimum drinking age in Netherland, until they raised it to 18. It wouldn't surprise me if there were still countries where it's 16.

But it's not really a fair comparison, because alcohol has a very direct detrimental effect on brain development. Many things can have a detrimental effect, but alcohol always does. Which is probably why they raised the age to 18.

My kids call. Only they tend to call through Discord or Whatsapp instead of just using the actual phone, for some reason. But they call, and they pick up when I call them. They also call their friends for gaming.

Grades for homework have clearly become meaningless. Instead, give homework as practice, but test them in school, without access to AI.

I recently got the Anker 140W. I bought a MacBook, and apparently they come without a charger these days. So instead of buying an expensive Mac charger, I figured the widely recommended Anker 140W offers a lot more functionality for less money.

Do people want to restrict 16 year olds with phones? That seems like a really bad idea. For 10 year olds it makes sense, but 16 is nearly adult; they need to really learn this responsibility. And of course they need a phone when they go out like these girls.

A bit of a weird tangent from what apparently is harassment in a train or something like that? I admit it's hard to follow what is going on.

Yeah, I'm reading this and find myself wondering what's so new about this. Haven't tech companies always had this role? I suppose Forward Deployed Engineer sounds more like an engineering role than Sales Consultant, which sounds like you're a salesman rather than an engineer, so it feels to me like this is mostly PR to make the role more attractive to engineers.

It's certainly working on me, because I like talking with stakeholders and identifying problems I can solve, and I don't like sales. I'm far more likely to apply as Forward Deployed Engineer.

It's not so much a branch, but a dependency between subsequent iterations of the loop, which means execution of each iteration has to wait for the result from the previous iteration, slowing things down. But if most of the time j == next_j[i][j], that dependency is often unnecessary. So the branch allows the system to predict that it can be parallelized. But that's only really worth it if the branch condition is false most of the time. Whenever it turns out to be true, the CPU will have to backtrack and redo that work.

Is Explore the only thing subagents are ever used for?

I hear that too, but I'm much more ad-hoc about what model I use for what. Opus can be good at planning too, and Fable is remarkably good at figuring out obscure complexities in the code.

Interesting. I thought modern CPU optimisation required avoiding branches, but here adding the branch allows the branch pediction to parallelise what it otherwise couldn't.

Why would you accept a scheduled call if you want to be left alone? That makes no sense.

You're the one projecting bias onto this scenario. You assume people only want to talk to you to waste your time. If you work with professionals, you can assume that when they ask you a question, they have a reason to ask you that question. Assuming that they're just being lazy is bad faith.

Accepting a call and then giving someone this kind of non-answer is extremely disrespectful of their time and their professionalism.

Anyhow, you should try hard not to "hate and despise" LLMs.

That's not what I wrote. You're being needlessly dishonest and disrespectful right here.