thinkharderdev

So Q is a "tuple-struct". In rust you can define a struct like

struct Q<T> { value: Option<T> }

with a named field or you can define it like

struct<T> Q(Some<T>)

which is the same struct layout but without an explicit name for the value. In that case, the field is implicitly names `0`

So q.0 = Some(foo) is equivalent to q.value = Some(foo).

The Some(..) is just one variant of the Option enum:

enum Option<T> { None, Some(T) }

Option represents a value that may or may not be initialized. For uninitialized values you use the None variant and then you can initialize it to Some(value).

The C rough equivalent would be

struct Q { void* value; }

struct Q q = q { NULL }; q->value = ...

Rust is supposed to guarantee statically that a reference cannot outlive its referent. The `T: 'static` bound means that the value that Q holds must have a 'static lifetime (e.g. either be an owned value or a reference to a static value). So this program should not compile since a reference to l is not 'static. This code is unsound because rust will drop the string l before q so when the Q destructor runs the underlying string has already been freed yet we have a valid reference to it.

I'm not entirely sure "general" intelligence is a meaningful concept but I take judgement to mean something like "the ability to make decisions under uncertainty without direct feedback." People seem to be able to do this using a lot of context and tacit knowledge. It's not really clear how you hill-climb to that capability through RL.

> the history of artificial intelligence research is littered with examples of humans confidently declaring that task X requires general intelligence, then getting humiliated by a neural network doing task X better than humans a few years later

True, but the history of AI research is also littered with AI researchers confidently predicting X job will be replaced by AI and being completely wrong because they don't actually understand what those jobs actually are. See Geoff Hinton predicting that Radiologists would be obsolete by ~2020, or predictions that truck drivers would all be replaced by self-driving tech.

I think all this debate about whether an LLM can write (or download) a chess engine is sort of missing the point. For basically any economically valuable work there is no equivalent of a chess engine for it. If there were we wouldn't need humans or AI to begin with.

It is pretty common to be prompted to tip by the PoS system in any place you can buy made-to-order food. This includes stores that are normal retail stores but also have some sort of made-to-order food. Like a fancy wine shop or gourmet food store that also sells sandwiches. But this isn't really a new phenomenon either. It's just that there used to be a tip jar sitting by the register, but now the PoS system prompts you because nobody carries cash anymore.

> You get better at modeling the trajectory because the neurons physically move closer together as you learn

I think "modeling the trajectory" is not necessarily what we are doing either. It's more likely we are using much simpler heuristics. If you are trying to catch a ball flying through the air, you can just look at the ball and modulate your running speed to keep your eyes at a fixed angle until you catch the ball. It's much more analogous to a PID controller than a model of the trajectory.

> LLM-generated code has a tendency to “over-justify”

This is the thing that drives my nuts about LLM-generated code. I will see PRs that fix a bug and the entire bug fix is re-explained in 10 different places in a code comment.

The chart in the article is inflation adjusted.

> 55% chance for a $10 payout; 45% chance to lose $10. You would keep on rolling that die, right?

The answer is that it depends? If I have $1B then yeah I would roll the dice and keep rolling as long as they let me. If I have $100? Maybe not because you can go very easily go broke even if each bet is positive EV.

Honestly asking for any specific number is a deeply weird and off-putting question to ask.

I'm in my early forties and both my parents worked (as did all my neighborhood friend's parents) and we still spent a lot of time wandering around. Honestly I think people are really overthinking this. We spent a lot of time wandering around outside because we were bored. Now kids have an endless well of entertainment to choose from so staying at home is a much more appealing option. It's always tempting to romanticize your childhood but if I'm being honest, most of that time wandering around outside I was bored out of my skull. I was just marginally less bored than I would have been sitting at home.

> The best endurance runners run in such a way that their feet land on the front of their foot during running

This is not really true and the whole fore foot vs heal striker thing is a bit of a red herring. There are elite distance runners that are forefoot, mid-foot (probably the majority) and heal strikers. The main thing is that wherever on their foot hits first, the foot itself is under their center of gravity and not out in front of them.

Congratulations on getting back in shape. Just here to say that there is no such thing as ramping up too slowly when getting into (or back into running). So many people push too hard too fast and flame out.

Sure, findings ways to burn tokens is not hard. Even finding ways to burn tokens on things (like your example) which are actually useful is not hard. But what is the ROI on that from the company perspective. I mean, you could have also hired an intern to do the job of collating this report every week. But if you went to your boss and asked to hire someone to do something, they would, reasonably, ask what the value of that thing is and whether it justifies more headcount. But we're in this bizarro world where the bosses are basically saying "go hire more people, even if you don't have specific high-value things for them to do. Just create make-work jobs for them!" It's wild.

> The Grand Canyon review is spot on though.

The review of the Grand Canyon annoyed me the most:

``` Can you hike in the Grand Canyon? Yes, technically. You can walk along the rim, but the view won’t change; same damn canyon on one side, same damn parking lot on the other. There are trails that go down into the canyon, but they’re a trap ```

So you can't even hike there, except of course for the hike that you can do.

"They are featureless steep inclines formed into endless switchbacks, and when they finally end, there’s nothing to do except go back up"

That is what hiking is! Granted, usually you hike up and then back down. And I wouldn't call the hike down into the canyon "featureless". Honestly, it sounds like this person just doesn't really like hiking, which if fine it's not for everyone, but that is just what there is to do in most national parks.