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Cake day: Jun 25, 2023

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You can use more debug outputs (log(…)) to narrow it down. Challenge your assumptions! If necessary, check line by line if all the variables still behave as expected. Or use a debugger if available/familiar.

This takes a few minutes tops and guarantees you to find at which line the actual behaviour diverts from your expectations. Then, you can make a more precise search. But usually the solution is obvious once you have found the precise cause.


Yes, I feel you.

And yes, that’s how it is. It’s an insanely complex industry if you really want to understand how things work.

Which you don’t need to get things done.

Which you still can if you really want, if you’re willing to invest the time and energy to study it thoroughly for many years if not decades.

But even then, chances are you’ll be touching libraries, concepts or technologies which you did not study in-depth yet. I think you need to be both aware and tolerant of limited knowledge, and willing to learn continuously.


A design professor actually proposed this idea to us. Make the user feel how the computer is working, so they can appreciate the result more.


“Monad” is a shorter term though. “Structured data type” reads almost as bulky as “Curve of constant normal intersection points”.


I think that’s a helpful analogy and comment. Please remember this while I go on to nitpick. I’m aiming at in both fields, there may be more math-leaning scientists and concrete-leaning workers, with the engineer being somewhat in the middle.

Declaring bridges safe probably involves a lot of math and tables in the background. I guess we don’t actually run a million trucks but estimate the safety theoretically, with a few experimental tests. Likewise, a security specialist can define the edge cases against which the tests should be run. That may be the same person who also implements the test, but I want to emphasize it’s two different roles. And we might consider one more of a scientist, and the other more of a worker.

So how much your activity resembles that of a mathematician, or a traditional engineer probably depends on your specific task, and how much your team requires you to generalize or specialize.


The obvious solution is to abandon your project not too late; leave on a high note.

I also found it very useful to document every step of my setup procedures, right after I figured out what works. At least the respective CL.


Right, I get now what you mean. In defense of the other person, they said this may be the case. Which implies that it also may not be the case. It’s a worry spoken out, maybe without thinking too much about how to word it in a way which does not come across as insulting.

I would frown at this in a direct conversation, but not so much in an indirect, general talk about opinions. In the current setting, I appreciated the opinion as open and direct. I don’t think anyone’s feelings have been hurt here, unless someone actively wants to feel offended.


OP asked for opinions, and that was an opinion.

You are right a project author can do as they please, but so can a project contributor. Both spend their mostly free time on that project, so it should be comfortable for both to do so.

There is no need to automatically agree. We can have different styles and disagree, in which case people might prefer to contribute to some other project instead, or work with other contributors instead.


Yes, my favorite comment:

pulls out the power cord for the monitor

Job done!

followed by:

Attacker must have had 5 people on the keyboard.


We also briefly discussed this in Games Master, if only to discover how wide and diverse the range of perspectives are. I feel it misrepresents the subject to talk about a “literal definition”, and to explicitly include “win conditions”. Because there are multiple attempts of a definition, and many do not include win conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game

One such example definition:

“To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.” (Bernard Suits)[14]

You seem to refer to Chris Crawford’s definition, which is in part:

If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.

Explicitly calling SimCity “not a game” is purely academic talk, detached from reality. For everyone else, SimCity is clearly a game. If you want to buy it, you look for games, not toys. I feel definitions are questionable which define something to be not what everybody thinks it is.

Was Minecraft not a game until it included “The End”? I loved playing Minecraft, but I rarely cared about The End, even after it was included. When a player cannot tell the difference between a version of a game which includes a win condition, and a version which does not, how can the existence of that condition be a decisive factor?

If we widen the scope to include any game, not just video games, we can also have a look at popular children’s games like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Association. My theater group loves to play win-free games as a warmup practice.

From my point of view, win conditions are a common characteristic of games, but not necessary or defining. Coming up with a short definition which captures all games and excludes all non-games is surprisingly hard.


Seems appropriate for a generous pizza. You developers love pizza, right?


Me in tech support.

Customer calls: “Internet is not working!!”

Me: “Router lights status?”

Customer: “Can’t tell.”

Me: “Why?”

Customer: “Router still in box.”

Me: “…?”

Me (pretends it was just an error of communication): “Can you please describe the lights on your router?”

Customer: “I can’t. It’s still in the packaging. The box is on my table.”

Me: “…??? … You … need at least electricity to power this device.”

Customer spirals into rage and madness: “I ordered wireless internet!! I won’t plug any cables in! I did not want any wires!!!”


I was self hosting GitLab for a while. The docker container was quick and easy to set up, simply worked out of the box.


Above 0.33:

Spectrum

  1. Python
  2. Java
  3. C++
  4. C
  5. JavaScript
  6. C#
  7. SQL

Jobs

  1. SQL
  2. Python
  3. Java
  4. JavaScript
  5. C++

Trending

  1. Python
  2. Java
  3. JavaScript
  4. C++
  5. SQL
  6. C#
  7. C

Python king. Deserved?


Without too much knowledge, I have the strong feeling this is equally true for the Fediverse and Lemmy.

And while it is fairly obvious and straight forward how to contribute as a programmer, it’s less so for all the other, equally important, tasks.


Bcrypt has a maximum of 72 bytes. It’ll truncate passwords longer than that. Remember that UTF8 encoding of special characters can easily take more than one byte.

Interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcrypt#Maximum_password_length

In the worst case a password is limited to 18 characters, when every character requires 4 bytes of UTF-8 encoding. For example:

𐑜𐑝𐑟𐑥𐑷𐑻𐑽𐑾𐑿𐑿𐑰𐑩𐑛𐑙𐑘𐑙𐑒𐑔 (18 characters, 72 bytes)

Makes me question if bcrypt deserves to be widely used. Is there really no superior alternative?


Something like this? https://codepen.io/darrengriffith/pen/KpKxqR

I can edit the code and see the changes without rewhatevering.


I agree to pretty much all the previous answer (text >>>> video), just adding what’s missing from my point of view:

Video can be fun. As irrelevant as this might seem at first, motivation is an important part of every learning process. If you can make the information easier to digest for some people, it can make their learning progress more efficient and effective.

“Being fun” can relate to literal jokes (which I like much less in text documentation), presentation style, atmosphere. It can also help to address more sensory modalities to support learning (like audio, colors, or sometimes people just like having a face explain things to them).

I also feel I need to focus much less to follow a video than I need to digest a technical documentation in text form. Yes, I might spend more time on the video to achieve the same understanding, but I can consume it in more situations. For example, when tired before going to bed, or while eating, I might still watch a video about something I’d like to learn, but rather not scroll through the corresponding docs.

Ideally, videos would be additional to clearly structured and comprehensive text docs. But as much as consumers are people, producers are, too. If they happen to prefer video for whatever reason, and don’t have the resources to do both, video is what you get.


Which might be seen as a positive by some people (not me).

It encourages social interaction. Every answered question becomes a valid option to ask again just a short time later. And to answer again.

It also takes the burden to search from those who have questions. Just keep the chat flowing.

Maybe it’s a bit like asking people on the street for directions, instead of using your phone. Less efficient and accurate, but you might get a smile in the process.



It might be used in education. Some who learned it this way might stick to it, or advance to your first group.


The better of those articles and videos also emphasize you should test and measure, before and after you “improved” your code.

I’m afraid there is no standard, average solution. You trying to optimize your code might very well cause it to run slower.

So unless you have good reasons (good as in ‘proof’) to do otherwise, I’d recommend to aim for readable, maintainable code. Which is often not optimized code.


I find it hard to read when these are together:

  • i, j, l
  • n, m, u, v, w

From all the possible character combinations, somehow the lookalike combinations are among the most popular. Yes, probably comes from math. I hated it even more when my math prof’s i and j on the board were indistinguishable.


Game programmers, yes. Programmers who happen to work on games. Further, the highlighted idea is not restricted to games.


As a child, I made a siren in QBASIC. Very proud, 2000 lines of code.

My sister’s boyfriend then introduced me to the concept of FOR loops. 6 lines of code.


There’s no general answer, it depends on your personal preference.

If you want to have most content available, register on an instance which has an according policy; which federates with anybody and is federated by everybody (both directions can make a difference).

The downside however is, this also opens the door to all sorts of bad actors, including bots and spam.

So I personally tried to strike a balance and am so far quite happy on lemm.ee.

This tool is pretty handy to make informed decisions: https://fba.ryona.agency/ It allows you to check federation status both ways.


There should be a place to document all the nuance around hosting an instance plus some tips and tricks.

The Wiki: https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Lemmy%3F

Hopefully it gets new contributors and maintainers from all the new users.


Who maintains a to-do list? sees many hands

Who maintains a done list? sees no hands


This is silly.

The article is an anecdote about one incompetent user using a new tool; ChatGPT.

He uses the wrong tool for what he’s trying to accomplish, finding sources. The free version of ChatGPT cannot search the internet and has no internal fact memory as he seems to wrongly assume.

So he, like many others, runs into hallucinations.

Then he jumps to conclusions:

  • Our jobs are safe
  • Chat GPT doesn’t make mistakes or tell falsehoods – it just gets confused
  • He was going to have produce the substance of his keynote address the old fashioned way

How much weight does this assessment or article have?

People who better understand what they can expect from a LLM, and who are willing to invest a tad more time into learning how to use a new tool well, will of course produce better results.

If you want a LLM which can find sources, use a LLM which can find sources. Use the paid ChatGPT 4.0, Bing AI or perplexity.ai.

Like all tools which are used well, they become a productivity multiplier, which naturally means less workforce is required to do the same work. If your job involves text, and you refuse to learn how to use state of the art tools, your job is probably not that safe. Yes, maybe “for the next week or so”, but AI development did not stop, so what does that help. You’re not going to be replaced by AI, but by people who learned how to work with AI.


Here’s a paper on the topic, which comes to vastly different conclusions than this anecdotal opinion piece: GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models

You can upload it to https://www.chatpdf.com/ to get summaries or ask questions.


Oh, I wasn’t aware. Coming from lemmy, the correct relative link to a kbin instance would be /m/. But since the community lives in a lemmy instance, it is /c/. Apparently coming from kbin you need /m/ in both cases. I added a link for both now, thanks.



The article complains the usage of the word “hallucinations” would be …

feeding the sector’s most cherished mythology: that by building these large language models, and training them on everything that we humans have written, said and represented visually, they are in the process of birthing an animate intelligence on the cusp of sparking an evolutionary leap for our species.

Wether that is true or not depends on wether we eventually create human-level (or beyond) machine intelligences. No one can read the future. Personally I think it’s just a matter of time, but there are good arguments for both sides.

I find the term “hallucinations” fitting, because it conveys to uneducated people that a claim by ChatGPT should not be trusted, even if it sounds compelling. The article suggests “algorithmic junk”, or “glitches” instead. I believe naive users would refuse to accept an output as junk or a glitch. These terms suggest something is broken, althought the output still seems sound. “Hallucinations” is a pretty good term for that job, and also already established.

The article instead suggests the creators are hallucinating in their predictions of how useful the tools will be. Again no one can read the future, but maybe. But mostly: It could be both.


Reading the rest of the article required a considerable amount of goodwill on my part. It’s a bit too polemical for my liking, but I can mostly agree with the challenges and injustices it sees forthcoming.

I mostly agree with #1, #2 and #3. #4 is particularly interesting and funny, as I think it describes Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.


I believe AI could help us create a better world (in the large scopes of the article), but I’m afraid it won’t. The tech is so expensive to develop, the most advanced models will come from people who already sit on top of the pyramid, and foremost multiply their power, which they can use to deepen the moat.

On the other hand, we haven’t found a solution to alignment and control problem, and aren’t certain we will. It seems very likely we will continue to empower these tools without a plan for what to do when one model actually shows near-human or even super-human capabilities, but can already copy, backup, debug and enhance itself.

The challenges to economy and society along the way are profound, but I’m afraid that pales in comparison to the end game.


the results are “high” as much as 10 percent because the researcher do not want to downplay how “intelligent” their new technology is. But it’s not that intelligent as we and they all know it. There is currently 0 chance any “AI” can cause this kind of event.

Yes, the current state is not that intelligent. But that’s also not what the expert’s estimate is about.

The estimates and worries concern a potential future, if we keep improving AI, which we do.

This is similar to being in the 1990s and saying climate change is of no concern, because the current CO2 levels are no big deal. Yeah right, but they won’t stay at that level, and then they can very well become a threat.


saying AI will ruin humanity’s existence or bring “disempowerment” of the species is a completely awful view that has no way of happening just simply due to the fact that its not profitable.

The economic incentives to churn out the next powerful beast as quickly as possible are obvious.

Making it safe costs extra, so that’s gonna be a neglected concern for the same reason.

We also notice the resulting AIs are being studied after they are released, with sometimes surprising emergent capabilities.

So you would be right if we would approach the topic with a rational overhead view, but we don’t.


The community for the app:

I’m also happily using it, it’s the only app which works on my old phone, haha :D