britzkopf (u/britzkopf)

britzkopf commented on What is a manifold? quantamagazine.org/what-i... · Posted by u/isaacfrond

britzkopf · 4 months ago

Every time I try to get some handle on the essence of this topic I fail. No different here. In the second paragraph it defines manifolds as "... shapes that look flat to an ant living on them, even though they might have a more complicated global structure"

So manifolds are complicated shapes that are at large enough a scale that an ant (which species?) will think they're flat....ok

britzkopf commented on Doing well in your courses: Andrej's advice for success (2013) cs.stanford.edu/people/ka... · Posted by u/peterkshultz

joshvm · 5 months ago

One really important factor is the grading curve, if used. At my university, I think the goal was to give the average student 60%, or a mid 2.1) with some formula for test score adjustment to compensate for particularly tough papers. The idea is that your score ends up representing your ability with respect to the cohort and the specific tests that you were given.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/current/teach/general/...

There were several courses that were considered easy, and as a consequence were well attended. You had to do significantly better in those classes to get a high grade, versus a low-attendance hard course where 50% in the test was curved up to 75%.

britzkopf · 5 months ago

So another strategy to do well might include tempting your classmates to distraction or perhaps offering to "help" them but in fact feed them misinformation? Got it.

britzkopf commented on Doctorow: American tech cartels use apps to break the law lithub.com/how-american-t... · Posted by u/ohjeez

rkomorn · 5 months ago

There are definitely some people who think that directing anger and unpleasantness at the person they talk to (who has no control over the situation other than choosing not to do their job) is a valid approach to providing "feedback".

Some sort of "trickle up" mechanism where if enough people are sufficiently nasty to frontline workers, it'll get back to decision makers who will then change course.

I think that's fantasy and/or rationalization for taking things out on others.

britzkopf · 5 months ago

I was a customer facing employee for a company whose underhanded policies caused me to face a lot of (legitimate) hostility. I eventually quit for this reason, and I know at least one other employee who did. That company lost two otherwise good employees. It works, it's just a question of how much collateral damage you're ok with. If management want to use front facing employees to shelter them from customer grievance, what other target to people have?

britzkopf commented on Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords blog.danielh.cc/blog/pass... · Posted by u/max__dev

bccdee · 7 months ago

FYI, you can put a 2FA secret into Bitwarden and autofill the one-time passwords alongside the regular password. That would mitigate the impact of losing your phone.

britzkopf · 7 months ago

Great, this is a universal solution. Let's all make it an integral part of our digital security, and in 5 years or so hope that bitwarden doesn't leverage it!

britzkopf commented on Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics to automate construction techcrunch.com/2025/07/16... · Posted by u/boulos

hollywood_court · 8 months ago

I work for a home builder. Our single biggest problem is finding and hiring quality contractors that have enough skilled tradesmen.

There are dozens of electrical contractors in my area. But only two that perform work to our standards.

There is only one HVAC company that can meet our standards. Same for all of the other skilled trades.

Our framing crew is the best within a 75 mile radius. Other builders are constantly trying to poach them from us. We keep throwing money at them to prevent them from going to another builder.

Non skilled labor like landscaping and pest control are a dime a dozen. I just fired our main pesticide and herbicide contractor today because they couldn’t get it together.

Of course I had them replaced before I fired them but I had almost 20 options to choose from.

Unfortunately I can’t say the same about all of the skilled contractors.

britzkopf · 8 months ago

Framing is skilled, but landscaping and pest control are unskilled? Are you living in a well framed house overrun with mice and a terrible yard? I've done some framing. With a communicative foreman and a straightforward building design I did not find it that hard.

britzkopf commented on What happens when clergy take psilocybin nautil.us/clergy-blown-aw... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

Mo3 · 9 months ago

These are not normal reactions to being under the influence of psychedelics but latent mental illness being activated.

britzkopf · 9 months ago

"latent mental illness" sounds like a tagline for the human condition.

britzkopf commented on Firing programmers for AI is a mistake defragzone.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/frag

hombre_fatal · a year ago

I think we who are already in tech have this gleeful fantasy that new tools impair newcomers in a way that will somehow serve us, the incumbents, in some way.

But in reality pretty much anyone who enters software starts off cutting corners just to build things instead of working their way up from nand gates. And then they backfill their knowledge over time.

My first serious foray into software wasn't even Ruby. It was Ruby on Rails. I built some popular services without knowing how anything worked. There was always a gem (lib) for it. And Rails especially insulated the workings of anything.

An S3 avatar upload system was `gem install carrierwave` and then `mount_uploader :avatar, AvatarUploader`. It added an avatar <input type="file"> control to the User form.

But it's not satisfying to stay at that level of ignorance very long, especially once you've built a few things, and you keep learning new things. And you keep wanting to build different things.

Why wouldn't this be the case for people using LLM like it was for everyone else?

It's like presuming that StackOverflow will keep you as a question-asker your whole life when nobody here would relate to that. You get better, you learn more, and you become the question-answerer. And one day you sheepishly look at your question history in amazement at how far you've come.

britzkopf · a year ago

Who the hell, in today's market, is going to hire an engineer with a tenuous grasp on foundational technological systems, with the hope that one day they will backfill?!

britzkopf commented on Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return theconversation.com/tip-p... · Posted by u/gnabgib

ThePowerOfFuet · a year ago

On paper, this is true. In effect, however, it often is not.

britzkopf · a year ago

How does this rule get circumvented?

britzkopf commented on Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return theconversation.com/tip-p... · Posted by u/gnabgib

britzkopf · a year ago

In Canada, there is no longer any special wage below the minimum for servers. They receive the same minimum as many other blue collar workers. It's over, there is no longer any reasonable argument for tipping servers but not a whole host of other low wage earners.

britzkopf commented on Weight-loss drug found to shrink muscle in mice, human cells ualberta.ca/en/folio/2024... · Posted by u/Eumenes

elevatedastalt · a year ago

The HN you are yearning for disappeared about 8-10 years ago when it was largely taken over by normies and people way outside the hard-core-tech fold. It's not very different from Reddit front-page now if the topic is even remotely political.

For purely technical topics you expect good quality discussion, but those threads barely get comments in the two digits.

britzkopf · a year ago

Yeah, normies suck. I totally only want to hear from people obsessed with the latest computer Science minutia!