superbatfish

I understood your point when I read it, and it didn't bother me. But the term inadvertently triggers a different hot-button issue in people's minds, so I think a clearer term might have been "marginal population increase".

The quote you're referring to came from the study's lead author, a Brit. Presumably he was referring to soccer (which everyone else calls "football"). Furthermore, a soccer field and an American football field are reasonably close in area, so it gets the point across in any case.

However, I will now refer to explosives exclusively in units of Bald Eagles when referring to their mass, and "star spangles" when referring to their energy output.

>this lacks empathy for the struggle to survive

The article addresses that objection.

This is accurate and the parent commenter here seems to be echoing a common misconception. Either they are confused or they need to elaborate more to demonstrate that they have a valid complaint.

For instance, this would have been a valid complaint:

"Users who don't need free threading will now suffer a performance penalty for their single-threaded code."

That is true. But if you are currently using multiple threads, code that was correct before will still be correct in the free threaded build, and code that was incorrect before will still be incorrect.

When I read an article about Python optimizations, I typically expect to have significant objections. But this one was great, actually.

On the other hand, the authors make plenty of other great points -- about the fact that LLMs can produce bullshit, can be inaccurate, can be used for deception and other harms, are now a huge challenge for education.

The fact that they make many good points makes it all the more disappointing that they would taint their credibility with sloppy assertions!

The author makes this assertion about LLMs rather casually:

>They don’t engage in logical reasoning.

This is still a hotly debated question, but at this point the burden of proof is on the detractors. (To put it mildly, the famous "stochastic parrot" paper has not aged well.)

The claim above is certainly not something that should be stated as fact to a naive audience (i.e. the authors' intended audience in this case). Simply asserting it as they have done -- without acknowledging that many experts disagree -- undermines the authors' credibility to those who are less naive.

Honestly, this might be an unpopular opinion, but I'll just say it: Brainfuck is not a great programming language for production use-cases.

Gotta love the word “just” in that first paragraph.

The majority of the research money behind most (if not all) drugs, is spent well after academia’s contribution. Clinical trials are very costly, they usually fail, and yet they’re quite important!

Personally, I think I would, at least at first.

If someone without the necessary expertise chimes in with an unhelpful answer within minutes of a question being asked, then everyone who comes after must check their answer before deciding if the user still needs help.

But even worse, I think potential responders on StackOverflow may not read the question at all because it will be listed as already having an answer. It won’t be an accepted answer, sure. But it still disincentivizes attention to the question. (I know it certainly disincentivizes me when I go looking for SO questions to answer.)

If a question has gone unanswered for hours or days, then sure — offer whatever advice you’ve got. But before then, you’re just adding noise, and actually reducing the chances that the OP will get what they were looking for.

It think the parent's point here could be rephrased like this:

Copyright law treats "involved a human" vs. "involved a machine" as fundamentally different just because humans are special-cased, not due to any deeper reason. Just by fiat.

The law gives special consideration to humans "just because". Therefore, if one situation involves a human in a particular role and another situation involves a machine, then there is no useful analogy to be drawn -- as far as the law is concerned. Even if the analogy makes perfect sense to you and me, the law treats humans and machines as fundamentally different, so all bets are off.

The answer is that once you’re able to definitively recognize it in at least one form, you’ll start to recognize similar, not quite identical forms.

The sapling form is not quite the same as the vine form, which is not quite the same as the very thick hairy vine that it eventually transforms into. But once you know one, you can start to recognize the others due to at least some parts of the plant matching what you already know. And then the other parts of the plant, which you hadn’t previously recognized as being how poison ivy can look, are added to your personal visual memory, too.

I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. It’s like if you saw a chihuahua and a Great Dane, you might not recognize them as being the same species. But if you see enough dogs in between, eventually you’ll see that they have something in common.