the8thbit

> This is a typical tech echo chamber. There is a significant number of people who make direct purchases through ads.

Even if its not, TV ads, newspaper ads, magazine ads, billboards, etc... get exactly 0 clickthrus, and yet, people still bought (and continue to buy) them. Why do we act like impressions are hunky-dory for every other medium, but worthless for web ads?

I don't see why, unless you think they're lying and they filmed their demos, or used some other preexisting model. I didn't ignore the JWST launch just because I haven't been granted to ability to use the telescope.

Her approach might not be the literal peak healthiest, but that doesn't mean its wrong. If she's only having a drink every once in a while and is getting 7+ hours of sleep most nights then the negative effects are probably negligible anyway.

To a certain extent, most people need to sacrifice some amount of health and performance to live the fullest life they can. If you don't feel that you benefit from that, though, and its important for either of you that you share your lifestyle, then perhaps you just weren't that compatible.

Not the person you're responding to, but no, it doesn't really bother me at all. What does bother me is that I don't have confidence in the value of the output, where as if I listen to This American Life, or a podcast or audiobook from a trusted authority, I don't have to worry about that.

I don't doubt you're right about social media and smartphones rotting our attention spans. But also, peripatetic philosophy is ancient. I spend most of my day sitting. Whether its work, entertainment, or hobbies, most of these things have me sat in front of a screen. So its nice, and I do think it increases my retention, to be able to do something while walking or cycling instead of sitting.

While you're right that the Internet contains a lot of wonder and exploration, the vast majority of people (and kids) will not interact much with that part of the Internet, if at all. Additionally, social media platforms have collapsed what would have been standalone, somewhat magical experiences into their own uniform platforms. I've heard someone say that kids today tend to think in terms of "apps" and not "websites", because rather than having everything scattered across a lot of small, independently maintained, websites, there are instead a few web apps that contain 99% of what you want to get at.

That means that if you really want to "surf" the web these days you have to dig deep and avoid getting sucked into a social media platform. And when you do dig deep there's not that much out there, because the people who would be maintaining their own web page now just have a facebook page for their business and a twitter account for their personal posts.

> Many of these alternatives failed because they were forced onto users who had already paid over $60 for a game

I really doubt that hurt their adoption. Yes, it pissed people off, but that doesn't mean it suppressed adoption. Being slow and clunky, sure, but you're probably not going to get anywhere without some high value exclusives.

Extremely pedantic, but is "non-deterministic" really the right language? The same input will always produce the same output, provided you haven't intentionally configured the system to use the model non-deterministically. It seems like the right way to describe it is as a chaotic deterministic system. The same input will always produce the same output, but small shifts in the input or weights can result in dramatic and difficult to predict changes in outputs.

This is absolutely wild.

JPEGs and 3D models are also executable binaries. They, like model weights, contain domain specific instructions that execute in a domain specific and turing incomplete environment. The model weights are the instructions, and those instructions are interpreted by the inference harness to produce outputs.

Its not really an analogy. LLMs are quite literally executables in the same way that jpegs are executables. They both specify machine readable (but not human readable) domain specific instructions executed by the image viewer/inference harness.

And yes, like other executables, they are not literal black boxes. Rather, they provide machine readable specifications which are not human readable without immense effort.

For an LLM to be open source there would need to be source code. Source code, btw, is not just a procedure that can be handed to a machine to produce code that can be executed by the machine. That means the training data and code is not sufficient (or necessary) for an open source model.

What we need for an open source model is a human readable specification of the model's functionality and data structures which allows the user to modify specific arbitrary functionally/structure, and can be used to produce an executable (the model weights).

We simply need much stronger interpretability for that to be possible.

As I said, "there's a place for that too, of course."

I don't think Claude is a good choice if you're trying to prototype a project which uses tools that you don't understand conceptually. However, if you already have a pretty good understanding of the tools, and you're good at reading code, documenting desired functionality, and writing user story requirements then its an amazing shortcut. Basically, if you are prepared to be the team lead or architect of a project then Claude can function as a junior dev who:

* has a pretty good score on hackerrank

* happens to have the exact right domain specific knowledge for the project you want to build

* still gets disoriented by medium and large sized codebases, as many juniors are wont to do (you will need to take over as the main developer, or involve an intermediate or senior developer once the project grows to that size)

As an example, the other day I wanted to prototype a project using typescript, react-konva, and tone.js. I already have a strong understanding of typescript, react, HTML canvas, and FM synthesis. What I don't have is an encyclopedic knowledge of the APIs these specific tools expose, nor do I have code sitting in front of me which effectively combines them.

If I document the functionality I want well, Claude is really good at taking that documentation and building out either that prototype or the foundation for that prototype.

Another thing that I find that helps is to add an intermediate step. Describe the functionality you want the prototype to achieve, and then ask Claude to write a project proposal which documents this functionality and breaks the procedure for producing that functionality into actionable steps. You can then save the artifact it generates to the project files, and have it iterate through that. You'll eventually veer off course as the functionality you want shifts, or the order and granularity of tasks diverges from the plan which was originally designed, but it acts as a way to start a project with a much stronger foundation than just saying "I want a thing that does X. Now make it do Y too. Now make it do Z as well. etc..."

Another way to use Claude effectively, which I also utilized for the project I'm talking about, is to use Claude for throwaway prototyping. Rather than having Claude build out a single prototype, and then taking the reigns from there, have it build out one prototype, then scrap that one and have it build another from scratch, then scrap that and have it build a third from scratch.

Each iteration you'll learn a little more about how the functionality and structure you specified actually operates, and what Claude struggles with in relation to your project. This allows the next prototype to be built out with a little more of the functionality you want, and a little bit of a cleaner architecture.

Throwaway prototyping like that is probably the best way to do development (imo), because it increases the likelihood that your final product has a strong foundation, and smooths out the development process dramatically. You don't carry the baggage of the learning process into the final product or the next prototype. However, this traditionally creates an enormous upfront cost, as we end up having to build out the same functionality many times, just to have it once in the end product. But with Claude, I can accomplish the same number of from-scratch iterations in 1 day as it would take me to build out myself in 2 weeks, making this a suitable approach for any project that has a limited enough scope to use Claude for prototyping. That is to say, you're not going to prototype an Unreal Engine competitor using Claude, but prototypes for a browser based FM synth toy are well within its wheelhouse.

I've used both Bitbucket and Azure in the corporate world.

I gotta say, Claude is a godsend for building out quick prototypes of ideas, especially when those ideas require domain specific knowledge that you know a little about but aren't specialized in. Which is most interesting programming projects.

Sure, I could do it myself, but it would take more time, each step would have less momentum, and I'd have to think more while I do it. Which, there's a place for that too, of course.