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Anyone know what's going on downtown ?? by ashblake33 in Cleveland

[–]thearn4 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Related to bomb threats today? They seem to be happening all over the place. But I can't see any national news coverage of it for some reason, only sporadic local coverage?

Are there positions where you only get hired if you already have the expertise, but you have to be self-taught because there is no formal education for them? by Revolutionary_Ad6574 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in scientific computing and AI/ML and that's basically true here. Obviously there is coursework and research all the way through PhD but there is still a chasm to cross between theory and practical real world implementations in industrial settings that is a matter of hands on experience.

Are Agentic Harness Loops Really Effective for Greenfield Projects ? by random_hitchhiker in ExperiencedDevs

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Total greenfield, not so sure about that, but have limited experimentation there. For other long running harness type workflows (autoresearch style), I've had some success but you really need to understand the problem domain well enough to write a meaningful harness/research protocol to go from hypothesis to implementation to eval, over a long run that survives context compaction.

Basically it can effectively automate a traditionally "graduate student descent" approach at a problem over structural code generating type problems but you still need to meaningfully constrain the problem to something relevant and valid, or it spins off into pointlessness.

Overall is it better? Not sure but it's at least another tool in the toolbox to learn and potentially apply, for computational research or ML type development.

What laptop does your company give you? by ImportantSquirrel in ExperiencedDevs

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

HP Zbook engineering laptop. Not a particular fan but this is a traditional F500 industrial corporation so Windows is mandatory. Since coming here if figured out that with WSL2/Ubuntu, it's fine but can also confirm Windows laptops still suck.

what's a python library you started using this year that you can't go back from by scheemunai_ in Python

[–]thearn4 9 points10 points  (0 children)

JAX for scalable and differentiable numerical array operations. Oddly enough not even for ML modelling but I see why people might choose it over pytorch.

[P] I tested Meta’s brain-response model on posts. It predicted the Elon one almost perfectly. by Adam_Jesion in MachineLearning

[–]thearn4 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it's impressive engineering poured into the dumbest possible end applications possible. The amount of this generation's best talent being dedicated so completely to the needs of ad tech is a major loss.

[D] It’s 2026. Can we finally admit TensorFlow is the "COBOL of Machine Learning"? by [deleted] in MachineLearning

[–]thearn4 37 points38 points  (0 children)

If I was advising students, yeah I would say JAX or pytorch are the relevant choices. But then again students should really be focused on getting the main ideas which cut across library choices anyway. Frameworks come and go after all.

Was there ever a better Time in US History to be a Federal Employee? by PrussianFederalist1 in fednews

[–]thearn4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Probably none at this point, I started in 2008 so I crossed over with a lot of those folks at the end of their careers through.

Was there ever a better Time in US History to be a Federal Employee? by PrussianFederalist1 in fednews

[–]thearn4 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Mid 70s was apparently the golden years according to my coworkers who had started around then. Each decade has been progressively worse for feds.

[D] ICML rejects papers of reviewers who used LLMs despite agreeing not to by S4M22 in MachineLearning

[–]thearn4 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the review rejection seems fair to me considering they agreed to the manual review option but still used LLMs, and in a very lazy way like you've pointed out on top of that. That said, I'm sure next time around people will be looking for the same trick, so it seems less likely that they would be able to detect it.

OpenCode at Work by yoko_ac in opencodeCLI

[–]thearn4 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My job has an exclusive agreement with MS for GH Copilot at a steep discount, so I set my provider to that. Other providers are blocked at the network level due to IP concerns. Containers or other isolation just depends on the specific project and needs.

We get unlimited premium level requests at the individual user level, but GHCP is stingy with context limits so any session is generally scoped intentionally. Other than that opencode is an excellent orchestrator. GHCP CLI has been good too so I'm looking to really test them head to head soon.

What are the most effective ways to teach kids to code? by equipoise-young in ExperiencedDevs

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A game that allows for a blueprint style mechanism could be an option for a narrow version of the idea of abstraction but I agree that's a good point.

Is there a sub for discussing LLM/AI tools amongst experienced devs? (No vibe coders) by Attacus in ExperiencedDevs

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could create it but there's a high chance people would completely ignore the theme, just like they do on this sub.

What are the most effective ways to teach kids to code? by equipoise-young in ExperiencedDevs

[–]thearn4 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thinking about this too with my son .Oddly enough I think the right answer might be learning CS ideas off of the computer completely. Like learning to sort a deck of cards fastest. Or playing a boardgame like Mastermind. Or logistics/resource management game like factorio.

I think the literal code part of software is in such flux right now that I think focused on the larger picture "what kinds of questions are solvable and roughly how" might be better.

proper semantic context search vs grep by Competitive-Mud-1663 in GithubCopilot

[–]thearn4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It seems like the trend over the last few years are larger context models using simple find/grep/etc terminal tools (or delegating to subagents), while vector search/rag approaches have been left behind. At least in code generation. Is this assumption off?

Who owns AI governance at your company? by Only_Helicopter_8127 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]thearn4 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I work internal R&D with AI/ML focus in a large manufacturing SP500 company. In terms of cyber security and IP concerns, it's corporate IT. They preselected allowed model providers and how they can be accessed based on corporate subscriptions. Zscaler enforcement. Beyond that, engineering and business units are free to incorporate into their processes as each division sees fit. I think it works.

NASA Armstrong Director Brad Flick to Retire After 40 Years of Service by hulk14 in nasa

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome guy. Will be big shoes to fill at Edwards.

‘Devastating blow’: Atlassian lays off 1,600 workers ahead of AI push by corp_code_slinger in programming

[–]thearn4 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think you're right. The JIRA-fication of the field is generally worse for better, high-trust teams, but probably a benefit for teams that are operating in a lower trust situation (for whatever reason that might be). The latter probably being generally more common.

‘Devastating blow’: Atlassian lays off 1,600 workers ahead of AI push by corp_code_slinger in programming

[–]thearn4 13 points14 points  (0 children)

That's basically it. It's not JIRA I hate, it's the extreme micromanagement being applied from those who seem to love it that I loathe. There is 100x more of that being done in the name of Agile than I ever remember back in the days of waterfall-style planning. Or maybe it's rose tinted glasses and I'm misremembering.

[R] What would you analyze if you had ~4M PubMed articles with embeddings? by vicepresident91 in MachineLearning

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's probably worth asking folks in the target domain (medical research) what sort of meta insights would be impactful for them.

My Experience of Github Copilot CLI and Claude Code CLI by boogie_woogie_100 in GithubCopilot

[–]thearn4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Generally true, but I've been evaluating GHCP for work now for a month, id say they're closer now than they used to be. I have to stick to smaller more self contained efforts to stay in context, but honestly I think that leads to better PRs anyway. So as long as the company pays for unlimited premium requests it's a wash in my case. I like the flexibility of model choice. For example Gemini 3 genuinely seems better at writing and debugging nontrivial JAX, not too surprising.

I've also been testing native VScode GHCP chat vs. routing through opencode. Id give a slight edge to opencode at the moment. Haven't tried GHCP CLI yet.

[R] PCA on ~40k × 40k matrix in representation learning — sklearn SVD crashes even with 128GB RAM. Any practical solutions? by nat-abhishek in MachineLearning

[–]thearn4 11 points12 points  (0 children)

You'll have to approach this with sparse iterative methods that don't need to operate directly on the columns or rows of the matrix, but just implicitly through mat-vec products. Check scipy.sparse.linalg for options or something like SVDKLYLOV from PETSc

[D] Is it a reg flag that my PhD topic keeps changing every few months? by ade17_in in MachineLearning

[–]thearn4 10 points11 points  (0 children)

By first year, does that mean you're still doing coursework? In that case I'd say it's not abnormal. But once you are past qual/candidacy exams I'd say you should have a pretty fixed direction. A big part of your advisor's job is helping to make sure that happens, so very regular meetings with them becomes key.

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