suraj

trying to put my dumb ass to sleep, failing, tried to solve project euler problem 11 in janet, great success, now sleep will come to me

Screenshot of a 4-line paragraph with the word “XA-JRM” highlighted in the first line. Paragraph text is: “At 17:08, XA-JRM departed for the test flight with three pilots on board. One of them was riding as a passenger, which is at least questionable, if not outright irresponsible, on a test flight.”

Sorry to bother but I came across a very minor typo a little further than halfway through. An occurrence of XA-JRM instead of XA-JMR.

brb going to go read echopraxia again

It was only a matter of time, of course, and I might even be too late to notice it, but people have begun to add AI-generated text to TVTropes.

And work quality isn’t suffering, but it’s like it’s all in a separate loop from my conscious thinking. Sometimes I switch entirely out of conscious thought and get completely engrossed in the work, but that has always been a thing. Having two separate contexts running together is the weird bit.

Lately starting to become aware of how much work stuff I actually do sort of on autopilot where I’m not consciously thinking about what message I’m typing or code I’m writing or such. Gets jarring when I’m doing this stuff while on a call because I see what I’ve done but don’t remember how.

Thanks, I feel young again after reading this 🤝

Ah, okay, got it. Thanks!

That new clicks keyboard accessory isn’t quite the same as what I was thinking about here but it’s close enough

And who knows, maybe we’ll get something like the n97 keyboard next year if the clicks folks manage to make it til then

This looks super complex — how many tokens did it consume and do you happen to know the cost incurred for the whole operation?
Also, how does one validate that an operation like this executed correctly and nothing got borked?

Sorry, I know these are big questions but I couldn’t help but ask.

Put my phone in a jacket pocket I don’t normally use, forgot where I put it, and panicked for a full minute despite being able to feel its weight in the jacket. All in a public place. Is this what being 31 is supposed to be like?

folks who call LLM-generated software homemade or home-baked or whatever ought to consider calling it drop-shipped after looking at how much they pay for it and the way they depend on model peddlers not effing things up without telling them

Same! I haven’t read Thud! and Snuff yet but I don’t think they’ll top Night Watch. It is now one of my all-time favourite books.

Been on a streak of reading the City Watch series of Discworld books this week. Just finished Night Watch and I don’t know what to do with myself, which is how good books make me feel. What a great story. Love it.

struck suddenly by the realization that the very first thing I ever did on a computer with internet access was download more clipart in powerpoint (2003 maybe?) so i could make funny animations in a computer lessons class organized by a school that was run by a charitable foundation

Wordle 1,642 4/6

⬜🟨⬜⬜🟨
🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨
🟨🟩🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

funny how siri is the only voice assistant app this works anymore for because all the rest of them can respond to this question and might soon try to shove an advert in their answer

More and more convinced that the iPad mini is the only device that comes close to the ideal form factor for an all-round general purpose personal computing device. If only this had actual cellular functionality (and maybe better cameras) I’d be glad to use it instead of a phone full-time.

been wondering if this is finally the year that I learn javascript in earnest. might be so.

Bought something online last night at 2am so I guess the mood for today and tomorrow is “packidge”

Thought about buying an iPad mini for my birthday, but somehow not convinced that buying it would be the best way to spend that much money. Now I'm thinking about what other gadget I could buy to scratch my itch for a new toy. It'd have been easier if more things officially shipped to India.

Not to be all doom and gloom about things but the flip side of LLM writing is LLM summaries, and with both being as popular as they are, I’m not sure that most LinkedIn users (or people on the internet generally) would care. Sort of becomes the path of least resistance for having an online presence.

Didn’t sleep enough yesterday, did a fair bit of driving today, and then had coffee late at night. So now every time I try to close my eyes and sleep I wind up imagining a very vivid situation where I get into a horrible car crash.

Which, I mean, good luck? If these systems, behemoths that they are, get wrangled by GenAI in a way that minimizes the burden of building and validating and running them mostly, if not entirely? Great! But I'm not sure if the economics of it work out (unless guillotines come into the picture).

To add here though, I think I understand some of why it's going this way. The dream is that GenAI trivializes software development (and maybe most development/processes) that have been outsourced, right? And not speaking purely geographically here. This applies to all sorts of large organizations.

Nevertheless, on we march, huh? Like fucking lemmings. On we fucking march. Come what may.

It's necessary work. And the people who work on these systems, with modern tools, modern languages and frameworks that were created to make programming more accessible, I don't think they're trained/motivated to approach GenAI tools with the caution+rigor that celebrity programmer of the day might.

I've had a few friends and former colleagues who worked on outsourced projects that came to them via consultancy work. I'm not naming names or being more specific here because it's pointless. Everyone knows what role India plays in the software world, for better or for worse. It's grunt work. But...

Anyone from a third world country who's done some basic reading in high school knows that statements like "90% of code will be written by AI in a few years" was wished upon a shriveled monkey's paw — I don't understand why so many programmers with online clout don't seem to think that way

I mean, I'm not trying to be an ass here for the fun of it. (What fun?) It's just that everyone who seems to proselytize GenAI tools in earnestness (earnestness as in only preaching what they practice) is in some weird little clique where they don't work in the sort of field most programmers do.