Recent submissions

Comment · 4 years ago
One day, long after I'm gone, people will finally accept that Python and JavaScript are no longer young languages.

JavaScript is 26 years old, Python is 31. They both continue to grow in importance year-on-year, JavaScript because there is nothing on the horizon which will plausibly replace it, and Python because a large number of industries and programmers genuinely love it.

I think there's a nontrivial chance they'll both still be languages of primary importance in 50 years, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that they'll at least remain as relics yet needing support the way Fortran and COBOL exist today.

Comment · 4 years ago
I don't think that argument holds up. A VR headset, say, is astronomically high up the hierarchy of needs, but I know very few people who'd say the inherent value of a piece of modern technology is zero.

It really seems to be art specifically which people are often keen to describe as worthless, not any particular category of good that artwork might fall into.

Comment · 4 years ago
I get frustrated with games that scale things with me. I want to be able to feel myself getting better, having my enemies scale with me on any axis really takes away from that feeling that I'm progressing.

I say this not because I think it's an especially noteworthy or important objection, but to echo GP's point, that it's very hard to find AI that suits everyone, and it's not just a matter of difficulty.

Comment · 4 years ago
I think this is a weird framing of the issue. Sure, lots of businesses go under, and maybe being larger would have saved them, but maybe not. Plenty of VC-funded businesses go under precisely because they tried to be too large, when they could have perfectly comfortably served a few satisfied initial clients for enough money to pay all their bills.

I think the idea that companies go under because they aren't ambitious enough says more about modern attitudes towards growth than it does about the reality of business.

Comment · 4 years ago
For anyone as confused as me, from Wikipedia:

> [Hunger] stones were embedded into a river during droughts to mark the water level as a warning to future generations that they will have to endure famine-related hardships if the water sinks to this level again.

Comment · 4 years ago
Oh, excuse me, I entirely missed that section of the page. Makes sense there's a geographical distinction, I'm not American so I suppose I don't have the intuitive issue with it, but on reading I see the logic.
Comment · 4 years ago
EDIT: Never mind, sorry, I missed part of the article, it does indeed say what you say.

---

That's the opposite of what your source says:

> In writing, however, use to in place of used to is an error.

Used to X was the standard past tense of to use in the sense of being in the habit of:

I used to fish: I was previously in the habit of fishing, correct both in the past and today.

I use to fish: I am presently in the habit of fishing, correct in the past but no longer understood today.

The second, however, is according to MW occasionally misused to mean "I was previously in the habit of fishing".

Comment · 4 years ago
Comment · 4 years ago
I don't know, I maintain that policy fairly strictly, but I can imagine falling for this.

I won't as a policy give out information to an incoming call, and I do call back if they want any info from me. But my working memory is not endless. The topic of discussion had changed three times before he was asked for any information, and the information still wasn't PII, it was a confirmation code. The scammer knew enough about him that he wasn't especially on alert. I can well imagine that flag in my mind that I was on an incoming call having been lost before we got to that point. And I suspect that's exactly how the scam was designed.

Comment · 4 years ago
I've lost track of what point you're making.

Speed and memory is orthogonal to my point, which is about the output of two methods of arriving at an answer. I'm obviously not saying GPT-3 is anything like as efficient as running a small function.

What distinction are you drawing between the output of an interpreted program and a compiled program?

Comment · 4 years ago
I don't think that's a reasonable assumption. If we allow ourselves to assume no errors, we could just assume GPT-3 makes no errors and declare it equivalent to a code interpreter.

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