abootstrapper (u/abootstrapper)

abootstrapper commented on Show HN: Scream to Unlock – Blocks social media until you scream “I'm a loser” · Posted by u/madinmo

mikesabat · 2 months ago

If you want to make a kids app... Forcing the child to do a number of math problems to continue using the tablet would be an amazing app that I would definitely pay for.

My daughter is a second grader. If every 5 minutes of tablet use 'cost' her 5 correct arithmetic answers she would be working at space x right now.

abootstrapper · 2 months ago

I don’t think it’s possible to build this app on an iPad. But, I taught my kids my phone number by making it their passcode. Before that I used it to teach them how to spell their name.

abootstrapper commented on Jerry Lewis's “The Day the Clown Cried” discovered in Sweden after 53 years thenationalnews.com/arts-... · Posted by u/danso

al_borland · 3 months ago

> I want to sell it to a serious producer who either restores it or keeps it locked away, or restores it and shows it to people for studying purposes.

How is someone who "keeps it locked away" even an option if he believes it "must be seen"?

This seems like the perfect candidate for going on archive.org, if the goal is for it to be preserved and for people to see it.

I also find it odd that he's been screening it for friends since the 80s, yet has only shown it to 24 people.

abootstrapper · 3 months ago

If he stole it, how does he have the right to sell it?

abootstrapper commented on Human coders are still better than LLMs antirez.com/news/153... · Posted by u/longwave

ben-schaaf · 3 months ago

Friendly reminder that people like you were saying the exact same thing about metaverse, VR, web3, crypto, etc.

abootstrapper · 3 months ago

I didn’t buy the hype of any of those things, but I believe AI is a going to change everything much like the introduction of the internet. People are dismissing AI because its code is not bug free, completely dismissing the fact that it generates PRs in minutes from a poorly written text prompt. As if that’s not impressive. In fact if you put a human engineer on the receiving end of the same prompt with the same context as what we’re sending to the LLM, I doubt they could produce code half as good in 10x the time. It’s science fiction coming true, and it’s only going to continue to improve.

abootstrapper commented on The Friendship Recession: The lost art of connecting happiness.hks.harvard.edu... · Posted by u/47thpresident

gavinray · 4 months ago

Was having kids worth this in your opinion -- genuine question?

abootstrapper · 4 months ago

This a legit question before having kids, I don’t mean to belittle it, but after having kids, for me, it’s like asking if I wished the people I loved most never existed. The question no longer makes sense.

abootstrapper commented on The polar vortex is hitting the brakes climate.gov/news-features... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

hallway_monitor · 5 months ago

What would you cut? I don’t know what I would, but I do know that the United States is heading for a financial apocalypse unless drastic measures are taken now.

I know there’s a lot of hysteria around this, but I’m still at the place where I can be optimistic that the US will come out ahead. At least they’re doing something besides spending more money and acting like everything‘s OK. From a long-term financial stability standpoint it’s really not.

abootstrapper · 5 months ago

> What would you cut?

Nothing. Tax the billionaires.

abootstrapper commented on Computer scientists invent an efficient new way to count quantamagazine.org/comput... · Posted by u/jasondavies

mudiadamz · a year ago

Python implementation:

  def streaming_algorithm(A, epsilon, delta):
      # Initialize parameters
      p = 1
      X = set()
      thresh = math.ceil((12 / epsilon ** 2) * math.log(8 * len(A) / delta))

      # Process the stream
      for ai in A:
          if ai in X:
              X.remove(ai)
          if random.random() < p:
              X.add(ai)
          if len(X) == thresh:
              X = {x for x in X if random.random() >= 0.5}
              p /= 2
              if len(X) == thresh:
                  return '⊥'

      return len(X) / p


  # Example usage
  A = [1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3]
  epsilon = 0.1
  delta = 0.01

  output = streaming_algorithm(A, epsilon, delta)
  print(output)

abootstrapper · a year ago

New leetcode hard question just dropped.

abootstrapper commented on Mint is shutting down, and it's pushing users toward Credit Karma theverge.com/2023/11/2/23... · Posted by u/pseudolus

yieldcrv · 2 years ago

I wish there was money in building offline apps

Maybe a nonprofit could do it, especially with treasury rates so high it could self sustain itself for 30 years easily with a big endowment

abootstrapper · 2 years ago

Long live offline apps! I have a copy of Family Tree Maker that is decades old and still works.

abootstrapper commented on Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation sciencedirect.com/science... · Posted by u/ck45

Spooky23 · 2 years ago

I'd go further and say that emotional attachment in business is always a net negative that gets exploited.

As a consumer, you often see guilt or other attachment with car and home purchases. I'm definitely guilty at work. I really enjoyed the work at some jobs that were objectively awful. The customers, mission or colleagues were great in some way, but the company gleefully exploited that emotional attachment.

In my case, I attribute that inappropriate attachment to work to my own failure to deal with conflict or emotional issues in my personal life. It's really the only regret that I have in life, as it's a problem caused by my own stubbornness. Time is the enemy -- age, death and other events make it impossible to take back or fix. Whenever you find yourself thinking "we can do <X> next time, I have this <important project/task> to do", stop. The kids will grow up, your partner will get sick, your parents will die. Someday there won't be a future, and you'll find that you don't care about or remember the "important" things you did, but you will regret that things you didn't

abootstrapper · 2 years ago

I feel this, but also my family needs money and health insurance. So, yeah, live life now, because it’s short. But, also we have to do the things necessary to keep our jobs and keep food on the table.

abootstrapper commented on A study on robustness and reliability of large language model code generation arxiv.org/abs/2308.10335... · Posted by u/floridsleeves

enumjorge · 2 years ago

It's comments like these that make me wish I could stand behind the chair of the people who get these results because I feel like there's something lost in translation. I don't know if I'm taking your comment too literally but this part confuses me:

> It writes lots of code before I even think about what I was going to do in that file.

If you haven't even thought of what you want to do in the file, how are you prompting Copilot to write the code you need? Am I understanding correctly that Copilot not only generates the correct code, but it's also able to deduce what code you meant to ask for without any input from you? I don't see how this is possible except in the uncommon case where you are bringing a file to be more in line with other files in your code base that have a similar structure.

I do think Copilot can be useful, but I'm confused at how different my experience is from what others are getting out of the tool.

abootstrapper · 2 years ago

ChatGPT 4 is amazing! I use it when I’m blocked to get unstuck. I don’t need perfectly functioning code, just something to get my gears turning. I use it to review my own code. It often has pretty good suggestions, or can validate my approach. And I use it to sketch out unit tests for me. I still have fill in pieces, but it’s absolutely improved my output. It’s like having an egoless programming partner. Yeah, it makes mistakes, but I treat the AI like a programming buddy, not a flawless code wizard. It doesn’t solve problems for me, but we come to solutions together.