surgi

I somewhat agree with the article on the narrative level.

Lately, my thoughts on our LLM future darkened a tad, too.

I find the parallel between LLMs and Sophons from the 3-Body Problem novels increasingly accurate. That is, specifically, in terms of their effect of stalling human progress. Sure, anybody can opt out of using LLMs (unlike with Sophons), so the restriction on progress seems kind of "soft" in this sense, but the chances of someone choosing to do so aren't too high, IMO. It is so much easier to avoid forcing yourself to learn or explore hard stuff and just ask the model instead.

While I tend to support this in a field such as SW Engineering (if only the Standards and Quality Control aspects advanced as fast as raw code generation...), I share the same fears as Tao and others regarding Mathematics (and not just Mathematics; Computer Science, which ultimately underlies SWE, is on the spotlight as well).

My take is that frameworks matter less the more it is just agents, emitting code. The frameworks were just tools supposedly making the job easier. We have much better tools now.

Take web environment. It matters a little to your large coding buddies, whether they emit React or vanilla JS. For this particular instance, the learning set was pretty much similar, consisting of both React version of given app, and vanilla version (or even C/C++ version, since going thru wasm is a viable approach). It is possible that some core concepts (such as virtual DOM or redux-like store) are less likely to disappear, but the chances are that there is just no sound need for React-like framework in already pretty mature vanilla JS world.

Somewhat of a sidenote, take reverse engineering. It is a common thing nowadays to have your favorite closed source library / app "disassembled" and put together "anew". Any frameworks used for creation of the original app are irrelevant.

Europe this summer? /jk

As someone who frequents online and offline scavenger hunts and CTFs, I second the opinions around here that the task at hand must have been largely unknown. As I find it hard to believe no one from the entire scav hunt / CTF communities would try to fit a classic book cipher interpretation. Tells me more about the state of the art of those academic circles that failed to decipher this than about LLMs.

Amusement coming purely from the disproportionality of complexity of what worked correctly and what failed.

I find the explanation offered by Cruise amusing: the car supposedly "figured out" that it is in a dangerous spot to be pulled over and "tried to move to a better one" (extremely complex behavior), while the actual reason for the car being pulled over was not having its headlights on (seemingly a relatively simple bug).

This is so cool, imagine it would meet Perseverance and the droids would engage in some <strike>battle</strike> friendly cooperation!

Q: Are the landing sites even remotely close to each other?

Q: Had any of sides incorporated this somehow unexpected counterpart into their master programs? Can they update the programs at all?

Edit: grammar

Was playing with BabylonJS engine the other day, found it quite cool, so made it into a playable result. Hope you'll enjoy!

Am I the only one here experiencing that GMail does reasonably good job in filtering out the spam, while I have to visit the Spam folder approximately once a week, just to randomly correct a mail or 2 a month? (not a Google employee)

I have a Masters in Physics and Applied Mathematics. I started to work (edit: original role was Frontend Engineer / Architect) for US-based startup 6 years ago, 4 years ago founded development office in EU (for the same startup), became engineering manager and eventually GM of that office (75 people back then). Last year we exited for reasonably big number, now I help to finish the integration into the corporate and partially cover SW Architect role.

Loosely related to the title: Why not create a complete modular version not only localised, but also tied to individual country's flows and processes? So it could serve as an education material. (mind:blown)

I also hate the new design, even after few hours I've spent trying to get used to it. With all the necessary settings (compact mode, text buttons etc.), the main flaw stays - theres no freaking border between message body and ads! C'mon Google, this is just too obvious. Wonder how users will switch to some other webmail or desktop clients, how many of them will install some ad-blockers, just because of this. You realise, Google, that this would mean actually less clicking on your ads? Speaking of intentional clicks here.