Extasia785 (u/Extasia785)

Extasia785 commented on Bloat is still software's biggest vulnerability (2024) spectrum.ieee.org/lean-so... · Posted by u/kristianp

otikik · 4 months ago

I thought about this several years ago and I think I hit the right balance with these 2 rules of thumb:

* The closer something is to your core business, the less you externalize.

* You always externalize security (unless security is your exclusive core business)

Say you are building a tax calculation web app. You use dependencies for things like the css generation or database access. You do not rely on an external library for tax calculation. You maintain your own code. You might use an external library for handling currencies properly, because it's a tricky math problem. But you may want to use your own fork instead, as it is close to your core business.

On the security side, unless that's your speciality, there's guys out there smarter than you and/or who have dedicated more time and resources than you to figure that stuff out. If you are programming a tax calculation web app you shouldn't be implementing your own authentication algorithm, even if having your tax information secure is one of your core needs. The exception to this is that your core business is literally implementing authentication and nothing else.

Extasia785 · 4 months ago

You are describing domain-driven design. Outsource generic subdomains, focus your expertise on the core subdomains.

https://blog.jonathanoliver.com/ddd-strategic-design-core-su...

Extasia785 commented on Careless People pluralistic.net/2025/04/2... · Posted by u/Aldipower

anal_reactor · 4 months ago

> If you're wildly successful at something with significant real world influence, why would you care so strongly about something as relatively inconsequential as a board game or a video game?

I think that successful people tend to be people who pay a lot of attention to "winning" in as many situations as possible. If you accept losing as a part of life and move on, you're not going to be successful, because you don't spend time thinking how you could've won. Of course this looks funny in situations where one cannot win, but it's really helpful when it comes to fixing your mistakes, allowing you to be successful.

Extasia785 · 4 months ago

> but it's really helpful when it comes to fixing your mistakes, allowing you to be successful.

It would be helpful if they'd take a loss as a learning opportunity. But as stated in the original quote they threw a tantrum and accused the opponent of cheating, taking away no lesson to improve the next time around.

Extasia785 commented on YAGRI: You are gonna read it scottantipa.com/yagri... · Posted by u/escot

crazygringo · 4 months ago

These are not decisions that should be taken solely by whoever is programming the backend.

They need to be surfaced to the product owner to decide. There may very well be reasons pieces of data should not be stored. And all of this adds complexity, more things to go wrong.

If the product owner wants to start tracking every change and by who, that can completely change your database requirements.

So have that conversation properly. Then decide it's either not worth it and don't add any of these "extra" fields you "might" need, or decide it is and fully spec it out and how much additional time and effort it will be to do it as a proper feature. But don't do it as some half-built just-in-case "favor" to a future programmer who may very well have to rip it out.

On a personal project, do whatever you want. But on something professional, this stuff needs to be specced out and accounted for. This isn't a programming decision, it's a product decision.

Extasia785 · 4 months ago

This entirely depends on the company culture. I worked in teams where every small decision is in the hand of the PO and I've worked in teams where a software engineer is a respected professional enabled to make their own technical decisions. I found the second option to create higher quality software faster.

Also not sure what you mean by additional effort? Created_at, updated_at or soft-deletes are part of most proper frameworks. In Spring all you need is an annotation, I've been using those in major projects and implementation cost is around a few seconds with so far zero seconds of maintenance effort in years of development. At least those fields are solved problems.

Extasia785 commented on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy... · Posted by u/belter

taspeotis · 5 months ago

They’re sanctioned up the wazoo

> U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024.

Among European Union members:

> The total bilateral trade in goods reached €851 billion in 2023.

Extasia785 · 5 months ago

Ukraine has around $1.2 billion and still got 10% tariffs.

Extasia785 commented on I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs twitter.com/skdh/status/1... · Posted by u/ksec

geuis · 5 months ago

A scientific instrument that is unreliably accurate is useless. Imagine a kitchen scale that always gave +/- 50% every 3rd time you use it. Or maybe 5th time. Or 2nd.

So we're trying to use tools like this currently to help solve deeper problems and they aren't up to the task. This is still the point we need to start over and get better tools. Sharpening a bronze knife will never be as sharp or have the continuity as a steel knife. Same basic elements, very different material.

Extasia785 · 5 months ago

A bad analogy doesn't make a good argument. The best analogy for LLMs is probably a librarian on LSD in a giant library. They will point you in a direction if you have a question. Sometimes they will pull up the exact page you need, sometimes they will lead you somewhere completely wrong and confidently hand you a fantasy novel, trying to convince you it's a real science book.

It's completely up to your ability to both find what you need without them and verify the information they give you to evaluate their usefulness. If you put that on a matrix, this makes them useful in the quadrant of information that is both hard to find, but very easy to verify. Which at least in my daily work is a reasonable amount.

Extasia785 commented on Learning to Reason with LLMs openai.com/index/learning... · Posted by u/fofoz

p-e-w · a year ago

According to the data provided by OpenAI, that isn't true anymore. And I trust data more than anecdotal claims made by people whose job is being threatened by systems like these.

Extasia785 · a year ago

> For each problem, our system sampled many candidate submissions and submitted 50 of them based on a test-time selection strategy. Submissions were selected based on performance on the IOI public test cases, model-generated test cases, and a learned scoring function. If we had instead submitted at random, we would have only scored 156 points on average, suggesting that this strategy was worth nearly 60 points under competition constraints.

Did you read the post? OpenAI clearly states that the results are cherry-picked. Just a random query will have far worse results. To get equal results you need to ask the same query dozens of time and then have enough expertise to pick the best one, which might be quite hard for a problem that you have little idea about.

Combine this with the fact that this blog post is a sales pitch with the very best test results out of probably many more benchmarks we will never see and it seems obvious that human experts are still several order of magnitudes ahead.

Extasia785 commented on Take Ownership of Your Future Self (2020) hbr.org/2020/08/take-owne... · Posted by u/makerdiety

Extasia785 · a year ago

I've started doing something similar around a year ago, after noticing that I reached basically all goals I set out for myself after school. I was at a point where I felt like I stopped growing as a person and found myself unhappy with my life, yet was seemingly stuck.

What I did was to have a very strong introspection over a few weeks. I thought about each important aspect of my life - social life, family, career, hobbies, health, even my daily structure - and formulated a very specific target for each area. Basically a well thought out fantasy character. This was hard work, it took many nights of thinking and it's honestly a process that never stops, even nowadays I still update that document from time to time.

Once I had a list I was reasonably happy with, I started thinking of the type of person that would reach that goals and what kind of habits they had. And then I started implementing them. The most important part here is a habit of doing stuff. I can not stress enough how important that is, everything else pales in comparison. I recommend reading Atomic Habits and personally follow the "Getting Things Done" system. But once you have written down everything you need to do and actually do it, you have a superpower and the ability to transform every part of your life in a few months. I found that most "hard" things in life are actually quite easy to do, it's just that doing stuff consistently is extremely hard.

I agree with the author, simply telling people about your future self also helps massively. The first time it will feel extremely weird, like talking about a fantasy character. You will talk about some guy you seemingly have nothing in common with and talk about future achievements with absolutely nothing to back it up. But do it 2-3 times and suddenly that future self will feel familiar. Do it some more, take some steps to be that person and suddenly you'll be far more similar to that guy than you could've ever envisioned.

At least for myself this process was the most important thing I've ever done in my life. I've gone from a pretty shy, boring, somewhat depressed and risk-averse guy to moving across the country for an awesome job, restarting my entire social life and solo-travelling across the world. And most importantly, I'm happy now, it feels like I'm finally me and not just the product of my upbringing and surroundings.

Extasia785 commented on The dating app paradox npr.org/sections/money/20... · Posted by u/zwieback

solatic · 2 years ago

It's only a paradox until you realize that dating apps would shoot themselves in the foot with such a user-hostile model, trashing their brand. Hanlon's Razor directs us to the simpler explanation, which is that 90% of people on dating markets stay on dating markets; for which there are many, many highly personalized reasons. No dating app can fix its users' mindsets.

There are three rules on dating apps, and they haven't changed in the last couple of decades: be attractive, don't be unattractive, and inject humor. The fourth rule is to remember that if you want to be treated like a customer then make sure you pay for the product rather than being the product; the fifth rule is to have patience over things outside of your control.

Extasia785 · 2 years ago

I completely agree. I'm always amused by the idea that dating apps have this secret, sophisticated algorithm that gives you dates that are nice but leave you wanting more. Human relationships are hard and I doubt that the best experts in the field could come up with something like that, and it's certainly impossible for an algorithm without any information about the person. I always feel that these complaints come from the frustration of not being able to find the perfect partner, from people who don't even come close to the standard they want in a partner.

In my experience, online dating is a pretty well functioning marketplace. People have a limited amount of time to date, so they'll take the best one they can get. Of course, online dating narrows down the ranking process to superficial information, but I don't think there's a technical solution to that. As a man I've seen both sides of the coin. When I started out with online dating I didn't have good pictures, no good bio, no good writing skills and didn't pay. I went months without a good match and even longer without a date. Then I decided to clean up my profile, highlight my strengths as a potential partner, learned to carry a fun conversation and started paying for the product and suddenly had to reject women, simply because I had too many options for any given night.

Dating apps are just a more extreme form of real dating. Dating always has been a competition, people will choose the best partner they can get. The advantage of the real world is that people often don't have many choices, but the disadvantage of the real world is also that people don't have many choices. Apps get rid of that disadvantage, but also of that advantage.

Extasia785 commented on Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union apple.com/newsroom/2024/0... · Posted by u/colinhb

bobbylarrybobby · 2 years ago

If you've ever tried to cancel Amazon Prime through amazon.com, you'll understand the value that Apple provides through its App Store subscriptions.

Extasia785 · 2 years ago

What's wrong with cancelling Amazon Prime? I did it recently and it took less than a minute. I even had the option to cancel immediately and have them refund my money, even though my yearly subscription was still running for half a year, which AFAIK is not possible for App Store subscriptions. I'm in EU so might be different to US.