jlos

AI helps me learn math now, what are you talking about??

I don’t waste time on unfamiliar notation, it provides me with context, suggests things I wouldn’t have thought of. And connects it to fields I wouldn’t have thought of.

We have personal tutors with PhD level knowledge for basically free if you know the questions to ask.

There is no waiting, results are here.

How is that any different than another kind of automation?

AI will make mathematics so much more approachable, comprehensible, and applicable as more problems gets solved. If the costs is a handful of PhDs tenure track, so be it. Academics didn’t much to seem to mind when that happens to blue collar workers.

Nothing stopping anyone from studying mathematics here.

The criticism of the Century Initiative is that the extra 60-80 million are going to come largely from countries like India at rates that destablize Canada while further entrenching the kind of inequality that we've seen grow over the past 15 years.

The British did this to almost 20 different colonies, with the same people groups for the same reasons.

UK has two competing governance models: The Round Table (decentralized, king as "first among peers") and the Tower of London (Centralized autocracy, originally imposed by the Norman conquerer William I).

The Star Chamber, as an extension of the Tower of London, served as an administrative tool to avoid trial by peers, lower the standards of evidence, while eliminating privacy and the spread of "libel" in favor of public stability. "The truth is no defense" in the Star Chamber model because libelous claims that were TRUE were more damaging to public stability.

There's a strong precedence in common law for supression of privacy and speech if it threatens the legitamcy of the administrative state.

Agents allow for delegation, that’s something we aren’t used to as devs. But it’s very useful.

It’s why the execs get so excited about these tools: they understand how to delegate.

I still do deep work, but I actually enjoy a session bouncing between agents. And I can chose how much focus to give each tasks.

Be real, most of that flow state was typing boilerplate

*You dont*

Skill issue, not a universal problem.

(1) Spending time building a plan. I have lots of artifacts like diagrams, tables, web pages that help me think through all the details quickly. Get code snippets to reduce uncertainty, get options for architectural decisions, flesh out assumptions.

Main thing is (1) how do I verify the agent hits the happy path and (2) how can I elicit and clarify assumptions it might make.

Then follow up the build with exploring and refactoring.

(2) prioritized context switching (like playing an RTS) I have several tasks going at once, while one works I hop onto other tasks.

I usually have one or two “core” goals I’m trying to accomplish that take deeper thinking and get priority. The other tasks are smaller and require less thinking.

A lot of times I’ll have the secondary agents build research docs I can review in detail later.

Agree wholeheartedly, but you already have that with Obsidian. You own the vault, and if you don't want obsidian, its already in markdown.

I'm mixing the two because I think developers should value their time and profit from the value they add. I want them to build viable businesses so they get wealthy from their efforts and can continue keeping useful products alive.

There's no value to their business to open sourcing the product. Open source risks losing customers to knock-off competitors or fragmenting their plugin ecoystem (which is a lot of Obsidians moat).

So you saw a product that (1) gives you complete control of your data (2) uses an open format (3) only charges for sync, publish, and commercial use, and you thought to yourself:

"What a great use of my time building a competitor that adds no value, just to save a few dollars a month on sync and publishing. I hope other people value their time as little as I do and contribute"

Have fun!

Why should it be opensource? Obsidian gives you complete control of your data, which it stores in an open standard.

Please explain to me why developers should act like monks who've taken a vow of poverty? The devs built something valuable, they should profit from it.

You want ENGLISH to be more phonetic?

English, a language with over 40 different dialects in its country of origin.

English, the official language of over 60 countries?

English, the bastard child of millenia of Roman, Germanic, and French colonization?

English, a language with documented vowel shift that occured over 200-300 years?

THAT language would be easier if the words were spelled how they were pronounced?

Taking a contrarian point here, I went into software to make money doing a craft I can enjoy. I love software because its *useful*. Useful enough I can finance a lifestyle I enjoy for myself and my family, while still feeling moments of creativity and autonomy.

I think there needs to be a distinction between artist and artisan. Art exists for its own sake, code exists because its useful. I don't want code that reads like poetry, I want code that works so I read actual poetry later.

> Have a project in mind that you’ve always wanted to tackle but it never made sense to you to do it because it would never be used by anyone else or it would never make you any money?

I appreciate the tinker's and hobbyists, software is endlessly interesting as a career, and I'm thankful to be here. But I only want to build code that is useful.

Why is James Damore listed alongside Andreesen and Zuckerberg? Andreesen and Zuckerberg have hundreds of billions at their disposal and Damore was an employee fired for giving feedback on a company diversity program.

I mean I know why, but the antipathy underlying the article undermines an otherwise interesting point.