brunorsini

Thanks for the recommendation. In my case, GPT revolutionized the way I use bash. If you know what you want to accomplish, gone are the days of endlessly fiddling around with syntax.

Kudos to MSFT for the blog post title of the year... Regardless of whether those GPU fleets came up with it or not :)

Last year I bought a second computer for my music studio. I wanted to use the same set of 2 monitors and wired keyboard + trackpad on both machines.

I wrote simple scripts to switch my monitor inputs with keyboard shortcuts (even simpler with Lunar, amazing new Mac app — https://lunar.fyi), which saved me from having to press annoying input-source buttons.

But I couldn't for the life of me find a simple, suitable software controllable KVM switch. That still requires the hardware button to be controlled, so frustrating.

Do you go to google.com when you have nothing to search for?

When you do, does the current opening UI feel that inadequate?

There's a simple reason they haven't added tons of UI elements for things like advanced search operators: the vast majority of the queries and the vast majority of users simply don't need them to get what they want from the tool.

Sam Altman is the principal. The agents are MAMAA middle managers, who are often also smart (though I'm clearly biased here, having been one of those in my previous life) but highly incentivized to be obedient and risk-averse.

Principal–agent problem! Previous generation assistants have been frozen in time by managerial capitalism. This is evident in literally all the incumbents that matter in the western world: Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung.

It took founder-led OpenAI to kick everyone in the butt. Thankfully the wheels are moving again to get to what you're describing, an inevitability in the very near future.

"There is nothing, I repeat nothing, more intimidating than an empty text box staring you in the face."

Talk about a hyperbolic opening line.

Is it really that intimidating to have an empty text box on Whatsapp or your favorite SMS app? No, as you expect to have an appropriate response coming from the other side, pretty much regardless of what your input is.

As a frequent user of ChatGPT, I've come to expect the same in there. And it works great, without me having to study any "prompt engineering". In fact, as it gets updated, I get frustrated less and less often — unlike my experience using Bard, which can be better for a few tasks but often returns opaque errors that do feel frustrating. The solution here is clearly for the model to improve, and one doesn't even need a leap of faith — just look at what OpenAI is already delivering!

Talking to a competent LLM is nothing like talking to bash or dos. I also get frustrated when I sometimes have to ask for the same thing in a slightly different way... but that's still almost always faster than searching for the right button or submenu in most creation-oriented software. Whoever is waiting for Word or Google Docs to add a "write this in business-formal email tone" dropdown menu to the UI clearly hasn't grokked the true shift we're about to go through in computing.

Incidentally, I am often using ChatGPT to help me do more advanced / rarely used tasks in software from Avid Pro Tools to Adobe Premiere. And I can't remember a single time when doing this was slower or more frustrating than reaching out to either Google or the software's own "help" section.

Of course we'll have more input options. It makes tons of sense for things like image or video generation. I bet the models will also soon be outputting more and more "interactive elements" that will aid in refining results. But I have a feeling the opening text box (or, better yet, the open ears of a friendly audio assistant) is here to stay.

“There is a big advantage in being able to hunt when you’re warm and everything else is cold.”

Pardon my ignorance, does anyone know why? Is it because the warmer creature is likely to have faster metabolism?

I have the same exact concern.

I've witnessed a large number of studios across the US and Latam using RX on a regular basis — places recording anything from indie stars to Grammy-winning artists.

Izotope, associated with MIT researchers, makes arguably the best such tool for the pro audio industry. Their RX suite is truly miraculous, allowing audio engineers to visualize frequencies in a similar manner, but also offering brush-like tools to do things such as "deleting a dog bark from a guitar take" fairly easily.

As a friend who produced award-winning albums used to say, "I hope my kid gets into drugs — music studios are too dangerous!"

For anyone who is not into music production, these are the most ubiquitous audio monitors on the planet, for two basic reasons:

a) They are not very expensive

b) Given how popular they are, there's no other pair of monitors any given user is more likely to have used before... Meaning they are a "familiar reproduction baseline" for musicians, producers and engineers who are often working outside of their own studios and have to make critical decisions on the spot.

In recent decades, as audio monitoring fidelity dramatically improved, NS10s also became increasingly useful as secondary monitoring devices. "My mix sounds great on these hi-fi speakers — let me see if it also translates well to my ("crappier") NS10s!"

Finally, for anyone looking to get serious about audio monitoring for an arguably reasonable price (compared to other pro options), I highly recommend monitors by HEDD, a Berlin-based company founded by physicist Heinz Klaus (formerly R&D lead at ADAM, another solid audio monitor manufacturer whose products I also used for years). Here's Sound on Sound's review of the pair I currently own: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/hedd-type-20

Always fascinating to see evolution arrive at similar outcomes in vastly distanced species / environments. Not only the "hands" are so familiar to us, the whole animal resembles an axolotl.

More precisely, this is what they actually did:

"Therefore, I've made the difficult decision to reduce our operating expense(1) by about 25% Q/Q, which includes letting go of about 950 people

(..)

(1) Comprising Sales and Marketing Expenses, Technology and Development + General & Administrative Expenses, including stock-based compensation and excluding restructuring expenses and Other operating expenses"

(..)

In futher news, highly recommend Ben Thompson's recent interview with Brian Armstrong.

I love that too, only wish auto-scrolling speed could be adjusted (would like it to be slower).

I did the same thing. One more of those habits that didn't survive the transition to Mac OS X.

This made me think of Calico/Google trying to develop early cancer detection systems. If I recall correctly, they wanted you to swallow something that would be wandering in the bloodstream, ready to attach to loose cancer cells. That combo could then theoretically be measured by a wristband of sorts that we would wear around.

I remember seeing that demo 8 or 9 years ago. Yet here we are, still waiting for the pancreas to start hurting, when it's obviously too late to do anything about it. If only we had good incentives around preventive care...

Getting a 64 gb 2021 MacBook Pro really changed the game for me.

The computer now works on my rhythm, not its own. No need to suspend tabs or do any other shenanigans. Sometimes it's just not productive to stop everything to clean up tabs and/or open apps. Some rabbit holes are actually quite worth digging into, and they are often RAM-hungry!

Going from 16 to 64 gb on my personal laptop meant I got to choose when to deal with my own mess... on my own terms. I much prefer to do this cleaning exercise on weekends, versus "whenever the computer starts choking up".

So yeah, highly agree with the author here. Wish Apple laptops were RAM upgradable, but I doubt that will be coming anytime soon.

There's a movie about his brother, it's been on my watch list for years — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul_Beneath_My_Wings.

The connection between aviation history and nationalism is fascinating. As a dual citizen, it's hilarious to realize how virtually no Brazilians know much about the Wright brothers... while basically no American I ever met has even heard of Santos Dumont, a huge hero in Brazil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont).

Needless to say, the same applies to the Russian / American space race. We do know a lot more about the stories on both sides there, but we obviously have a very western-centric view of things. Going to the wonderful Museum of Cosmonautics in Moscow (https://kosmo-museum.ru/?locale=en) really drove this point home.

For people with "enthusiast level" cooling needs for rack gear I highly recommend AC Infinity's line of products.

You can get them off the shelf from Amazon, they saved my life after moving from foggy SF to often (too) warm São Paulo — https://acinfinity.com.

I second the Syntorial recommendation — https://www.syntorial.com. By far the best method I've seen, largely because you learn in practice.

Interesting demo, but of course Photoshop and a variety of mobile apps have had efficient "context aware filling" functionality for years now.

Again, yes, there are many problems yet to be solved.

But on the subject of piracy, it is still pretty rampant even on major platforms like YouTube, to this day — but less so than when they started out. Very fair to expect a similar trend here.

I agree there are lots of scammers on the community.

But were you on the internet in the early 90s? Do you remember the type of jpegs that got shared around on IRC, pretty much making their way to your hard drives whether you wanted to see them or not?

Yet here we are, having a highly civilized debate on the free, powered by a series of magic tubes. This is just the start and decentralization does have tangible advantages.

You don't need it. You don't even "need" art. But:

a) it's working, at least for now, and it certainly wasn't before (music label owner here, friends with many professional artists)

b) decentralization really does have a few important use case advantages — one can use the asset all across the internet while exhibiting provenance, etc.

We are still working on the impact of proof of work networks, gas fees... and there are quite a few obviously inflated assets that will in time find their way back to earth.

But people finally funding the arts... digital goods with provenance and attribution... all with easily accessible secondary markets, complete with game-changing royalty fees.

What's not to like? These rants are seriously getting old.

• Web3 becomes way more about portability of identity and micropayments than ownership of expensive 8-bit art

• Live commerce finally becomes mainstream in America

• Google tries to copy Notion

• Tidal waves of headlines about the upcoming demise of Bitcoin and ETH. Both tokens still end the year significantly stronger

• Bay Area to continue losing relative importance in tech. Anyone with hard skills itching to maximize bang for their buck

• Apple Sidecar still inexplicably buggy

So many great recollections playing this on MS DOS. The thrill I would feel finding obsidian items!

Makes me wonder whether a world in which those items can be carried from one meta world to another, through web3/MetaMask type wallets, is desirable. Should my hard-earned obsidian items retain some sort of secondary-market value, much like vintage Magic cards? I did work hard as heck to find them back in the day :)

As a Brazilian-American I often think Fernando Pessoa is the #1 thing one misses out on by not speaking Portuguese.

These things are highly subjective but he's easily my favorite 20th century poet. So creative, incredibly deep, yet so accessible. But as these things go, there's always a loss of fidelity in translation, particularly to non-Romance languages.

If anyone wants to tap straight into Pessoa's world with two flawless poems, you can't go wrong with "Tabacaria" (Tobacco Shop — https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/pessoa/TobaccoShop.htm...) and "Poema em Linha Reta" (Poem in a Straight Line — https://thenewloud.tumblr.com/post/11328170683/poem-in-a-str...).

"If only I could eat chocolate / with as much truth as you do!"