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virgil_disgr4ce

721 karma · joined October 25, 2011

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virgil_disgr4ce··on An empirical study of harness design for coding agents
Anecdotal or subjective don't mean "wrong." I would 100% agree that claude and chatgpt have different 'styles.' They do have their own patterns, and those patterns are distinguishable.
virgil_disgr4ce··on OpenSpec – A lightweight and configurable AI spec framework
specifying is not planning
virgil_disgr4ce··on ZX Spectrum: Experimenting with 1-Bit Sound
A friend of mine built his entire career as a composer around 1-bit music (famously in the form of an album that is physically a circuit inside a jewel case) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBUVKNqdsEo
virgil_disgr4ce··on Exit the Cave
Right? In a way I'm mildly surprised he hasn't had some kind of resurgence, because his style was (is?) actually so prescient of the kind of content that blows up on tiktok or whatever. Not that I'm equating the two—for all I know ZF's style made it possible for everything that came after.
virgil_disgr4ce··on Exit the Cave
I'm reminded of Ze Frank's "Brain Crack:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sHCQWjTrJ8

The idea is that unexecuted ideas can actually become addictive. You keep telling yourself, "boy, that thing is going to be amazing whenever I get around to making it!"

And the more you tell yourself this, the more you become petrified that it won't be great, making you even less likely to actually work on it.

virgil_disgr4ce··on The Emergent Symbolic Structure of Artificial Neural Networks
Maybe someone can clear this up for me. I always thought it was already obvious that neural networks, artificial or otherwise, are symbol systems. Some input pattern reliably associated with some output pattern is, nearly by definition, a symbol. No? Am I just using the word symbol differently than researchers in these fields?
virgil_disgr4ce··on Restroom Archive
I love this so much.
virgil_disgr4ce··on Playa Phone
what's the point of going to burning man? What's the point of going outside? What's the point of reading? what's the point of posting a comment on HN?
virgil_disgr4ce··on Show HN: Typebase – A single-folder back end you write in TypeScript
I don't understand this perspective. I've developed, delivered and maintained countless Next.js projects and never come close to considering it "high cognitive overhead." It's among the nicest DX I've experienced. It has a lot of features, I guess, but you don't have to use them if you don't like them. Next.js has very little to do with the frontend. The frontend is literally just react, which is why I commented in the first place. People keep acting like it's a "frontend framework" which doesn't make any sense at all.
virgil_disgr4ce··on Show HN: Typebase – A single-folder back end you write in TypeScript
Am I missing something? The entire point of next.js is that it's backend+frontend in one project
virgil_disgr4ce··on IPFS Maintainers Winding Down
please define "authentic activity" and "inauthentic activity"
virgil_disgr4ce··on First human trials of designer protein therapies stun US neuroscientists
Yeah I'm wondering the same thing. It's bizarre and unsettling and seems off-brand for HN.
virgil_disgr4ce··on First human trials of designer protein therapies stun US neuroscientists
China is an authoritarian regime that brutally punishes dissidents. Just throwing this out there because apparently everyone seems to have forgotten this.
virgil_disgr4ce··on Don't classify, hallucinate
Your call is important to us. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.
virgil_disgr4ce··on Music Generation by a Composer, for Musicians
Am I crazy or is there no way to actually hear wtf this is supposed to be selling??? "Audition stems" goes to a tone wheel but nothing actually does anything??

God I hate this.

Vibe-Coded App About a Topic I Just Learned About, by AI, for AI.

Vibe Theory replaces real ideas with a chatgpt conversation I had for 5 minutes. Access confusing buzzwords, sticky lingo parroted by LLMs, and adaptable blorg zorgations crafted for immediate, slopworthy internet points.

virgil_disgr4ce··on LinkedIn CringeBot 3000
Hm? The self-awareness is the advantage. Instead of just regurgitating cringy bullshit, write something sincere, something you actually find interesting, something you liked writing and something you'd enjoy reading.

Like any sincere creative work, it takes effort. You may have to push yourself hard, yes. But like most things, it does get easier with practice.

I'd like to think that the era of AI slop will cause more people to become more sincere and thoughtful because it's a competitive advantage!

virgil_disgr4ce··on Improving Heuristics for A* Pathfinding
I legit love this idea as a general book concept
virgil_disgr4ce··on Danish high schoolers will have to verbally defend written assignments
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you for posting this. It drives me absolutely freaking crazy when people do the "Oh, I'm just not _____," having essentially decided they are not _____, and therefore will never learn or change.

Like every time I hear "Oh I'm just not a math person." It's not that I expect everyone to like math because I do, not at all. But I do expect people to not artificially limit themselves. :/

virgil_disgr4ce··on Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't
Man you must be really fun at parties
virgil_disgr4ce··on Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage
All of this is exactly why I started Slow Code. I like programming. Lots of people like programming. I don't want to stop doing that. So we meet up once a month to practice that.

https://slowcode.dev

virgil_disgr4ce··on Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?
> did Psychedelics more than a few times

If you want to specify LSD, you should do that, not "psychedelics." There are many, many psychedelics. They have sometimes radical differences. You cannot generalize that word into "many people never make it back." That is flat-out wrong, not to mention harmful.

virgil_disgr4ce··on Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?
Whose record?
virgil_disgr4ce··on A Discord Alternative – Echoed
Man, the Nitro stuff is garbage, but it's bizarre that you're equating the ENTIRE UI to that. It's really not that obtrusive. I don't like it either but it's like 0.5% of the UI
virgil_disgr4ce··on A Discord Alternative – Echoed
Yeah; I get the impression that people saying this really mean "I hate the stupid upsells." Which is fine, I do too. But I guess on HN there's more clout to claiming it's the UI that's the problem?
virgil_disgr4ce··on The hardest way to make a GIF
This reminds me in the best way of Lynch's Lumiere competition entry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-OKH2ow4o
virgil_disgr4ce··on Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone
Monumental Deployment Mastermind
virgil_disgr4ce··on How Alberta Eradicated Rats
The Freakonomics podcast did a series on rats and their relationship to cities and humans and talked about Alberta's approach—it was really fascinating, I'd recommend it: https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/sympathy-for-the-rat
virgil_disgr4ce··on European sunscreens are safer than American (2024)
> Except you can check the differences easily

Huh? No you can't. Without regulation or oversight, companies will simply lie about what's in their product.

The libertarian vision really handwaves the practical reality of "I'll simply do a gas spectrum analysis on every single bite of food I put into my body. Easy!"

> Take a walk, that will help you a whole lot more, and won't make you poorer.

OK, before the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act and Federal Meat Inspection Act, food was frequently adulterated with e.g. formaldehyde in milk, borax in meat, copper salts in canned vegetables, and chalk/plaster in flour or milk.

Before the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, kids candy was dyed with toxic coal-tar. And on top of that was frequently contaminated with arsenic, lead, and mercury.

So please explain to all of us how taking a walk is going to save us from these issues.

virgil_disgr4ce··on Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left
+1 for Purelymail. Most things that appear to be too good to be true are not true. Purelymail is the real deal.
virgil_disgr4ce··on United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
> Actually, I don't think it's a good idea to bring your politics into a an enclosed pace like this

Ah yes, the classic "your politics," but of course the person having this opinion's politics are perfectly fine, because they're the "normal" person with the "normal" politics, not like that crazy person who thinks some randos shouldn't be the subject of genocide. How dare they!

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