ShamblingMound

Joined 5 years ago

Karma

Submissions

Member since

Apr 21

Recent submissions

Secret Agent has a slow, difficult beginning (~hour). Not much happens. And it's not clear why what's happening is happening, particularly for someone unfamiliar with Brazil's political climate in the 1970s.

As someone who's never been to Brazil, certainly not in the 1970s, watching Secret Agent still felt like being transported there. How did they make a movie that makes you feel like you're in a familiar place you've never been to?

And then after about an hour, it picks up a bit more, and by the end, it felt like they directly transmitted to the audience the horror of the Brazilian junta in all kinds of subtle and dramatic ways. We don't see the resolution of the main character's story because that moment is lost. Memories of his life are fractured (through disjointed audio recordings) or repressed (by those closest to him).

Hard to put it into words. I started out disliking it and ended up loving it.

Comment · 1 year ago

Have been looking for an orchestrator for AI workflows including agentic workflows and this seemed to be the most promising (open source, free, can self-host, and supports dynamic workflows).

But have not seen anyone talk about it in that context. What do people use for AI workflow orchestration (aside from langchain)?

Comment · 1 year ago

Had a handful of interactions with Matt. Probably the last was sometime in the mid- to late-2010s. I essentially started my software development career using software that he was largely responsible for (unknown to me at the time):

  * Catalyst (web framework)
  * DBIx::Class (ORM)
  * Moo (object-oriented code)

These are, in my opinion, some of the best packages in Perl, and there are rarely counterparts that are as good in other languages. Have not found an ORM that is as effortless and featureful as DBIx::Class, for example.

I've read about his tough interactions with other people, and it does seem that, at times, he fell into the classic trap of loving his own ideas too much; but in our interactions (reviewing some of my code on a Perl project), he was really helpful and kind. Also amazingly quick. He read my beginner-level Perl code, instantly understood it, and instantly gave clear, concise feedback.

It's a shame he has passed.

Comment · 5 years ago

For anyone curious about whether recycled plastics in clothing have less environmental impacts than primary raw materials, they do [0].

[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...

Comment · 5 years ago

Thanks, that is a great feature.

Comment · 5 years ago

If anyone knows of a flexible static site generator that can process Rmarkdown files, I'd be interested to know about it.

There is `rmarkdown::site` (see [0]), but I had to mess with the internals to get it to do what I wanted.

[0]: https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/lesson-13.html

Comment · 5 years ago

The author asks:

> So why don’t firms merge to get larger?

But they do. Most industries/sectors trend toward consolidation. Specific examples that come to mind are radio, agriculture, banking, and tech. I did a quick search and found [0], which describes a general tendency toward consolidation as industries mature.

One major reason for consolidation (ignored by the author) is economies of scale: as volume increases, the cost per unit decreases.

On the other side, the author ignores benefits of central control for some things. For example, private railroad companies used to have different gauges for their railroads in order to protect their routes, but that led to unnecessary inefficiencies.

Also, governments have a different mandate than the private sector. Governments are charged with pursuing citizens' values (freedom, equality, security, etc.), but for private sector companies, their goals boil down down maximizing profit.

[0]: https://hbr.org/2002/12/the-consolidation-curve

Comment · 5 years ago

This was (1) research with human subjects (2) where the human subjects were deceived, and (3) there was no informed consent!

If the IRB approved this as exempt and they had an accurate understanding of the experiment, it makes me question the IRB itself. Whether the researchers were dishonest with the IRB or the IRB approved this as exempt, it's outrageous.