blainm

Steve Jobs was against the "status quo" of Windows users, hated by "the right people", people that wanted to keep the OS monopoly. So why are you against his management style, do you not want people to succeed? Do you see how the caveat actually does nothing? I steered away from it because "the right people" is highly subjective, especially in a political context.

The reasoning treats a correlated characteristic as a causal mechanism.

successful person → unusual trait And infer: unusual trait → success

The most popular example of this in tech (that never seems to die) is when people notice moments where Steve Jobs was an asshole, or he said no directly to customers, and infer they need to be more like this because it's the unusual trait they're missing and need to emulate.

FDR's hatred was a byproduct of his consequential actions. But consequential actions are not the only things that produce hatred. In fact, rather petty actions can cause someone to feel hatred.

If you use hatred as a proxy for importance, you are effectively saying: "All impactful people are hated, therefore all hated people are impactful." This is logically equivalent to saying "All dogs are animals, therefore all animals are dogs." The metric has zero predictive power because the set of "hated people" is vastly larger than the set of "impactful people."

Friction is also terrible metric for progress. I would argue privacy has actually gotten worse due to the banners because if you decide you're not going to sign in to do something like a Google search (so it's not tied to your account), then you're immediately punished with a nag box. So you actually decide you'd rather stay signed in so you don't get nagged. Even if you're in favour of using the government, you should be using friction as a counter-signal. For example, switching to the Euro, reduced friction. Standardising to USB-C, you could argue this reduces friction for consumers.

I think the issue is people are using tools in an automated fashion and running up a compute bill for free when they were only meant to be used by humans in a more limited capacity (for companies to gather data on how to improve their products for humans). I think the correct way to use these models in an automated fashion is via the APIs and even then they might also worry about things like abuse/distillation type attacks still if the volume is too high. I think the lack of transparency might actually be by design so that people abusing their services don't figure out what triggers them losing their accounts. I could be wrong of course, this is just speculation on my part.

Living things that are good at predicting things don't die as much. There's a good reason why our auditory system is always on, even when we sleep. I suspect the reason for something like an 'earworm' is a system that's eager to predict sounds from the environment.

It's probably better to have a slightly overeager prediction system which sometimes gives false positives than one that isn't as active, because false negatives could lead to your death. That includes things like noticing that birds suddenly stopped singing. Maybe it's nothing, but you can see the use of a subconscious background process that has is eagerly making predictions that would then have an error, that could potentially save your life.

Thinking Fast and Slow has a wonderful example of the veteran firefighter who knew to order people out and then later realised that it was his ears feeling unusually warm (that was the clue to the hidden fire under the floor) that made the area unsafe.

If there are alien life forms out there, I would expect them to have evolved similar systems.

Issues like these reflects an evolutionary blind spot: selective pressure drops off after reproductive age, allowing defects like prostate dysfunction to persist. It's the same reason late-onset neurological diseases remain prevalent.

I strongly believe technical interviews should try to mirror a pair programming session on a problem as if it was work, rather than a quiz or interrogation type format.

If someone asked during such a session (where it's cameras, screenshare) that they wanted to do something like google some documentation, I wouldn't see that as a problem. Obviously it's a problem if someone just googles for a solution and pastes it in.

I see LLMs in the same way. No issue with them using it do something like take the pseudo code they wrote in front of me and turned it into an implementation. Especially if they could talk through this code and make suggestions about further changes and so on, clearly showing they understand what's going on.

The real concern is going to be when sophisticated agents can impersonate (clone voice and video) in a convincing way, as well as the capabilities to see the screen and type away as if it was a real person, and they're responding to you in real time.

If the software is based on the models made by large companies, they'll be happy to give you recipes. They would refuse if the coding request mentioned something about cracking passwords or dumping credit cards. And all of them will have a meltdown if you try to ask them to say something politically incorrect (what a bizarre world that would be if that became the new captcha system for humans trying to figure out if they're wasting their time with a fake human).

That said, this is going to be a cat and mouse game. There will be nothing to stop people from fine tuning models to get around being "jailbreaked" to reveal themselves as LLMs. Perhaps the best means is taking the time to research problems that causes "vibe coding" to completely fall down. And that is likely going to be things that are novel and haven't been littered all over the internet. That has a knock on effect of making such interviews a bit more interesting for the people doing them too.

So when it really struggled to get around (kept just walking into obstacles), they gave Claude the ability to navigate by adding pathfinding and awareness of its position and map ID. However, it still struggles, particularly in open-ended areas.

This suggests a fundamental issue beyond just navigation. While accessing more RAM data or using external tools using said data could improve consistency or get it further, that approach reduces the extent to which Claude is independently playing and reasoning.

A more effective solution would enhance its decision-making without relying on direct RAM access or any kind of fine tuning. I'm sure it's possible.

There has to be a better approach, and also in a way that's not relying on reading values from RAM or any kind of fine tuning.

I like the idea of blending a portfolio-style showcase with some kind of network on top. Consider how to maintain meaningful engagement without falling into the same pitfalls as existing social media.

Some ideas:

Avoid Engagement for Engagement’s Sake – Features like posting and analytics can create the same inauthentic cycles seen on other platforms, where users engage primarily to boost metrics and reach rather than build genuine connections.

Encourage Thoughtful Interaction – Consider placing limits on outreach, such as allowing only one new direct message per day. This ensures that when someone reaches out, it’s intentional and meaningful, not spam.

Resist Monetisation Pitfalls – Rather than introducing premium features like LinkedIn’s paywalls or sponsored content, a fair enterprise model such as paid job postings section could sustain the platform without diluting its core value.

Your approach is promising, and with the right focus, OpenSpot could offer a genuinely valuable alternative. Best of luck!

I've found tools like Cursor useful for prototyping and MVP development. However, as the codebase grows, they struggle. It's likely due to larger files or an increased number of them filling up the context window, leading to coherence issues. What once gave you a speed boost now starts to work against you. In such cases, manually selecting relevant files or snippets from them yields better results, but at that point it's not much different from using the web interface to something like Claude.

One of the key limitations of even state-of-the-art LLMs is that their coherence and usefulness tend to degrade as the context window grows. When tackling complex workflows, such as customer support automation or code review pipelines - breaking the process into smaller, well-defined tasks allows the model to operate with more relevant and focused context at each step, improving reliability.

Additionally, in self-hosted environments, using an agent-based approach can be more cost-effective. Simpler or less computationally intensive tasks can be offloaded to smaller models, which not only reduces costs but also improves response times.

That being said, this approach is most effective when dealing with structured workflows that can be logically decomposed. In more open-ended tasks, such as "build me an app," the results can be inconsistent unless the task is well-scoped or has extensive precedent (e.g., generating a simple Pong clone). In such cases, additional oversight and iterative refinement are often necessary.

Is your domain relatively new? It might be that Google's automated systems don't yet "trust" it due to a lack of history/backlinks, or it could be similar to a flagged domain from the past. This might be why they're suggesting you switch to a different domain.

To improve this, you could work on building more "authority" for your domain by gaining backlinks, which could help increase its trustworthiness. If time is an issue, you might consider purchasing an existing domain with a solid reputation. There are also some SEO tools which can give you insights into a domain.

Working unpaid overtime is often a cultural norm at certain companies. When you join a team where this is expected, you may feel pressured to follow suit. Unfortunately, such practices rarely change within a company.

Your best option is to seek a new job and assess the company culture during the interview process. Once you've passed initial screenings, don't hesitate to ask your potential manager about typical workdays, deadline crunches, and team turnover. Just as they will inquire about your reasons for leaving your current job, you can ask if you're replacing someone and why they left.

Keep in mind that you might not always get the full truth. Both candidates and companies have reasons to present themselves in the best light. Nonetheless, asking these questions can provide valuable insights and a gut feeling about the work environment. The most reliable way to gauge company culture is through trusted connections who have worked there.

For those interested in part-time development work, it’s advisable to first secure a full-time job with a reasonable boss. Prove your reliability by delivering on projects and building trust. Once you've established this, start by requesting small accommodations, such as unpaid half days on Fridays. Gradually, as your boss becomes comfortable with your work patterns, you can explore reducing your hours to part-time. Asking for significant changes early on, before trust is established, is less likely to be successful.

I would be curious to know if anyone has tried a hybrid approach where you have a Mamba-like architecture for longer term recall but it's combined with a transformer for short term memory?

Irish person with a CS background here. I think Ireland has similar problems regarding churning out 'talent' to the UK in that there are initiatives in schools for people to use computers but that's about it.

The fact we have a much smaller population also means that the small percentage of really good hackers you'd normally expect generally is a small number. To compound things further, those in this category are also more likely to immigrate, not because of some hardship, but because there are simply better opportunities elsewhere. To put it bluntly, those who dedicate large amounts of time hacking and getting better are a lot less likely to be 'tied down'.

Universities, yes the number of relevant applicants have gone up, and that's good and all, but to me this looks more reactionary than anything else. I think the primary problem is more of an image one, CS itself remains a mystery subject to many. I realise that this problem may also exist elsewhere, but to me it seems a lot more pronounced here.

I'm glad the government is at least doing something about it, but I feel that simply chucking money at it probably isn't the most effective way to tackle it.