Is anybody else having kerning problems reading "Ternus" as "Temus", and thinking about the future of Apple?
(Not a dig at the guy, the MacBook Pro has definitely been rescued from the Ives era. Even if it's hobbled by Liquid Glass )
Pondering how the connectionist approach to AI had a quick flash with LLMs, but in order to actually make this stuff appear to be useful they need to be layered under regexes and tool guidance.
Conceding the field, once again, back to the symbolists.
Provident decided to shut down our local hospice supporting thrift store, which sucks, but they're selling stock at 50% off. I got some honest-to-god programmer socks for a buck.
Some days I think we're seeing the consequences of Computer Science education having become chanting "Resource Acquisition Is Initialization" as a religious incantation rather than actually building mental models about code and systems.
Down to Sausalito for the community garage sale this morning, and we're taking the slow way home. Stopped in Roy's Redwoods, first time we've been there since they refinishef the trail revamp.
Miss the old sense of wandering through forest but, given the increase in visitors, it's really nice.
Is there either a really good intro to Rust's libcosmic, or a better/more mature widget set for Rust that isn't Qt?
I'd love something lightweight, but a table that doesn't appear to have edit in place capabilities, or truncate/wrap for long fields, seems... more archaic than I want.
SMS with a verification code from a 5 digit phone number I don't recognize. Moment of panic, then I search for the number and discover it's the Safeway Rewards login process.
Sorry, evildoer, you will not hijack my grocery coupons today!
Oh eeenteresting: Google's models respect Anthropic's poison pill constants. At work we just tried to use the Gemini API to summarize Flutterby, and it kept throwing errors.
Bwahahahaha!
The best part about this little bit of irony from this thing that's apparently just reskeeting anything with "AI" in it, and is likely just a bad reselling of someone else's LLM API, is that the link on their home page to their pricing is 404.
LLMs have so poisoned the concept of "AI" for me that I automatically assume any pitch involving the phrase is bullshit, even if there might actually be reasonable machine learning behind it.
(This particular musing brought to you by email from NoamAI, no link 'cause I'm not sure if it's legit.)
Last night filling in for Eric at Tam Twirlers, tonight calling at Circle n Squares.
Square dance calling is definitely a joy and a bright spot right now.
Whoah! I've had them on a recurring donation for a little while, Petaluma Voice has launched... errr... hatched!
https://www.petalumavoice.org/petaluma-voice-hatches-today/
Reading Karen Hao's "Empire of AI", and I'm in the part where everybody seems to still be a true believer in AGI, and it feels so quaint.
And yet I hear people around me predicting that we'll have models that learn within 3-5 years, and...
Meanwhile, shoe brands are pivoting to AI for stock bumps.
"If you have a structure of the future where there's a lot of innovation and other people will come up with new things in the thing you're working on, that's great for society. It's actually not that good for your business."
Peter Thiel, as quoted in Karen Hao's book "Empire of AI"
When we made a YC application, there was a question: "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage."
I'm reminded of this reading "Empire of AI".
I see it as an indication that YCombinator requires you to have fucked people over to qualify.
Just pondering about what's "easy" with an LLM coding assistant, and what's hard, and how the languages I've used have influenced the kinds of code I've written, and how the use of an LLM assistant is going to change what our software looks like.
Like: If we can't get our LLM assistant to fix a UI issue, are we just gonna abandon that interface mode?
Oh, yes, this object mas the method as_secs_f64(), that's definitely letting me abstract out the code to the appropriate floating point size for whatever target platform this ends up running on.
Have a project that might be good for Rust. People like libcosmic. Fix the issues with dependencies and architecture, run:
cargo generate gh:pop-os/cosmic-app-template
Get to where it asks for a "Repository URL", and:
⚠️ Sorry, "ssh://danlyke@www.flutterby.com/home/danlyke/var/git/squareplay2" is not a valid value for repository-url
Does everything have to suck? Can't anything just work?
A MeFi thread about restoring scroll position, and then looking at the Lit JavaScript library has me wondering: Is there a web MVC framework that doesn't rely on breaking the user experience by writing the web page from code?
https://ask.metafilter.com/389402/Why-is-preserving-browser-scroll-position-not-a-solved-problem
If there's one thing that attempting to use the Gemini CLI to code with has taught me, it's that there's really no substitute for learning the technology yourself and doing it right in the first place.
I'm the showdown between the Catholic Church and the current administration I can't believe I'm siding with... I mean... Holy shit, if you'd asked me pre this administration to name an evil institution responsible for so much suffering and abuse...
Every time I think my voice is getting good, someone gives me a holy crap moment. Latest case is Charlie Puth making a reference to T Pain's auto tune technique, with no hardware...
https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/template-paysa-ywpnl-f4t4j-rdtka-g3wnk-nrtag-fwsbl-tfsxc-szzhn
https://www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/charlie-puth-advice-switched-on-pop-podcast
Hmmm... The Dell i7 8Gen hand me down laptop I've been using for Linux stuff is giving me flakey display, including keeping remnants of the previous display after a shutdown and restart (I didn't know they did that these days).
Sigh. I need work to turn around.
Of course, this Rust repo was last updated over 4 months ago. Why would I expect that it'd run on a modern Mac.
Guess this is gonna happen on a Linux machine.
At some point, you'd think that there'd be some structure to get the LLM to execute some code to give an answer, rather than just continuing down the "but we can make it more plausible" sentence generator path.
Seems particularly relevant to that stuff about ChatGPT measuring the time it takes to run a mile that's floating around right now.
Was thinking about how some AI advocacy I've been reading recently sounds a lot like "I've got a system for beating slot machines", went Googling, and... yeah, this MGM article sounds totally like your average "how to use AI" influencer.
https://www.mgmresorts.com/en/casino/tips-on-how-to-play-and-win-at-video-slot-machines.html
Reddit r/answers asks "What made you finally decide to quit smoking for good?"
Pretty sure the smokers I've known weren't all that hung up on whether they were smoking for good or not.
Unpopular opinion: Rust is the C of memory safe languages.
I'd really like a performant language that lets me not have all sorts of ugly boilerplate code when representing reasonable data structures.
The "Exciting USAA Advice Changes are Coming!" email may be the thing that drives my growing sense of unease fully into "find a new insurance company".
Used to be that we actually liked USAA. Is there an "actually like" insurance company of any sort any more? Preferably that eschews AI?
Futurism reports that "Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed"
Demand is low enough that you might actually have to get Iran to bomb your data center for the insurance money rather than claim you're gonna achieve "AGI" next year this time for sure really...
https://futurism.com/science-energy/data-centers-construction-supply
I have been trying to not work out square dance choreography puzzles I'm my head when I have down time, and it's reminding me of how much I miss programming with like real data structures and stuff.
Helping me clarify the directions I want to go with work.
Pondering differences between wealth taxes and inflation. I guess the primary difference is that with a national currency, a wealth tax is how states can independently implement the effect.
What I wanted for a MacOS Tahoe 16.4 update: performance, stability, security, better handling of switches disabling "Liquid Glass", square corners...
What I got: 🧑🩰
Reminder to mobile email client developers: Often people have urgent tasks to do with their phone. Nobody wants to take your five minute tour of new features when they're trying to find a login code because a friend is helping them solve their Netflix billing issue after a square dance.
Assholes.
Listening to "Who Killed Avril Lavigne?" on the walk to work this morning, and... it's super dumb in a good way. If you need a pop-punk flashback to the '90s made by a bunch of people who are obviously friends and having fun...
https://www.supernormal.fm/whokilledavrillavigne
Huh. Don't know how I've missed this "Danger! Do not operate! Man on line." tag dated 12/14/24 on this pole that I've walked past a gazillion times, but I hope dude isn't still up there somewhere, he's gotta be getting thirsty.
Also, "man on line", what century are we in again?
Finally figured out my Deckset issue. As a competent text editor user, I am really digging the trend of "all configuration happens in text files" and "tools do one thing, well."
Based on an ancient Cooks Illustrated article, I've been making hash browns by squeezing the grated potatoes, letting the juice sit, pouring off the water and re-incorporating the starch.
(Cook 9 minutes per side, medium heat, plenty of fat.)
I just did my first batch by squeezing and rinsing and discarding the starch, and way crispier!
Deskset mavens: I think I'm loving it, except that I have two B&W images from the Library of Congress that I cannot get it to display at a reasonable size, even when I screengrab for them, or convert from TIFF with Image Magick or GIMP.
Any help?
If the toy collectors on Facebook Marketplace place could stop referring to 1997 as "vintage", I'd appreciate it. Pretty sure that was less than a decade ago...
Boris Cherney said "Can confirm Claude Code is 100% written by Claude Code". Time to start pushing back on those DMCA takedowns, and get Anthropic's legal team disbarred for abuse and misconduct.
https://x.com/bcherny/status/2030109840555790357
Provident decided to shut down our local hospice supporting thrift store, which sucks, but they're selling stock at 50% off. I got some honest-to-god programmer socks for a buck.
Down to Sausalito for the community garage sale this morning, and we're taking the slow way home. Stopped in Roy's Redwoods, first time we've been there since they refinishef the trail revamp.
Miss the old sense of wandering through forest but, given the increase in visitors, it's really nice.
The boats have arrived for Butter and Egg Days.
Lucy, the office pup, eyes deep in a Penry Park gopher hole. With picture.
The best part about this little bit of irony from this thing that's apparently just reskeeting anything with "AI" in it, and is likely just a bad reselling of someone else's LLM API, is that the link on their home page to their pricing is 404.
I don't remember seeing "international inc" as a superlative to that particular exclamation....
At some point, you'd think that there'd be some structure to get the LLM to execute some code to give an answer, rather than just continuing down the "but we can make it more plausible" sentence generator path.
Seems particularly relevant to that stuff about ChatGPT measuring the time it takes to run a mile that's floating around right now.
Huh. Don't know how I've missed this "Danger! Do not operate! Man on line." tag dated 12/14/24 on this pole that I've walked past a gazillion times, but I hope dude isn't still up there somewhere, he's gotta be getting thirsty.
Also, "man on line", what century are we in again?