arscan

5 ms·

1.
by arscan 23d ago
I think his point is to do this to understand deeply what they can do, what they can’t do, and what they can almost do. And then find the highest value ‘almost’ use case and push there. Which doesn’t necessarily mean improve the llm, could
2.
by arscan 27d ago
> This isn't just a new feature — it’s a new way to build software I imagine they smushed 2 of the most well-known AI-isms together on purpose here to troll the AI-weary. Might as well I guess, if this type of language annoys you th
3.
by arscan 28d ago
I was very into PC gaming during this era, and ran a decently sized gaming news website, and Carmacks use of .plan as a one-to-many microblog was really a decade or two ahead of what became mainstream twitter’s primary use case. None of the
4.
by arscan 1mo ago
Well, yeah, it does. Effective and clear communication is really important and often really hard for engineers. It is said that one goal of stackoverflow was to help programmers learn how to write through practice, as it’s both very hard an
5.
by arscan 1mo ago
Not a substantive comment on content but hopefully constructive feedback on presentation: Holy moly, on mobile I was trying to read the example console screenshots/snippets and then it would just unexpectedly change. Took me a little w
6.
by arscan 1mo ago
There’s the chance that you notice patterns emerging that become quite grating after listening to it for awhile, in the same way that LLMs tend to have subtle but eventually noticeable patterns in writing. Some people care, some don’t. Will
7.
by arscan 2mo ago
Who is going to end up capturing all this value being generated is going to be very interesting. Back in 1980, who’d have thought MS would capture the majority of the value from PCs over the next 3 decades, and not IBM?
8.
by arscan 2mo ago
Linus Tech Talk (LTT) did a whole series on doing this on the pool at the channel hosts’ house. Extravagant home upgrades are a frequent topic on that YouTube channel… business expense write off yada yada. My general takeaway was, yikes, al
9.
by arscan 2mo ago
Perhaps this is a controversial take, but I believe security runs in opposition to many other quality attributes (i.e., usability, interoperability). Not to say that there aren’t designs that could exist that are optimal for security and th
10.
by arscan 2mo ago
Quality is an opinion based on your perspective. The author articulates quality from their perspective, which has value, but isn’t universal.
11.
by arscan 3mo ago
I remember Matt’s Scripts Archive as an absolute gold mine for learning how to make web applications through example in the pre-PHP days, which was pretty challenging when all you had to work with is CGI and maybe SSI if your hosting provid
12.
by arscan 4mo ago
Applications like Photoshop will one day be regarded as the castles of this era. Technically impressive, but economically/politically irrelevant. While they could be reproduced at a fraction of the cost there just isn’t any point to it
13.
by arscan 4mo ago
I had a similar experience. Back then gamers were an outsized part of the online community, so if you wanted to build a site that got some actual use and engagement, building to that audience was a good strategy. And of course, it helps whe
14.
by arscan 5mo ago
I learned about this technique from Owen Wilson’s character in the otherwise exceptionally forgettable movie “The Haunting (1999).” Paradoxically, you are the one doing them a favor by effectively giving them permission to ask for help in t
15.
by arscan 5mo ago
I interned at a company called Stratus which did hardware fault tolerant computers in the 80s/90s. I think they called it a “Pair and spare” approach, where every component had 3 copies running and comparing state every cycle. If one c
16.
by arscan 5mo ago
It does, but according to the article it doesn’t apply to tickets issued by camera.
17.
by arscan 5mo ago
To perhaps give a little insight into why this is on the front page by someone who upvoted it: I didn't realize it was so open and easy. Now I do. The Golang code simply serves as proof in how open and easy it is. > Even at the tim
18.
by arscan 5mo ago
It is completely possible that the path that got them to this point was the optimal path given their goals and knowledge at the time. And wildly enough, maybe it was even the optimal path with perfect knowledge of the future as well.
19.
by arscan 5mo ago
I don’t think people are spending their time on more pressing issues. I think they are just are hooked on an endless stream of content that is built for addiction and is always within arms reach.
20.
by arscan 6mo ago
I think the idea is that if they cannot perform any cognitive task that is trivial for humans then we can state they haven’t reached ‘AGI’. It used to be easy to build these tests. I suspect it’s getting harder and harder. But if we run out
21.
by arscan 6mo ago
I do love the concept, but a little part of me died each time I came across an article with a very strong AI voice. That just feels antithetical to the ‘small web’ ethos because it obscures the ‘neighbor’ behind it.
22.
by arscan 7mo ago
Sure but industry cares about value (= benefit - price), not just price. Price could be astronomical, but that doesn’t matter if benefit is larger.
23.
by arscan 7mo ago
I’ve been thinking about it like this for some time: If the computer is a bicycle of the mind, then the LLM is its credit card.
24.
by arscan 7mo ago
I’m not so sure an increasingly large context window will be seen as a critical enabler (as it was viewed 6 months ago), after watching how amazingly effective subagents and tool calls are at tackling parts of the problem and surfacing the
25.
by arscan 7mo ago
Reminds me of the “Google AI Challenge” in 2011 called Ants [1], except the ‘AI’ is implemented using ‘AI’ now instead of human programmers. I was proud for getting the highest-ranked JavaScript-based implementation, but got absolutely crus
26.
by arscan 7mo ago
> There's a middle ground of "written by human and LLM together". Absolutely, but I’d categorize that ‘bit’ as the innovation from the human. I guess it’s usually just ongoing validation that the software is headed down a
27.
by arscan 7mo ago
> But I’ll gladly use a tool someone had an AI write, as long as it works (which these things increasingly do). It works, sure, but is it worth your time to use? I think a common blind spot for software engineers is understanding how har
28.
by arscan 7mo ago
I got the sense that Kidders side was approximately equal to my father’s side, as my father said he provided a lot of information to the author through interviews and was happy with the account that ended up in the book. I’ll see what I can
29.
by arscan 7mo ago
My father was an unnamed DG marketing executive in the book, who joked that his greatest career regret was asking Kidder to be unnamed in case the book wasn’t any good (it won Kidder the Pulitzer). I’ve been meaning to go through his old no
30.
by arscan 7mo ago
This absolutely has been the case for me for the last few months. But what’s disheartening is that this signal will just be mimicked through simple prompting if too many people start tuning in to it. Or maybe that’s already happened?

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