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zppln

842 karma · joined December 4, 2021

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zppln··on The political orientation of the ChatGPT AI system
Yesterday I spent some time (admittedly not a lot) trying to get it to comment on the war in Ukraine, but it was as if it never happened. Quite eerie. Has not been trained on recent events? Anyone else experienced something similar?

Edit: That is, it was aware that there's been a conflict since 2014 ("caused by pro-Russian separatists"), but didn't seem to be aware of this years invasion.

zppln··on ChatGPT passes the 2022 AP Computer Science A free response section
I find myself almost getting a headache reading some of the things it outputs. It's like my brain overloads from trying to find meaning where there is none.
zppln··on Placing #1 in Advent of Code with GPT-3
I could see it be pretty demotivating not standing a chance against AIs for the first couple of days though (and since you don't know beforehand which day they'll break down you still have to put in the work everyday).
zppln··on Northrop Grumman unveils B-21 bomber
This is an interesting point. While pulling of an attack like that wouldn't be easy, just having your entire air force having to patch for it simultaneously would be devastating from an availabilty PoV. Perhaps information security assurance is the real 6th gen? :)
zppln··on Northrop Grumman unveils B-21 bomber
The B2 Spirit cost like $2B+ each. In the 90's...
zppln··on Northrop Grumman unveils B-21 bomber
Additional photo from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-21_Raider#/...

Additional PR from Northrop: https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-21-raider/1...

I have to admit that the 6th gen classification sounds a bit weak. Data links are hardly new and fighters have been integrating every weapon under the sun for decades.

But the Open Architecture stuff (and more generally how tech is shared between projects) appears to have started serving America well.

zppln··on Show HN: Can you tell if an image is AI-generated?
You correctly classified 27 of 30 (90%) images!

You identified 14 of 14 (100%) AI-generated images.

You identified 13 of 16 (81%) human-made images.

Better than I thought. Got a few dupes though.

zppln··on Berlin artist transforms waste plastic into an inflatable isolation chamber
I expect no one will visit the installation and that it will have no impact whatsoever. :)
zppln··on Writing docs well: why should a software engineer care?
If you document something well people won't have to nag you over it.

One of my first real job assignments was a relatively large C project (client/server architecture) behind a simple CLI. I was given the opportunity to document it relatively well (not just the CLI, but the internal design as well). Ten years later there are multiple GUI clients implemented, some even at other companies. One guy even replaced the client-server UDP protocol (don't ask) with a TCP one. Aside from reviewing pull requests for stuff like that, I don't think I've ever had to explain how any of it actually work aside from pointing them to the docs.

zppln··on Porting 58k lines of D and C++ to Jai
People have been believing that for close to a decade now.
zppln··on High-documentation, low-meeting work culture
This sounds like a programmer's rather naive take to be honest.

Available PLM/PDMs could be improved a lot yes, but you're not gonna replace them by slapping a GUI on git (I mean, you could do that but it's really just a pretty small part of the problem space).

zppln··on Dissecting a Dummy Promo MiniDisc
Neo did.
zppln··on Ever-expanding animation of the life of the 796th floor of a space station
Wow. I don't think I've ever felt less imaginative.
zppln··on Leaderless Teams
I feel like I've suffered through this type of "leadership" for the past decade. When it works, it's great (although I feel you've kind of traded traditional authority for slight manipulation/scheming on part of the leader in such instances). These instances have also always involved more experienced team members.

When it doesn't work it's useless. Instead of just getting told to drive straight off a cliff you get to wander around in a forest for a while and when you eventually find out you're lost it's way too late.

As always (and as TFA points out) the person you pick for a leader still needs to actually possess whatever skill set your flavor of the month leadership style requires.

zppln··on Musk discusses putting all of Twitter behind a paywall
Yeah, that's my feeling as well.
zppln··on Signal Introduces Stories
I never asked for this.
zppln··on Twitter’s mass layoffs have begun
So, article is a bit vague on who were let go. Is this gonna have any real impact on operations going forward? Could you really axe half the staff and not?
zppln··on The mysticism of Alan Watts (2018)
While I do find Watts pretty based overall, some of his talks do give me that TED talk vibe, i.e. man on stage who says things that sound intelligent and an audience of middle class people sitting there spellbound and thinking they're educating themselves, whereas in reality most of them will forget everything they heard during the drive home.
zppln··on The art of the desk setup (2021)
I don't understand how people can live without a numpad. I feel so much more comfortable typing numbers on one compared to using the top row.
zppln··on Russia continues funding media in the U.S.
I spent some time listening to Radio Sputnik earlier this year. I was curious to hear how their mouthpieces were spinning the war, and Radio Sputnik was the only one I could find that hadn't been shut down. I was surprised to learn that they actually broadcast over the air in the US (D.C. and one other location).

It's a pretty creepy channel. A lot of the programs are just re-runs because the hosts quit over the war (which they of course don't announce). One of the hosts is clearly dying from some disease (I once heard him throw up on the air). Some of their pundits I'd characterize as downright evil (Mark Sleboda...). There's also a surprising amount of American academics that come on, which is kind of odd.

zppln··on Show HN: I 3D scanned the interior of the Great Pyramid at Giza
Looks like that gear is still there (in the bedrock chamber) scanning. The 3D tour mentions it.
zppln··on Pocket Casts goes open source
> I don't see them innovating

For a podcast app that's a feature, not a bug.

zppln··on We're Drowning
In Python you can insist on pulling in Click... or just use argparse which is available in the standard library.
zppln··on Syntax Design (2014)
> syntactic salt

I feel like this describes Rust's lifetime annotations pretty well too.

zppln··on Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built
And why weren't they viable? Sounds strange that other countries would be able to operate nuclear reactors profitably but not Sweden.
zppln··on Everyone going to World Cup must have this app, experts are sounding the alarm
I doubt this is gonna stop anyone with a ticket from going.
zppln··on Ask HN: Is it still possible to live in a terminal?
It obviously depends on your working environment..? I'd be screwed 5 minutes into my workday having to sign into our PDM.

> It seems like the terminal world is slowly getting abandoned in favor of proprietary GUI apps.

Eh, I'm seeing quite the opposite trend. I see people doing stuff that'd consider using a terminal to be straight up inappropriate for (e.g. displaying line graphs).

And your troubles with Slack is most likely down to it being proprietary garbage.

zppln··on IKEA’s Crimes Against Cartography
As someone who lives close to an Ikea store and can got here spontaneously it's kind of fun to observe people there. A lot of people have to travel quite a bit to visit the store as you say, so when they go make sure to try to get everything they need. Couple this with a couple of hungry kids and you have recipe for disaster. In my experience things usually start to fall apart around the bedlinen section. By the bathroom section couples are often full passive aggressive towards each other. Thankfully the flower section soon follows and appear to pick people up so they can make it through the registers.
zppln··on Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
Hm, not in my app (Android)? Unencrypted messages have an open padlock next to them, whereas encrypted ones have double checkmarks. But no difference in color, even in conversations that contain both.
zppln··on Removing SMS support from Signal Android (soon)
> There are three big reasons why we’re removing SMS support for the Android app now: prioritizing security and privacy, ensuring people aren’t hit with unexpected messaging bills, and creating a clear and intelligible user experience for anyone sending messages on Signal.

Pretty weak reasoning to me. Just do what Apple does and color sms messages some other color or whatever. Problem solved.

This is gonna make me drop Signal. I use it as my default sms app and have been very happy with it, but most of my conversations (although most actual messages are Signal) are still over sms so it'll have to go. I can't be bothered to roll a bunch of different apps.

Still, I'm grateful for the work the Signal team has done over the years. Sad to see us part ways!

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