zem

23 ms·

1.
by zem 4d ago
I'm not talking about the transient aspects of producing software; I'm happy to accept that AI will change that, but also I feel that it will change it in ways that really aren't very hard to learn, and truth be told the more
2.
by zem 4d ago
but the solution, ironically, is not learning more about ai, but learning more about good software engineering, so you can tell when the ai is not doing it
3.
by zem 5d ago
this reminds me of a debate about science education - somewhere in elementary school we had to study various proofs that the world was round, mostly with historical context. some people now argue that we don't need this to be part of t
4.
by zem 5d ago
one of the best things about it is not the proof per se, but the fact that mathematicians continue to work on the theorem. bodes well for interesting mathematical research not being killed by AI proofs.
5.
by zem 5d ago
if it didn't you would likely be reading about it in far more mainstream press outlets :)
6.
by zem 5d ago
I have found that claude (opus 4.8 and 5) can do a very good job of implementing good architecture and system design if I can just steer it right. left to its own devices it does produce less than optimal code, but if I just spend a few min
7.
by zem 6d ago
there was an interesting retcon of that story in one of niven's later works, where it was pointed out that any spacefaring race would know instantly what killed him. it was just better PR to pretend that it was a huge mystery, and that
8.
by zem 6d ago
not to take away from the author's appreciation of newly accessible formal proofs, but people have been talking about the savings in formalization effort for longer than they have been talking about the AI doing the actual proofs!
9.
by zem 6d ago
*Morphy
10.
by zem 7d ago
I once read a (possibly apocryphal) description of a swiss sign saying in english "please don't pick the flowers", in french "those who love nature leave the flowers alone", and in german "picking the flowers i
11.
by zem 7d ago
reading that shopify supports users designing their own custom shopfronts really helped put the acquisition into context. makes a lot of sense to bet on tailwind for that.
12.
by zem 8d ago
addressing the category error rather than the specifics of whether js belongs in the backend - just because a language is theoretically general purpose, it doesn't mean it's the best tool for the job. in the case of language tooli
13.
by zem 8d ago
when it comes to openai and shadiness I'm pretty sure it's a "fish rots from the head" situation.
14.
by zem 8d ago
the projectnash link claims it's mathematically valid, the noahpinion link says that it's invalid and has a marvellous proof that the non-walled section is too small to contain.
15.
by zem 8d ago
even apart from the plagiarism issue, what sort of slimy company thinks "oh, here's someone using our models to work on a problem, let's throw more compute at it and scoop them"?
16.
by zem 9d ago
css actually is hard, but layout is hard in general. it's a surprisingly difficult and computationally expensive problem to do things that look instinctively easy to humans.
17.
by zem 9d ago
btw for people into science fiction and fantasy I highly recommend Ursula Vernon (writing as T Kingfisher) as someone who has me deeply invested almost from the get go. I mention it not just because I'm a fan, but because I consider th
18.
by zem 11d ago
growing up (in the 70s/80s), the first time I was shocked at the exponential destructiveness of human civilisation was when I learnt that we had polluted the oceans . the second was when I found out that ubiquitous natural resources l
19.
by zem 11d ago
you are eventually going to have a very bad time if you do not have a solid mental model of the code the LLM is writing, and indeed if you cannot steer the LLM so that its code conforms to your mental models. learning ocaml is a great way t
20.
by zem 12d ago
got to love the name!
21.
by zem 12d ago
what I would love to see along those lines is something that can answer "what packages do I have installed to do task $foo"; I keep installing things that I use for one thing and then forget about when I need to do the same task s
22.
by zem 13d ago
https://mvakde.github.io/blog/44-on-arc-1/ makes a good case that all the performance on the arc agi tests is overfitting, based on the fact that v1 performance did not translate directly to v2 performance
23.
by zem 15d ago
I don't use brave, and I'm mostly going by this comment thread, but if the free brave is user hostile by default in an attempt to steer people over to the paid brave, that's a very legitimate thing to complain about. you can&
24.
by zem 16d ago
up/dn is cute
25.
by zem 18d ago
I was briefly impressed that https://hylang.org/ had released a 4.0 version!
26.
by zem 20d ago
sounds more like grapheneos blocking paypal!
27.
by zem 20d ago
I've found a more productive workflow is to ask claude how it would do the task, go back and forth with it a bit until you both agree on the steps, then have it work through them. i also emphasise the need to have every step in its own
28.
by zem 20d ago
at least for Indians, going to Mexico/Canada and renewing to the same class were both very large use cases. consulate appointments in the home country are super backed up.
29.
by zem 21d ago
the "only in your home country" change happened very recently, late 2025 or early 2026
30.
by zem 21d ago
I think you misunderstood the comment you are replying to - they are arguing that running fibre to rural communities is a good use of subsidies, and contrasts pleasantly with the usual sort of subsidy that only a few large corporation own

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