expr
@expr@programming.dev
- Comment on What options of resistance are programmers creating to not submit to AI culture? 2 days ago:
Cute. I’m a senior software engineer that has trained many different models (NLP, image classification, computer vision, LIDAR analysis) before this stupid fucking LLM craze. I know precisely how they work (or rather, I know how much people don’t know how they work, because of the black box approach to training). From the outset, I knew people believed it was much more capable than it actually is, because it was incredibly obvious as someone who’s actually built the damn things before (albeit with much less data/power).
Every developer that loves LLMs I see is pretty fucking clueless about them and think of them as some magical device that has actual intelligence (just like everybody does, I guess, but I expect better of developers). It has no semantic understanding whatsoever. It’s stochastic generation of sequences of tokens to loosely resemble natural language. It’s old technology recently revitalized because large corporations plundered humanity in order to brute force their way into models with astronomically-high numbers of parameters, so they now are now “pretty good” at resembling natural language, compared to before. But that’s all it fucking is. Imitation. No understanding, no knowledge, no insight. So calling it “inspiration” is a fucking joke, and treating it as anything other than a destructive amusement (due to the mass ecological and sociological catastrophe it is) is sheer stupidity.
I’m pissed off about it for many reasons, but especially because my peers at work are consistently wasting my fucking time with LLM slop and it’s fucking exhausting to deal with. I have to guard against way more garbage now to make sure our codebase doesn’t turn into utter shit. The other day, an engineer submitted an MR for me to review that contained dozens of completely useless/redundant LLM-generated tests that would have increased our CI time a shitload and bloated our codebase for no fucking reason. And all of it is for trivial, dumb shit that’s not hard to figure out or do at all. I’m so fucking sick of all of it. No one cares about their craft anymore. No one cares about being a good fucking engineer and reading the goddamn documentation and just figuring shit out on their own, with their own fucking brain.
By the way, no actual evidence exists of this supposed productivity boost people claim, whereas we have a number of studies demonstrating the problems with LLMs, like MIT’s study on its effects on human cognition, or this study from the ACM showing how LLMs are a force multiplier for misinformation and deception. In fact, not only do we not have any real evidence that it boosts productivity, we have evidence of the opposite: this recent METR study found that AI usage increased completion time by 19% for experienced engineers working on large, mature, open-source codebases.
- Comment on What options of resistance are programmers creating to not submit to AI culture? 3 days ago:
Ah yes, “just use it correctly”. All these programmers convinced that they are one of the chosen few that “get it” and can somehow magically make it not a damaging, colossal waste of time.
“Inspiration”, yeah, in the same way we can draw “inspiration” from a monkey throwing shit at a wall.
- Comment on Anon is a movie critic 4 days ago:
Also, you know, he’s the son of the most powerful force wielder in the universe. Tends to help with piloting a bit.
- Comment on Cause and Effect 1 week ago:
It’s not talking about a doctorate, it’s talking about actually taking education (of all levels) seriously because education is the primary means by which a populace becomes in innoculated against mis/disinformation.
- Comment on Phineas explains nuclear power (and how fear mongering ruined it) 2 weeks ago:
It is very safe.
- Chernobyl: was being used to create weapons-grade nuclear material (read: requires enrichment far, far beyond what’s needed for power generation), and the USSR had been shown to have cut many corners in its construction and ignored basically every safety measure imaginable. It didn’t even have a containment unit like every other reactor design (which is, you know, the exact thing that’s designed to prevent leaking radioactive material into the environment). It is not comparable to any other nuclear power plant and is completely irrelevant when discussing the safety of modern power generation from nuclear power plants.
- Three Mile Island was successfully contained (no significant radiation was leaked into the environment), and significant changes were introduced to prevent such a thing from happening again (and, nothing like it has ever happened since). It is the most frequently misunderstood nuclear accident, because it had no actual impact on the surrounding population in terms of radiological exposure.
- Fukushima, similarly to Three Mile Island, was successfully contained and did not result in radiological exposure of the surrounding population.
The fact is that nuclear power generation is incredibly safe and has an incredible track record through decades of use. It is far, far safer for populations than fossil fuels (which are known to emit much, much more radiation into the atmosphere and cause a lot of cancer), and is much more capable for baseload electricity generation than wind, solar, etc.
- Comment on My credit union no longer allows me to payoff pending purchases made on my credit card 4 weeks ago:
High-Yield Savings Accounts are something distinct from normal savings accounts. I don’t believe there are any HYSAs being offered that have rates as low as 1%.
You can find many institutions online offering HYSAs. It is definitely pretty common. In personal finance circles it’s very often recommended to put your emergency fund in a HYSA.
And yes, as you noted, HYSAs have different rules than normal savings accounts. Just like how CDs do.
- Comment on My credit union no longer allows me to payoff pending purchases made on my credit card 4 weeks ago:
It’s a common financial instrument. You can find many providers online.
You get a much better interest rate than a typical savings account (I think current rates are around 4% or so), but you are typically limited in the number of withdrawals you can make per month. Banks offer better interest rates because the cash is less volatile and sits in the account longer. They are good for cash you want to park somewhere for a while but that you still need quick, infrequent access to, like emergency funds. Credit card payments are also a fine use for it, though I’d say the benefit is pretty minimal unless you consistently maintain a balance greater than the credit card payment.
- Comment on O no 4 weeks ago:
It’s just a different kind of difficulty, and of course not all jobs are created equal. But ultimately this rhetoric is the kind of thing the capitalists want. They want to pit “lower class” against “upper class”, when in reality, these distinctions are entirely irrelevant and it’s actually “the billionaire oligarchy squeezing every last drop out of the rest of us”. If you work for a living, you are “low class”.
- Comment on The sheer amount of websites that are completely unusable without JavaScript 1 month ago:
Yes, it is unfortunate that this functionality is not built-in to HTML/browsers to begin with. The library is effectively a patch for the deficiencies of the original spec. Hopefully it can one day be integrated into HTML proper.
Until then, HTMX can still be used by browsers that block third party scripts, which is where a lot of the nasty stuff comes from anyway. And JS can be whitelisted on certain sites that are known to use it responsibly.
- Comment on The sheer amount of websites that are completely unusable without JavaScript 1 month ago:
htmx.org solves the problem of full page loads. Yes, it’s a JavaScript library, but it’s a tiny JS library (14k over the wire) that is easily cached. And in most cases, it’s the only JavaScript you need. The vast majority of content can be rendered server side.
- Comment on Anon tries to meet girls at college 1 month ago:
The makeup of universities these days isn’t that far off from that in general.
- Comment on Pretty but pointless 2 months ago:
Also some kind of ventilation.
And the painting would get fucked up pretty quickly in general.
- Comment on Feeling insecure about going to a 'girlie pop' concert as a 30 year old man, am i overthinking it? 2 months ago:
I’m also in my 30s. I’ve been to a bunch of “girly” concerts with my wife and have had a great time at all of them.
It’s much easier to enjoy life when you let go of notions of what you should or should not be enjoying. Music doesn’t need to be gendered. You can just enjoy it for what it is.
In fact, I’d extend the idea to countless other facets of life: there’s so much pointless gendering in society that does a huge disservice to everyone, men included. I’ll give you a dumb example: I used to hold the notion in my younger years that if I were given a purse to hold, that I had to hold the purse in such a way to telegraph that it wasn’t actually my purse. Like grasp it like some kind of ape man or something. Like… What is the fucking point in that? It’s so goddamn dumb and childish. Now I often take turns holding my wife’s purse (it can be a bit heavy because it also doubles as a diaper bag for our toddler) and don’t give a single fuck about doing so.
I can give you countless other examples where I was raised with incredibly damaging ideas ultimately stemming from toxic masculinity that I have painstakingly excised from my psyche.
- Comment on Every support thread on Reddit is literally this now 2 months ago:
If that were true, then why did Reddit respond to the mass deletions (that’s what people did at first, not edits) by undeleting the comments?
- Comment on Should I unplug my smart tv from the internet? 2 months ago:
Um yeah, definitely. My TV has never had Internet connectivity, not should it.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I assume you’re young?
Big streamers can make okay money, but to be honest it’s not really something to aspire to generally speaking. It’s not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. When you spend all of your time doing something that’s supposed to be relaxing/fun as a job and you can’t even necessarily do what you want anyway, it’s not really fun anymore. And beyond that, only a very small portion of people that attempt it actually make money from it and it’s much more about how you can manipulate social media platforms than it is anything about gaming.
- Comment on Thoughts?? 2 months ago:
Blows Excel out of the water, and it’s not even close. And it’s free, open source, and completely extensible (with Python, not some godforsaken excuse for a programming language).
- Comment on Anon hates reddit 3 months ago:
Given that, according to your comment history, that you think “homosexuality is morally wrong”, I don’t think you’re going to find much sympathy here. On the whole, Lemmy has little patience for regressive ideology.
- Comment on Is anyone else not feeling that patriotic for July 4? 3 months ago:
That’s the majority of Americans. Beyond what was almost certainly a stolen election (large scale, billionaire-bankrolled propaganda, campaigns, voter disenfranchisement, and probably voting machine manipulation), Trump’s disapproval rating since starting that shit has skyrocketed.
We are in an awful fascist quagmire of a situation that we are going to have to fight to free ourselves from, but that doesn’t mean that the actions of this administration actually represent us.
- Comment on Is anyone else not feeling that patriotic for July 4? 3 months ago:
Not sure what you’re referring to, but the 4th hasn’t really changed. Maybe you’re confusing it with the (laughable) military parade Trump did for his own birthday?
Personally I’ve long found patriotism to be a pretty abhorrent concept, but I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with my family regardless. To me, the 4th is much more about community than it is the country. And while this country is fucking awful, I do have a pretty great community around me that I’m grateful for.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 months ago:
It’s perfectly reasonable to not want to sleep over at your parents’ house after only a month of dating. To be honest, it’s reasonable to not ever want to do that. It’s weird sleeping in someone else’s house period.
But especially after just a month of dating, your parents may as well be strangers to him. He likely doesn’t have any sense for any cultural differences between how he was raised and your family, like what behaviors are considered faux pas to your parents, etc.
To be honest I think you’re really getting ahead of yourself. Take your time with the relationship and build trust and the foundations of a great relationship. It always takes time and patience. You guys are still just starting to learn about each other.
- Comment on It's the dream 3 months ago:
Yeah… I do hear it a lot.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 months ago:
I met my wife on a dating app in 2019 on Bumble (28 at the time). It can work, but you have to be willing to sift through a lot of bullshit and be patient. You also need to be able to handle rejection and mistreatment (like getting stood up/ghosted). It’s ultimately a numbers game and it takes time to find someone that is actually right for you.
I expect it’s probably also not nearly as bad for older age groups. At your age, I think people are going to be a lot more likely to be direct and know what they want.
My advice is to try it out. Worst case, you decide it’s not for you and try something else.
- Comment on My password is not accepted because it is too long 4 months ago:
That’s simply false. Increased length increases the entropy of a password, making it harder to brute force to gain access.
You have to go out of your way to restrict the length of passwords. There’s absolutely no reason to do it, and it is contrary to all good security practices.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
The world is political.
- Comment on Anon watches Jurassic Park 5 months ago:
Erm… You might be confusing millennials with Gen Z or something. I was 19 when annoying orange first showed up, and I’m on the younger end of millennials. Me and my friends found it pretty obnoxious.
- Comment on n o u g a t s 5 months ago:
Flossing must be a bitch.
- Comment on What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good? 5 months ago:
www.visidata.org is way, way, way, way better than excel and it’s FOSS.
As for the rest:
- I don’t really miss Word because WYSIWYG editing is just kinda bad across the board. Much better to write with markup rather than fighting an auto-formatter all the time.
- I thankfully have not needed to make much of any PowerPoints, but I think I would probably feel similarly about them and want them in some kind of markup language as well.
- Teams just sucks ass compared to many other alternatives, though I’m admittedly not familiar with good FOSS ones
- Outlook is basically just a dinosaur and there’s a million ways to do email better. Frankly, FOSS has it beat by a huge margin
The rest of Office isn’t really even worth talking about tbh.
- Comment on What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good? 5 months ago:
For excel stuff, www.visidata.org is way, way better than excel assuming the data is tabular (which, frankly, it should be anyway). Like it’s not even close.
- Comment on What are some FOSS programs that are objectively better than their proprietary counterparts? 5 months ago:
Way, way better than excel for working with tabular data. Excel is child’s play in comparison.