sourdoughness

6 ms·

1.
by sourdoughness 9mo ago
Using Opus 4.5 through VScode/CoPilot gives so much better results than anything else I’ve tried that I kept paying when they briefly made it 3x token rate. I really like the interaction flows better than Gemini 3 or Codex, though I ca
2.
by sourdoughness 9mo ago
Interesting. I treat VScode Copilot as a junior-ish pair programmer, and get really good results for function implementations. Walking it through the plan in smaller steps, noting that we’ll build up to the end state in advance ie. “first l
3.
by sourdoughness 11mo ago
We have a low-tech version of something like this in South Australia: we pay the wholesale rate for electricity, which updates at 5 minute intervals. During the day when there’s oversupply of wind and solar, the rate is super low or even ne
4.
by sourdoughness 1y ago
We’re not talking about AI writing books about the systems, though. We’re talking about going from an undocumented codebase to a decently documented one, or one with 50% coverage going to 100%. Those orgs that value high-quality documentati
5.
by sourdoughness 1y ago
I don’t think entropy ever moves from high to low overall, it only ever distills some local low out of an higher entropy area, and in doing so, the overall entropy increases. It works a bit like air conditioning: yeah, you can make one room
6.
by sourdoughness 1y ago
My understanding of this idea is that once the universe reaches a state of maximum entropy (this is the “heath death” of the universe, where everything is a uniform, undifferentiated cloud of photons, then time stops being meaningful becaus
7.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
The “resetable” aspect seems to be a crucial part of true “time-lock” encryption… rather than what feels like a “proof of work” mode where an amount of computation stands in as a proxy for “time elapsed”. But regardless of how good a proxy
8.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
You can turn watch history off, and then you don’t get any recommendations at all - just the channels you subscribe to. YouTube doesn’t like it - and goes out of its way to make the apps feel a bit broken with out it, but I much prefer to c
9.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
Yeah, that’s true - it’s integral because an EV retains all of its components throughout its lifespan. If we consider an ICE car’s fuel as a “component”, then it’s an interesting comparison: fuel is basically maximally degraded - it accumul
10.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
Driving any car like that will result in increased stress on components and wear. A lot of EVs have high-end sports-car levels of acceleration, and those aren’t known for being low-maintenance.
11.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
I don’t agree that they’re just props: they’re analog controllers and so the form factor and manner of their use directly affects the music being played. Even the controllers that are just “big heavy knobs on bearings” are fundamentally dif
12.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
Vacuum clamping would get tricky when the surface you’re trying to slurp onto is also the thing you’re actively cutting holes in, right?
13.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
Turning CO2 into a stable feed-stock seems to be an important part of it, given that as the article says, we need to be processing gigatons per year. If we’re just using our captured CO2 to extract more fossil fuels to burn, thats not nearl
14.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
That is an extremely interesting and potent way of phrasing it - thank you!
15.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
Is adding side-panels to skyscrapers a solved problem? It doesn’t seem nearly as easy or mature as rooftop or grid-scale PV.
16.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
I know what you mean, but not strictly true. I cook everything from scratch - the most processed ingredient I use is probably a can of whole tomatoes or occasionally a pack of pasta. I’m a good cook, I think, and it’s easy for me to make ou
17.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
Agreed! This stood out: > The laws of physics definitely allow for functional subluminal warp drives “Definitely”? That feels like an exceedingly bold claim, given the nature of the thing we’re talking about. I don’t believe we know enou
18.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
The new material is an extremely thin film that sits on top of a traditional glass substrate: it doesn’t replace the window, and it doesn’t dim light or reduce the spectrum in the same way that frosted glass normally would.
19.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
This is the question I come back to: a crucial advantage of plastic is that nothing eats it. What’s the missing step that allows things to eat it, but only when we’re ready for them to?
20.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
Start at noon? That’s the exact opposite of the approach people take when it’s hot around here (I live in southern Australia where it regularly breaks 40C in summer). Start early - before the sun’s up if you can - and be ready to knock off
21.
by sourdoughness 2y ago
I can vouch for this. You can tell how much YouTube doesn’t want you to do this by the way the app shows you a big, error-looking message on boot: “Your watch history is off - update setting?”. No thanks! Only real downside (and it might be
22.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
The way this is implemented, it’s polish over a checkbox, with a fallback to the checkbox where it’s not supported. The semantics has therefore got to be the same as a checkbox - that is, no (native) submission of “off” switches.
23.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
For what it’s worth, I have the same expectation and have been applying it to forms since IOS 3 or 4. If we’re going to have a switch-looking thing, it’s because it brings some skeuomorphic affordance with it: I think “off/on with imme
24.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
He’s got a deliberately obnoxious delivery, but by all accounts his research is solid. The politician in question was the deputy premier of NSW (one of the highest state-level positions in the country) and stepped down amidst the - totally
25.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
It’s funny - the test rig in the article shows wraparound LED displays, which are already replacing a lot of green screen applications: the scene is rendered in real-time on those displays, taking the position and angle of the camera as inp
26.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
You should go and read the extremely detailed posts Christian shared in r/apolloapp. The dude really considered everything, but it’s a non-starter: Reddit do not want 3rd-party clients, so it’d be foolish to build further on top of thi
27.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
Bots aren’t people and can’t consent, sure - but they are tools that are wielded or deployed by people who absolutely can consent (setting aside whether click-wrap terms are enforceable or not). If I throw a brick through a window, it’s me
28.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
These kind of articles are what we get when writers are given impossible deadlines and targets to hit (multiple submissions per day in many cases), and incentives that favour clicks and engagement over actual imparting of information. Even
29.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
It’s not removed for long though, is it? It’s at best offset against a ton of new CO2 coming up from underground, which might be valuable, but I don’t think it’s fair to describe this as CO2 removal.
30.
by sourdoughness 3y ago
I have one, and it’s an excellent machine (15 years old, no sign of wearing out), but the dryer is fairly lacklustre. It can only dry about half a full washing load, but I suspect that’s just physics: however much a machine can dry, it can

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