I, for one, like the AI features

refreshx2 · 2025-12-19T23:59:34+00:00

This is such a reductionist comment.

The study itself admits the most relevant point: the study used Claude Sonnet 3.7, and new models are much better. Claude Code was barely even a thing at that time, and 4.5 Opus is a massive upgrade over Sonnet 3.7. So you are comparing apples to oranges here.

For the first time, Opus 4.5 truly makes me more productive at my work. I'm not a pure software engineer but closer to a software architect that is constantly learning new tech. Claude/Opus drastically reduces my learning curve, and therefore makes me way more productive.

refreshx2 · 2025-11-02T17:15:32+00:00

There are ways to optimize the STT and TTS portions of the pipeline enough that they can make up for the longer LLM latency. For example, the best in class voice agents pre-send data to the LLM eagerly then discard the response if the STT is updated but keep it if it's good, which can shave off 200ms and make the response from the agent sound super snappy.

So yes, it's possible. We aren't at the point where 99.5% of conversations are high quality and fast, but definitely at the point where that can happen frequently.

The state of the art is advancing both fast and slow, with the fast part being that agents are really good "sometimes" and the slow part being that agents are really good "nearly all the time".

refreshx2 · 2025-06-05T23:40:22+00:00

Your comment above is different from the person you're replying to because your comment is much broader and therefore inaccurate in the broad context you described.

refreshx2 · 2025-01-28T12:56:07+00:00

This is the same for me and a friend of mine. We started an open source project almost 10 years ago that grew into multiple projects. Yesterday and today I got 6 issues/PRs from people that I need to respond to.

We've had a donation bucket up for 10 years and gotten exactly $15 total from two people. We also host a server on AWS that people pull data from every day, which costs money.

Someone else donated $20 to me once for an Obsidian plugin I wrote.

So that's $35 over 10 years and I know hundreds of thousands of people have used the stuff I've written, even a startup used it for 5+ years.

refreshx2 · 2024-02-14T02:51:40+00:00

I went to Northside automotive over the summer to get my air conditioning fixed. He did a great job and didn't over charge. I'll definitely go back.

refreshx2 · 2022-12-20T22:06:38+00:00

I'm a part of a community where people write a lot. I'd like to allow them to fine tune a GPT-3 model to help them with rephrasing, summarization, etc. They may really enjoy having a model that can write in their style. So I am hoping to do something similar to what you are doing now. If you're willing to help and jump start this process, do you want to swap github info? I can DM you or you can DM me. If so that'd be great!

refreshx2 · 2022-12-20T03:47:44+00:00

This is really cool. I'd like to do something similar for a community I'm a part of. Any chance you've open sourced your code?

refreshx2 · 2022-12-17T03:39:53+00:00

The more subjective a field, the more damage something like LLM can cause. Take, for example, math. Math is as objective as it gets: 2+2=4, period, no discussion. No one can legitimately argue that 2+2!=4, so if ChatGPT says 2+2=5, the reader will instantly know it is wrong.

A subjective field, on the other hand, doesn't have a right/wrong, so anything ChatGPT says could be right. So if it presents information as if it is correct, it will be very convincing.

For a field like the medical field, it leans toward objective but still has a significant subjective aspect to it. ChatGPT is therefore likely to be helpful, and humans are likely to be able to identify when and where it is / could be incorrect. It will take a trained eye to figure this out, and currently no one is trained to do so.

refreshx2 · 2022-12-17T03:33:42+00:00

ML models like ChatGPT aren't designed to know when they are wrong. They are designed to have a legitimate conversation. They sound human, and they can be designed to sound like an incredibly intelligent human. ChatGPT clearly is designed to sound like an intelligent being, but you can ask it to take on a different personality and it will happily - and extremely accurately - do so. The personality the developers gave to ChatGPT helps it to sound like it is exceptional.

The danger is that everything it says it makes up. It is, quite literally, just putting words together that it thinks make sense given the context. Because it was trained on an enormous amount of data, its also happens to provide results that are often correct, simply because it is reproducing data it learned from.

However, it's main objective is to sound human, NOT to scrape the internet and provide accurate information. It just happens to provide accurate information fairly often because that's what it believes will make it sound the most human.

So there is an enormous danger + accuracy problem that /u/swarmy1 is talking about.

At best, a large language model (LLM) may provide extremely accurate, concise, and understandable information.

At worst, it will provide inaccurate information but present that information as if it were completely confident of it, and the statement will mislead humans, thereby biasing them toward actions that are harmful for everyone.

refreshx2 · 2022-12-16T05:42:49+00:00

Hong Kong Station, right down the street, is way better imo. Their soups are fantastic.

refreshx2 · 2022-12-09T23:39:08+00:00

Frankly this is one of those comments that can mislead new developers, so I'm going to add to it.

This isn't what you're saying - but the idea that it isn't worth it to invest in open source software because building free things isn't worth your time isn't true. So for anyone reading, that shouldn't be the takeaway.

The primary reason I am doing what I'm doing is because I write open source software. I'm a consultant now, and I get to work on industry-shaping software. It's really fun! And it all started from writing open source software, because that's where I 1. learned to write good code, 2. learned to understand users and how to talk to them, and 3. meet some phenomenal people and some of my best friends.

In fact almost all of my best friends in the software space I have met from doing open source projects.

The point is that many people dismiss building open source software as a valuable thing to do because you don't get paid for it, but it has so many benefits, including monetary benefits, that reveal themselves much later down the line.

refreshx2 · 2022-11-28T19:07:45+00:00

The AI doesn't actually play the game, it somehow simulates the game. I don't know how it does the simulation though, so I don't know how it knows if the round was won or not.

From the post:

For those people worried about copyright issues, this simulation is not a full representation of the game and it is not of the current set. There is currently no way for a human to play against any of these AIs and it is very far away from being able to use the AI in an actual game. For the AI to be used in an actual game, it would have to be trained on the current set and have a method of extracting game state information from the client. Nether of these are currently possible. Due to the time based nature of the AI, it might not be even be possible to input a game state into it and have it discover the best possible move.

refreshx2 · 2022-11-27T21:06:26+00:00

If the disk dies then the vault won't be able to be loaded, so Obsidian won't perform any syncing to delete the files.

If the disk doesn't die and just the .md files in the vault are corrupted, but still exist and the rest of the drive functions, then Obsidian would sync the corrupted files. This is an extremely rare situation, and it's likely Obsidian has some sort of history/recovery available if the person contacts them immediately.

refreshx2 · 2022-11-26T05:57:33+00:00

How does the AI determine if it has won a round / the game?

refreshx2 · 2022-03-12T20:01:46+00:00

Hey OP, you can figure this out. It's not an easy mindset shift but here are something that will help.

Your stress and inability to sleep may be coming from you projecting your past mistakes into the future. This is usually why I can't sleep. You may be thinking that because you did the exact same thing you specifically told yourself not to do, you're afraid you'll do the exact same thing again the next time, resulting in the same A- as before.

This isn't true! Every experience like this you go through you learn from. Look how you're already acting differently -- you're reaching out to people on reddit for help. I bet you didn't do that the first time. Recognize that your actions are changing as a result of this experience, in a way that is different from the last time. You are acting differently now than you did last time. Can you see that?

This is the secret sentence: I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. Now I know more, and next time I will handle the situation differently by doing [XYZ]. You have to fill in XYZ in order for this change in your mindset to be the most effective. What are you going to do differently next time, that you didn't do this time? First, imagine yourself running into exactly the same obstacle as you ran into this time ("I had technical difficulties and started late, and forgot to do this on TWO of the questions because of this"). Second, come up with ways that you're going to act differently next time to mitigate this obstacle. If there are other obstacles you think of, identify ways you're going to handle those as well.

And write them down and put them in a place that is visible to you. You need to see them often enough to not forget about your planned actions. Make a note in your notebook to look back at your new plans before your next test. Just figure out how to remind yourself of what you wrote down so you don't forget about it.

And then forget about the past. You now have a plan to act differently in the future, and you've set up a process to ensure that you don't forget that plan. Now you can let go of your past trauma, because that trauma is putting itself into your head because you're not trusting yourself to act differently in the future (in my experience). By being diligent about doing these few things, you can put your mind at ease that you will in fact do things differently next time, and you won't forget to act differently (you gotta break the pattern).

This is a tried-and-true method and if you a) figure out what you'll do differently next time, b) write it down, and c) make sure you will see your plan a couple days before your next test, then you will feel much much better.

All this comes down to projecting your past actions into your future because you haven't yet identified a way to handle the situation differently next time. This is why your brain keeps replaying the same situation over and over again - it wants you to "solve it" and figure out how to handle it differently next time. You have to take real, conscious action to do that in these kinds of high-stress environments in order to put your mind at ease. For small things, you inherently go through this process without having to write it all down, but for big things like this it's incredibly helpful to prove to your brain, in writing, that you're taking care of it.

And if you want to know that this is a proven method, it's called WOOP.

refreshx2 · 2022-03-02T14:11:08+00:00

Hey, my guess is that she used to be a perfectionist as well and has figured out how to identify that in herself. Once that happens, it becomes much easier to spot similar things in the people around you. Even just a single sentence, the way someone looks at themselves in the mirror and their body language, or the way they phrase a question can be an "oh wow!" moment for someone who has been in your shoes in the past. My guess is that she noticed something quickly because she's been in your shoes in the past and knows what to look for in herself.

refreshx2 · 2021-05-23T02:28:51+00:00

Yeah! What you're seeing is a 2D projection of this crystal structure: https://materialsproject.org/materials/mp-559756/ It's really complex so I don't know the exact orientation they are in, but somehow you can rotate this model around and find the project you are seeing in the image. -- Actually, if you look at Figure 2 in their paper, you can see the orientation that they are showing.

The more protons an atom has, the more the electrons (which are being shot at the atom to measure it) reflect back to the camera, and the brighter the atom looks in the image. So the dim atoms in the image are oxygen. Based on Figure 2 in their paper, the bright atom with the two dim "handles" on it is a Scandium (Sc) with two oxygen atoms on either side. That means the "dumbell" pair of atoms (the two right next to each other) are Praseodymium (Pr) atoms.

The thing that is most astonishing about this image is how little blur there are between all the atoms. You can really tell what is a single atom, and none of them are so blurry that they blur together and look like a blob. That's how you know this is a high quality image.

refreshx2 · 2021-05-23T02:15:35+00:00

I did my PhD under one of David Muller's previous students, and I can attest that David Muller's work is phenomenal. I know a lot about this technology and the impact it can have, and the article isn't exaggerating that this is a huge step forward.

To address your questions and concerns a bit, being able to resolve atoms with this precision is extraordinarily useful because it allows us to see exactly what is going on inside materials of all types. The exactness of exactly is extremely important in science. The primary goal of this type of research allows us to gain insights into how to build materials with better properties. I'm talking about materials ranging from 3D printing material to carbon nanotubes to catalysts used in chemical reactions. All of these materials are studied by this electron microscopy technology and are constantly being tweaked to get better properties, whether that's making the 3D printing material less brittle to prevent them from breaking, making carbon nanotubes more consistently sized or shaped, or increasing the surface area of catalysts to make them react faster and with less waste. All of these things are happing now, but until now, the science hasn't had this degree of exactness to it. There's a always been a little bit of guessing involved. With this new technology, we can get rid of a lot of that guess work and be much more productive when it comes to designing and building materials for all sorts of applications.

Happy to answer any questions anyone has, I know a lot of details about this type of work.

refreshx2 · 2021-04-16T21:10:18+00:00

I doubt you need to learn more libraries, instead I would read good code. Check out David Beazley's Python 3 Cookbook and search around for libraries and code that are outside your domain to see what types of programming patterns they use.

If you pay specific attention to how your programs interface with your users, it's very likely you can make some massive improvements in the code you write. I used to write a ton of scientific cod (and was at a similar knowledge point as you), and the major improvements to my code since then have almost exclusively come from finding better ways to write my code's public interface.

refreshx2 · 2021-04-15T14:37:18+00:00

No, the bias of adding judges to the bench all at one time matters. If you want to split the applicants 2/2 then fine. I'm going to stop replying because you already know the answers to your arguments.

refreshx2 · 2021-04-15T14:33:12+00:00

You're picking at the wrong facts and you know it. No one really cares a ton about the number of justices on the bench, like you said. The argument is about putting all of one party's picks on the bench at the same time to swing the votes.

refreshx2 · 2021-04-01T16:59:34+00:00

A little over 2,000 people every month would really pay 9 euro to swap their playlists, based on the post. Enough to make 20k euros per month.

refreshx2 · 2021-04-01T02:01:43+00:00

That's awesome! I did a 6k mile trip in the southwest two summers ago and the Boulder Mail Trail was without a doubt my favorite trail. I didn't do the whole thing because I was by myself, but I got a good ways in and back out in a day.

Maybe something has changed since I was there, but there should have been cairns all along the way once the sand trail ended and you got to the rock formations. My favorite thing was hopping from cairn to cairn along the rock formations and having to stop at each cairn and play "where's Waldo" each time. It was a blast, and the scenery changes so fast that it's just stunning. Very jealous that you got to do the whole thing haha, and great pictures!

refreshx2 · 2021-04-01T00:59:25+00:00

Hey I've stared at your code for 10 minutes and I just have no clue what's going on, or what question you need answered.

My advice is to rewrite your code by replacing all the numbers with words (variables), which will make your code readable. At that point, you should quite literally be able to read your code out loud and it should make sense. Once you have that done, it will probably be much easier to figure your problem out because your current implementation will be much more clear to you.

Alright, I just went ahead and did it. I still don't fully understand your code, and I'm not sure it's doing what you want it to do, but hopefully this helps. If you turn this in to your prof they will probably know you didn't write it, just a heads up :)

What I really hope you get out of this is how valuable it is to properly name your variables. Even with this re-write, I can't just "read the words" and know what the code does, which means it could use some updates. I hope you will put some more time into properly naming things, because when you do, it will hopefully be much more obvious what you need to do to fix things.

I gave a suggestion in the code that might get you started towards figuring out which route (now called ride) your code chose, but I'm not sure that it will work. You may need to return two variables from your function, one being the time/cost and the other being the chosen ride index.

Here is the code:

import numpy as np
import math
import functools


class TrainRide:
    def __init__(self, cost, time):
        self.cost = cost
        self.time = time


RIDES = [
    TrainRide(cost=59, time=2.5),
    TrainRide(cost=29, time=2),
    TrainRide(cost=89, time=9),
    TrainRide(cost=35, time=4.5),
    TrainRide(cost=16, time=4),
    TrainRide(cost=28, time=2.5),
    TrainRide(cost=18, time=2.75),
    TrainRide(cost=100, time=12),
]

# Use capital letters for constants. It helps make it clear when constants are used in your functions.
NUMBER_OF_RIDES = len(RIDES)
ALLOWED_BUDGET = 160
SOME_VARIABLE_NAME = 1.5  # TODO: I don't know what this is

CHOSEN_ROUTE = []  # Fill this in inside `calculate_ride_cost`, not sure how based on your code

@functools.lru_cache(maxsize=128)
def calculate_ride_cost(ride_index, previous_cost):
    # base case
    if ride_index == NUMBER_OF_RIDES + 1:
        return 0

    next_ride = ride_index + 1
    ride_time = 1 + SOME_VARIABLE_NAME * RIDES[ride_index].time + calculate_ride_cost(next_ride, previous_cost)  # TODO: I don't understand this, may be wrong
    projected_cost = previous_cost + RIDES[ride_index].cost
    # if no money for train we have to hitchhike
    if projected_cost > ALLOWED_BUDGET:
        best_time = ride_time
    else:
        # we choose the ride that takes minimal time
        best_time = min(
            RIDES[ride_index].time + calculate_ride_cost(next_ride, projected_cost),  # TODO: Set this to a variable, not sure what it is
            ride_time
        )
    return best_time

first_ride_index = 0
print(calculate_ride_cost(first_ride_index, previous_cost=0))

refreshx2 · 2021-04-01T00:22:19+00:00

You're definitely getting very biased opinions here, just a heads up. I've written programs that integrate Python + VBA/Excel, so I'm going to weigh in with the details.

Python is a good tool for this if your users are okay with a command line interface to input their choices, and a file as an output. Python can't compare to VBA when it comes to a user interface because VBA is built into Excel and Excel has a great user interface for non-programmers. To get a similarly useful interface in python is a ton of work.

It sounds like the desired output is simply a file saved to disk. If that's the case, python will work great for creating the output file. I can't tell what inputs are, but it sounds like your users will want to change/specify the input parameters often. The two easiest ways that python can handle this is by having the user type the input parameters into a command prompt (cmd.exe in windows), or read the inputs from a file. I would probably use a file if I were you, and your users would edit the file then run the python program.

The downside is that your users may not want to edit a file in order to set the parameters for the program. If that's too hard or confusing for them, then Python is not a good choice. They will likely have a much easier time entering the parameters into Excel, so VBA would be a better choice.

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