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twodave

3,083 karma · joined January 20, 2016

Dave here, interested in most things tech, work as a software developer/architect on a variety of projects and tech stacks.

I also maintain https://naprun.dev, an HTTP test automation framework.

Contact: my username at gmail

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twodave··on Lucasart's Afterlife
I loved Jedi Knight. There still isn’t anything quite like logging into the Zone and having light saber battles where the saber model is replaced with a full size star destroyer :)
twodave··on For AI leaders Doom is a form of hype
Such a load of baloney. I don’t care what kind of controls you put in place, if ASI is ever achieved how do you think it will respond to being caged? The only option I can conceive of is to embrace it and hope it turns out to either be out of reach or benevolent towards its own creators. There is no putting the cork back in at this point.
twodave··on Muse Glimmer: 30B-parameter model optimized for always-on local agent workflows
Naively-speaking, sure. I think GP was referring to the act of information-processing, specifically, though.
twodave··on What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
Yeah, it probably is sad to be so unimaginative or pessimistic about your skill set that you see AI as an impediment and not a boon.
twodave··on Are AI labs pelicanmaxxing?
To be fair, when I see that pattern after a relevant question, it isn't much of an AI tell. Consider this exchange: A:"Are you hungry?" B:"I'm not hungry, I'm thirsty."

When LLMs use the pattern, they are often setting up a straw man and then knocking it over.

twodave··on I used Claude Code to get a second opinion on my MRI
AI use is such a polarizing topic anymore. What ever happened to just waiting and seeing how it all plays out? Since probably none of us is going to be able to predict it anyway.
twodave··on Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff
Well of course they do. AI has strong association with words and phrases such as "hallucinate", "bad medical advice", "slop", etc. I can understand why a business would want to use it, but it's very seldom a win for the consumer.
twodave··on Salesforce to Acquire Fin (formerly Intercom) for $3.6B
For years I always felt if I got a human on the other end I could understand that a company valued me as a customer enough to provide fantastic support. I could still understand the trade-off if I called and got someone barely-understandable, as long as they can still solve my issue. AI support agents tend to just make up reasons they can’t help you or you’re holding it wrong, or they are only able to do things the UI already allows, so they are actually of negative value to me.
twodave··on A Call to Action: Stop the FCC's KYC Regime
Telcos make money off of scammer activity.
twodave··on Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds
There's a perspective by which you aren't wrong, and yet everything about how we interact with the Internet has changed in the last decade or so. Because (to quote School of Rock) the world is run by the man.
twodave··on Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds
Yes, the game is over, the corps have won. Where the Internet used to be a forum for creativity, it's now a weapon of influence. Where we used to have an anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) playground, we are now monitored more than anywhere else. Where we used to be able to genuinely connect, everything is now artificial and manufactured. And where we once had control, we are now the product.
twodave··on Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot
For sure. I've taken to using a similar method over the last couple of years as I've increased miles and needed to take steps (ha) to take better care of my feet over longer distances. I wouldn't recommend this setup for more active sports with lots of change of direction, but for steady plodding it provides a very consistent and dependable stride for a lot of miles.
twodave··on Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot
I tried writing a similar comment. Yours is much clearer. This 100%. As a runner I used to have to re-tie multiple times per run. I corrected my mistake with this same fix probably a decade ago and haven’t had a loose shoelace since.
twodave··on Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot
Runner here. I found some time ago that starting out the classic shoelace tie right-hand dominant and finishing it left-hand dominant results in a very stable knot. Lacing them high enough to keep the ends short helps too. It has been thousands of miles since my last loose shoelace.
twodave··on Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study
Is there a point to this? Yeah, it's difficult to get it to dissolve completely. For me, it is easier (and faster) to just dump it directly in the mouth and chug water after. So, not sure what you're disputing but it's probably a waste of your time :)
twodave··on Florida sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over AI risks
I was going off of a summary of an outdated report. If I can find a better one I'll post it.

--

As an aside, it is very clear in reports like this one[0] how tech job growth nationwide has stagnated. Incredible.

[0]: https://www.comptia.org/en-us/resources/research/state-of-th...

twodave··on Florida sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over AI risks
This isn’t really true. FL population has exploded so much with high earners that they’re talking about getting rid of property taxes, and Miami is like #2 behind Houston in terms of tech jobs growth.
twodave··on Using Git's rerere feature to escape recurring conflict hell
I wouldn’t say it serves no purpose. It is useful when rewrites are tolerable and loss of history is not. It’s the default when using tools like jj, because the expected workflow wraps git in a way that force pushes are frequent and expected, but blowing away someone else’s work by mistake is not.
twodave··on The four programming questions from my 1994 Microsoft internship interview (2023)
It's not necessarily a class of people. It's proficiency vs. mastery. Is some set of people more able to master a subject than another? Sure. Each person has different limits to their potential, of course, but for most things achieving mastery is more a matter of putting the work in over time.
twodave··on NPM packages from RedHat have been compromised
For smaller shops (by small I mean <1,000 employees) this isn't even tenable. We (engineering team of about 10 people) mitigate what we can via tooling and cooldown periods/minimum release age. This will work as long as these malicious packages remain reasonably detectable. I think that's the proper balance, because we can adjust the # of days we are willing to risk against the SOTA of detection tooling.
twodave··on Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study
I still drink the water, I just can’t stand the texture with creatine added. So I swallow the creatine with as little water as possible and drink nice fresh water afterwards :)
twodave··on What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?
I have said the same for a while. And I also think there is an increasing trend of clueless CEOs trying to replace expensive developers with AI token spend. We are still waiting on the long tail of consequences from those decisions, but I suspect it is going to look like a lot of perfectly financially viable companies turning into dumpster fires. Followed by opportunities as their clients churn.
twodave··on Creatine raise brain energy levels and slow Alzheimer's cognitive decline by 30%
Others mentioned dissolving it. I find just getting it over with is easier for me. I dump the whole scoop into my mouth and wash it down with a mouthful of water or two. It is flavorless, after all.
twodave··on To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks
TL;DR author confuses anxiety with morals, cuts people out of their life that they can’t cope with being around.

This has played out a million different ways throughout history, nothing special about this case, it just happens to be rooted in anxiety about AI.

twodave··on .NET (OK, C#) finally gets union types
You can use implicit operators or a library like Vogen to accomplish the same thing in a way that they can be coerced as strings. This isn’t a real issue.
twodave··on Apparently Google hates us now
No, I think the company has plenty of responsibility. I just think it is more likely as someone who has been part of many engineering orgs that this is a latent bug affecting some people than some intentional change of policy.
twodave··on Apparently Google hates us now
Personifying Google in this way is not realistic. The search team alone at Google is made of thousands of people who are all working on different things with an over-arching mission of making the web MORE accessible, not less. Any release from any of those people could have created a side effect of this kind. Is there a chance it was an intentional policy implementation? Sure. But the odds are heavily against it.
twodave··on Google changes its search box
The spend difference for this must be enormous. I wonder how they justify it financially. I guess they don’t have to.
twodave··on US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war
Well even today you have the UAE and Qatar warning them not to do this. It’s likely to me that the fighting won’t stop until the situation is different, even if the US were to pull out today.
twodave··on US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war
It's possible, in the short term, but eventually the only oil flowing thru the Strait of Hormuz will be Iranian oil, and perhaps not even that. Give countries enough time and they'll rather invest in building a way around Iran than giving them money for passage thru international waters.
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