Posts by ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org
(DIR) Post #B4BOYByNUD6kDpYjHk by ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org
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I was able to finish reading all of “The Genius of Lisp“ by @cdegroot and the whole book was as good as the free preview (chapter 8). I was able to speed-read through the detailed explanations of concepts I already knew, like tail recursion, garbage collection, the Y-combinator, Currying functions, and so on. But there were parts where I slowed down and read carefully, like the section on the Universal Turing Machine, and some of the details of the IBM-704 system architecture. Also the story of how the first Lisp implementation was created when one of McCarthy’s grad students implemented an M-Expression calculator, this was described in slightly more detail than what I recall McCarthy himself explaining in his 1960 paper — that or I had just forgotten those parts of the story.The tone of this book reminds me a lot of popular physics books like Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” which was aimed more at general audiences than professionals. That said, there is a lot to enjoy about this book for professionals like myself as well. There are many good stories about the principals designers of Lisp throughout. The sections on the commercialization of Lisp for the first AI boom of the 1970s and it’s subsequent “AI winter,” were very interesting to read. And if you are a teacher, you might like how some of the concepts in the book are explained.And I would definitely recommend this very strongly to 3rd-year high school students, or 1st and 2nd year college students, who are more genuinely curious about how computers work and want to know more than just how to make the next billion dollar app.The next #LispyGopherClimate show with @screwlisp I look forward to talking about this book some more.#tech #software #Lisp #ProgrammingLanguages #SchemeLang #Scheme #Clojure #Emacs #EmacsLisp #RetroComputing #LispyGopherClimateShow
(DIR) Post #B4yX2lnfALQsP8fw24 by ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org
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When I see posts from mastodon.social, it feels like I am getting a taste of what the corporate social media is really like, and man is it just horrible. So much slop, and AI scams, and celebrity worship, it is just incredible.Too many people still think everything is an app, the idea that computers can be shared, communal resources and don’t have to be turned into a commodity as a product you can shop for in a store is a foreign and very strange concept to many people who have lived their entire lives in a hyper-consumerist culture. They even turn themselves into a commodity, or a “brand.”So they think, “hmm, I’ll try this Mastodon app and write a review of it to get some more engagement for my brand.” Where do you go to “get Mastodon?” On their website, of course, because there is only one: mastodon.social. What’s this mastodon.xyz? Hmm, must be a scam imitating the actual app.So they “install Mastodon” onto their phone and start using it like they would use Twitter or BlueSky. “Man, it’s a ghost town!” and “How can I get more followers?” and “what the hell, no search?” and “missing a bunch of necessary features, when will they fix it?” as if “Mastodon” were a corporate owned and controlled “app.”Or some of them are just bots, trying to “reach a wider audience” using AI to build their brand. This is what so-called “social media” is, and people who try Mastodon try recreate that insanity on the fediverse. It is amusing, but also deeply disturbing.#tech #fediverse #Mastodon #SocialMedia
(DIR) Post #B53VVyKgQ8sNYNiVWq by ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org
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I have been thinking a lot lately of this old Chrisopher Hitchens clip I saw on YouTube a lifetime ago, back in about 2007. It has aged like milk, rather than wine. In this clip Hitches talks about Iran, and the great threat to civilization we face if the psychotic regime of Iran obtains nuclear weapon, how International law would fall apart. Ironically, every claim he makes about Iran in this clip can now be said, more accurately, of the United States.Now it is the US who is obviously committing genocide, and who has unleashed a secret police force (ICE) against their own citizens. Trump is the psychotic regime with nuclear weapons threatening nuclear holocaust on a nation of some 80 million people who’s actions have made a complete mockery of international law.Again, he is talking about Iran, but you can pretty easily substitute the US for Iran and everything Hitchens says in this clip still holds true. Just incredible.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n-STlCzn8s#politics #Iran #War #EndTheWar #EpsteinWars #OperationEpsteinFury #OperationEpicFurybut they do have a lot of force at their disposal and they’re very ruthless um and then there’s the clock that’s ticking towards a nuclear weaponry towards where these same goons will have nukes. Unless everyone here is very very much unlike me or very much younger they’ll have had the fear in their life that one day a mad man or a mad regime will get hold of a nuclear weapon.Well you’re about to find out what that’s feels like and now that’s where we can say that’s not their internal Affair Iran has sworn repeatedly before every International body the European Union the UN the international atomic energy Authority doesn’t seek nuclear weapons. But it’s lied it’s been caught lying it’s developing them very fast it’s going to use them for nuclear blackmail not against Israel in my opinion but against neighboring Gulf Sunni States like Bahrain which it will claim as its Kuwait. And then it will say we walk into your country what are you going to do, what’s the West going to do what’s the UN going to do now they know we’ve got nukesThey’ve solemnly sworn they they don’t so among among the crimes that would be committed if they were allowed to get nuclear weapons is no international law of any kind or any resolution of any International body would be worth a dime if they could tear it up that easily and just laugh at us so the question is one for not for me but for everyone or for the president for everyone in this room which do you think is worse? That they get a bomb after the way they’ve behaved to their own people and to their neighboring countries and the way they intend to go on doing so or that they be told that they can’t have a bomb and that we’d accept the logical and probable consequences. In either case you don’t have to answer now, but you do have to ask yourself.
(DIR) Post #B5NWrkotKLlT8Azm7M by ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org
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@jhlagado I have heard many large companies are requiring their employees to use LLMs for coding and other things.I assume this is because they have bought into the idea that:LLMs are a disruptive new technology comparable to the invention of the personal computer (I’ll include smart phones in the PC category)any company that isn’t using them will quickly learn that the technology they use is out-of-date and fails to keep pace with their competitors, andLLMs are a skill that anyone needs to learn, just as anyone needs to learn how to use a PC.Given the limitations of LLMs, and also the ill effects LLMs have on people that we are only just beginning to understand, I am highly dubious of all three assumptions.I think LLMs are less like the invention of the PC, and more like the discovery of radium. We are in the early stages of the discovery, when industry is struggling to find uses for it, not yet realizing in what ways it is harmful to people, and there is lots and lots of snake-oil products being sold by companies that used to have a reputation for producing safe and useful products.
(DIR) Post #B97xD89BgLoBrHNcnI by ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org
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LLM fatigue is real My day job basically requires me to use LLMs (or, it is strongly encouraged) on the software that I develop. Now I understand why LLM fatigue and LLM burn-out happens. It is because you constantly have to babysit the LLM to keep it from screwing things up.Babysitting is exhausting work. At one time in my life, as a 20-something-year-old, I was responsible for a group of 30 kids age 5 to 12. Every day I went home so drained that I could barely stay awake long enough to have dinner. I know from experience that school teachers perform some of the most labor-intensive work in the modern world.It is what they call “emotional labor.” When other people are unable (as with kids) or unwilling (as with a lazy roommate) to live or play or work with you as a cooperative peer or team member, you essentially have to spend mental energy keeping an eye on them and making sure they aren’t doing something that is disruptive. That mental energy is a real energy cost, it really does consume calories and make you feel tired.The worst part about it is that the LLM never really “learns.” Kids can learn to work and play with you. Lazy roommates can learn to live with you. But an LLM never really learns, and it keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. People who work with LLMs often end up keeping a directory of scripts they can deploy with a quick copy-paste so they can quickly re-explain something to an LLM. So the fatigue of watching over it and making sure the LLM doesn’t do something wrong is a constant emotional pressure, and it never gets better with age.#tech #AI #LLMs #LLM #VibeCoding #AIFatigue #BurnOut