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awithrow

297 karma · joined November 10, 2013

Co-Founder @ Itera, Inc.
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awithrow··on How to Write with an LLM
Agreed and depends on the writing. It's a very helpful tool though to be able to flag and highlight that sort of thing
awithrow··on How to Write with an LLM
I've seen this in action as well. The biggest value by far is seeing the overused phrases and tics in your writing style. The prompt I like is to tell it to highlight and flag passive voice and run ons since those are my major pain points. I can also tell when its getting out of "real" advice since it'll offer the same "trim 10-15%". Also important to tell it to highlight specifics otherwise it'll give vague editorial advice that isn't anchored. Another fun exercise is to submit other authors writing as well. Say a short story from a magazine. Some of the edits are legit, but do it enough times and you'll start to see the same generic writing advice gets applies to just about any input.

another iteresting thing models can do is to highlight and notice themes and motifs in a piece. I find that helpful when thinking about a piece of work. Might be obvious ones, sometimes it can be subtle themes. Good for stirring your own brain.

awithrow··on House Defies Automakers and Mandates AM Radio in New Cars
What makes it so great? I can't remember listening to AM radio in decades. Surely it would make more sense to install an aftermarket AM if you listen to it rather than force everyone else to buy one too?
awithrow··on Startup Anti-Patterns
Python is a perfectly fine choice for a tech stack. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it an anti-pattern. NodeJs + TypeScript have tons of warts of their own that you have to deal with as well. Every language does.
awithrow··on The Future Belongs to the Weird
I don't see the connection of the brogrammer's to the idea of being your own brand and embracing the weird. To me, the brogrammer's were the result of the huge influx of money into the tech ecosystem. It was the arrival of those just chasing a paycheck and stock options rather than those who enjoyed programming for its own sake.
awithrow··on France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s
My company has only a small office in San Francisco. There are 10 of us.
awithrow··on France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s
Separation of powers between the different branches of government.
awithrow··on France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s
Is there a term then that encompasses all the branches?
awithrow··on France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s
The courts are part of the government no?
awithrow··on I hate packaging my software for Linux
I get that but I feel like its a bit different for linux users. The ecosystem has way more folks that are used to building their own tools relative to Win/Mac. Especially for something like nix. I've built nixpkgs for tools I've wanted to try & use. For something like this, I'd stick with cargo and let others do the packaging.
awithrow··on Accelerando (2005)
ha, the "/s" got formatted on to a different line.
awithrow··on GitHub Actions down again today
that is absolutely not the case for any system of size and scale. that would just burn out the on-call team and not result in improvements. Error rates/budgets are used instead.
awithrow··on Accelerando (2005)
no, that is the actual author. He's been here a long time.
awithrow··on Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0
I really want this to be true but for me its not close. Maybe its better on the new 13 but its still night and day between my mac book and my FW 16 that's about a year old. My macbook works for days without a charge. My FW last maybe 6-8 hours on battery.

Don't get me wrong. I do really enjoy my FW but the mac hardware is still number one for me. I'd really love is an ARM based FW. Though if I could wave a magic wand it would be mac hardware running pure linux with no caveats. I really love seeing what Asahi is building

awithrow··on A macOS bug that causes TCP networking to stop working after 49.7 days
A ticking time bomb? What an overly dramatic way to talk about a bug that requires a reboot. Its not even a hard crash.
awithrow··on AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
Correct, it's really anthropomorphizing what gets generated. It's another form of the "you're absolutely right" framing. The interesting thing is sometimes it won't do that. It'll continue to insist that some point or another is still a valid interpretation. I'm some ways it all feels like a complicated way of reading tea leaves
awithrow··on AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
Yes exactly! It's very frustrating. My guess is it drives engagement. But some model that tells me what I want to hear all the time is useless.
awithrow··on AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
what is Kimi white?
awithrow··on AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
'admit' is anthropomorphizing the behavior, sure. The point is that sometimes the model's response will tighten, flag things that were overly supportive or what not. Sometimes it wont, it'll state that previous positions are still supported and continue to press it. Its not like either response is 'correct' but it can alter the rest of the responses in ways that are useful.
awithrow··on AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
oh i do as well. I think of the LLM as another tool in the toolbox, not a replacement for interactions. There is something different about having a rubber duck as a service though.
awithrow··on AI chatbots are "Yes-Men" that reinforce bad relationship decisions, study finds
oh that's great. thanks for the link!
awithrow··on AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
It feels like I'm fighting uphill battle when it comes to bouncing ideas off of a model. I'll set things up in the context with instructions similar to. "Help me refine my ideas, challenge, push back, and don't just be agreeable." It works for a bit but eventually the conversation creeps back into complacency and syncophancy. I'll check it too by asking "are you just placating me?" the funny thing is that often it'll admit that, yes, it wasn't being very critical, and then procede to over correct and become a complete contrarian. and not in a way that's useful either. very frustrating. I've found that Opus 4.6 is worse about this than 4.5. 4.5 does a better job IMO of following instructions and not drifting into the mode where it acts like everything i say is a grand revelation from up high.
awithrow··on Afroman found not liable in defamation case
You're talking to a bot. There has been a wild influx of these accounts that just add filler comments like this.
awithrow··on Anthropic ditches its core safety promise
discussed heavily here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145963
awithrow··on A psychedelic medicine performs well against depression
Yeah, talking about grams without taking about what kind of mushroom is very out of date IMO. 2.5g could be anything from a light sensation to over the top potent. Just look at the results of the latest Denver Psychedelic Cup to get a sense of range.

https://www.canva.com/design/DAG4IrghoIg/inPxQbZk0XtnQU_lB92...

awithrow··on Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
I think 1st season Ted Lasso works. The contrast between his optimism and everyone else's cynicism made i good. Though I agree with you about the show after the first season. Everyone else becoming wholesome broke the spell and I found it unwatchable and saccharine sweet.
awithrow··on Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
Its the opposite of a cult classic. Its hugely popular across platforms. Halloween this year was full of kids in costumes of the various characters. It a hit. A cult classic is something that finds a small but intense following over a course of years or decades.
awithrow··on Guix System First Impressions as a Nix User
I'll bite. I use NixOS as a daily driver and IMO makes the underlying FS type even less important. If my main drive goes I can bootstrap a new one by cloning my repo and running some commands. For my data, I just have some rsyc scripts that sling the bits to various locations.

I suppose if I really wanted to I could put the data on different partitions and disks and use the native fs tools but it's a level of detail that doesn't seem to matter that much relative to what I currently have. I could see thinking about FS details much more for a dedicated storage server

Fs level backups for an OS sounds more relevant when the OS setup is not reproducable and would be a pain to recreate.

awithrow··on Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company
If you're going to flame it you might as well point out something concrete you don't like about it.
awithrow··on The mushroom making people hallucinate tiny humans
Here is a paper about an authors experience searching for these mushrooms in Yunnan. Fun stuff

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226076639_Xiao_Ren_...

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