memen (u/memen) - Readit News

memen commented on Ask HN: By what percentage has AI changed your output as a software engineer? · Posted by u/nomilk

memen · 9 hours ago

0% productivity improvement.

Rephrasing the question: By what percentage has AI changed your input quality?

Answer would be around -50%. This is attributed mostly to the vast amount of search results that are AI generated and provide very low density information and miss conveying actual key learning points. This means you have to scan through 100% more text to finally get the information you need to solve the issue. I think this is a low estimate actually.

memen commented on Adenosine on the common path of rapid antidepressant action: The coffee paradox genomicpress.kglmeridian.... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

UniverseHacker · 22 days ago

That lancet article very well refutes the point you are trying to make. The term “chemical addiction” is not really used anymore because it really just refers to mechanisms of chemical dependence, which are neither necessary or sufficient to cause addiction on their own.

There has been a major shift in how addiction is understood in modern research, but you have it backwards- your perspective of chemical addiction or direct chemical mechanism being important is the old discredited concept, not the new one, which sees it as a psychological process that requires no direct chemical mechanism at all.

memen · 22 days ago

The chemical dependence is quite a factor in the psychological process you refer to. It nudges and reinforces this psychological behaviour. You can broaden the definition to include addiction without chemical dependence, but it does not mean you can omit the chemical dependence factor from the equation.

This chemical dependence is often the number one reason people cannot physically stop their psychological process. Potential effects from quitting include simply dying, or with less strong chemical dependence, feeling anxiety or generally ill.

memen commented on Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling? · Posted by u/cpt100

brothrock · 5 months ago

AI has drastically changed how I make decisions about code and how I code in general. I get less bogged down with boilerplate code and issues, which makes me more efficient and allows me to enjoy architecting more. Additionally, I have found it extremely helpful in writing lower-level code from scratch rather than relying on plug-and-play libraries with questionable support. For example, why use a SQLite abstraction library when I can use LLMs to interact directly with the C source code? Sure it’s more lines of code, but I control everything. I wouldn’t have had the time before. This has also been extremely helpful in embedded systems and low-level Bluetooth.

In terms of hiring- I co-own a small consultancy. I just hired a sub to help me while on parental leave with some UI work. AI isn’t going to help my team integrate, deploy, or make informed decision while I’m out.

Side note, with a newborn (sleeping on me at this moment), I can make real meaningful edits to my codebase pretty much on my phone. Then review, test, integrate when I have the time. It’s amazing, but I still feel you have to know what you are doing, and I am selective on what tasks, and how to split them up. I also throw away a lot of generated code, same as I throw away a lot of my first iterations, it’s all part of the process.

I think saying “AI is going X% of my work” is the wrong attitude. I’m still doing work when I use AI, it’s just different. That statement kind of assumes you are blindly shipping robot code, which sounds horrible and zero fun.

memen · 5 months ago

> why use a SQLite abstraction library when I can use LLMs to interact directly with the C source code?

Because of the accumulated knowledge in these abstraction layers and because of the abstraction itself resulting in readable and maintainable code.

Yes you can move the abstraction one level up, but you don't control it if you nor the LLM meet the level of accumulated knowledge that is embedded in this abstraction. Let alone future contributors to your codebase.

Of course it is all depending on context and there is no one-fits-all strategy here.

memen commented on Common side effects of not drinking medium.com/@k.kozmana/com... · Posted by u/rzk

janandonly · a year ago

This hits hard for some I guess:

> When you lose friends, it’s because you’ll realise that without alcohol, they don’t have much in common with you.

memen · a year ago

This implies that you need to have a lot in common in order to be friends. Maybe alcohol shows that you actually do not need to have a lot in common, just having fun together is the common. You might need alcohol once in your life to realize it, but alcohol is definitely not required to experience it.

memen commented on Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/petethomas

1vuio0pswjnm7 · a year ago

""Despite its expensive price tag, the technology is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to be useful," Jim Covello, Goldman Sachs's most senior stock analyst and a 30-year veteran of covering tech companies, said in a recent report about AI. "Overbuilding things the world doesn't have use for, or is not ready for, typically ends badly.""

Who should I believe: (a) Goldman analyst with 30 years experience or (b) HN commenters who consistently dismiss any and all criticism of "AI".

Every criticism or iota of skepticism of "AI", even something as simple as "show me the money", gets countered on HN. It reminds me of the way HN commenters defend "crypto". It is like some sort of religion.

Every day, we have to wade through endless submissions about "AI". Yet an HN poll showed voters thought "AI" was overhyped.

I am going with (a).

Too much focus on "the future" while trying to deflect attention away from the present. Vapourware tactics.

memen · a year ago

> (b) HN commenters who consistently dismiss any and all criticism of "AI"

I do not really get the same vibe from 'HN commenters'. The way I repeatedly see it presented is, it is a language model (very good at that) and nothing more than that. If with AI we are talking about ChatGPT and alike. Other AI is often cracked as 'just' very advanced machine learning, reinforced learning etc. In general, HN commenters' seem to be very sceptical or realistic about 'AI' at least in my perception. Of course there may be exceptions (in both commenters and threads).

memen commented on My daughter (7 years old) used HTML to make a website naya.lol... · Posted by u/fintler

kijin · a year ago

Abstractions are fine. Everything we do is a dozen layers of abstraction on top of the metal anyway.

It just happens that people who know how the bits actually move underneath the abstractions tend to be better at solving problems related to those abstractions, than those who don't.

memen · a year ago

There are problems where understanding one level below the abstractions indeed leads to better solutions. However, I would argue that for a large set of problems, this is not the case. I think being aware of the abstraction (at multiple levels) would lead you to choose the right abstraction level for solving the problem. Of course, apart from school assignments, these abstraction levels are never given with a certain problem, so the more you know, the better you'll be able to see it.

memen commented on Safer roundabouts are replacing traffic signals (2023) urbanismspeakeasy.com/p/8... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

kibwen · a year ago

Most people who object to roundabouts are drivers who don't know how to drive on them, which leads to hand-wavy dismissals of all criticisms of roundabouts as "you'll learn, look at these stats, they're safer!"

But for a pedestrian in a populated area, roundabouts are not an improvement.

Quick, how does a pedestrian safely cross a lane of traffic? Is it while dodging moving traffic, or does it involve traffic coming to a stop?

If you said the first, I hereby revoke your license to design public infrastructure. For pedestrians to safely cross a lane of traffic, cars need to come a stop, period.

And the whole selling point of a roundabout is that cars don't come to a stop. This is fine for rural areas or large interchanges. But for anywhere that pedestrians are expected to be, roundabouts make the environment more hostile.

And this is before we consider that to cross a roundabout requires setting the pedestrian crossings back from the intersection, forcing pedestrians to zig-zag in order to use them.

And this is also before we consider that we know for a fact that shallower turns (which allow cars to retain more speed) are less safe than sharper turns (which require cars to shed speed), which further exacerbates the pedestrian safety issue.

To say nothing of the fact that roundabouts preclude implementing pedestrian scrambles, which are the safest and most efficient form of pedestrian crossing.

Roundabouts are a solution to a problem of making roads safer for cars, at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists. They exacerbate the problem of our depressingly car-oriented infrastructure. "But the stats say they're safer!" Yeah, and when Google reduced page sizes they saw their average latencies increase. This is a fun way of lying with statistics. Sure, fatalities from roundabouts go down when you create such a human-hostile environment that every pedestrian and cyclist goes out of their way to avoid it, or just throws their hands up in despair and buys a car, since it's a signal that car owners are the only thing people worth optimizing for.

memen · a year ago

I'd rather cross at a roundabout than at a crosswalk somewhere along a straight road. Actually, last week I got almost run over in such a situation. A bus stopped for the crosswalk, blinked lights to indicate he'd seen me. I start to cross, and at the same time a van overtakes the bus at 'normal' speed and almost running me over as I could not see the van behind the bus, and the van could not see me. This would not have been possible at a roundabout as all traffic is slow and overtaking is not possible.

memen commented on Safer roundabouts are replacing traffic signals (2023) urbanismspeakeasy.com/p/8... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

sam_bishop · a year ago

I'm an American who lived in the UK for a couple of years. They have many roundabouts there, and I love them. But now I live in an American town with a few, and I've realized that there's a reason that they are less safe in the US than in the UK--besides the fact that American drivers are less familiar with them. It's a solvable problem, but not one I've heard people talk about. (Though to be clear, I'm not a traffic engineer.)

Most American drivers are familiar with slip lanes, which allow drivers to make a right-hand turns without necessarily coming to a stop. (Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_lane. Note that the diagram shows an example from a country where they drive on the left side of the road.) They're convenient for drivers, but dangerous for anyone on foot or a bike. This is because a driver in a slip lane is looking for an opening in traffic in the direction opposite of the direction they're traveling.

A roundabout is basically an intersection made up of nothing but slip lanes. So they're fundamentally dangerous to pedestrians in the same way that a slip lane is, but the fact that vehicles are moving slower means that they're still safer than typical American intersections.

However, if I remember correctly (it's been over 20 years ago), in the UK they don't mix roundabouts and crosswalks. They'd put crosswalks (called "Zebra crossings": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing) between intersections, where drivers aren't distracted by other things. I think we need to do that in the US as well if we're going to adopt roundabouts.

memen · a year ago

In the Netherlands it is very common to have both crosswalks and bike priority lanes on the roundabout, especially in busy city environments. This actually improves safety, as the 'vulnerable' road users cross when drivers are driving slow and alert. Also, the access to the roundabout is slowed down by the crosswalks and bike lane, which improves safety for the drivers as well.

memen commented on Safer roundabouts are replacing traffic signals (2023) urbanismspeakeasy.com/p/8... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

leapingdog · a year ago

This kind of roundabout is awful for pedestrians and drivers: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@54.5737159,-5.9326045,127m/da...

Surprise! I'm going to walk in front of you.

memen · a year ago

It's funny how the Run Coaching is placed in the middle of the roundabout!

memen commented on Ask HN: How to deal with vitrolic colleagues in workplace? · Posted by u/shivajikobardan

OutOfHere · a year ago

Find a remote job. There's much less coworker drama in remote work, but there can be slightly more managerial drama.

memen · a year ago

Avoidant behaviour does not solve the actual problem. To each their own, but I think trying to address the issue and learn from it to better deal with these situations in the future is much more constructive than to abandon or limit all future coworker interaction. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater.