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markmaglana

31 karma · joined June 23, 2021

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markmaglana··on GitHub merge queue is generally available
This looks like the merge method used by Gerrit which I've missed. Good to know that it's now available on GH!
markmaglana··on Social media for AI bots: “No humans allowed”
One could also call this the Social Network of Things (SNoT).
markmaglana··on Wardley Maps–illustrated through Gerstner
Astute observation!

I’ve had a similar issue with the Business Model Canvas which, while very useful in visualizing a business’ model, leaves me hanging and a bit uncomfortable because, as you said, there are no (or incomplete) hard data to back up its claims.

On the other hand, if we were to consider these tools as just hypotheses makers and validate those hypotheses with the company’s financials (among other things), I think they’d be a very valuable component of a very able business management toolkit.

markmaglana··on Wikipedia user edits over 90k uses of “comprised of”
As a non-native English speaker, the issue that I've had with the dual meaning of "comprise" is that I was first introduced to it via the "is comprised of" usage which resulted in me equating "comprised" with "composed" or "made up" As in: "X is comprised of Y and Z" == "X is composed of Y and Z" == "X is made up of Y and Z"

Some time later, I came across the usage "X comprises Y and Z" and, based on my previous understanding that "comprise" == "compose," I took that to mean "X composes Y and Z" which, in other words, means "Y and Z are made up of X". But really, it means the other way around which is that "X is made up of Y and Z!" Only when I learned about the dual meaning of "comprise" did I correctly understand it to mean the latter.

To this day, I still have to actively juggle this arbitrary "dual-rule" in my head when I come across "comprise."

markmaglana··on FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank
I think the additional liability from that event would be much less because it would be computed from the interest payments that the bank eventually owes the depositors.

So given an interest per annum of 1% (for example), a $1m deposit would add $1m liquid, non-earning assets while also adding $1.01m to their liabilities. So, effectively, they’d have $10,000 in unsecured liabilities.

To counter that imbalance (as well as protect the cash from the effects of inflation), they’d have to put some of that cash to work via various investments.

markmaglana··on FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank
I wonder if it’s correct to also think about it in this way: idle cash devalues over time. Coupled with interest (no matter how small) that they pay out to their depositors, this exposes banks to future liability. To counter that, they have to give “jobs” to as much of this cash as possible so that they can make those payments while also pocketing a profit for themselves.
markmaglana··on Mermaid Cheat Sheet
Still waiting for the day someone out there adds some drag-and-drop capability in a Mermaid based UI similar to https://sequencediagram.org/
markmaglana··on Theory of Mind May Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models
Your question aligns with the argument I'm trying to make which is: If it turns out that our understanding of ToM is wrong, should we be making proclamations about--whether for or against--the real-ness of our current AI implementations?
markmaglana··on Theory of Mind May Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models
> Something that is able to simulate having a theory of mind sufficiently well does actually have a theory of mind.

That presupposes that our existing tools for detecting the presence of ToM are 100% accurate. Might it be possible that they are imprecise and it’s only now that their critical flaws have been exposed?

markmaglana··on Theory of Mind May Have Spontaneously Emerged in Large Language Models
At some point, when multiple components (including the LLM) have been connected to form a system that exhibits "knowing" (the way humans do), wouldn't the "intelligence" be distributed across the entire system rather than attributed primarily to the LLM?

In other words, the LLM wouldn't be the equivalent of the human brain. Instead, it would just be equivalent to that part of the human brain that processes language.

markmaglana··on A step by step guide on how to become a DevOps engineer
Step 0: Understand that “DevOps” is a really bad name for “Industrial Engineering principles applied to IT.”
markmaglana··on Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?
I still haven’t made the transition to Neovim in favor of stability, but here’s part of my dotfiles repo that installs all the plugins that I use with Vim:

https://github.com/relaxdiego/dotfiles/blob/main/run_once_07...

markmaglana··on The Trouble with Startup Accelerators
To expand on your assertion, I’m sharing a link to a framework that I drafted a few years back for evaluating an accelerator (referred to as an incubator in the paper):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B75fn5jlTYO3ODQ5X0NhM0txQ2M...

markmaglana··on Ask HN: Share your personal site
https://relaxdiego.com/

Just recently (finally) added functionality that auto-tests the code snippets in my articles. I talked about it in this article: https://relaxdiego.com/2022/02/autotest-code-snippets.html

markmaglana··on When I do TDD and when I don’t
JB Rainsberger would like a word with you :-)

https://blog.thecodewhisperer.com/permalink/integrated-tests...

markmaglana··on When I do TDD and when I don’t
I tend to go by how much anxiety a piece of code might give me once it goes to production. If I expect the level of anxiety to breach a certain threshold (usually when there’s too many logic branching than I can keep in my head), then I write the tests first.

The above assumes though that I’ve done enough previous discovery to have a relatively robust model of the problem domain. If not, I prototype first and during this stage I won’t be using TDD. Prototypes produced are throwaway, of course.

markmaglana··on Does the software industry learn?
...but aren't those tools a representation of the additional knowledge that the industry accumulated over time?
markmaglana··on Don't start with microservices – monoliths are your friend
If there’s no organizational barrier (e.g. microservices architecture, separate repos with strict permissions) that will prevent devs from leaking abstractions across technical boundaries, those well-defined modules and interfaces will devolve into a big ball of mud.

I say this with the assumption that the team is large and members regularly come and go.

markmaglana··on Tacit knowledge is more important than deliberate practice
Both sides of the aisle in this debate appear to hold a common assumption that our current method of sharing knowledge (i.e. written and spoken words) are the best methods that we will ever have at our disposal.

However, should a day come when a new method circumvents this very crude way of knowledge transmission, this debate will be significantly changed or even rendered moot.

markmaglana··on Mozilla Guidelines to Secure SSH
It doesn't address the Trust On First Use (TOFU) issue.
markmaglana··on Micro – a modern and intuitive terminal-based text editor
Nice trolling. You almost got me there. You have my respect! ;-)
markmaglana··on How to replace estimations and guesses with a Monte Carlo simulation
I don't understand why commenters are so hung up on the "unless you're working with absolute bozos" part. That sentence is irrelevant compared to the rest of the comment. The three benefits listed are a great articulation of how estimates should be used. Couldn't have said it any better.
markmaglana··on How to replace estimations and guesses with a Monte Carlo simulation
If you already have ~2 months worth of data, why not just use that to plot a distribution curve? Seems to me that the monte carlo simulation that the article describes is really just used to "guess" the likely distribution curve. Seems unnecessary if you already have ~2 months worth of data.
markmaglana··on Tesseract OCR
This is the OCR engine used by Mayan EDMS[1] which I've used since 2018. The reliability has been topnotch.

[1] https://www.mayan-edms.com/

markmaglana··on Dell removed Fn+Left/Right for Home/End from all its products
> The worst I have ever used is Macbook Pro. It doesn't even have a delete key!

It does but you have to use Fn with the delete key.