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I make music when I can. I own too many synthesizers. I program C++ for money, but it's usually reasonably fun.

he/him or they/them, as you prefer.

#nobot

My music on Bandcamphttps://arcseconds.bandcamp.com/
Discographyhttps://arcseconds.net
Photographyhttps://visible.pictures/

I think something that's worth highlighting is that both communities are concerned with empowerment and disempowerment. And I tend to think these tools tend to *appear* empowering, but are actually disempowering, in their current configuration.

I don't believe LLMs are fundamentally disempowering, and could be part of an empowering future, but the present *industrial deployment* of AI tech within our *socio-economic environment* is net-disempowering. And I worry that there is a big rush to adopt with so little settled about the legal implications on the one side, and with *well known* problems for AI generated code on the other.

Not all AI coding usage is necessarily doomed to be a problem: using local models to "lint" or discover vulnerabilities/bugs is actually probably very good, in the way that having fuzzers is good. But there is so much pressure to adopt beyond the space of what's good and to dismiss real concerns that I am worried it is going to take a long time to undo damage

Since I haven't posted it in a few years... Behold! The greatest video art piece ever made: Björn Melhus' No Sunshine (1997).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X-4_BVLnAgw

Bjorn Melhus - No Sunshine 1997.flv

YouTube
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In order to make coding LLMs work better, it's often helpful to provide more information about the code being worked on. As LLMs work entirely based on the human languages they were trained in, the best thing to do is to provide plain English text about the code.

Ultimately the software industry has invented the most fucked up method to force software engineers to document their code. All this text intended for LLMs is often useful to humans, too.

Depressing fact I just learned: when pumping oil from a well, the oil industry flares (burns into the atmosphere) gas when they don't think it's economically viable to put it in a pipeline for later use.

In 1990 the Alberta, Canada oil industry flared enough gas to heat the entire city of Calgary for that year.

Cool cool.

Amazing Digital Circus episode 8 is out! Is this the one that's going to finally make me cry for real? Gonna start it in half an hour. #tadc #tadcep8
It occurs to me that half of the posts on Hacker News and Lobsters are basically LinkedIn style clickbait by people who think they're too smart for LinkedIn.
When it comes to housing, it's all about location location location! Are we certain? Found what looks like our dream house, just near the city trash incinerator and the water purification plant. That's fine, right?
I am colourblind. I have completely rejected academic manuscripts and proposals that use only red and green in graphs without shape or line width differences. If they are that incompetent about use of colour, they are not going to be better in other things.
Star Trek: Discovery did it again! They brought another character back from the dead! That's at least four. And this one is the dumbest one. A resurrection that invalidates the protagonist's entire life.