daotoad

If you're using a university to get credentials that are necessary to open the doors you need to reach your goals, then sure, that's what they are for. That's more or less how I thought of them before I went to college.

And that perspective isn't entirely wrong--for some people that's all they will ever be. It's just that they do more than that.

Universities exist to provide the resources academic researchers need to work. Whether they are studying physics, sociology, or creative writing. The buildings, the meeting spaces, the people they gather who share interests, they people with cross-cutting or even opposing interests are also a resource.

Universities exist to provide the resources students need to learn skills that are difficult to obtain otherwise. It's not practical for most people to be self taught operators of gas chromatography systems, confocal microscopes, or research reactors. The physical stuff isn't the only thing. Having a collection of experts on different topics clustered together means that as a student you have access to a massive resource if you are smart enough to engage with it. These are all people who can teach you, guide you, and make introductions for you.

Of course, I am kind of dumb and didn't really realize this stuff until after I graduated and was navigating the world as an adult. Relationships I built in college helped me land several jobs early in my career. I don't think my bachelor's degree did anything for me beyond my first job. People rapidly stopped asking about it.

The writer is quite elegant in her description of how LLMs are corrosive to the social aspect of university.

Stoked to see this.

I've long felt that something like this was the way but have never gotten around to working on it.

I think the home automation market is waiting on things that most people really want and a lower barrier to entry.

Alfred North Whitehead famously noted that "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

What has household automation really given us so far? Dimmable lights? Whatever. If I cared, I'd already have rheostats on all my light switches. Thermostat? My digital thermostat is already good enough.

The thing that would sell like crazy is a robot valet.

In other words, the ability to navigate carelessly through your home, dropping items when you are no longer interested in them and have them "magically" return to their proper homes.

Such a thing would need to be able to roam around your home and pick things up and store them, and then retrieve them when appropriate (when asked or based on schedules and other automations). Maybe even do a little light dusting.

If you can make it take out the trash, fold laundry, and empty the dishwasher, you're looking at a ridiculously popular system. Even if it costs thousands of dollars.

Thing is, the tech isn't really ready to give us a household robot that can pick your jacket up off the couch and put it away. When we can do that, it will be huge.

Once we are there, we've grown so used to the idea of an adversarial relationship with the businesses that provide our services, that we are being spied on and our data sold, would we even trust the systems that would be needed to enable such products?

1. Starting from scratch is rarely a good idea. 2. It always sounds like a better idea than it actually is. 3. Item 2 is true even if you think you've accounted for item 1.

Is there something specific that you want that cannot be implemented reasonably on existing systems?

Unless you have a specific compelling benefit that only a rewrite can grant, focused narrow rewrites are the way.

The gap between quality work and baseline LLM output is precisely the understanding.

If it can be validated by automation, the bot will do it. But no automation suite is complete or perfect.

What concerns me is that building software using the LLMs gives a distance that inhibits the formation of the sort of understanding I need to "just know" a code base intuitively. So when product asks for a feature, my ability to be sufficiently pedantic about the 6 different non-obvious things this impacts is less effective. And when I need to choose abstractions and try to form an effective ontology, my intuition is less effective. I believe I can still grind out an effective solution, but I start farther from the finish line.

Does the LLM's ability to "answer questions" about the codebase make up for my lack of intuition? Does my apparent ability to run faster make up for the fact that I am starting farther from the end of the race?

I don't know yet.

I really, really want that to be true, but my experience trying to adopt it has been really painful.

Even selecting things in the UI has sucked. I went in and increased the selection radius or whatever, that helped. But really, should I need to do this as a new user?

Getting the constraints to behave is like pulling teeth.

It also kind of sucks that you have to have really sparse sketches that only contain one closed figure. I gather you can create a "master sketch" and selectively project geometry into other sketches. But the last few times I've tried the app, I haven't gotten far enough into my sketches before rage quitting to validate the technique.

Right now I am back F360 with their hobby license wanting to escape their regular messing with the terms and conditions.

It's a kind of crappy slide deck, not a proper home page. Even worse, the link drops you into the middle of the deck. (TBF, it wouldn't be so bad if you know that it's a slide deck when you load the page.)

Try using the arrow keys to navigate. It took me multiple tries to get it figured out.

Use up/down to navigate within a chapter/topic. Use left/right to switch between topics.

I lost a nuke to a phalanx in Civ 1. Still salty about that _decades_ later.

Anecdata:

I'm a Civ3 hater, give me 2 or 4 any day. 3 is my least favorite version of the game.

But, OTOH, my wife is ride or die for Civ3.

What I really want to know is, is it mighty mighty? And does it let it all hang out?

The problem is most people won't take that attitude. For most homeowners, the home is the largest asset.

This is a Catch 22 for elected officials. We must reduce housing costs dramatically if we do so, we will devalue significant assets of a large number of active voters and political contributors.

I'd love to see some ideas on how to pull this off, because we need them.