shruubi

n+0 friends

Does this still hold if n=0?

I have a theory, this is obviously based on speculation based on how Anthropic is treating Mythos and the whole media noise around it's dangers and who gets access to it.

My theory is that Anthropic are banking on being the top model when the race to IPO finally reaches the finish line, and to do that they need to have the top model but not let any competitors see it or derive from it to have a comparable model in the market.

Fable is their way of showing the public "the model does exist but in a mode that makes it harder/impossible for competitors to derive a comparable model from results.

You are absolutely not a "random person on the internet", you are a very public figure with the wealth and influence available to you that could allow you to take revenge on someone who says something you don't like in real, life-altering ways. Now, I'm not saying that you would do that, but it is a shocking lack of self-awareness to think of yourself as a random person on the internet.

Am I the only one who looks at guys like Addy Osmani and Steve Yegge who before LLM's had a good reputation and since then get the feeling they are cashing that reputation in to ride the LLM hype-cycle? Or is it just a matter of professional tech talking heads moving from writing books and giving conference talks about good engineering practices to talking about the new hot topic that sells books and conference tickets?

Honestly, things like this just depress me. Someone makes a mistake and then they try to cover themselves by saying "Yeah I am somewhat to blame, but look at all these other things that are more to blame". They seem responsible by appearing to take accountability but in actuality are pushing accountability onto everyone else before themselves.

Then, to get clicks and attention we then ask the AI to write some kind of "confession". It's a probability engine, it has no thoughts or feelings you can hurt or shame into doing better, it has no long term memory to burn the embarrassment of this into and in fact given the same circumstances it is probable that the agent would do the same thing again and again no matter how many confessions you have it write or how mean you write to it.

Ultimately, you are the operator of the machine and the AI, and despite what OpenAI/Anthropic/Whomever say, you are required to exist because the machine cannot operate without you being there nor can it be accountable for what it does.

Two questions

1) Do you not feel self-conscious or weird about calling this "EvanFlow"? Seems like a lot of people these days are naming their AI tools/skills/whatever after themselves which seems self-absorbed. Either that or they hope that if their thing takes off like OpenClaw did then they'll grab the fame that comes along with it.

2) Why does your TDD flow miss the refactor step of TDD?

If Meta paid more than ten dollars for this then that is eleven dollars too much...

Amazon - Where the beatings and layoffs will continue until AI usage improves.

Models are getting 99% more efficient every 3 years - to get the same amount of output, combined with hardware and (mostly) software upgrades - you can use 99% less power.

This is such a poor argument for a number of reasons.

1. Three years ago is basically when the "AI race" really kicked off amongst the frontier companies. You're effectively comparing a car from the 1920/30's to a modern car.

2. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. You can't just say that LLM's will grow and improve at a fixed rate for all time, that isn't how they or anything else works in the real world.

3. Since it's an open secret that companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are running their models at a loss, a static 99% cheaper every three years arc still puts these companies at a net negative position unless compute, energy and water all somehow start getting 99% cheaper every three years.

I realize that the example is contrived, but what is the point of writing a test of a fibonacci function if your test harness is designed to just take whatever it tells you and updates the assert to verify that what it told you is indeed what it just told you.

This assumes the code you wrote is already correct and giving the correct answer, so why bother writing tests? If, however you accept that you may have got it wrong, figure out the expected outcome through some reliable means (in this case, dig out your old TI-89), get the result and write your test to assert against a known correct value.

I wouldn't trust any tests that are written this way.

I'm willing to admit I may be the odd one out here, but I find this entire article to paint the author as self-entitled and manipulative.

One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion.

People may feel good about themselves after performing an act of kindness, but this sentence makes it sound like the author is gifting them the opportunity to go out of their way to do things for him.

And all of these stories of wandering around Asia for eight years sound more like he deliberately put himself in positions to guilt people who culturally feel obligated towards generosity. These don't read like stories of kindness to me, but someone bragging about all the people he manipulated, and then recycled all these stories of manipulation into some ridiculous idea that he is the truly compassionate and kind person because he is accepting their kindness.

So not only are we measuring lines of code as a productivity metric as though that has any actual relation to productivity, but across the board they are boasting that lines of code is going up and PR density is getting bigger as well.

Those numbers should be seen as a giant red flag, not as any kind of positive.

I understand the intention of what the author is trying to achieve, but I think the problem they will run into is how do you define "evil" in a legal document or license? There is a subset of acts and beliefs that wider society has deemed "evil", but I doubt large corporations are actively supporting sexual assault, torture, murder etc. What the author is referring to is things they find morally reprehensible but do not reach the level of the aforementioned acts enough to be expressly illegal and evil (and whether they are or not, IANAL).

Not sure how geographically diverse it is to have two "highly secure sites" on the same continent.

The problem with investors these days is that too many of them seem so focused on short-term gains and showing their numbers increase quarter-over-quarter that we seem to be incapable of looking at an investment over a longer period of time.

As someone who was the victim of a lot of bullying myself, this article is a very mixed bag for me.

For one, I like the idea of creating some degree of systems of support to try and prevent things like school shootings from happening by stopping them before they get too far.

On the other hand, unless there are more details missing from this article, it really seems like the only person who got any degree of punishment is the student who was being bullied.

You know what stops bullies that doesn't involve shooting them? Ruthless consequences for their actions. Schools love to talk about their 'zero tolerance' policy for bullying, but if there are no consequences outside of a teacher telling the bully to stop, then that is definitely less of a 'zero tolerance' policy and more of a 'mostly tolerated' policy. Zero tolerance means immediate suspensions, expulsions, supporting police reports for physically violent bullying etc.

I'm of two minds on this, I think all comedians should be able to make fun of anything, but at the same time, just because you have the right to free speech doesn't mean you get to avoid the consequences of what you say. Whether I agree with the outcome or not, if ABC don't like what Jimmy Kimmel said, they are free to pull his show off the air and fire him all they want, Kimmel is not entitled or owed TV time nor is ABC required to broadcast his show. But, by the same token, ABC must then be willing to accept the consequences of doing that and any bad PR that comes from it.

That all being said, what I don't like is that even if ABC execs decided that they found what Kimmel said distasteful or offensive, this still looks an awful lot like acting out of fear of a president who famously is very spiteful to anyone who says anything bad about him.

What's with "defend them no matter what"? Defend from what and why?

In my experience, a lot of sports fans love to debate and argue, claim some strategy was "unfair" when used against their team, argue whether some penalty was justified or not. People who are die-hard for their team will usually defend their team no matter what.

Sport is just sport - just watch, enjoy, have a good time

This is the thing. Politics has basically become a form of entertainment these days. You have talk-shows covering politics and making fun of the political news of the day, you have YouTubers and streamers who make a living off of making political content. Artists make comics that are varying degrees of witty political satire and, in America at least, the democratic and republican conventions are basically a political sideshow circus. To top it off, how many people have taken this situation as a reason to post on social media? Regardless of if you like or dislike Charlie Kirk and his idea's, using his death as a reason to post something on social media, positive or negative, is just using the situation for entertainment purposes.

How many people these days can honestly say they engage in politics to talk about policy, and not as a form of entertainment?

The fact that we're talking about this using terms like "sides" is the problem. American politics has long since stopped being about policy, but is treated like a sport where you follow your "team" and defend them no matter what. It's as though people are incapable of having thoughts on an issue more complex than "does my side think this is good or bad?" and suddenly those who disagree with you are evil, and with partisan media suddenly you see the "other side" as some faceless evil rather than people with differing and complex experiences and views.

I don't agree with a lot of the things Charlie Kirk said, and as someone who is not an American, there was also a lot of things he said I simply didn't care about because they didn't apply to me. I also found that his way of communicating was more geared towards encouraging discussions that would generate views. But despite all that, I can appreciate that he was a man who was willing to have a (mostly) civil conversation with all sides, something I wish more people would try to do.

American politics isn't politics, it's one step short of being like football hooliganism for supposedly smart people.

Poor Alan Kay not even getting a mention for pioneering the basis for this idea in the design of Smalltalk.

I'm 30, so roughly the same age as the poster of this article. But for a person who (rightfully so) derides the ageism and racism they encounter, their whole section on technical literacy is just a modern-spin take on ageism.

Just because people my age and younger use discord etc, doesn't mean this is either a "good" way for people to communicate, or something we should force people whose technical literacy could vary wildly between extremes to try and figure out.

Personally, I hate discord and messaging in general and much prefer to make phone calls. I guess that makes me an anomaly compared to my generation, but I generally find that whole section rude and trying to solve their own personal problem, not the problems of the community as a whole.

I'll be honest, all these asides feel like there is some kind of explanation or big reveal that never comes. I can understand a bank identifying a large-sum account and wanting to look after them, being annoyed by that account moving banks as well as a local branch having to take precautions on such large withdrawals. But otherwise, I feel like I'm missing something here that isn't spelled out.

I approved and took responsibility for our ambitious staffing trajectory—this is on me

It's all well and good to say that, but what has he actually done to take responsibility?

Mum: "He does something with computers on the internet. It's all very complicated."

Sister: "He builds websites or something."

Grandparents: "Complicated computer stuff."

What I actually do: Lead-Developer/Team-Leader for a data analytics company.

I'm not a parent, but if I was I'd rather have security tell everyone, regardless of their motives to move along and not be anywhere near the children and offend a bunch of innocent bystanders than the alternative.

The way I look at it, if the standard you set is to tell everyone to move along, then you are creating the systems and processes necessary to prevent bad actors from doing what they will try and do, and that outcome is infinitely more important than some passer-by's feelings.

The whole story of Trevor is just heartbreaking to me. I see a lot of my experiences helping someone get proper mental health care in this story, and the fact that between the restrictions that COVID created and how ill-equiped the mental health sector is unless you send someone to a hospital is awful.

From my experience, putting someone in a hospital or other treatment facility is often presented as the only way you can get help for serious conditions, but for most people, the idea of being sent away to a hospital or other facility for an extended period of time can be very damaging, especially in the immediate term. For people who need that level of care, the feeling of being abandoned, or that your friends/family can't deal with you anymore or don't want you around.

You also have the fact that for a lot of people who end up in these facilities, do so because they have been forced in some way, shape or form to be there. Couple that with these places often feeling less like hospitals or places of medicine and treatment, and more like prisons, these environments can make you feel like a criminal or unwanted member of society.

Finally, while I don't want to paint all who work in places like this with the same brush, my experiences have shown me that it is not that uncommon for the doctors and support staff who work in these places to be somewhat uncaring to those in their care. And, while I understand that working in a place like this would obviously have a significant impact on your own mental health and make you jaded, from my experience what a lot of people who end up in these places want more than anything is empathy and compassion.

I'm not saying that we should abolish hospital treatment for mental health, because this kind of treatment in a lot of cases is both necessary and effective. My thoughts here are that for cases like Trevor, there should be some kind of service or help available that provides the right degree of ongoing care without having to upend a persons life in ways that can be damaging.

This post hits so close to home for me it is unsettling.

Every 4-6 months we have this ritual where everyone finally accepts that we can't have one person being the "center of the universe" and we have this almost performative process of trying to spread things around to other staff. This will last at most two weeks and then we're back where we started.

It can get pretty bad at points, like when dev's get so comfortable in relying on me to solve all their problems that they'll encounter an issue and instead of actually trying to do anything about it themselves, the first thing that happens is I get a call/text/email/slack asking me to fix it for them.

And to top it off, outside of the occasional weekend, I can't remember the last time I had a day off, but I do remember it lasted three hours before they called me to come in and fix something for them. Nowadays, I don't even bother with time off, public holidays or weekends, they aren't days off to me anymore, they are just days where I can sleep in a little longer before getting back to work.

This was an interesting read on tech history, so much so that I googled the author to see if there was any other writings like this.

Low and behold I instead found out the guy is a convicted Paedophile...

I prefer working from the office, not because of the social aspect but because I find that I just can't bring myself to be nearly as productive at home as opposed to in the office.

What I really miss was the period in time where I could work in the office and everyone else was working from home. The quiet of no-one else around, the productiveness of not being at home and the commute for that period of time between work/home where I can have some time just to myself.

I never really got into Twitter. I could never understand the point of posts limited to 140 characters and my severe lack of self esteem means I live my life believing that nothing I say is worth hearing or in any way remotely interesting.

In saying that, every time I've tried to "do" Twitter, I just find myself in this space where I feel a mix of sadness, anger, hatred and other negative emotions because 95% of Twitter is either people assuming the worst in everyone, calling other people every horrible name conceivable or just generally being another awful person in a sea of awful people.

The fact that I've never quite "got" Twitter has meant that I feel no attachment to it, and don't care if I remove it from my life, so it's not like I'm losing any sleep over it. But, it also helps immensely that removing Twitter from my life is like cutting off a necrotising limb that you never needed to begin with.