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epgui

4,991 karma · joined July 29, 2020

MSc biochemistry, Sr Software Engineer at Teamshares, photographer, academic at heart.

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/epgui; my proof: https://keybase.io/epgui/sigs/y564TgN5chSlzKFy-9SIa9Lpqeo22kBECpmXwEVwMJ8 ]

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epgui··on LLM Voice
It’s also just… disrespectful to the human reader. Quite plainly.
epgui··on Meta Employees Denounce Interference in Brazilian Elections
Sometimes people have to choose between doing the right thing and doing the easy thing.
epgui··on Types of types: Haskell's Kind system
I think you missed the “not”.
epgui··on Types of types: Haskell's Kind system
Lack of knowledge is not the problem at all. Anti-intellectualism is.
epgui··on How to Formalize All of Mathematics
The incompleteness theorem doesn’t mean it’s impossible to formalize all of mathematics. It just means you’ll need to build out “various” mathematics from a landscape of axioms that are not necessarily all compatible with each other.

A bit like a multiverse of mathematics.

epgui··on Siri is so bad at everything
So it’s pretty obvious that Siri sucks.

Is Apple acknowledging it? Do they have an explanation? What’s their narrative?

epgui··on Deloitte falsified documents to evade tax on Abramovich's wealth
Am I the only one who can’t read the article because of the paywall? Since when does BBC paywall?
epgui··on Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program
How does AI relate to my question?
epgui··on Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court
At the end of the day, the law is what people agree it is… And people don’t seem to be too interested in keeping the lunatic in check.
epgui··on Trump administration is suspending Microsoft from a green card program
What does this mean? Use more words please.
epgui··on Turbo Haskell
Yes, undoubtedly.

(For further context, I was comparing essentially vibe code across languages. Vibe-coded Clojure stood out as much less unpalatable than anything else I tried.)

epgui··on Turbo Haskell
Anecdotally, I’ve found Claude-generated Haskell code to be almost as bad (hard to read) as Claude-generated python.

I have no doubt the haskell compiles… but when it comes from an LLM it reads like nonsensical code soup.

Claude-generated Clojure seems a lot better.

epgui··on The problem is not AI code, but not knowing about system architecture or intent
To put a finger on a word: David Hume’s “is vs ought” problem.

Data can describe to you what exists. But it can’t tell you what you value.

What you describe is people who can’t tell the difference, and who let the machine (data) make the value judgments.

epgui··on Footguns with Postgres “at time zone 'UTC'”
I love how there’s even errors in the article. Timestamps and time zones are so subtle and nuanced, and people assume they are WAY simpler than they really are. Even smart engineers.
epgui··on Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock
I was kicked out from the MD programme at Université de Sherbrooke due to a procedural failure. The school covered it up, I was devastated.

Six years later after filing the equivalent of a FOIA I realized something didn’t add up. I filed for judicial review, it was denied on prescription grounds (delay) so the court had no need to examine the case on its merits. I appealed, the judgment held.

So yeah, delay/prescription is a real and super serious thing, especially in administrative law. Very strict.

epgui··on Writing Parquet files using Haskell
Haskell tends to be C-fast.
epgui··on Claude is a Contrarian
That’s better but I’d argue it’s still not clear enough. If you told me that, I’d interpret that as meaning “don’t try to imagine things that never happened as a thought exercise”, which is what I normally understand “counterfactual” to mean.
epgui··on Claude is a Contrarian
Well, I agree that all of that is annoying, but "Don’t contradict sentences" is not a very good instruction. The construction "A, not B" is not a "contradiction", it's a clarification, a juxtaposition, a contrast. It's self-consistent and non-contradictory.
epgui··on Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives
Yeah, I suppose this could vary by geography, but my understanding is that in Canada, you're nearly-absolutely responsible for hitting anything in front of you, and nearly-absolutely not responsible for anything hitting you from behind.

The only exception I could think of would be if someone intentionally jumped in front of your car, or if you did a patently and clearly unsafe maneuver, but even then I think there'd be a sort of rebuttable presumption of fault.

epgui··on Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives
Anecdotally, the only times I've ever noticed these chimes and the auto-braking (even automatic rolling-up of windows), it was false positives, and it was mildly terrifying: for a brief and unexpected moment I was no longer in control of my vehicle. [Recent Honda Civic and Audi A3 models]
epgui··on Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem
Lean is for humans.
epgui··on Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem
Is Lean a DSL? I’d argue it’s a general purpose programming language that excels at proofs.
epgui··on Thinking in Python
I would only wish that on my enemies... For god's sake, if you're going to think in a programming language, pick one with strict referential transparency.
epgui··on AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study
If you use AI to outsource your thinking, then AI is not “just an amplifier” at all.

A huge proportion of people who use AI use it to outsource their thinking.

epgui··on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down
No, it’s just written as speech.
epgui··on How I over-engineered my book
Sounds more like an admission than a boast to me.
epgui··on Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit
I think you’re failing to identify the important part of the story.
epgui··on How I over-engineered my book
What gives you the impression that "people" have come to such a conclusion?
epgui··on Linear algebra done right
I am a very big fan of Axler's approach, because to me it really gets to the (abstract) essence of things. When I truly started to "get" this approach, it really made linear algebra an important part of how I think.
epgui··on Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
No.
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