ekidd

33 ms·

391.
by ekidd 4y ago
Some of the best performances I've seen out of ChatGPT are essentially "junior programmer" level. But it still requires clear instructions and close supervision. But GPT's training data includes GitHub, and it's use
392.
by ekidd 4y ago
> This is because you keep state. You are fallen. The Rust philosophy is that there is nothing wrong with mutating state, as long as nobody can ever see you do it. :-)
393.
by ekidd 4y ago
Yes, ChatGPT seems to strongly prefer happy endings. Ask it to write a scene where a Montague bumps into a Capulet, and accusations start flying. One of the characters will successfully de-escalate. Or the price of Verona will show up with
394.
by ekidd 4y ago
WotC tried to retroactively revoke an open gaming license that had been in widespread use since 2002. They had a legal theory why they could do this, but that theory contradicted quite a few public statements they had made on record. IP law
395.
by ekidd 4y ago
> they're a Chinese Room Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment is designed to appeal to your intuition. But it appeals in an incredibly unrealistic way. If you fill a room full of people shuffling Han charact
396.
by ekidd 4y ago
If you look at the history of banks, it's clear that banks naturally fail whenever a bank run occurs. This happens because banks exist to turn liquid deposits into long term loans for things like homes. Liquid deposits at low interest
397.
by ekidd 4y ago
"Limited partner", someone who invests in a partnership without having day-to-day management control (IIRC). In the case of VCs, many of the limited partners are pension funds or other giant players who want to invest a small frac
398.
by ekidd 4y ago
No normal bank is safe without government backing. Banks are inherently vulnerable to bank runs, because they work with money across different time intervals. For example, a hypothetical small town bank might turn checking and savings accou
399.
by ekidd 4y ago
I might go so far as to say C:S is a traffic and transportation simulator. The city building parts are all there, and they're reasonably fun. But the ultimate limiting factor with my cities was transportation. No matter how much I work
400.
by ekidd 4y ago
> Rather, I fear it will be put into critical positions and will start making stupid decisions that are harmful to humans or humanity. Yes. In a very real sense, we already share our world with powerful, inhuman entities that don'
401.
by ekidd 4y ago
It depends. Obviously, if you're a visitor on a public trail, you shouldn't have a machete. But there are corners of my property where a machete wouldn't hurt. Sure, New England forests often have open understories. But if su
402.
by ekidd 4y ago
> I guess the intention is to be better than SQL but then I was left with "under which circumstances?" Excellent question. Two of the most common use cases for databases are "transactional processing" (manipulating
403.
by ekidd 4y ago
If you're interested, I explained my argument in more detail in a sibling to this comment. > As far as I'm concerned, the LLMs can't just hide the needle in the haystack and then say "well we aren't infringing s
404.
by ekidd 4y ago
If I wanted to expand my bit of cynicism into an argument, it might be: - I strongly suspect that much of what I consider "me" physically exists inside my skull. That's a huge philosophical debate, but look at any Oliver Sack
405.
by ekidd 4y ago
> but I know that the law will not think of LLMs the same way it thinks about a human at the pub. Perhaps I am old and cynical, but I fear that we'll establish harsh new restrictions on LLMs—and then gradually apply those restrict
406.
by ekidd 4y ago
> Maybe things have changed, but if someone hasn't had to think about them ever, it could make learning a language with explicit pointers challenging. To be clear, safe Rust doesn't actually have pointers. (Well, it does, but
407.
by ekidd 4y ago
> I could see how it would be hard for someone whose only background is in js or python. As someone who has trained several Rust programmers, I've seen people hit two major snags: - Like TypeScript, Rust is a strongly-typed langu
408.
by ekidd 4y ago
Honestly, when we automate GCP from Rust, we use a thousand lines of hand-written client code and a normal HTTP client. Auth we do using a library. We've also tried the open source GCP client libraries, but they were huge didn't s
409.
by ekidd 4y ago
Honestly? I do the job that's in front of me. That has included everything from pre-STL C++, to 90s-era PHP and even Visual Basic for Applications. And a few things even more obscure than that. I do sympathize with agency's situat
410.
by ekidd 4y ago
> Because that's not up to the programming language to decide. There's actually a lot of really neat research in this space, including: - "Row types" for effect systems, which allow the compiler to cleanly keep trac
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by ekidd 4y ago
> Even in supposedly "memory safe" languages like Java, XML (and json) parsers are often riddled with bugs and design problems that can be exploited for remote execution. Why do we think this is OK, even for a moment? For how
412.
by ekidd 4y ago
> Does Rust help with integer overflows? Overlow panics in debug mode. And in release mode, overflow is defined to wrap (2's complement) instead of invoking undefined behavior. One of the big dangers in C is "nasal demons&quo
413.
by ekidd 4y ago
I am more paranoid and cautious than, say, 95% of the programmers I've known. Maybe more. I still don't trust myself to write safe C. Specifically, I do not think I'm smart enough to violate the Chrome team's Rule of 2
414.
by ekidd 4y ago
The approach you describe is excellent, but it builds upwards from the physical foundations of computing. SICP builds from the mathematical foundations of computing (sort of). The end game is to take students from zero through: 1. Under
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by ekidd 4y ago
The basic pitch that I've heard a (competent) app development shop make was, "Look, we have a reputation for doing this right. And it's cheaper to pay us to develop an app than it is to open up a coin laundromat." I&#x27
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by ekidd 4y ago
> I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: I've seen two types of non-technical founders that stood a chance: - The industry insider who knows exactly what problem to solve, and w
417.
by ekidd 4y ago
Yes, bonding the hydrogen with something could really change the tradeoffs dramatically. For example, the main ingredient in gasoline is C8H18. It has good energy density at atmospheric pressure, and the fire risks are manageable. We alread
418.
by ekidd 4y ago
I am not a fan of hydrogen, because I once worked with a former NASA robotics engineer. We were looking for a way to power terrestrial robots, and we asked him about hydrogen. He told us there were extremely high efficiency hydrogen systems
419.
by ekidd 4y ago
> Does that work in anything but boilerplate code? It depends on the problem and the language. The most impressive I've ever seen was implementing "call with current continuation" as a monad, given nothing but the type s
420.
by ekidd 4y ago
I haven't actively used Common Lisp in years. But for a long time, I used it professionally. Common Lisp's greatest strength is that it's "the programmable programming language." You can customize everything from th

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