alansammarone

6 ms·

1.
by alansammarone 8mo ago
Because people have to compete just to have sand doing math for us? The why is that it's high time we stop worrying about how much compute we have. Certainly filling all solid planets in the solar system with computers is not nearly en
2.
by alansammarone 8mo ago
Yep. I'm no fan of Elon - exactly the opposite, in fact - but this is just someone trying to look smart and eco-friendly by doing the simplest, least ambitious, most obvious and surface-level analysis. The sentence you mention was inde
3.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
I...I am very interested in this subject. There's a lot to unpack in your comment, but I think it's really pretty simple. > this does not support your conclusion that artificial systems are "computationally equivalent&quot
4.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
I believe our definitions of "winning the IDE wars" are very, very different. For one thing, using "user count" as a metric for this like using "number of lines of code added" in a performance review. And even
5.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
evil and stupid are certainly the wrong words. I agree this is a nuanced issue. however, I think it is an objective fact that certain orderings of priorities - in particular, the relative priority of freedom, privacy, security, protection,
6.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
I don't necessarily disagree with you, broadly. The good news is that, I think, we don't really need - if fact, we probably don't really want - most people to accept anything, at least the specific context of this thread. It&
7.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
I share your feelings - both the sadness about the path we seem to be going down and the wonder about what the Internet used to be. I do believe, however, that the future does not "exist" in any real sense, but is constructed - ev
8.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
Interesting point, never thought of it like that, and I think there is some truth to that view. On the other hand, IIRC, this works best in instances where it's pure chance (you have no control over the likelihood of reward) and the pr
9.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
I dont think it's quite the same. The cases you mention are more like two alternative but roughly functionally equivalent things. People still argue and use both, but the argument is different. Even if people don't explicitly ackn
10.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
It certainly helps, but in my experience you get 60-80% of the benefit just with code (except in legacy or otherwise terrible code, for example with misleading/outdated comments everywhere, bad variable/function names, etc - in th
11.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
This is an interesting threads. There are many instances of "this is bad, doesn't work, don't like it", and many instances of "it works reasonably well here, look: <url>". Seems like a consistent pattern.
12.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
I don't know the specifics of this particular tool, I assume it's at most using a couple of passes of (some frontier model with specific system prompt + custom tools, for example code-specific rag + some form of "summarize&qu
13.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
I feel you brother. Same boat. I've been able to do things I wanted to do for ages and knew how to do, but didn't have the time to type, essentially. I prefer to produce nothing than something half baked ("MVPs"), so I d
14.
by alansammarone 10mo ago
This is getting absurd, seriously. People can choose the tools they use. Whether you're old school or one of the new age people who don't even use punch cards anymore (don't even get me started on people using vi... myself, n
15.
by alansammarone 11mo ago
Just to make a small addition to my comment, which also addresses the sibling and child replies. I 100% agree that any good professional still needs (with or without AI) the "design, engineer, and knowledge of your constraints". I
16.
by alansammarone 11mo ago
after reading so many people argue about this over the last few years (and having had my own experience - I've been writing software professionally for close to 15 years), I've come to believe people are talking past each other be
17.
by alansammarone 1y ago
That's right, one person caring and not acting doesn't change reality, neither does one person caring and acting (most of the time). A relatively small number of people caring and acting, however, can change the course of history.
18.
by alansammarone 1y ago
This. I can't keep myself from quoting another 20th century lesson from Snyder: > Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.
19.
by alansammarone 1y ago
While I think I agree with most of what you're saying, I think it can be misunderstood and it can be very damaging when taken to an extreme, so I'll just leave a quote from the absolutely fantastic 20 lessons from the 20th centur
20.
by alansammarone 1y ago
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm with you. I just meant more broadly - I think that inevitably, news organizations, as a whole, have more many competing interests - comercial, political, etc. I think that at least some of them at reall
21.
by alansammarone 1y ago
Ok, that makes sense. I couldn't quite fish that out of the article (there's a lot more being said that obscures it), but you're right. If this is indeed relatively common (at this scale and/or level of sophistication),
22.
by alansammarone 1y ago
No, I'm not a bot, I just wanted it have it as reply to the article itself too, separate from this reply. It has been pasted exactly once and edited accordingly. Also, my account is 15 years old :)
23.
by alansammarone 1y ago
Exactly! Thank you! :) I believe we're making very similar points in essence - see my other reply. Personally, I'd say that foreign security services having some involvement in this is slightly more plausible. If nothing else, ju
24.
by alansammarone 1y ago
...more like an ELI5? Sure. When Bobby tries to convince his friend Jimmy that Charlie is lying, you shouldn't trust him if he says that "I know that Charlie is lying because apples are green". > One of the reasons we know
25.
by alansammarone 1y ago
I felt slightly...hm...confused when reading this. When I see something in the news, to the degree that I trust the source, I see it only as a statement of fact, and unless I trust the commentator, I ignore the comment. I only expect descri
26.
by alansammarone 1y ago
You're assuming the conclusion in order to argue against it. It's slightly surprising to me that this is not obvious and actually, pretty common. You can't argue against X ("It isn't completely obvious that is bogus
27.
by alansammarone 1y ago
Completely disproportionate, off the charts dominance (relative to everything else I have tried in (mostly hardware, but also software) quality, attention to detail and UI/UX would be my opinion. Power consumption would be part of that
28.
by alansammarone 1y ago
So the author is not a great programmer/professional. I agree with you that they should have done their homework, tested it, have a mental model for why and how, etc. If they don't, it doesn't seem to be particularly relevant
29.
by alansammarone 1y ago
I've had a similar discussion with a coworker which I respect and know to be very experienced, and interestingly we disagreed on this very point. I'm with you - I think AI is just tool, and people shouldn't be off the hook be
30.
by alansammarone 1y ago
Turing machines are universal. Anything that does anything is, at most, a Turing machine.

More ›