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jlkuester7

1,229 karma · joined May 1, 2018

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jlkuester7··on Non-Determinism Doesn't Matter
> LLMs, and their respective harnesses, are actors in a system. Code is just an output.

This tracks well with my experiences integrating AI into a software dev pipeline. Sure the output of an LLM is not deterministic in the same sense as a compiler (at least when the LLM has the typical configuration). However, that just means the LLM should not be solely responsible for the final product of your pipeline.

jlkuester7··on Pi Durable
Not familiar with the details of Pi Durable, but I have tinkered a bit with different sandboxing strategies for Pi. IMHO it would be hard to trust a sandboxing layer built into a harness that is so focused on being fully pluggable/moddable/self-improvable.

When I am using Pi to write extensions for Pi, I feel better running Pi wrapped in a separate os-level sandbox. I guess Pi could do it all, but I am content with how it is.

jlkuester7··on Will Open Source Survive the Agents That Replaced It?
This. I happily pay for IntelliJ software (even though basically everything else I use is FLOSS). It is not really this feature or that feature of WebStorm that makes it worth while, but just that 40+ hours of the weeks it just works. For normal stuff, for edge cases, small projects, big repos. When I need something, it just works (with out me needing to fiddle with an agent to build me some brittle scripting that will kinda work today, but break tomorrow....).
jlkuester7··on Goose:experimental lang 1.16x faster than C++ and 1.12x than safe Rust, mem safe
All-stack-no-heap

Isn't this kind of the point of Java's Project Valhalla or am I just confused???

jlkuester7··on Small Models Have Arrived
Exactly. Even 32b parameter models you can run locally on consumer hardware are "good enough" at this point for some workflows!
jlkuester7··on Qwen3.8-Max: A New Bar for Coding and Cowork
I recommend trying pi.dev as your agent harness for local models. In my experience it has been the sweet spot of functionality (which you can and should extend with plugins) vs performance (OpenCode just swamps local models on my hardware).
jlkuester7··on Canon Law Ninja
Not 100% sure why this is trending, but anyone here interested in the Code of Cannon Law for the Roman Catholic Church, might also find this of interest: https://github.com/DivinumOfficium/ (no affiliation)

This project maintains a digital source for multiple old versions of the "Divine Office" (aka Liturgy of the Hours or Roman Breviary). I find it particularly interesting from a FLOSS perspective. The source data is all very old (none/expired copyrights), but the calculations for which readings/prayers should be said for each particular day of the year are non-trivial (and the readings/prayers for a particular day are different from year-to-year). So, the logic included maintained in the project is a real value-add.

jlkuester7··on Catholic Church to Excommunicate Priests for Following New US State Law
> if it’s handled only within the Church then the only penalty are things like defrocking or banning from the church

To be clear, things said under the "seal of the confessional" cannot be shared by the priest with anyone else _even within the Catholic Church._ This particular situation is not a matter of the church trying to handle matters internally, but more of a recognition that the penitent is confessing their sins to God and the priest is only acting "in persona Cristi" (and thereby is prevented from pursuing other personal or societal objectives based on information revealed).

jlkuester7··on Pipelining might be my favorite programming language feature
> Debuggability is much more important than marginally-better readability, for production code.

I find this take surprising. I guess it depends on how much weight you give to "marginally-better", but IMHO readability is the single most important factor when it comes to writing code in most code-bases. You write code once, it may need to be debugged (by yourself or others) on rare occasions. However anytime anyone needs to understand the code (to update it, debug it, or just make changes in adjacent code) they will have to read it. In a shared code-base your code will be read many more times than it will be updated/debugged.

jlkuester7··on The F-35 as a Subscription Service
> Now everyone has to ask what Microsoft, Google, AWS, Red Hat, etc. would do to avoid risking their government contracts or possible consequences for their executives

As long as executive compensation is tied to stock performance, coorperations will only care about their stock price and the kinds of things that will affect it. I do not trust them regardless of who is in the White House. Their alignment of values/incentives is diametrically opposed to mine...

jlkuester7··on The F-35 as a Subscription Service
The "issues" described here seem to me to be basically just run-of-the-mill aquisitions considerations. Is anyone out there buying any kind of enterprize-grade hardware in any industry and not doing the due dilligence to consider operating costs over the lifetime of the unit? All technology of sufficient complexity requires a supply chain to be in place to support it. Folks are not just waking up today and realising those F-35s they bought will need to be supported or maintained.

The only thing remotely newsworthy here may be a story around a loss in global confidence in the US "brand", but I think the actual implications of that (if any) still remain to be seen....

jlkuester7··on The F-35 as a Subscription Service
> Android is Open Source and therefore does have a full feature-set available free of charge.

This is assuming a pretty narrow definition of "full feature-set". It is a inacurrate to say there is feature parity between an Android phone running Google Play Services vs one that is not.

jlkuester7··on Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones
Building and maintaining a functional marketplace (e.g. through common-sense anti-trust enforcement) is about more than just optimizing for a specific outcome...
jlkuester7··on Apple restricts Pebble from being awesome with iPhones
100% agree that decisive anti-trust action is needed. In addition, many of us can (and do) choose to just not participate (to the best of our abilities) in the nonsense from these companies.

Many of us are not required to use Apple devices (and we choose not to). Additionally, many of us are able to choose privacy-respecting Android variants (like GrapheneOS). It sometimes is less "convenient", but IMHO it is better then surrendering to the duopoly...

jlkuester7··on uBlock Origin is no longer available on the Chrome Store
I get it. I run FF as my primary browser (mostly because I don't want to see the internet devolve into a Blink mono-culture).

But, I always recommend Brave for less-technical folks. It just works! My FF setup includes a number of extensions, some of which need a bit of tuning to be useful. Then you have to deal with issues in websites that just don't properly support FF, etc. My grandmother can install Brave and simply start browsing. Things just work without extra config or tinkering.

jlkuester7··on Vtm: Text-Based Desktop Environment
Been using Zellij for awhile and it is delightful! I am only a moderate terminal user, but I really like having some basic multiplexing features if I need them. My brain just could not hold onto the necessary tmux key combos with only intermittent use. Instead I find the Zellij commands to be more intuitive (and more discoverable thanks to the handy prompts...)
jlkuester7··on Signal to leave Sweden if backdoor law passes
So much this! The internet does not have to be a monolith controlled by the mega-corp/govt flavor-of-the-month. It originally was (and still can be) a network of smaller federated ecosystems controlled by individuals or smaller groups.
jlkuester7··on Kaneo – An open source project management platform
Yeah, was thinking that as well. IMHO, compose.yaml is the best balance of convenience and simplicity if you need one (or even "several") instances. You should only get more fancy if you need to deploy `n` instances with auto provision/load-balancing/failover/etc.
jlkuester7··on Tiny vanes glued to planes promise big savings for US Air Force
> Just remember that the brake pads on your car are stuck on with glue next time you tap the pedal.

Unrelated to the article's point, but what? Maybe the layers of the pad itself are glued together, but no brake pads I have every changed have been stuck to the car with glue in any way. (They are held in place with metal brackets which allow them to slide along a small track when compressed by the brake pistons....)

jlkuester7··on Earthstar – A database for private, distributed, offline-first applications
Honestly it kinda feels like they just reimplemented CouchDB/PouchDB....

Not that it would be a bad thing to do that, but really, for small scale stuff Couch works pretty okay. My first impressions of Earthstar do not lead me to believe they have a particular emphasis on performance at scale.

jlkuester7··on Trying out Zed after more than a decade of Vim/Neovim
This is the part that impressed me the most! I know other editors "support" this kind of workflow, but opening "remote projects" via SSH is so clean and intuitive in Zed! I love that when you pop the terminal open on a "remote" Zed window, it just opens right in your remote host directory where you would expect.
jlkuester7··on US-owned Greenland and Gulf of America? What a weird week
> A classic regime change operation like hundreds of others.

My memory of post-WWII is that the US has a history of "changing" regimes in other countries, but has made very few (none? Maybe Cuba?) serious efforts to add territory to the actual land area of the United States.

jlkuester7··on US-owned Greenland and Gulf of America? What a weird week
The Russian angle is an interesting one I had not considered! Even the "threat" of an increased US presence in the Arctic would seem to apply some additional pressure on Russia.

It could also have interesting effects regarding Russia/Ukraine negotiations. Russia would be wise to consider if it really wants to open to door to a major powers territorial acquisition fire-sale....

jlkuester7··on US-owned Greenland and Gulf of America? What a weird week
The pop of Alaska is not the relevant number here. Presumably the vote to transfer Alaska to Russia would have to be at the level of the whole country. (The question of whether a state can unilaterally leave the United States has come up in the past and was pretty violently settled.)
jlkuester7··on US-owned Greenland and Gulf of America? What a weird week
> Unfortunately, there's a method to his pronouncements.

Am I missing some alternate definition of "method" which is actually explored by this article? I was hoping for some (even speculative) explanation for why territorial expansion has suddenly entered the American zeitgeist...

jlkuester7··on The price of shutting down coal power, and what would be gained
In the historical context I would see "Vox Populi, Vox Dei" as intentionally juxtaposed against the "Divine Right of Kings" (the leading political philosophy in Europe for the last few thousand years).

I think there is a TON of interesting discussion to be had on the best ways to _implement_ democracy, but locating the source of political power directly in the people who are governed seems like a pretty solid idea to me... I have not been able to come up with anything better.

jlkuester7··on Why shouldn't you give money to homeless people?
Yes! I have never struggled with drug addition, but I have had personal experiences that showed me how sometimes in life "getting through today" takes a higher priority then "fixing the underlying problems". Looking back at my life, several unexpected highlights came from the kindness of random strangers who helped me out when I did not deserve it.

Giving a homeless person $5 will not fix any of their underlying issues, but it might be the thing that gets them through the day.

jlkuester7··on Hazel: A live functional programming environment featuring typed holes
Not sure if I have just spent too much time in the JS/TS world and so I have forgotten the pain in this area in proper compiled languages, but to me it seems like needing "typed holes" smells like maybe there is some abstraction missing in your codebase.

I prefer to have code layered in a way that my inflection points happen across well defined interfaces. Then I can make changes one layer at a time in increments that are small enough to still be able to reason about. But maybe I am totally mising the point of typed holes!

jlkuester7··on The importance of F-Droid, an Android app store
Do these same concerns still pertain to dev-hosted F-Droid repos? (E.g. I am thinking of how I install Bitwarden from the their own repo: https://mobileapp.bitwarden.com/fdroid/)

IMHO, one of the best parts about the F-Droid ecosystem is its openness. Security models are not a one-size-fits-all and it is important to me to have access to software from multiple sources.

jlkuester7··on Google loses antitrust suit over search deals on phones
Big fan of Graphene! The balance I personally prefer is to use Shelter to create a "work profile" and install Play Services in there along with any apps that must have Play Services. Then, I only enable the work profile when I need to use those apps.
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