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gbalduzzi commented on From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent   ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-ar... · Posted by u/articsputnik
cycomanic · 3 days ago
> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good.

When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave me 8-10h battery life and the only issue I ever had was that 1.5 years ago the battery was reaching end of life and capacity started dropping very fast.

That was just a 70$ repair I could easily do myself.

My youngest daughter just inherited my mother's x220 (?) (she has been running Linux) that I got for my mother in 2011 or 2012. That never received any work and still works fine except that I didn't change the battery so you have to run it of ac power.

My older daughter and my mother both just got some used thinkpads that are >3years old and don't have any issues either.

So from my experience a 5 year lifetime for a macbook is really nothing special and definitely not "crazy good".

gbalduzzi · 3 days ago
I believe there is a similar situation in the mobile space with iphones, at least here is Europe where they are not ubiquitous.

Most people use cheaper android phones, that are slower and with a much shorted timespan. then they try a 1k€ iPhone and it is great and conclude they prefer the iPhone to Android: it is not an apple to apple comparison, you should compare it to a 1k€ android lol.

Same things happens on laptops. If you try to use a 500-600€ laptop as work main machine for multiple years it will fall apart. Than you try a MacBook and it feels great because after 5 years is still usable.

gbalduzzi commented on US tech rules the European market   proton.me/blog/us-tech-ru... · Posted by u/devonnull
dismalaf · 20 days ago
> Excel rules the world, and even if it didn’t: nobody is running libreoffice on linux professionally, at least not that I am aware of- and hosting mail?

It has remarkable stickiness but the replacement for Excel isn't another spreadsheet, it's programming + databases. SAP and other custom business software are pretty big especially in large organizations. Word is pretty replaceable, as is the rest of MS Office, especially if you have a custom solution instead of relying on Excel. Self-hosting email is definitely a thing for massive corporations. And don't forget 2/3 of the big Linux vendors are European.

74% tracks. Lots do depend on MS and Google solutions, but enough don't.

gbalduzzi · 20 days ago
You can replace excel with programming and a DB only up to a certain point.

The advantage of excel is that any office worker can perform data manipulation there. It can't be replaced for una-tantum operations on data, because it isn't practical to do custom implementations every time you need something.

The alternative is to teach programming to every office worker and give them access to the db. Not sure it's a good idea

gbalduzzi commented on PHP 8.5 adds pipe operator   thephp.foundation/blog/20... · Posted by u/lemper
goykasi · 20 days ago
What are the benefits? Code completion, AI agents, etc will handle it for you. No one's life is falling apart because the param ordering is more similar to C than a blog article complaining about it decade ago. Php devs have had up 30 years to learn the difference. Are C devs complaining about this?

If we want to change the param order of str/array functions for php, I think we should start with fixing the C libraries. That seems like a better starting point. The impact will certainly be more beneficial to even more developers than just php.

gbalduzzi · 20 days ago
Because it would be more predictable, easier to memorize, less verbose, easier to use for developers coming from other modern languages and more comfortable to work with.

The fact that they are chaotic since 30 years ago is not a valid reason for keeping them chaotic right now.

Also, I'm not even arguing they should change the existing functions, that would break all existing code for almost no reason.

I think they should "simply" support methods on primitives, and implement the main ones in a chainable way:

"test string"->trim()->upper()->limit(100);

[0,1,2]->filter(fn ($n) => $n % 2 === 0)->map(fn($n) => $n * 2);

I would love this so much

gbalduzzi commented on PHP 8.5 adds pipe operator   thephp.foundation/blog/20... · Posted by u/lemper
colecut · 21 days ago
PHP string / array functions are consistent.

string functions use (haystack, needle) and array functions use (needle, haystack)

because that's the way the underlying C libraries also worked

gbalduzzi · 20 days ago
`strlen`, `strncmp` and `strtolower` but `str_split` and `str_contains`.

How it that consistent?

gbalduzzi commented on PHP 8.5 adds pipe operator   thephp.foundation/blog/20... · Posted by u/lemper
goykasi · 20 days ago
In the early days of PHP, it relied heavily on wrapping the underlying C libraries and preserving their naming conventions.

https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/70950

gbalduzzi · 20 days ago
And that was fine in the early days, absolutely.

We are not in the early days though, and in many other aspects PHP evolved greatly.

gbalduzzi commented on PHP 8.5 adds pipe operator   thephp.foundation/blog/20... · Posted by u/lemper
gbalduzzi · 21 days ago
I like it.

I really believe the thing PHP needs the most is a rework of string / array functions to make them more consistent and chain able. Now they are at least chainable.

I'm not a fan of the ... syntax though, especially when mixed in the same chain with the spread operator

gbalduzzi commented on Study mode   openai.com/index/chatgpt-... · Posted by u/meetpateltech
dcbb65b2bcb6e6a · a month ago
You are right and that's my point. To me it just feels like that too many people think LLMs are the holy grail for learning. No, you still have to study a lot. Yes, it can be easier than it was.
gbalduzzi · a month ago
Your other responses kinda imply that you believe LLMs are not good for learning.

That's totally different than saying they are not flawless but they make learning easier than other methods, like you did in this comment

gbalduzzi commented on Study mode   openai.com/index/chatgpt-... · Posted by u/meetpateltech
holsta · a month ago
> It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed.

We were able to learn before LLMs.

Libraries are not a new thing. FidoNet, USENET, IRC, forums, local study/user groups. You have access to all of Wikipedia. Offline, if you want.

gbalduzzi · a month ago
Are we really comparing this research to just writing and having a good answer in a couple of seconds?

Like, I agree with you and I believe those things will resist and will always be important, but it doesn't really compare in this case.

Last week I was in the nature and I saw a cute bird that I didn't know. I asked an AI and got the correct answer in 10 seconds. Of course I would find the answer at the library or by looking at proper niche sites, but I would not have done it because I simply didn't care that much. It's a stupid example but I hope it makes the point

gbalduzzi commented on AI is killing the web – can anything save it?   economist.com/business/20... · Posted by u/edward
future10se · a month ago
Why would you need to retrain the model or update the SFT? You could just dynamically update the system prompt to include things it should advertise.

You could even have something like an MCP to which the LLM could pass "topics", and then it would return products/opinions which it should "subtly" integrate into its response.

The MCP could even be system-level/"invisible" (e.g. the user doesn't see the tool use for the ad server in the web UI for ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini.)

gbalduzzi · a month ago
You are right, I didn't consider system prompts.
gbalduzzi commented on AI is killing the web – can anything save it?   economist.com/business/20... · Posted by u/edward
lucasyvas · a month ago
AI will be ridden with ads - just disguised as answers.

And without the web there is no new datasets for AI so it’ll grind to a halt.

gbalduzzi · a month ago
A new model will be trained for every new ad update?

u/gbalduzzi

KarmaCake day286April 5, 2022View Original