float4 (u/float4) - Readit News

float4 commented on The Bitter Prediction 4zm.org/2025/04/05/bitter... · Posted by u/jannesan

M4v3R · 5 months ago

To me it’s the exact opposite. I was writing code for the past 20+ years and I recently realized it’s not the act of writing code I love, but the act of creating something from nothing. Over the past few months I wrote two non-trivial utility apps that otherwise I would most probably not write because I didn’t have enough time to do that, but Cursor + Claude gave me the 5x productivity boost that enabled me to do so, and I really enjoyed doing that.

My only gripe is that the models are still pretty slow, and that discourages iteration and experimentation. I can’t wait for the day a Claude 3.5 grade model with 1000 tok/s speed releases, this will be a total game changer for me. Gemini 2.5 recently came closer, but it’s still not there.

float4 · 5 months ago

For me it's a bit of both. I'm working on exciting energy software with people who have deep knowledge of the sector but only semi-decent software knowledge. Nearly every day I'm reviewing some shitty PR comprised of awful, ugly code that somehow mostly works.

The product itself is exciting and solves a very real problem, and we have many customers who want to use it and pay for it. But damn, it hurts my soul knowing what goes on under the hood.

float4 commented on What, exactly, is an 'AI Agent'? Here's a litmus test tines.com/blog/a-litmus-t... · Posted by u/1as

andy99 · 5 months ago

Anthropic has a definition:

  Workflows are systems where  LLMs and tools are orchestrated through predefined code paths.
  Agents, on the other hand, are systems where LLMs dynamically direct their own processes and tool usage, maintaining control over how they accomplish tasks

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-effective-age...

While I know it's a marketing term, I think a good distinction is that agents have a loop in the execution graph, and can choose whether to loop or keep going. Workflows are chained LLM calls where the LLM has no "choice".

float4 · 5 months ago

I should have read this 12h ago! This afternoon, I tried to create my first simple agent using LangChain. My aim was to repeatedly run a specific python analysis function and perform a binary search to find the optimal result, then compile the results into a markdown report and export it as a PDF.

However, I now realize that most of these steps don't require AI at all, let alone agents. I wrote the full algorithm (including the binary search!) in natural language for the LLM. And although it sometimes worked, the model often misunderstood and produced random errors out of the blue.

I now realize that this is not what agents are for. This problem didn't require any agentic behavior. It was just a fixed workflow, with one single AI step (generating a markdown report text).

Oh well, nothing wrong with learning the hard way.

float4 commented on Automatically tagging politician when they use their phone on the livestreams driesdepoorter.be/theflem... · Posted by u/driesdep

tpoacher · 6 months ago

This is beyond silly.

You could be using your phone to factcheck something that relates to the ongoing discussion. Or having a side-chat with another member, privately expressing/requesting an opinion to provide context. Or to take quick notes. Or, nowadays, you might even be using an AI to keep a running summary of what the speaker has been rambling about in the last 50 minutes, translated from 'buzzspeak' to 'humanspeak'. All legit uses of technology, which enhance the politician's attention rather than detract from it.

I'm not saying I'm having a hard time believing people 'could' be checking out 9gag instead during parliament, but unless you give me an AI that can detect people who are on their phone AND verified to be slagging off, then you're just bullying people for having phones and being able to use them.

Also, I like how laptops are somehow exempt from this bullying for some magical reason.

float4 · 6 months ago

You call it silly because you could be doing useful stuff on your phone. I'd go one step further and say that even if you're slacking off that's not necessarily a bad thing. Everybody, including politicians, slacks off from time to time. Be it due to stress, awful sleep because the neighbor's dog barked all night, illness, or something else. It's just human and there's little wrong with it as long as you do your job well most of the time.

float4 commented on AI and Startup Moats unzip.dev/0x01f-ai-and-st... · Posted by u/vismit2000

float4 · 8 months ago

> Bezos nailed it on this topic: “[...] [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things [...] will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. [...]”

> You should consider what won’t change, and the following is a (non-exhaustive) list of things that I think won’t change: I believe AI is and will continue to gain intelligence

Okay, but that way you can frame every ongoing change as a constant. "Change X will continue, and because it's already ongoing and will simply continue, I consider it a constant and therefore add it to my list of 'things that won't change'". But that's clearly not what Bezos meant.

float4 commented on We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines ifixit.com/News/102368/vi... · Posted by u/LorenDB

trollbridge · 10 months ago

Except Dairy Queen, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s outside of the U.S. don’t have this problem.

Somehow I doubt DQ employees are paid better or are better trained or more diligent about regular maintenance. The difference is they don’t have a machine designed to require expensive maintenance visits with a DRM lockout to retard attempts to maintain it by normal restaurant/HVAC maintenance contractors.

float4 · 10 months ago

> Except Dairy Queen, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s outside of the U.S. don’t have this problem.

Heck, even Ikea has successfully been selling ice cream (from self serve machines!) here in the Netherlands for like 20 years now. €0.50 back in the day, €1 now. Can't remember the last time all machines (yes, they do have at least 2 usually) required maintenance.

float4 commented on What a difference four years makes ianbetteridge.com/2024/04... · Posted by u/edent

yorwba · a year ago

Core platform services include "online intermediation services" and "video sharing platform services" both of which Netflix could be argued to count as. But I guess there are probably fewer than 10,000 EU businesses distributing content through Netflix?

float4 · a year ago

I was under the impression that Netflix was not deemed video sharing platform because they don't actively dictate what is and is not allowed on the platform the way YouTube does. But maybe it was the 10,000 rule, who knows. To my knowledge the EU never made explicit why companies were not deemed gatekeeper.

float4 commented on What a difference four years makes ianbetteridge.com/2024/04... · Posted by u/edent

senorrib · a year ago

“ In particular, Apple – and Facebook – are gatekeepers because they “are digital platforms that provide an important gateway between business users and consumers – whose position can grant them the power to act as a private rule maker, and thus creating a bottleneck in the digital economy”. Spotify is not in that position.”

How is Spotify not in that position? I see no difference between Facebook, Apple and Spotify in this case, except for the fact that they gatekeep different things.

float4 · a year ago

Multiple reasons:

1. Size. DMA requirement is >=7.5b turnover in the EU, or worldwide market cap >=75b. Not the case for Spotify.

2. Non-provision of core platform services. It's not just "important gateway between business users and consumers", it's "important gateway between businesses and consumers *in relation to core platform services*". Core platform services are e.g. search engines, operating systems, browsers, app stores and so on. This is why Spotify isn't a gatekeeper.

And the exact same reasoning applies to American companies. Video streaming platforms like Netflix are also excluded for example, even though Netflix has a market cap >=75b.

float4 commented on The British Are Coming for Your White-Collar Job wsj.com/finance/investing... · Posted by u/techterrier

float4 · a year ago

https://archive.is/Lhkml

float4 commented on From anxiety to cancer, the evidence against ultra-processed food piles up text.npr.org/1238939706... · Posted by u/rntn

antif · a year ago

> certainly ultra processed

Pardon, but where's the ultra processing? Isn't pea protein just dried peas in a blender?

I figured ultra processed was reserved for things like ascorbic acid, pectin, and xanthan gum.

float4 · a year ago

Most people buy pea protein isolate. This is a more complex product where the protein has actually been separated from the remainder of the peas.

(Not sure if it would qualify as ultra processed though.)

float4 commented on Quiet-STaR: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Think Before Speaking arxiv.org/abs/2403.09629... · Posted by u/hackerlight

wara23arish · a year ago

I love reading his EWDs, I had a professor who worked with him who mentioned he made his students work use pens while taking his tests. To make it less likely for the students to make mistakes??

float4 · a year ago

> he made his students work use pens while taking his tests

This is very common in the Netherlands, I think that's why it was a rule of his.

In general, the Dutch education system seems to be against pencils (at least this was the case until recent; I'm Dutch and mid 20s). You're tought to write using a fountain pen, not a pencil. In high school, you're allowed to switch to ball point but absolutely not to pencil. In university, write with pretty much anything you want, but... not with a pencil. If you do take your test with a pencil, there's genuinely a chance your teacher will give you a 0, although most of the time they'll probably be forgiving.

I majored in CS in the Netherlands and every test was done with good old pen and paper. Students still make mistakes all the time, which is why everyone uses a scrap sheet.