sundarurfriend (u/sundarurfriend)

sundarurfriend commented on In Defense of Matlab Code runmat.org/blog/in-defens... · Posted by u/finbarr1987

drnick1 · 5 hours ago

I don't think Julia really solves any problems that aren't already solved by Python. Python is sometimes slower (hot loops), but for that you have Numba. And if something is truly performance critical, it should be written or rewritten in C++ anyway.

But Julia also introduces new problems, such as JIT warmup (so it's not really suitable for scripting) and is still not considered trustworthy:

https://yuri.is/not-julia/

sundarurfriend · 4 hours ago

As your comment already hints at, using Python often ends up a hodgepodge of libraries and tools glued together, that work for their limited scope but show their shaky foundations any time your work is outside of those parts. Having worked with researchers and engineers for years on their codebases, there is already too much "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" temptation in this type of code (because they'd much rather be working on their research than on the code), and the Python way of doing things actively encourages that. Julia's type hierarchies, integrated easy package management, and many elements of its design make writing better code easier and even the smoother path.

> I don't think Julia really solves any problems that aren't already solved by Python.

I don't really need proper furniture, the cardboard boxes and books setup I had previously "solved" the same problems, but I feel less worried about random parts of it suddenly buckling, and it is much more ergonomic in practice too.

sundarurfriend commented on GNU recutils: Plain text database gnu.org/software/recutils... · Posted by u/polyrand

saulpw · a day ago

I use VisiData[0] to view and modify in bulk. For simple error corrections I just edit the text file. For insertions as part of another process I'll write a simple script that appends a block of test to one of the .rec files.

[0] https://visidata.org

sundarurfriend · a day ago

Has support for recfiles improved recently? I was overjoyed when I learnt that VisiData had support for recfiles since I'd been getting tired of editing recfiles manually and liked VisiData's UI when working with CSVs and such.

But at least at the time (~2 years ago IIRC), the support was really basic, just basic record display, and most importantly, editing the parts VD didn't understand lead to data loss. I don't remember what I was trying to do - the error report I wrote with those details died with my old machine - but it wasn't anything too complicated, just array fields and foreign keys I believe i.e. just using recfile features one step beyond a listing of `key: value` pairs. I gave up on recfiles as a whole after losing data a few times like this (since I hadn't found any other suitable tool either).

sundarurfriend commented on Hashcards: A plain-text spaced repetition system borretti.me/article/hashc... · Posted by u/thomascountz

mstipetic · a day ago

I wish more people knew about GNU recutils instead of inventing new formats

sundarurfriend · a day ago

I wish there were more/better tools for working with recutils. I had a phase of trying to use recutils wherever it made sense, a few years ago, but the format has a lot of redundancy (not a bad thing in itself), and editor support to make working with that easier was basically non-existent (perhaps it exists only for Emacs). Using the command-line interface for everything was way too cumbersome. Visidata claimed to support the format, which got me excited, but in my experience it mangled the file if you had anything more than a basic set of records, and the support for display too was overall very rudimentary.

sundarurfriend commented on GNU Unifont unifoundry.com/unifont/in... · Posted by u/remywang

swiftcoder · 3 days ago

> Unifont only stores one glyph per printable Unicode code point. This means that complex scripts with special forms for letter combinations including consonant combinations and floating vowel marks such as with Indic scripts (Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, etc.) or letters that change shape depending upon their position in a word (Indic and Arabic scripts) will not render well in Unifont. In those cases, Unifont is only suitable as a font of last resort. Users wishing to properly render such complex scripts should use full OpenType fonts that faithfully display such alternate forms.

An important caveat, that while this is potentially a useful fallback font to at least something for unknown glyphs, without any sort of combining/shaping, it's not going to usefully render a whole bunch of languages (i.e. languages like Arabic will be a disaster)

sundarurfriend · 2 days ago

And just in case the wording "special forms" makes someone think these are edge cases or just fancy-but-non-essential ligature type stuff, these are basic core syllables and sounds in these languages that go from their familiar form to a form where you have to mentally do some detective work to figure out what's being said. 1t'5 1!k3 !f 3v3ry 0th3r w0r<| w@5 wr!tt3n l!k3 th!5. (Not a great analogy but it's the best I got.)

sundarurfriend commented on Gut microbial imbalance can impact memory, says study newindianexpress.com/stat... · Posted by u/sundarurfriend

bentt · 2 days ago

Study link?

sundarurfriend · 2 days ago

Seems most likely this one: "Gut dysbiosis leads to cognitive decline through CNTF-mediated activation of microglia in mice" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12915-025-02454-x

The underlying mechanism seems applicable to humans too, but it's annoyingly ironic that the paper mentions mice in the title clearly and doesn't even mention humans, and the article doesn't mention mice even once.

sundarurfriend commented on GPT-5.2 openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/atgctg

solarkraft · 4 days ago

> Only downsides are in the polish department

What an understatement. It has me thinking „man, fuck this“ on the daily.

Just today it spontaneously lost an entire 20-30 minutes long thread and it was far from the first time. It basically does it any time you interrupt it in any way. It’s straight up data loss.

It’s kind of a typical Google product in that it feels more like a tech demo than a product.

It has theoretically great tech. I particularly like the idea of voice mode, but it’s noticeably glitchy, breaks spontaneously often and keeps asking annoying questions which you can’t make it stop.

sundarurfriend · 4 days ago

ChatGPT web UI was also like this for the longest time, until a few months ago: all sorts of random UI bugs leading either to data loss or misleading UI state. Interrupting still is very flaky there too. And on the mobile app, if you move away from the app while it's taking time to think, its state would somehow desync from the actual backend thinking state, and get stuck randomly; sometimes restarting the app fixes it, sometimes that chat is that unusable from that point on.

And the UI lack of polish shows up freshly every time a new feature lands too - the "branch in new chat" feature is really finicky still, getting stuck in an unusable state if you twitch your eyebrows at wrong moment.

sundarurfriend commented on GPT-5.2 openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/atgctg

kccqzy · 4 days ago

> The biggest complaint is that all links get inserted into google search and then I have to manipulate them when they should go directly to the chosen website, this has to be some kind of internal org KPI nonsense.

Oh I know this from my time at Google. The actual purpose is to do a quick check for known malware and phishing. Of course these days such things are better dealt with by the browser itself in a privacy preserving way (and indeed that’s the case), so it’s unnecessary to reveal to Google which links are clicked. It’s totally fine to manipulate them to make them go directly to the website.

sundarurfriend · 4 days ago

That's interesting, I just today started getting some "Some sites restrict our ability to check links." dialogue in ChatGPT that wanted me to verify that I really wanted to follow the link, with a Learn More link to this page: https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10984597-chatgpt-generat...

So it seems like ChatGPT does this automatically and internally, instead of using an indirect check like this.

sundarurfriend commented on GPT-5.2 openai.com/index/introduc... · Posted by u/atgctg

sundarurfriend · 4 days ago

> new context management using compaction.

Nice! This was one of the more "manual" LLM management things to remember to regularly do, if I wanted to avoid it losing important context over long conversations. If this works well, this would be a significant step up in usability for me.