drinfinity (u/drinfinity)

drinfinity commented on Google releases Bard to a limited number of users in the US and UK nytimes.com/2023/03/21/te... · Posted by u/jbegley

drinfinity · 2 years ago

Somehow I'll miss you Google. I'll miss the simpler times. You were a fine search engine and gmail was pretty great too, at the time. I was really excited to get an invite. Good memories.

We'll always remember you. Well.. not always, but for some time to come. Rest in peace.

drinfinity commented on GPTs Are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of LLMs arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130... · Posted by u/ericzawo

mojuba · 2 years ago

> You need iteration and I believe these kinds of AI have the same issues as us.

It's funny how we resort to humanizing the machines when their results are inaccurate. We don't do that with the calculator, because it's expected to be 100% bug free. When there's a bug in the calculator code we expect it to be fixed, not gradually improved.

Speaking of bugs: mistakes in code is one thing, wrong output because of a fundamental flaw in the algorithm is another. The statistical machines we are dealing with work as intended, or at least the wrong output the top comment here brings up is not a bug, it's a feature. That's the difference.

drinfinity · 2 years ago

That's (IMO) too narrow view of what a "machine" is. Complex machinery of any kind never is 100% correct and needs constant correction and maintenance. I still think approaching this as a "calculator" is awkward at best.

drinfinity commented on GPTs Are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of LLMs arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130... · Posted by u/ericzawo

mojuba · 2 years ago

I don't want to have a calculator (or say bookkeeping software) that gives correct results most of the time but not always, and then hear from the developers that it will get better with each iteration. I need a calculator that is correct 100% of time, not even 99.999%, because otherwise I can't rely on it at all.

In other words, the utility of a calculator that is correct only 99% of time is zero, since you can't even tell when it's wrong.

drinfinity · 2 years ago

Confining an LLM to the very narrow domain of "calculators" is a mistake, I think.

You wouldn't say "a programmer that is 99% correct is worthless, I need 100%". I'm pushing it, but for a more fair comparison I'd say measure it against a programmer. How often are we wrong? 75% of the time? :) being generous here. It's the tools that make us productive.

I don't know about you specifically, but I don't think you'll be very productive with a bare terminal lacking any modern IDE-like or even REPL facilities. I'll ask you to come up with instantly working code every time, all the time. It doesn't work like that. You need iteration and I believe these kinds of AI have the same issues as us. There are wrong sometimes (often) and need feedback.

drinfinity commented on Who knew the first AI battles would be fought by artists? vmst.io/@selzero/10951255... · Posted by u/dredmorbius

boredemployee · 3 years ago

>> making art is vastly more difficult than the huge majority of computer programming that is done.

I completely agree with it. Take a contemporary pianist for example, the amount of dedication to both theory and practice, posture, mastering the instrument and what not, networking skills, technology skills, video recording, music recording, social media management, etc.

drinfinity · 3 years ago

You think music theory is more demanding than CS? I've dedicated decades and probably 75% of my youth to mastering this instrument called a computing device. It has numerous layers, each completely different and each significant enough to build a standalone career out of (OS, networking, etc). I feel insulted if you think playing and mastering a piano is the same thing.

Extreme specialists are found everywhere. Mastering skateboarding at world level will eat your life too, but it's not "harder" than programming. At least, for any commonsensical interpretation of "harder".

All the rest, we do too. Except I don't record videos and I'm sure it is not childishly easy, but it will not eat my life.

drinfinity commented on Who knew the first AI battles would be fought by artists? vmst.io/@selzero/10951255... · Posted by u/dredmorbius

meebob · 3 years ago

I've been finding that the strangest part of discussions around art AI among technical people is the complete lack of identification or empathy: it seems to me that most computer programmers should be just as afraid as artists, in the face of technology like this!!! I am a failed artist (read, I studied painting in school and tried to make a go at being a commercial artist in animation and couldn't make the cut), and so I decided to do something easier and became a computer programmer, working for FAANG and other large companies and making absurd (to me!!) amounts of cash. In my humble estimation, making art is vastly more difficult than the huge majority of computer programming that is done. Art AI is terrifying if you want to make art for a living- and, if AI is able to do these astonishingly difficult things, why shouldn't it, with some finagling, also be able to do the dumb, simple things most programmers do for their jobs?

The lack of empathy is incredibly depressing...

drinfinity · 3 years ago

Making art is not "vastly more difficult" or at least it is (IMO) highly debatable. Some parts of it require decades of experience to do with any kind of excellence, yes. That's also the case with powerlifting, figure skating and raising children and indeed programming. It's just that your boss made a money printer that takes in bullshit and outputs bullshit which gives you your cosy job.

But that is not "programming". That is glueing together bullshit until it works and the results of that "work" are "blessing" us everyday. The gift that keeps on giving. You FAANG people are indeed astronomically, immorally, overpaid and actively harm the world.

But, luckily, the world has more layers than that. Programming for Facebook is not the same as programming for a small chemical startup or programming in any resource-restricted environment where you can't just spin up 1000 AWS instances at your leisure and you actually have to know what you're doing with the metal.

drinfinity commented on Ask HN: How did you fix your narcissism? · Posted by u/zuzuleinen

moretai · 6 years ago

What are examples of problems you couldn't solve with your mind?

drinfinity · 6 years ago

  Broken heart
  Broken leg
  Blindness
  Losing a child
  Having a low (or too high) IQ
  Having severe mental disorder(s)

drinfinity commented on Ask HN: How did you fix your narcissism? · Posted by u/zuzuleinen

drinfinity · 6 years ago

Why do you want to change? Regret anything?

I don't know the first thing about you, so it's hard to say what is going to help. If you truly are a narcissist all bets are off, but perhaps you are just a bit self-centered which might mean there is still hope after all.

I'd look for books on being a "building lasting relations", "how to deal with emotions", "how to be a good mother/father". That kind of stuff. Bring out the wounded inner child and see if some CPR is still an option.

drinfinity commented on Snowpack: Build a web application without a bundler snowpack.dev/... · Posted by u/codecurve

GiorgioG · 6 years ago

I disagree. I spend most of my time at work in an Angular app and it sucks. The compile times suck, the developer experience sucks and it's not getting better, it's only getting worse. I had a chance to do some side work and decided against building a SPA. I wound up using ASP.NET Core Razor Pages (templated pages) and it's been a breath of fresh air - I haven't enjoyed myself this much writing web software in ages because I can get stuff done in very short order. If I need some more complex interactivity then I might sprinkle in something lightweight but I expect that to be the exception not the rule.

Death to complexity on the frontend for complexity's sake.

drinfinity · 6 years ago

It does not suck. The compile times are OK and are getting better. Angular (and other) SPAs have capabilities no RoR, ASP.NET or Django setup can even begin to touch. Separating the back-end from the front-end with an independent API is also a god-send.

Death to remaining in the dark ages for nostalgia's sake.

drinfinity commented on The University Is a Ticking Time Bomb chronicle.com/article/The... · Posted by u/jseliger

Pete-Codes · 6 years ago

I was seriously considering doing a PHD in Politics but I always knew there was a strong possibility of not getting a job and being pretty much unemployable/moving back in with my parents. So I said no to that!

The problem is that colleges still regard themselves as educators and not job trainers, which most young people think of them as. I distinctly remember my politics lecturers telling us they weren't here to get us jobs but to teach us about politics. Which is maybe less problematic if college is free but obviously everyone wants a job after four years of study.

The likes of bootcamps like Holberton School are the way forward. There is no skin in the game for universities. If a graduate doesn't get a job it doesn't affect them one iota. (ok, it doesn't look great for their job report but they can fudge that. )

Coding bootcamps for instance which only make money when their grads get a job are the way forward. They have their incentives aligned with the students.

See this for an example: someone who was a broke artist did a coding bootcamp and is now a developer. But they would never have taken on the debt of a college degree because they weren't sure if they could get a job. The bootcamp gets them a job and if they are unsuccessful they don't pay anything. Bingo! https://www.nocsdegree.com/this-holberton-school-graduate-we...

drinfinity · 6 years ago

He is not a developer. He fudges with scripts.

Good luck bootcamping someone to engineer. Civil or otherwise.

drinfinity commented on CPU Introspection: Intel Load Port Snooping gamozolabs.github.io/metr... · Posted by u/matt_d

drinfinity · 6 years ago

I find it interesting that somebody dedicates his or her life to figuring out how these CPUs work when exactly that information is just laying about in some vault in Santa Clara.