OneOffAsk

It’s all speculation (you too), but I think the effect you’re describing is instead getting calibrated to the model’s limits. Next time a new model comes out, wait a month before trying and see if you have the same feeling of rapid quality decline after a few days. I did after I jumped back into it mid 5.x or whatever ChatGPT after paternity leave. Blown away for a few days, worried about my job for a few days, then increasingly aware of its limits.

People often need a little nudge not to be on the defensive. I usually try to find a point that I agree with and let them know “that’s a good point”. It takes some listening and a lot of patience, but folks tend to reciprocate. It takes two to tango.

> because just like in actual fracking, it is immensely harmful to the long-term health and sustainability of anything it is applied to

An otherwise good article, but weakened by this bit. Fracking and the use of natural gas is actually pretty great ecologically compared to the other ways we get and use fossil fuels. It got a bad rap because it probably really stunted US adoption of renewable resources… and it’s my theory the coal industry was behind the public damnation.

That sounds legitimately hard and I don’t envy you. Hopefully (to carry your analogy) you can find punctual sports fans who freely share their holiday plans.

> Whenever you try to vent how you don't fit into the culture people point out that it's your fault you're the weirdo.

Surely it’s pretty self evident why this is the case.

There’s a natural desire for people to want to make things. Most of the time it’s physical: homes, crafts, woodworking. But for a few of us it’s ok for it to be non physical. Actually, that’s part of the allure of programming: you don’t need much more than a computer and some thinking to build incredibly intricate… things. AI is like a brand new power tool. It’s fun to use because you can build faster. I felt a sense of giddiness the first time I used a table saw after using a push saw my whole life.

This is pretty textbook antisocial behavior. Also, every one of those points is a normal way to deal with someone you don’t like or want to distance yourself from.

I don’t think UI’s natural interface is visual. I think the natural interface is a state machine.

The most reliable and performant UI code I’ve written usually tackles this head on by thinking through all the possibilities of different states the application can be in and how the transition of each state should look. This can very quickly get mind boggling complex.

Systems programming languages seem like they model their problems better because it’s less common to ask a systems programmer for a like button that shows bubbles when you press it. If you model your UI explicitly like a state machine, you can say “no” to the bubbles like every systems programmer says “no” to most features, because you realize the explosion of state will be unmanageable. Or you can use a JavaScript framework and download a bubbles package and wonder why your app is buggy, but have job security.

That sounds like something you fight harder on instead of being defeatist.

Zero shielding may actually help. Shielding acts as an antenna when not properly grounded and continuous, which is more common than not.

> Fonts look fat or washed out

Disable font smoothing and restart/relogin.

  defaults -currentHost write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 0

I bought one for coding. I no longer can read text for an extended period with lower DPI monitors.

There’s a few reasons why.

1. Non integer scaling sucks on Linux. It sucks on all OSs, but it’s just unusable on Linux IMO.

2. Text antialiasing sucks for most OSs except Microsoft ClearType, but I hate Windows.

I currently use an old LG UltraFine 5k. It’s physically cracking / falling apart and has atrocious burn in. I tried replacing it with a Dell 32” 6k monitor. The stupid matte coating on it and seemingly all other high DPI screens is so, so bad.

I just want glossy 5k at 120Hz with decent build quality and color accuracy.

I don’t even like the fact it’s mini LED. Blooming is pretty awful on those things. I hope there’s a way to turn it off.

So yes, I bought a $3,500 monitor to read text because no one else can seem to do it even remotely acceptably.

> this generated function is not understood completely

I think this kind of stuff is OK for the most part. I think it's a thrilling part of computer science: building systems so complex they're just on the brink of what can be fully understood by a single person. It's what sets software engineering apart from other engineering fields where it's unacceptable not to fully understand the engineering, say, for factories, buildings, bridges, ships and infrastructure and such.

Lube the road.

Aim to make the road laminar. Every time you hard brake, you're causing the milk jug to glug, making a ripple of entropy as momentum turns to heat from your brakes and those behind you, sometimes in perpetuity. I learned this while doing a 1.5hr daily commute in a Subaru with a clapped out manual transmission. I wanted to conserve energy shifting, but realized I was now participating in large choreographed dance of "smooth" with other drivers who already knew this. There are many of us. And we all glare at the driver blinking their red lights on the interstate indicating that they're loud and proud of introducing turbulence to an otherwise peaceful system.

I recently installed a mini split heat pump in a detached accessory building. The installer upsold me on a more expensive unit because I’d get federal refunds due to its higher SEER rating. Ok, sure: higher efficiency, same price.

In fact, efficiency was the main reason I wanted a mini split in the first place. It just bugged me to _not_ pump the heat entirely outside the structure. And I paid a bit more for that versus just using a window unit or “portable” AC. All we’re talking here is the location of the condenser coil: inside versus outside. It just makes sense to put it outside, with just a small penetration in the building.

Well, during electrical inspection apparently I paid too much. After paying more than a certain threshold for converting an unconditioned space to a conditioned space, I now need to insulate the accessory structure to a certain degree in order to pass code.

The kicker is, the only way I can insulate the space to meet code is to insulate with polyiso (aka styrofoam) because the structure is so small. So, I guess in an effort to be “green” according to local government, I need to rip out the mineral wool insulation, dump it and replace it with styrofoam. Or put the mini split in the dump and buy a cheaper less efficient unit like a window unit.

I’d save approximately $0.30 a year on energy costs to insulate to code versus what I have now with the mini split.

This whole industry is stupid and that’s because it’s regulated by idiots.

Name and shame: this is Chapel Hill, NC.

Yeah, ChatGPT is a tool not a therapist with robot mode on and all memory options disabled. It’s awesome.

Someone did, but they're still slightly more expensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

Yes, exactly. The demo of Gemini's Diffusion model [0] was really eye-opening to me in this regard. Since then, I've been convinced the future of lots of software engineering is basically UX and SQA: describe the desired states, have an LLM fill in the gaps based on its understanding of human intent, and unit test it to verify. Like most engineering fields, we'll have an empirical understanding of systems as opposed to the analytical understanding of code we have today. I'd argue most complex software is already only approximately understood even before LLMs. I doubt the quality of software will go up (in fact the opposite), but I think this work will scale much better and be much, much more boring.

[0] https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/21/gemini-diffusion/

ParaView [0] and VTK [1] are big projects from the same shop that does CMake.

[0] https://github.com/Kitware/ParaView

[1] https://github.com/Kitware/VTK

America’s entire research and academic industry is rooted in military.

> In fact, we didn’t found Tailscale to be a networking company. Networking didn’t come into it much at all at first.

I always just assumed they were building some kind of logging software (“tail”scale), used Wireguard to connect hosts, and just kind of stopped there. Don’t get me wrong, Tailscale is a nice way to connect machines. It’s nice because Wireguard is nice.

Nginx is a state machine that efficiently handles lots of L4-L7 protocols. Seems weird to feel any emotions about it.

Is this similar to what iOS 17 uses for its new autocomplete?

I just listened to a podcast, Huberman, that discussed how to improve your ability to task switch. Apparently, there’s some connection to how your mind perceives time. He mentioned an exercise to improve your ability to task switch that manipulates how your mind perceives time, switching back-and-forth between slowing it down and speeding it up.

I think the inability to task switch is a big part of ADHD and this thing you’re describing really sounds similar to what Huberman was discussing.

Now, I’m not a doctor and I have no idea what I’m talking about here. Every time I start talking about this stuff I imagine my doctor friend sitting in the corner of the room shaking his head (maybe some of you saying it’s placebo should do the same).

Creative works are incompatible with capitalism. We’ve create a thin finicky interface between them with copyright laws, but it hardly works. I’m not saying artists and creators shouldn’t have financial security in this system, quite the opposite. I don’t have a better idea, but I hope we can come up with something that doesn’t conflate ownership with attribution and also protects the livelihood of people who want to share their creations.