Congratulations on not participating in the legal or political systems of the US, I guess?
Readit NewsIf it’s not your code how is a log useful vs returning an error?
Even relatively complex operations like say convert this document into a PDF etc basically only has two useful states either it worked or something specific failed at which point just tell me that thing.
Now independent software like web servers or database can have useful logs because they have completely independent interfaces with the outside world. But I call libraries they don’t call me.
That’s a very simple operation. Try “take these 100 user generated pdfs and translate all of them”. Oh, “cannot parse unexpected character 0x001?” Cool beans, I wish I knew more.
lazyasciiart commented on Implications of AI to schools twitter.com/karpathy/stat... · Posted by u/bilsbie
That's a valid and useful lesson, especially for the shy students. Arguably, it's probably more important than whatever the question on the test was.
The world at large rarely accommodates shy people. Coping skills are essential, even if they are unpleasant.
Only if she advertised it somehow. The dick version is, of course, to tell the class that “you know, until now, if you had come in to challenge your grade I would have let you fix it. Too late now!”
lazyasciiart commented on Trillions spent and big software projects are still failing spectrum.ieee.org/it-mana... · Posted by u/pseudolus
I work at $FANG, every one of our org's big projects go off the rails at the end of the project and there's always a mad rush at the end to push developers to solve all the failures of project management in their off hours before the arbitrary deadline arrives.
After every single project, the org comes together to do a retrospective and ask "What can devs do differently next time to keep this from happening again". People leading the project take no action items, management doesn't hold themselves accountable at all, nor product for late changing requirements. And so, the cycle repeats next time.
I led and effort one time, after a big bug made it to production after one of those crunches that painted the picture of the root cause being a huge complicated project being handed off to offshore junior devs with no supervision, and then the junior devs managing it being completely switched twice in the 8 month project with no handover, nor introspection by leadership. My manager's manager killed the document and wouldn't allow publication until I removed any action items that would constrain management.
And thus, the cycle continues to repeat, balanced on the backs of developers.
For one project I got so far as to include in the project proposal some outcomes that showed whether or not it was a success: quote from the PM “if it doesn’t do that then we should not have bothered building this”. They objected to even including something so obviously required in the plan.
Waste of my bloody time. Project completed, taking twice as many devs for twice as long, great success, PM promoted. Doesn’t do that basic thing that was the entire point of it. Nobody has ever cared.
Edit to explain why I care: there was a very nice third party utility/helper for our users. We built our own version because “only we can do amazing direct integration with the actual service, which will make it far more useful”. Now we have to support our worse in-house tool, but we never did any amazing direct integration and I guarantee we never will.
lazyasciiart commented on Implications of AI to schools twitter.com/karpathy/stat... · Posted by u/bilsbie
This couldn’t have happened at a better time. When I was young my parents found a schooling system that had minimal homework so I could play around and live my life. I’ve moved to a country with a lot less flexibility. Now when my kids will soon be going to school, compulsory homework will be obsolete.
Zero homework grades will be ideal. Looking forward to this.
Now that's an optimistic take!
lazyasciiart commented on Implications of AI to schools twitter.com/karpathy/stat... · Posted by u/bilsbie
When I was in college, there was a cheating scandal for the final exam where somehow people got their hands on the hardest question of the exam.
The professor noticed it (presumably via seeing poor "show your work") and gave zero points on the question to everyone. And once you went to complain about your grade, she would ask you to explain the answer there in her office and work through the problem live.
I thought it was a clever and graceful way to deal with it.
Only if she advertised that option somehow. I worked two jobs in college, I didn't take time off to go complain about my grades.
lazyasciiart commented on Al-Shabaab Hacks MN Welfare Process thecentersquare.com/minne... · Posted by u/mensetmanusman
Minnesota has a welfare fraud problem, and the highest profile scandal (to the tune of a quarter billion dollars) was mostly committed by Somalis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_Our_Future#Defendants. It's been widely reported.
It's totally plausible some of that money wound up with a Somali terrorist organization.
Then someone else can report on it. I don’t bother reading News of The World in case they say something true either.
lazyasciiart commented on Homeschooling hits record numbers reason.com/2025/11/19/hom... · Posted by u/bilsbie
This topic is such a basket case. “Homeschooling” in the US is a word that has come to mean “not enrolled in an accredited school” and can mean anything from being the Duggars to “my 4yo audits classes at MIT” or “we have an unaccredited private school that is identical to any other private school except for not being subject to laws”.
Advocating for homeschooling is simply advocating for absolutely no regulation on schooling, which is fine for the Zuckerbergs and will condemn children like the Duggars.
lazyasciiart commented on Homeschooling hits record numbers reason.com/2025/11/19/hom... · Posted by u/bilsbie
Remote learning. You didn't see homeschooling, which is a very different thing, you saw remote learning.
The homeschooling crowd has developed methods over the years to compensate. The COVID remote learning cohort did not, and suffered for it.
Remote learning has also built many methods for success, and absolutely nobody even consulted them before implementing their ad hoc systems for Covid. There are entire online public schools and their staff were just ignored.
Assuming every government is the same, which I'm not so sure about. I rather be arrested by the German government than the US government, mainly because I don't want to disappear to black site and be made to disappear for years while I'm t̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶d̶ receiving enhanced discussion techniques. At least I know I'll be treated relatively OK by Germany, while my fear is pretty much the opposite from a lot of other governments out there.