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laserlight

2,188 karma · joined August 12, 2021

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laserlight··on OpenAI Privacy Filter
> predictably do what they are programmed to do

And now they predictably do what they are not programmed to do.

laserlight··on I am building a cloud
> I can't shell into ECS

Is there a specific reason why you can't shell into ECS? IIRC, I was able to do so by following the guide [0].

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/new-using-amazon-ecs...

laserlight··on Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors
> 200ml shot

It's not an espresso.

laserlight··on Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs
> A certain large company

Which one is it? And, more importantly, why not name it?

laserlight··on Productive Procrastination
Note that not being okay with that idea is a symptom of ADHD. Talk about it with your psychiatrist.
laserlight··on Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?
Wow. This is news to me. Office Lens had been my trusted scanning app for ten years. It was years ahead of Cam Scanner bullshit, which many people used, likely because of marketing.
laserlight··on Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era
> I feel like there’s a bunch of factors for why it will never be the same for many folks

Yeah, and the problem arises simply because some people are unable to accept the fact. They insist that if LLM-assisted coding doesn't work for one, it's because “you're holding it wrong”.

laserlight··on Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
I'm sorry that it wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that I was going to connect to Sam Altman. I specifically wanted to address why it wasn't the case that people were “intellectually beaten” by Sam Altman.

> except the one you imagine is true

I'm not sure what you mean. I told about an example of manipulation that I witnessed. I later learned that these were common tactics employed by con-artists, scammers, etc.

> Don’t project them on people you don’t know and seemingly have no actual first-hand experience with.

I don't need first-hand experience with someone to understand that they are a manipulator. I am comfortable forming my opinion based on reports.

laserlight··on Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
I have experience in dealing with Sam Altman-like behavior. I hope to explain how their tactics unfold.

> I can see people concluding that they have been lied to rather than accept that they had been intellectually beaten.

There are two angles to this: from an individual perspective and from a collective one.

One's interaction with such a manipulator isn't a single shot. There is not a single event that they are “beaten”. First, one gets persuaded --- you might argue that there's nothing wrong with a skillful persuasion. At some point they realize that the reality is not in line with their expectations. They bring the point up to the manipulator and ask for a change, this time in more concrete terms. The manipulator agrees with the change, negotiates compromises, and the relationship continues. After some time the manipulated party realizes that things are not going in the direction they desire. This time they ask for more concrete terms, without accepting any compromises. The manipulator accepts, yet continues to act against the terms. The manipulated party is now angry and directly confronts the manipulator. The manipulator apologizes and tells that none of it was intentional, and asks for another chance. However, at that point, the manipulator has run out of “politically correct” “persuasion tactics”, and tells blatant lies to make the other party behave.

From a collective perspective, even those “politically correct” “persuasion tactics” are discovered to be lies, because what the manipulator told different parties are in direct opposition to each other, i.e., they cannot all be truths.

> Helen Toner suggested that they effectively ambushed Altman because if he had time to respond to allegations he could have provided a reasonable explanation. It did not reflect well on her.

I understand how her behavior may raise a flag for the unsuspecting, but it was exactly the right one. Manipulators prey on the benefit of the doubt. If Toner were to bring Altman's behavior into attention of others, no doubt that Altman would manipulate them successfully.

It's unfortunate that many people are unaware of these tactics and assume the best of intentions, when such assumptions fuel the manipulation that they would better avoid.

laserlight··on Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
> He's doing his job as it is defined (make OpenAI profitable.)

What? OpenAI was a non-profit until Sam made it for-profit.

laserlight··on Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
> Is that because they’re paying Google?

No, the Google deal hasn't shipped yet.

laserlight··on In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants
“Worth” and “at the market clearing price” are different concepts, which was my point. The job doesn't pay what it's worth, it pays the market price, which is determined by market dynamics, not how much people value it.
laserlight··on In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants
> pays what it's worth to society

Pay and worth are different, just like price and value are. Garbage collection is worth a lot, but its pay is determined by market dynamics. As the number of unemployed increases, it will pay less.

laserlight··on Music for Programming
This is more like music for relaxation. I can't code without a strong rhythm.
laserlight··on Employers use your personal data to figure out the lowest salary you'll accept
> they'd discover they needed to offer you salaries in the $350-400k range?

No, such a discovery wouldn't be possible, because nobody would pay that amount to someone who was willing to accept $200K.

> They're locked in an auction and the market price for your time is nowhere near $200k.

There is no magical market price that exists outside the market dynamics. When bidders know that one's current salary is $150K, their willingness to offer higher salaries will diminish accordingly.

laserlight··on SSH certificates: the better SSH experience
> Things like deploying dev keys to various production environments, instead of generating/registering them within said environment.

I can see this happening when a developer is authorized to generate, but not to register. So, they just reuse an already-registered one.

laserlight··on The house is a work of art: Frank Lloyd Wright
I wish people talked more about the building's shortcomings: moisture, mold, mildew, etc. It's a good architectural demonstration, but not good architecture --- just like how an overengineered code might be interesting, but not practical.
laserlight··on Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
He was born in 1971 according to Wikipedia [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen

laserlight··on Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
> A decade ago wasn't Musk talking about Hyperloop?

Yep, and he claimed that he would colonize Mars soon.

laserlight··on Go Naming Conventions: A Practical Guide
I don't deny the trade-off between variable name length and other factors. But, between 1 and 38, I doubt that the optimal length is at 1. Adding 5 more letters doesn't take anything away, IMHO, while increasing comprehensibility significantly.
laserlight··on Go Naming Conventions: A Practical Guide
> remember how it was introduced

The problem is that many times I have not read the definition to remember. Debugger puts me into a context where I have to figure out what `p` stands for. I go up the call stack and now there's `s` to be deciphered. Worse is the reuse of `p` for person, product, part, etc. in different contexts.

Debugging is not the only problem. Code is read rarely linearly. Many times I browse different uses of a function, or see how a data structure is modified in different contexts. Looking up single letter variables is just a waste of time.

laserlight··on Go Naming Conventions: A Practical Guide
person.Age is easier to understand than p.Age regardless of the loop size.
laserlight··on Go Naming Conventions: A Practical Guide
> we use the identifier p to represent a value in the people slice — the range block is so small and tight that using a single letter name is clear enough.

No, it's not. When you see `p.Age`, you have to go back and find the body of the loop, see what it operates on and decipher what p stands for. When you see `person.Age`, you understand it. I've never understood what is gained by using `p` instead of spelling it out as `person`.

laserlight··on Goodbye to Sora
I'm comfortable reading much more than two paragraphs, even in online forums. In this specific case, unreadability is because of poor sentence structure. I quit in the middle of the second sentence.
laserlight··on Goodbye to Sora
> gets the point across

If people don't read because the text is an unreadable mess, none of the points get across.

laserlight··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks
> If people really counted [...]

Exactly. I counted and reported my results in a previous thread [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272913

laserlight··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks
“You're holding it wrong.” is the most common response I get, when I talk about problems I had with LLM-assisted coding.
laserlight··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks
What's your definition of "working"? Do you consider it working, when you have to put more effort into prompting back-and-forth than writing it the old way?
laserlight··on Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents
Fair, but the thread has evolved into a discussion on the theory. We are definitely in the territory of theory when the invisible hand is mentioned.
laserlight··on Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents
> That means there’s an invisible hand keeping prices up, or basically that the market is not free enough.

Nowhere in the economic theory there is a proposition stating that prices should fall below affordable levels, given enough competition.

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