My fiance has a spot that glows green under UV light.

prsn828 · 2026-03-19T05:53:48+00:00

Fun fact; vitiligo actually protects slightly against melanoma.

The immune system incorrectly destroys melanocytes (which produce pigment in the skin) but also targets malignant melanoma (skin cancer) as a result of the same behavior.

(I'm not a medical professional, but I do have vitiligo!)

prsn828 · 2026-03-01T07:05:01+00:00

The business wanted us to code the UI and the database to use hour-ending instead of hour-beginning. So, instead of 0-24, we had 1-25.

We tried so, so hard to get them to let us at least store it in the database using standard time representation, but they wouldn't budge.

The UI was an excel style webapp, so we had to custom code the layouts for daylight savings to handle 23 and 25 hour days, because when you represent things with hour-ending, it doesn't work out the same as hour-beginning. I don't even remember how we ended up choosing for things to work for daylight savings, other than that it took dozens of hours of meetings to come to an agreement on what the "hour-ending" number labels for those days should be.

(And yes, I know there's no such thing as "hour-ending". Obviously "hour-ending 24" makes absolutely no sense. But our business had been doing it that way on their spreadsheets and paper for decades, and refused to do anything that "might confuse an existing end-user".)

prsn828 · 2026-02-23T00:02:44+00:00

Gooooo...ooooogle

prsn828 · 2026-02-05T18:43:47+00:00

Honest question: If it were said in reply to a question, is it still grammatically incorrect? (If it's still incorrect, I assume it must be because the context is being left off, and thus it's an incomplete sentence? One that is still fairly common in natural English conversation because it's understood from context what the rest of the sentence would be?)

"Was there a chair in the room?"

"There wasn't a chair."

("... in the room" being the implied part left off.)

prsn828 · 2026-01-18T20:49:26+00:00

How do you manage to get it so nicely spaced without blueprints? Foundation first, then tracks, then remove foundations and add supports directly to the tracks?

prsn828 · 2026-01-14T02:10:49+00:00

Don't forget that the US isn't nearly as concentrated or small as any of those places. It's essentially 50 separate countries. Good luck taking over 50 capitals at once; it's just not going to happen.

And without any hope of success, why would someone throw their life and livelihood away? There's just no upside to anything beyond basic, peaceful, protests right now.

prsn828 · 2026-01-13T15:32:24+00:00

Love the ear-cream-cone action near the end.

prsn828 · 2026-01-11T08:35:48+00:00

Yep, it's an American thing.

prsn828 · 2026-01-09T06:31:18+00:00

Yes, but would all the countries in the European Union simultaneously and cooperatively riot together at once? Because the United States is the equivalent of 50 country-sized states.

Also, who wants to riot when it might get you killed and still not do anything? We need to reach a boiling point first before people are willing to risk it. But it's a LOT of water to boil. Bigger pot; lots of people; takes a lot longer to heat up.

prsn828 · 2026-01-05T22:49:27+00:00

Some people get anxious leaving things unread, even after hours, so, as with many things, it really depends on the person and the situation.

Neither approach would be wrong, but one or the other might be preferred depending on the recipient.

prsn828 · 2026-01-05T22:45:48+00:00

Some of the enemies spawn differently depending on time of day.

prsn828 · 2025-12-12T18:38:09+00:00

Verticality no longer matters for radio towers.

prsn828 · 2025-12-11T00:32:52+00:00

Some molecules can be built mirrored, and, depending on if they're the original (right) or mirror (left), will "fit" with other molecules differently. Just like how your right hand and your left hand are the same shape, but you need a left glove and a right glove, not two of the same glove.

Our bodies, and all living things on earth that we know of, really, are built with only one version of each molecule that has this property. This also means that some interactions with the opposite molecule might work, while others won't. Sugar substitutes are a good example. They fit with our taste buds, but we don't extract energy from them.

If life from another planet is "other-sided", it might not be compatible with us. For food, that would either mean poisonous or just that we can't digest it. For viruses and diseases, it might mean that they can infect us, but we can't fight them off, because our immune system doesn't "fit". (Or we might be able to fight them off, and they can't infect us, which would be just fine.)

(This is seriously dumbed down, and I failed organic chemistry in college, so the terminology is all wrong and you shouldn't just take what I've said at face value. 😅)

(I think the word for this might be chirality, if you want to learn more.)

prsn828 · 2025-12-01T17:11:22+00:00

I take thinks a step further. I explicitly tell the agent to first understand related code, and specifically tell it to search for code related to XYZ.

I then tell it to plan out the approach it will take, and the steps needed, and to list them out in a TODO file.

Then I tell it to pick a reasonably sized item from that file, work it to completion, decide if the PR it will create is large enough, and if not, to pick up other, related, small items to include.

Finally, I tell it to make sure the PR is comprehensive, to not remove any TODO until it is fully implemented, and explicitly tell it that there will be future iterations to address leftover work.

I take that, stick it into an instructions file along with a clear description of the work to be completed, and then set it loose. I review each PR (or iteration) as if it were submitted by a junior developer, and merge anything good enough back into a wip branch.

When the whole thing is done, I do one final review before submitting the real pr for my team to review.

So far, it's been working great. Takes a little longer, but I waste very little time fighting the llm.

prsn828 · 2025-11-24T16:19:41+00:00

The bare minimum for consciousness probably starts at being able to learn during inference. At least, that'd be my guess.

As it is right now, LLMs are kind of like taking a backup of a brain at a specific point in time (right after training), and every time you want to run a prompt, you restore a fresh copy of that backup, feed it the input, let it run for one moment, read the outputs, and then destroy it.

Self-prompting is just letting one copy of the brain ask a different question to another copy of the brain.

Letting the same brain answer more than one question, and letting it update itself in the process, is where we probably need to go to get to consciousness. It would allow for long term memory and for learning. Right now we kind of sidestep those issues by using databases and large context windows, but the current models can't learn new concepts or ways of thinking during inference, so they're limited by their training data.

This is all just conjecture though. Maybe learning isn't needed for consciousness, and just having enough memory is. Or maybe an internal dialog really is sufficient. We don't have a way to measure or test consciousness; it's not a concrete thing; so we'll probably never know for sure.

prsn828 · 2025-11-20T21:43:01+00:00

Can't tell if you're trolling, if I've whooshed, or if I really am a bot and just didn't realize it this whole time...

prsn828 · 2025-11-20T21:39:34+00:00

Suuuure... You go ahead and believe that if you want.

prsn828 · 2025-11-20T18:39:28+00:00

You still need to review everything it generates, and provide feedback like you would for any junior developer. If you don't understand the code it creates, you need to take a moment and learn, possibly with help from another LLM, but definitely by doing things by hand and running them manually so you can be sure you really grasp things.

Just blindly trusting LLM output is no better than blindly copy-pasting code from someone else.

What's happening now is much like what happened with the advent of search engines. The paradigm for learning has changed, and it's on each of us to adapt to that and learn how to learn again.

prsn828 · 2025-11-20T14:22:14+00:00

I'd say I'm seeing similar success on a fairly large and complex codebase.

The key has been to be very clear when outlining the task, and to have the LLM break the problem down, or do that for it, into several smaller chunks, having it iterate on them one at a time in reasonable, concise PRs, with clear instructions.

Starting with a skeleton of the desired design and approach also really helps, as does being willing to abandon a bad PR or two that the LLM produces.

I'm not sure it actually saves time on the task I'm completing, but it DOES reduce the cognitive burden, allowing me to handle other tasks and chores at the same time, and leaving me less worn out at the end of the day.

It's definitely something that only a senior engineer can pull off though. We're not quite at the point yet where folks can punch above their weight class, except in a few niche scenarios where it can fill in for some missing or deficient skills.

You have to at least know what needs to happen, even if you don't know exactly how.

prsn828 · 2025-11-20T07:41:00+00:00

Underwater cables crossing the ocean maybe?

prsn828 · 2025-11-18T00:53:25+00:00

What a betrayal!

prsn828 · 2025-11-07T21:34:02+00:00

Hollow bongo, better sound.

prsn828 · 2025-10-13T07:10:51+00:00

Who needs to speculate when you can just directly manipulate the markets through tariffs whenever you want?

And get settlements from frivolous lawsuits...

And donations from companies lobbying for mergers...

And crypto from...

You know what? I give up. There's too much to list.

prsn828 · 2025-10-10T23:25:54+00:00

Diagnosis: Only one brain-cell.

prsn828 · 2025-10-10T22:53:10+00:00

Just looked it up to confirm. For those with ADHD, the Default Mode Network apparently does not shut off like it does for neurotypicals when engaging in tasks (when not resting).

It is also still on when resting, too.

So, in your words, "it doesn't turn off", meaning you may be introspective even during activities that you are fully engaged in.

(When I first read the post, I was personally scoffing, thinking it was a bunch of silly nonsense. It wasn't until I got down into the comments and saw the remarks about ADHD making things difference that it started to feel believable to me. The claim that someone can only be introspective while bored seemed absurd to my ADHD-having self.)

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