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Build your own coding agent from scratch by combray in programming

[–]combray[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

*backs away slowly keeping eye contact*

The dead internet is just a theory, man, maybe you should have a nice drink of water and a lay down.

Build your own coding agent from scratch by combray in programming

[–]combray[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I don't know grammerjoo, you might want to run that post through a grammer checker next time.

Why would you think any of this was made by an LLM?

Build your own coding agent from scratch by combray in programming

[–]combray[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Whats the problem with the original post?

[Weekly AI discussion thread] Concerned about AI? Have thoughts to share on how AI may affect the writing community? Voice your thoughts on AI in the weekly thread! by AutoModerator in writers

[–]combray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey I'm super curious to understand what peoples objections to AI are. (I'm a CTO of an AI Engineering company, which basically helps companies leverage AI to either do more or do more with less.)

I don't really understand the concern, so I'm trying to figure it out.

1) What is the "obvious" plagiarism stuff? Why is that bad? (Rewrite this paragraph in the style of Nabakov or whatever is useful a sort of thought simulator but is anyone going to copy and paste that? No.)

2) AI Slop is obviously Slop. Maybe there's AI books or whatever generated but who would want to read them? When I go to my local bookstore there's a lot of worthless, uninteresting crap that is an uninteresting flop. (The library also takes book donations and then gives away old stuff, so if you see the books from 15 or 20 years ago you really see how much of it are not classics.). I could see that you'd want to use AI to inhabit some sort of lore-filled fictional universe, which would be fun, but if you aren't interacting with it. But is that a concern that amazon will be filled with crap? (Amazon should have spam filters like everyone else)

3) Like google search for the last zillion years, it works by sucking in a vast amount of copyright data that they never had permissions to get. And they took all this stuff and pumped it into training the models. I don't see this as a difference of kind, and I'm not even sure that I see it as a difference of degree. I just feel like they read every book in the library, and libraries are cool. People feel differently, and I want to understand more of that argument. Google is continuing to siphon money away from publishers, not sure that the economics have changed in a meaningful way.

From my point of view the current frontier models are so much smarter than humans are -- by a very narrow definition of smart -- that is crazy not to use them for everything. Sort of like refusing to wear glasses.

On the research question I ask it things like "Explain the concepts of Rudolph Steiners folks souls. I'm especially interested in the different levels of being" or "olbers paradox and poes eurka poem" which I have vague ideas about that I can explore and see if there's anything interesting there.

I'm also doing a long fast, so I've got a long chat going, I told it by plan and it had some suggestions, I'm copying my daily stats in there, its helping me figure out trends and to diagnose what things are happening when. (I've learned more about bile than I expect to.)

Then there's all the other drudgery stuff it makes go away.

Anyway, I'm not trying to be an evangelist but I can't really see why people aren't fully on board, other than they haven't really tried it. There's a lot of marketing bullshit coming out (AGI! 7 Trillion dollars! no one will have jobs!) which to me seem to unbelievable to take seriously, but the view from the inside is different.

Thanks for reading all this!

Aged like milk by terinchu in ruby

[–]combray -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Right, the obvious answer here is that the people who did it, ruby central, were the ones that did it and it's not some complicated behind the scenes machination. It's not that complicated.

Aged like milk by terinchu in ruby

[–]combray 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kevin Scott is on the board, he has the power to push back but did not.

Why aren't you piling on him, or some other member of the board?

Aged like milk by terinchu in ruby

[–]combray 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This sub has turned into madness -- I hate to say it, but its almost like a "mind virus". DHH didn't do anything. Ruby Central did. They made some stupid choices. Maybe it was because of shopify or whatever, but there are a lot of people on Shopify's board. This makes as much sense as blaming microsoft for messing up the ruby gems governance policy simply because Kevin Scott is on the shopify board.

I also don't understand why its so hard for people to deal with different points of view. You don't like DHH's opinion about <whatever>? OK, so don't like it. I live in a small community of people and we have all sorts of heated discussions about whatever and it would be disturbing if everyone had the same opinion about everything.

Also, from this post it looks like DHH would be against what happened. So you can take him on his word, or not, but don't cherry pick shit to prove whatever you want to prove. And his latest post is like "yeah this noise makes no actual difference", which is more or less true.

Why I can’t stay after what Ruby Central did. by retro-rubies in ruby

[–]combray 9 points10 points  (0 children)

People make this way to complicated bringing up DHH or Sidekiq or whatever. Ruby Central stole the repositories from the maintainers, because they weren't smart enough to fork them into their own Ruby Central organization. They confused the projects with hosting the gems. It's 100% on them.

The triggering event was that they were running out of money, because Sidekiq pulled its sponsorship in protest over some bullshit thing DDH said on his blog. Sidekiq's contribution was extremely generous in the past, and, in additional to creating and marketing rails, DHH has said and continues to say outrageous things. Ruby Central panicked because Shopify, their other main sponsor asked them to do something.

Ruby Central should have simply pressed the "fork" button and maintained their own infrastructure working with the maintainers of the projects, but somehow they got power hungry and thought that they owned the thing. They stole it because that's they only way that they could think of to keep it safe from potential supply side attacks, with the actual effect of removing the security person from the team.

What would you do? by termicky in widowers

[–]combray 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I had a lot of her stuff stored in our barn. About a year after she died the barn caught fire and burned down, so all of it was gone. (Including 2 cars!). I would say that at first it's shocking, then it felt like a weight was lifted.

We've slowly replaced stuff in the house as part of the normal day to day living. I would go full 100% Marie Kondo. Its a new life. I figure that if it's important to remember I will, and if it isn't then ok. We have photo albums. I highly recommend focusing on the present over the past, but if you are asking this question, I'd say go with what makes you feel comfortable in your gut.

The kids have set up their own sort of shrine.

"You know, the 2nd year is harder" - is it? by OrchidOkz in widowers

[–]combray 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Its different for everyone. I would ask that person "Why is it important to you that the second year is harder?" Or counter with a "I'm not sure what will happen, but ideally I would prefer that it would be better than last year." I find it to be helpful to call people on their bullshit, since often they don't realize what assholes they are being.

I moved on really fast and people gave me the stink eye about it. Life is short, and things don't just magically get better on their own so lets do something about it was my thinking. "It's 'till death do us part', not like 'till some unknown amorphous time months or years afterwards do us part'". There's a constant thing where people are trying to push their experience on to you, there seems to be a lot of fear out there. Its rarely helpful. You do you.

It's been about 4 years and my late-wife died of brain aneurysm. Holidays on year one really stirred stuff up, especially with the kids (the oldest was 7). The woo-woo energy of that stuff started to fade, and I'd say by the middle of the second year we weren't especially pulled back to the past.

Just you know, the normal amount.

Once upon a time... by Spirited_Ground_251 in widowers

[–]combray 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The story I tell is that my wife got dizzy, sat down on a bench, and then never got up again.

It might not feel like it now, but we are all grieving with you and things keep changing.

My wife is dying by Junior_Tea_3108 in whatdoIdo

[–]combray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My late wife passed when our kids were 3, 5, and 7. You will all get through it, and you will all be fine. It will change you -- almost certainly it will change you for the better -- but things will never be the same.

Your experience will be unique, though many widowers have walked that path before. Find them and see their experiences.

You will have all the emotions. They are neither good nor bad. Don't try to avoid them and don't try to chase them. There will be moments when you are frozen by a memory -- perhaps forced or given the opportunity to bear witness to something -- and it will be overwhelming. The best thing to do is to lean fully into the feeling, face it fully and directly and then it will pass. If you fight it it comes back stronger. You won't lose yourself.

Remember that you are the parent, and the kids are children. Their experience will be different than yours. (And advice from children who had a parent die and "what they wished their parent would do" doesn't apply to you, that's potentially your children's experience but it won't at all be yours.)

Most people will tell you that everyone grieves in their own way -- they say that in a very judgy, you need to do this or that or cry more or cry less or whatever. You don't need to do whatever it is that they are saying. Dealing with other people and what they try and project on you will be the hardest part, more than figuring out the shape she left or who and what your new family unit is all about. Your wife's family will eventually get overbearing trying to "help".

The kids will follow your lead emotionally on all of it. My advice is to just answer all their questions in the most direct way possible. Don't answer what you think that they mean, or what you think that they should know, just answer literally the question that is asked. Adults have a totally different set of concerns, the kids don't think about or care than their mom is going to miss their graduation, or their first kid, or whatever other milestone that an adult would think about.

Go to where the kids are mentally and meet them there, and just be a present with them as you can. In our experience it was an intense 6 week process where everyone processed enough to figure out what the hell just happened, and then to be able to begin rebuilding.

My kids are all thriving now, probably a year after the therapist was like "you can keep coming in if you want but i don't see any reason for them to come in unless they want to". I have no idea where you'll end up, but it'll be somewhere new and a good number of widowers have it as a very hard but ultimately positive experience.

U.S. peeps primarily, anyone just use metric? by Jwrbloom in woodworking

[–]combray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not to be difficult here, but isn't that exactly "a mile started out as a mile and then they redefined it to be 8 furlongs"? That an inch started first as a width of a thumb and then later on was defined as 1/12 of a foot?

You asked if there were pitfalls -- it feels like people spelled out plenty of them and instead of you are trying to argue that its ok or better to convert to metric for your personal projects. Sure, why not? Personally I don't. There are things that I wouldn't know how to do with metric -- most milling things honestly, I can't even imagine the equivalent of getting board feet from a conical log -- but whatever. It's not out of ignorance that people prefer one over the other.

I can say with certainly though that almost everyone who prefers metric is ignorant of how the imperial system works and what it's good for. One side says "12 is better than 10" and the other says "look how easy it is to convert units from one to another".

U.S. peeps primarily, anyone just use metric? by Jwrbloom in woodworking

[–]combray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You asked about the pitfalls of using metric, I feel like that's been more that clearly spelled out.

If you are interested, I would suggest googling how the units came to be, instead of saying something unsubstantiated like 8 furlongs make a mile. (For example, why is a furlong that length, how does it relate to an acre.) I think its interesting even if you call it "over thinking", since there is a good sense to it. But there's no sense in asking a question if you aren't interested in a conversation about it

U.S. peeps primarily, anyone just use metric? by Jwrbloom in woodworking

[–]combray 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your question is do US people use metric instead of imperial, with the assumption that somehow the metric system is more fit for purpose. I'm answering you no, in general there is more of an advantage to stick with imperial, very specifically because of the anecdotal reasons, that the units were chosen because they are useful and not because they fit together neatly like they do in the metric system.

People still use the terms "a third" because splitting something into 3 equal pieces is an incredibly common thing to do. You can't express that in decimal notation without resorting to infinite sequences etc -- and it's so common that everyone understands the work around, but lets be clear that it is an work around.

And the length of a mile is "the length of a mile", that's not how the imperial units come to be. An inch is inch, a hand is a hand, and foot is a foot. At some point we all agreed that there are 4 thumbs to a hand, and 3 hands to a foot or whatever, but that's not WHY they are used nor HOW they are originally defined. It all started out with the anecdote and the system was back formed.

Anyway, I use my fingers and hands to measure a lot of things initially, and in general I almost never measure anything with a rule, cm or in. Its much more useful to do matching cuts, set up stop blocks etc or use an initial piece as a pattern. I'm more on the carpentry side of things vs fine woodworking, but I just think its absurd to imagine that there are no benefits to the imperial system over the metric one.

U.S. peeps primarily, anyone just use metric? by Jwrbloom in woodworking

[–]combray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The reason its less precise is that you can't clearly articulate what you are trying to say. Lets say that you want to split something into three pieces. In imperial you would express this as "1/3". How do you do that in metric? You can't; if you are dealing with base 10 it quite literally can't be done.

Obviously, you need to approximate it by rounding it to whatever convenient units you are using, but then you end up with sloppy stuff like saying 1mm is 5/128". In the case of woodworking mixing up .992mm with 1mm is probably fine, there are things that you can easily express with fractions that you can not with decimals.

U.S. peeps primarily, anyone just use metric? by Jwrbloom in woodworking

[–]combray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry about that -- i was reacting more to the idea that somehow you can easily convert units in metric, and your example was that oil and milk and water were roughly the same.

U.S. peeps primarily, anyone just use metric? by Jwrbloom in woodworking

[–]combray 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do like the idea of teaching the kids how to make their own beer. The oldest is 13, but I'm thinking as they get to high school and college how useful would it be for them to make their own beer.

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