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d_sem

512 karma · joined October 31, 2022

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d_sem··on How do we prevent mathemathics from devolving into the Medieval Era of secrecy?
I think the worry is:

1. People will publish AI generated frontier math making it difficult to identify frontier mathematicians. 2. Trained frontier mathematicians will become scarce

d_sem··on T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97 Degrees
that hasn't been my experience. Its widely used in engineering and has been for decades.
d_sem··on Stop Turning every purchase into a tip request
American tiping culture is a form legal discrimination, were customer tip less for workers of different races, religions, genders, sexual orientation.
d_sem··on Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee
I guess I'd like to understand the technical reasoning on how you think an how an Opus 5 could over time fit on an RTX 5070.
d_sem··on Why senior developers fail to communicate their expertise
This resonates. Tips on how to build this skill?
d_sem··on Meta's Pyrefly sabotages competing Python extensions without telling you
OP is an LLM.
d_sem··on New research suggests people can communicate and practice skills while dreaming
It's not new information that people can learn/practice in their sleep. This is already known and well documented. The interesting question is: what conditions increase the chance practicing in ones sleep? What are the mechanisms?
d_sem··on Why Japan has such good railways
I suspect the commenter above is reflecting on 2026 USA and not 1850 USA. The past tense nature of your comment if part of the concern highlights a common recognition that there is limited evidence the country is currently capable of building.
d_sem··on Why Switzerland has 25 Gbit internet and America doesn't
The geographic and demographic orders of magnitude when comparing these two places makes it difficult to extrapolate applicability of best practices. Who's to say the Swiss model scales? Article doesn't convincingly address this.

For context:

41 US States are geographically larger than Switzerland. It's most comparable state in area is West Virginia. West Virginia is .064% of the national area.

Some fun distance contexts. Driving end to end in Switzerland is comparable in distance to: Driving from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, Detroit to Chicago, or New York City to Washington DC.

d_sem··on Fermented foods shaped human biology
More likely the cultural practice was not passed down after the massive change in food preservation about 125 years ago. In the United States, fermentation was a universally practiced method for the pickling of vegetables. This practice has been so reduced that the word "pickle" now only refers to cucumber preservation.
d_sem··on Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode
Bold take. This hasn't been my experience.
d_sem··on Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)
very nice. Keep up the good work.
d_sem··on Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)
And yet an accessible ecosystem of 3rd party non-emacs tooling has not been developed.

I would pay big bucks for an obsidian-styled org-mode clone that had a no-frills GUI interface. I find org-modes task tracking, calendar, and agenda views top tier.

d_sem··on NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months
electric bicycles have significantly less tire waste.
d_sem··on Perl's decline was cultural
I worked for a few years in an large org which utilized perl for build scripts, testing automation, and a few other things. I would summarize the half decade Perl learning curve as initial bewilderment, intermediate cult like praise, to advance level disillusionment.

There was something about scaling usage in large teams that felt awkward and high friction.

d_sem··on Roblox is a problem but it's a symptom of something worse
I think the primary issue is that there is massive demand for adolescent social interaction in a world that is increasingly physically isolating for kids.

Demographic shifts make suburban families too sparse to support children friend groups. Denser cities are increasingly financially impossible for families to move in.

d_sem··on Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?
any particular platforms that one could host the blog?
d_sem··on Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?
Any 101 tips for starting a blog that will stand the test of time?
d_sem··on VisiCalc on the Apple II
This was before my time but I appreciate the write up and the nostalgia from folks in this thread.

My take away was that VisiCalc was a fairly straight forward technological problem, but a 10,000x+ impact idea. I feel like there are still idea's like this waiting in the shadows to be discovered by a lowly undergrad somewhere who tries something unique for the first time.

d_sem··on Comparing the power consumption of a 30 year old refrigerator to a new one
So can we project from the authors data that, under normal operation, both bridges roughly consume the same amount of power?
d_sem··on Abandoned land drives dangerous heat in Houston, study finds
You sure? Thats the case for areas the size of entire states. You can look at any weather temperature map to prove this.
d_sem··on Software update bricks some Jeep 4xe hybrids over the weekend
Thanks for the clarity. Wow this is a big deal.
d_sem··on Software update bricks some Jeep 4xe hybrids over the weekend
How did you verify that a software update can 1. Occur during driving operation of the vehicle and 2. results in vehicle power loss?

I worked in an auto supplier years ago and there where several protections in place to prevent the risk of update corruption on safety related components. One of the simplest one the UDS programming session having entry protections related to vehicle speed, vehicle driving mode, etc.

d_sem··on Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025
This article left me wishing it was "How I'm using coding agents to do <x> task better"

I've been exploring AI for two years now. It's certainly upgraded itself from the toy classification to a basic utility. However, I increasingly run into its limitations and find reverting to pre-LLM ways of working more robust, faster, and more mentally sustainable.

Does someone have concrete examples of integrating LLM in a workflow that pushes state-of-the-art development practices & value creation further?

d_sem··on Why warm countries are poorer
You're over indexing on the genetics impacts of these things over the cultural impacts.
d_sem··on The "Wage Level" Mirage: H-1B proposal could help outsourcers and hurt US talent
My equally anecdotal professional experience has been the exact opposite and certainly influences my view on this topic.
d_sem··on The "Wage Level" Mirage: H-1B proposal could help outsourcers and hurt US talent
One of America's greatest assets is its brand as a place worth immigrating too. Much of the social capital is gained by high performing international hires who leverage the H-1B visa. We want methods for highly educated people to make the US their home. limiting this is short sighted and negatively impact the health of the country.
d_sem··on Writing an operating system kernel from scratch
Is there a book one can read to learn how to create one?
d_sem··on OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart
Detroit's decline started as soon as assembly plants went one-story in the 40's-50's. There was further decline with the advent of robotics/computers in the 70's-80's, and 2000's with globalization.
d_sem··on The maths you need to start understanding LLMs
I think the author did a sufficient job caveating his post without being verbose.

While reading through past posts I stumbled on a multi part "Writing an LLM from scratch" series that was an enjoyable read. I hope they keep up writing more fun content.

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