linguae

5 ms·

1.
by linguae 16d ago
I agree. I would switch to an open source spiritual successor to even Tiger in a heartbeat if it were available. The difficult part is replicating the ecosystem of applications. From a technological standpoint I would prefer a modern Linu
2.
by linguae 19d ago
This summer I’ve been investigating agentic coding with local LLMs, and while I’m far from an expert, one thought that has been on my mind is leveraging techniques from “old-school” AI such as heuristic search to guide agents when it comes
3.
by linguae 22d ago
I'd love for Apple to bring back the Mac Pro, but Apple hasn't had an affordable Mac Pro tower since the 2012 model. Apple got rid of the tower in 2013 in favor of the "trash can" model. When the trash can languished f
4.
by linguae 22d ago
Last week I purchased a MacBook Pro M1 Max from www.macsales.com, which is owned by Other World Computer, a maker of Mac peripherals. My computer comes with a 1-year warranty. It was my first time purchasing from them.
5.
by linguae 22d ago
Yup. Yesterday it was $799 for the base Mac Mini M4, a $200 increase from the original MSRP before June’s price hikes. I paid $499 for my M4 back in April with the academic discount since I predicted the next generation base model would co
6.
by linguae 25d ago
Russ Cox is one of the persons behind Xv6 ( https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/xv6.html ), an x86 port of Version 6 Unix, which is the version of Unix described in the famous Lion’s book ( https://en.wi
7.
by linguae 26d ago
I’m not a political conservative and I personally wouldn’t move to Idaho, but Idaho has a lot of appeal. There are plenty of conservatives who used to live in California who moved to Idaho in the past decade due to a combination of Califor
8.
by linguae 1mo ago
I’m quite optimistic about the long-term future of local LLMs for privacy and cost control reasons. An LLM running on my own hardware, even if it’s not a laptop but a home server, is one where I don’t need to worry about token limits, toke
9.
by linguae 1mo ago
I also enjoy my Blackwings, though my normal pencil of choice is the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni HB, which is cheaper than the Blackwing but is still an awesome pencil. I think my supply of pencils will last at least a decade. I take a lot of handw
10.
by linguae 1mo ago
In some areas like the San Francisco Bay Area, schools would have to pay astronomically more in order for teachers to compete against software engineers. I’m a community college professor in the Bay Area making a low six-figure salary, but
11.
by linguae 1mo ago
I want 2006-era Facebook. No algorithmic feed. No viral posts. No AI slop. Just updates from my friends and acquaintances.
12.
by linguae 1mo ago
There were exceptions, and I use “were” and not “are” because I don’t know any modern Silicon Valley companies that value loyalty, though I know some people at Apple and Google with long tenures. Hewlett-Packard under its founders believed
13.
by linguae 1mo ago
Maybe I’m looking through rose-colored glasses, but while people need money, there was a time where there was more idealism from the founders and the employees. Steve Jobs could’ve quit business in 1985 after his failed coup; he was rich e
14.
by linguae 2mo ago
I agree regarding the West Coast in general. Seattle and Los Angeles are also similarly expensive, and even Sacramento (my hometown) isn’t much of an improvement. A few months ago I was floored to see a $13 burrito at a place that was jus
15.
by linguae 2mo ago
I don’t know where you live, but in the Bay Area prices have exploded since COVID. I remember a decade ago when it was still possible to get a super burrito for under $10; in fact, the price was $7.75 for a carne asada super burrito at El
16.
by linguae 2mo ago
Additionally, as a former industry researcher myself who now teaches at a community college, there is less research freedom in industry, especially with very free places like 1970-era Bell Labs and Xerox PARC half a century in the rear view
17.
by linguae 2mo ago
I’m an noob to Lean myself, but my best explanation is that asserts are checks that happen at runtime. Imagine compile-time asserts, where the compiler is able to determine the validity of assertions without needing to run the program. Fo
18.
by linguae 2mo ago
I’m out of the loop these days in systems research since I largely focus on programming languages and AI these days (though I still love systems) and I treat research more as a side hobby rather than a full-fledged career. It’s disappointi
19.
by linguae 2mo ago
I may be biased since I interned at Google in 2013 and 2014, but Google in the 2000s and early 2010s felt downright magical as someone who wanted to pursue a career in systems software research. They made impressive technologies that still
20.
by linguae 2mo ago
I’ve been thinking about this over the past few days. There was an exciting keynote at PLDI 2026 by MIT professor Saman Amarasinghe where he talked about the intersection between compilers and machine learning, including LLMs. One of the
21.
by linguae 3mo ago
I'm a professor at a community college in Silicon Valley, and my students use online textbooks. I try to use Creative Commons or other libre textbooks, but sometimes I use paid textbooks when they are heads-and-shoulders better than t
22.
by linguae 3mo ago
I may be naïve or completely uninformed, but given the federal government’s vast resources, including supercomputers, national laboratories, the NSA, and many talented employees, why does the federal government need OpenAI or Anthropic for
23.
by linguae 3mo ago
When you have monopolistic or near-monopolistic control over platforms and other key pieces of software such as office suites, taste is irrelevant since people are still buying licenses out of necessity. Now, Microsoft is capable of writin
24.
by linguae 3mo ago
Come to think of it, modern cars have a lot of electronics such as touchscreens, cameras, and sensors. It wouldn’t surprise me if new car prices are not immune to what’s happening with RAM and storage prices.
25.
by linguae 3mo ago
This pressure works for pure software companies that don’t depend on hardware sales and that have competition. Unfortunately not all software vendors will respond to inflated RAM and SSD prices, since there are many important software vend
26.
by linguae 3mo ago
The only other event I could remember in the history of Apple that is remotely comparable is the release of the original Power Mac G4 towers in 1999. They were originally going to have 400MHz, 450MHz, and 500MHz models, but due to issues r
27.
by linguae 3mo ago
That’s terrible. I purchased my M4 Mac Mini (base 16/256 model) two months ago because I wanted an ARM Mac for a software project. I feared that the M5 Mac Mini would have a price bump, but I would’ve never guessed that Apple would d
28.
by linguae 3mo ago
Rob Pike of Plan 9 and Go fame lamented this back in 2000 in his “Systems Software Research is Irrelevant” talk: http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf I’d love to see a new operating system that explores radically dif
29.
by linguae 3mo ago
XP also introduced activation, which is one of the reasons I prefer Windows 2000 to XP.
30.
by linguae 3mo ago
I feel the exact same way. I was a Ron Paul Republican from 2007 (when I became old enough to vote) until 2016, when I changed my registration to “no party preference” in the aftermath of the GOP primary results. It hasn’t gotten to the p

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