RangerScience

This looks interesting! Is there a way to reach out more directly? (It’s my understanding that regular submission systems as getting pummeled by bots..)

It’s worth noting that the author of Zen and the Art literally went crazy in pursuit of this.

I don’t mean this to say “you have asked a bad question”, but rather to say, “you have asked so large a question that a man once went insane in trying to answer it.”

I mean - going from “doable in a week with the right mindset” to “doable in a day when I’ve struggled before” is uhhh kinda worth being blown away by

AFAIK, this is only commercial bees, which have a pile of stressors (such as being shipped places frequently). Non-commercial bees are doing "better" (I remember hearing that they're doing fine, but poking around now that doesn't seem to be the case).

The other issue is crop pollination, which AFAIK has heavy reliance on commercial bees.

nah. there's a lag time in my imagination filling in deeper details (roughly: the more time I spend imagining an apple, the more detailed it gets) that isn't present when interrogating reality. Reality is immediately as detailed as I can examine.

This is a good starting point, but it doesn't have to be the _conclusion_ to this line of thinking.

Philosophically: You can being building criteria for consciousness; the things you look at in yourself that tell you are, and then begin looking for that (or symptoms of that) in other people.

Anecdotally: you can totes spot "unconscious" people. You can even watch people gain consciousness, if you watch 'em in the right circumstances. You can even watch yourself regain consciousness (for me it's usually a sensation of "what was I even doing for the past day/week/month).

All of this gets at least as weird and fuzzy as trying to define "consciousness" in the first place.

Note: many neurospicy brains do not get the thing where something happens on “automatic”. If you’ve tried to “build a habit” and never got to the “now it’s automatic” stage, don’t beat yourself up about it. AFAIK, we have to rely on patterns and explicit attention and reinforcement (“everyday I do this, I have a good day, so now I’ve got more motivation every day to do it”)

Typescript is literally a language describing what the quack “sounds like” so you can attempt to ensure any particular variable makes those kinds of quacks. Typescript doesn’t care that it also quacks like a dog.

Plus, Ruby has lots of easy ways for you to check typing, if you want to.

I think your question is well-asked, and I lament any work environments that have led you to think asking a question like this would be A Problem(tm).

IMO - there’s a lot of things that queues are an excellent answer to. Potentially including performance.

But - queues (generally and among other things) solve the problem of “this will take some time AND the user doesn’t need an immediate response.”

If that’s not your problem, then using queues might not be the solution. If it’s something that’s taking too long and the user DOES need a response, then (as you say) optimizing is what you should try, not queues. Or some product redesign so the user either doesn’t need an immediate response. Or finding a way to split up the part producing an immediate response and the part that takes awhile.

For example: validating uploaded bulk data is in the right “shape”, and then enqueuing the full validation and insertion.

Also really really avoid jobs that enqueue jobs. Sometimes they’re necessary (spacing out some operation on chunks of a group; or a job that ONLY spawns other jobs) but mostly they’re a route to spaghetti.

> several quality frameworks

Gonna name names? :)

Ruby inheritance is a list of class names. When you call a function on an object, Ruby goes up that list, looking for the first one that defines that function.

If it doesn't find any class defining that function, it calls `method_missing` (and again, goes up the list). The Ruby base object class defines `method_missing`, so if no-other classes in the ineritance list do, you get that one (which then throws the usual error).

IMO, there is zero bloat or complexity added by this; it's super simple language bootstrapping (allowing more of Ruby to be written in Ruby, vs the c interpreter).

What do you see as the bloat and complexity added by this?

That was the common theory for awhile, but I’ve been seeing a few articles that talk about the egg doing things to “select” amongst the sperm

> IMHO, the whole idea of "design patterns" is that they are a standardized way of doing stuff

To disagree - Design patterns are a communication language. You use them to talk about code; if you use them as strict recipes they become dogma, with all the problems that entails.

Beyond that - most of the canonical design patterns are coping mechanisms for the limitations of pre-modern Java / strict OOP. You just plain don’t need them in a language like Ruby - IMO, mostly because of ‘yeild’.

The “imprecise use” is a consequence of either trying to use an unnecessary design pattern, or trying too dogmatically to adhere to one.

Might've been wise at the time, but nowadays I think the recommendation is to use View Components to package up view logic.

(I'm personally so-so on VCs; I think the core idea is pretty good but I'm not super sold on some of the implementation details - too OOP, not enough `yield`)

AFAIK, I would not read much into the possession and use of gas masks - the bake-sale anarchist medics are pretty well organized and equipped.

There's a lot of people in LA with the skills and equipment to rapidly organize like this; got to see it in person during the Occupy protests, when a tiny village popped up around City Hall - complete with power and internet infrastructure; medical, porta-potties, meals, workshops and seminars... it was pretty impressive!

It's also worth noting the insanity that is July 4th in Los Angeles, so there being a lot of fireworks is uhhh... really, really not weird for LA? We usually get increasing amounts (in size and frequency) of illegal firework "shows" all throughout June.

Lastly - there's also a big difference between "out of our [LADP's] control" and "out of control" - that's (AFAIK) actually the norm for effective protests. A large protest that's under the LAPD's control is generally a "demonstration" instead (see the women's marches).

Yes. AFAIK, this is exactly the (theoretical) cause for the "doomed to repeat it" effect of "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - the death of the last generation who remembers it from the previous iteration.

So - maybe not doomed to an 80 year cycle, as life expectancy changes, and/or as cultural memory changes due to more/better records.

But in broad strokes... yes.

reminds me a lot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Decision

IMHO, anecdotally, if you attempt a full rewrite under the same organizational conditions that resulted in code bad enough to warrant it...

...you're gonna get bad code again, or, as you say, worse. The impact of the organizational culture dwarfs everything else.

Do you know of examples of other agents with more defined tools, to use as inspiration/etc?

(Like - what would it look like to clean up test results for an LLM?)

This is very cool, somewhat inspiring, and (personally) very informative: I didn't actually know what "agentic" AI use was, but this did an excellent job (incidentally!) explaining it.

Might poke around...

What makes something a good potential tool, if the shell command can (technically) can do anything - like running tests?

(or it is just the things requiring user permission vs not?)

+1 gaffer tape.

Related: if you want the tapiest tape to ever tape, "bi-filament tape". It's sticky as hell, cannot be torn, and you can get it in 12in (or wider!) rolls.

I think part of it is the form factor of the camera; enough that I wish there was some kind of phone case that could pop out (from some flat shape) and make it feel like I had a real camera in my hands.

Go see if you’re ADD/ADHD and get on meds (I recommend Dexedrine), then also “join” the neurospicey community spaces where people swap tips, learnings and observations.

Also always go for a walk, touch grass, hug a tree. Pleasant physical experiences are truly effective at getting you into the “here and now”.

“Made in America” == “Assembled in America out of offshore parts”, only with AI?

(Also, huh - I wonder if that’s actually directly doable; “assembled by AI out of programmed outputs”?)

you can probably always just do something like:

  def no_items?
    !items.present?
  end
  
  def items
    # something lone
  end

  memoize :items, ttl: 60, max_size: 10`

just makes sure the expensive operation results in a truthy value, then add some sugar for the falsey value, done.

The validation is that you're having the experience you're having, not that it's, say, an intractable problem, or necessarily the emotional experience you're having about it.

It's this:

1. You: I am having problem X 2. Them: You are having problem X. 3. Them: Here are possible solutions.

There are lots of variations on this. There are also multiple reasons to do it: validation and calibration being (AFAIK) the main ones. One way to look at it is that validation says I'm not going to fight you about your subjective experience.

Contrast:

1. You: I am having problem X 2. Them: Here are possible solutions.

This can come across as "your problem will be fixed but you do not matter".

Contrast:

1. You: I am having problem X 2. Them: You are not having problem X.

Now it's an argument.

No, but I needed some kind of number (100k in equities would be middle/upper-middle class?). Ah; I should’ve gone with 10m-to-1m and 100k-to-10k income. Those are reasonable numbers for either end of the scale, and illustrate the point.

The speculation that I’ve seen is that the carve-outs will be used to reward loyalists and punish detractors. So yes, likely to happen.

Math doesn’t math because it’s not about absolute losses, but practical losses.

If you go from 100mil in assets to 10m, you’re fine. If you go from 100k to 10k, you’re not.

Ruby isn't dead and like all alive things, it grows and changes; your expectation is out of date.

https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2020/12/25/ruby-3-0-0-rele...