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alpinisme

526 karma · joined May 6, 2023

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alpinisme··on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Video Lectures (1986)
> And this is apparently super common even in ivy league universities as Youtube lessons have shown me over and over.

I think you have the “even” backwards. Elite research first universities have this problem more than teaching-first, low research output programs.

alpinisme··on Completing a computer science degree on Coursera
Yeah but writing detailed blog posts about the experience is usually a signal pointing toward the former group
alpinisme··on U.S. allows Anthropic to release Mythos AI to ‘trusted’ US organizations
Prohibition was the 18th amendment
alpinisme··on A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading
The article doesn’t. It quotes a CDC advisor who does.
alpinisme··on Unauthorized alert sent to cell phones across Brazil
If you say so. In the meantime I’ll continue to appreciate the occasional tornado warning.
alpinisme··on Is AI ruining our skills? Early results are in – and they're not good
One of the challenges here is that the skillset we are in danger of letting atrophy is essentially unbounded. It’s not a specialized tool like a calculator, where you have a well scoped domain of problems you are offloading. granted, in practice many people are using ai for specialized domains (like coding or producing visual designs). But whatever level of abstraction they are currently working at is not, in principle, something that they couldn’t also offload to ai.
alpinisme··on RFC 10008: The new HTTP Query Method
At least support - or lack thereof - for a new verb is unambiguous (compared to changing the semantics of GET)
alpinisme··on Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models
Arguably it’s a worse (or different) war crime to knowingly target people incompetently and thus kill more innocent civilians. In this respect, they showed themselves against one war crime. Not “war crimes” in general but a specific misuse of ai in war.
alpinisme··on US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
That shows that it’s been since 1991 since we saw similar five year increases in prices. Which is a long time. You also have to be careful not to zoom out so far you get into the “we all die anyway” scale where you’re not really tracking things that are meaningful to on-the-ground, as-lived reality
alpinisme··on Confidential submission of draft S-1 to the SEC
“Controls”

That will be especially untrue after IPO when shareholders can claim there are fiduciary responsibilities that conflict with the non profit goals.

alpinisme··on An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight
Yes but those are very different time scales of consequence. Definite immediate reward or possible long term consequence. People with active drug addictions are known to vastly overprioritize the former to the detriment of the latter. I mean, they also know the risks of overdose but they’re not all getting testing kits for their drugs.
alpinisme··on GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS
That’s why I said the analogy was imperfect. Because border guards (or the state) aren’t “inviting” anyone. It’s not an endorsement to let people in (unlike a friend to your house)
alpinisme··on GrapheneOS user reported to authorities for using GrapheneOS
> Think of it like being a guest

But I only hold guests responsible for what they say while in my home. Not what they have said to their friends in DMs 6 months beforehand.

But the analogy is imprecise because the border patrol isn’t inviting people and revoking invitations when they misbehave. They are granting access to public spaces or revoking that. And the idea that a public place should do anything more than gate on current activity in that place is insane (for speech!)

alpinisme··on Astronauts told to return to ISS after sheltering over air leak repairs
Not OP but I’d imagine the big problem with microgravity is not after application but during application. No idea the scale of that problem but obviously open cans of liquid paint are not realistic (not that anyone was suggesting they were)
alpinisme··on Do We Need Billionaires?
Totally. Those conversations often also overlook the fact that some people are just driven and curious and risk taking by personality (especially after they’ve made it to adulthood and have entrenched work habits that may have been partly the result of economic incentives along the way). Even if you start having diminishing (personal financial) returns on added effort at some point, or even hit a ceiling, there are plenty of people who will keep pushing just because it’s all they know how to/want to do. Or because they get a thrill out of knowing that they’re on top of a still growing product (how much bigger can I make this?). Or because they are vying for non-financial social status.
alpinisme··on Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing
“Any” is a very high bar Unless laws prevent it, I don’t see why a substantial minority wouldn’t buy services from where they can get them at a similar quality and much lower price.
alpinisme··on Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground
I highly doubt there is any overt pressure in academia right now to use AI. It’s a relatively conservative institution. But there’s certainly pressure to publish (publish or perish being a common phrase for decades), and competition for jobs in academia is fierce. That’s what I meant in referring to long term pressure.
alpinisme··on CSS-Native Parallax Effect
Ahh, yes I am. 26.5
alpinisme··on Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground
The choice only remains if using it isn’t a huge multiplier. If it is a huge multiplier/accelerator, then for a while it will be ambiguous and the choice will remain. But as time goes on, the gains of using it will be so apparent and the advantage of the people who use it so great (in publication numbers, hiring, etc) that it will force others to.

I don’t say that with any particular relish. But I am skeptical of the choice angle past a certain point.

alpinisme··on CSS-Native Parallax Effect
FWIW it works on iPhone safari
alpinisme··on California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash
What tools would you want?
alpinisme··on News outlets are limiting the Internet Archive’s access to their journalism
How would archive not be a revenue drain if there was pay per read articles? I would think the incentive to try to find a free version would increase not decrease, especially for a wide class of articles that are basically, “I’m curious but not that curious” which in aggregate I might pay money for (they add value to my subscription) but individually feel wasteful (do I really want to pay to satisfy this curiosity?)
alpinisme··on Profunctor Equipment in Haskell
Has the ecosystem or language actually limited the elm project or are you just speaking in terms of how “offbeat” the choice is now?
alpinisme··on OpenAI and Government of Malta partner to roll out ChatGPT Plus to all citizens
Honestly depending on how it’s implemented the course could be really socially useful, both for establishing some baseline knowledge that could help avoid some of the pitfalls of too-credulous use of AI and for spurring people to innovate in their local businesses because they’ve been exposed to ideas earlier than would happen “naturally” as ideas just percolate through society
alpinisme··on Futhark by example (2020)
Arrays are not dynamically sized though (handling runtime sizes) and don’t have efficient append/concat. The point of the dependent types is that you can have the type system track that concat creates an M+N length vector, sort preserves length (and adds a sorted guarantee that slice preserves), etc. Sure you can do a lot with templates, but that’s advanced templates not just “C++ arrays” in a throwaway “literally that” way.
alpinisme··on Bun Rust rewrite: "codebase fails basic miri checks, allows for UB in safe rust"
I don’t think the media care about having lasting effects. They just want to catch the wave of interest and not wait around and let someone else get the scoop while they fact check or add nuance.
alpinisme··on "Parse, don't validate" through the years with C++
It’s a contrived example. And I have to assume the author intended it to be contrived given that he also put an upper bound at 1999 in an article written in 2026 in an industry that skews young.

But the pattern applies regardless of the validation logic.

alpinisme··on I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
It would be easy to send a notification “you haven’t interacted with Sally in 6 months, so we’re removing her from your network. Click here to add her back” or something along those lines and nobody would be the least confused. They’d probably be annoyed often enough though.
alpinisme··on Anthropic bans orgs without warning
Oh no! If you don’t mind, could you share some context on what you were using it for and at what scale?
alpinisme··on Anthropic bans orgs without warning
Sure. And we aren’t only using Claude. Nor is it essential to our operations. But it’s a tool we used widely and it’s gone (for the moment), and in a way that is untypical of most “vendor did unexpected thing that hurt our workflow” stories.
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