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mark4on Formal methods and the future of programming

Relevant keynote I wrote about

Formal methods won, now what? https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/04/bugbash26-keynote....

Yep, this is the hardest part. Big groups slow everything down. I have found it helps to keep moving on what you can control while you wait on others, so you don't fully lose the thread.

mark4on Subliminal learning: Models transmit behaviors via hidden signals in data

Thank you!

mark4on Subliminal learning: Models transmit behaviors via hidden signals in data

Thank you! Great explanation! As I guessed this is much less alarmist and sensational than what the paper seems to be claiming.

mark4on Subliminal learning: Models transmit behaviors via hidden signals in data

ELI5 on this please. I don't get a good understanding by doing a quick read.

mark4on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

Getting schooled by AI, colleges must evolve (March, 2023)

https://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2023/03/getting-schooled-b...

mark4on Undergraduate shows that searches within hash tables can be much faster

This is a cool and important one. I was happy to see the article celebrating the young scientist. This is well deserved. Congratulations to him. And I hope this inspires other undergraduates as well.

mark4on What is going wrong for Intel?

In 2001, I did an internship at IBM. Ever since then, I have been convinced IBM should be going out of business any day now. Since then AWS was formed, and ate IBM's lunch. But IBM kept going. To my complete amazement, they are still in business, and doing fine. They had always seen less promising than Intel, and yet they are still there. I think Intel is undervalued, and is better positioned to make a come back.

mark4on You are probably sitting down for too long

On a tangential topic, is there another way of sitting, like sitting up? Why do English require qualifying with "down" so frequently?

mark4on Goals of Care

My condolences for your loss.

mark4on Andrew Ng says AI has a proof-of-concept-to-production gap

Winter is coming

mark4on IBM has cut its blockchain team down to almost nothing – sources

From IBM's whitepaper on blockchains in 2017: https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/REGBVG7J "7 in 10 consumer industry executives expect to have a blockchain production network by 2020"

mark4on Aurora 7 Prototype – 7 Screen Laptop

This is how I imagine Bad Place would torture Steve Jobs, with Bad Jony Ive bringing a version of this prototype to every other meeting to get feedback.

mark4on Rust 1.48

Newbie question. Why is this useful? Wouldn't slices be enough to fulfill the use-cases this would see?

mark4on Dutch brewery burns iron as a clean, recyclable fuel

Yet another front-page article about Rust.

mark4on Patrick Collison's Questions

Your answer resonated with me a lot. Can you elaborate on this? What is that structural reason?

> The underlying reason is structural -- neither our funding agency nor our institution is willing to yield on a fundamental sticking point that is causing all of our young researchers to leave.