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munchler

4,208 karma · joined July 25, 2021

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munchler··on Triplet of 'ghostly' galaxies hints at what dark matter is and isn't
This is a cool idea.

I was tempted to comment that there’s no evidence that you can make anything complex out of dark matter, but it turns out that some physicists hypothesize that “self-interacting” dark matter could bind into something like atoms and molecules, so carry on!

munchler··on There's never been a better time to go into math (by: 3blue1brown) [video]
The person you’re replying to didn’t say “every” or even “most”. They said “me”. There’s no argument or stereotype being invoked at all.
munchler··on Valen's Memory Safety: A New Kind of Borrow Checking
FWIW `foo in bar` implies iteration to me, not a path. In the .NET world, for example, `bar` would be a collection that we’re iterating through, assigning each element to `foo` in turn.
munchler··on Claude Code’s suggested message feature: I think the real customer is the model
The weird thing I notice is that these suggestions are always in all lower-case, even though I don’t type that way.
munchler··on Fixed Points and Strike Mandates
This is a cool example of abstract math having a direct impact on a real-world situation. Actually, two different cool examples, both clearly explained. Nice!
munchler··on Frog and Toad and the Increasingly Capable Machines
This is an excellent explainer. I noticed one important flaw in the setup, though: Toad assigns multiple puzzles on page 5, but by page 10 all the machines seem to be working on the same puzzle.

I'm not sure how this maps onto reality. If each agent had a different problem to solve, how did they cooperate?

munchler··on Stabilizing Rust's Never Type
As a fan of the Curry-Howard correspondence, I approve of this decision.
munchler··on An Alien Mind
> The strongest argument I see for continuing to train much smarter models quickly is the need to build defensive systems against the dangers posed by other AI.

Yikes! I really wonder about the cognitive dissonance necessary to work at OpenAI these days. They’re in an arms race to build a machine god, knowing full well that it could end humanity.

munchler··on Burnt out on a three-day week
It seems like AI to me as well. “That’s the gap” is a familiar Claude-ism, as are the references to a “pivot” and the use of “touch” to mean “affect”.

To be fair, I’ve reached the point where most random blog posts I read on the internet seem AI written, so it could just be confirmation bias on my part.

munchler··on HelloAssembly The smallest possible complete Windows application
It’s a minimal Windows app, so the whole idea is to rely on Windows DLLs as much as possible.
munchler··on A SAT Attack on Tarski's High School Algebra Problem
Well, yes, but negative numbers are also well known to every high school math student.
munchler··on What happens when an LLM never sees material beyond fifth grade?
A human child would just say “I don’t know”.
munchler··on A SAT Attack on Tarski's High School Algebra Problem
Why is subtraction not part of the algebra? It’s certainly familiar to every high school math student. This omission allows the counterexample, so the reveal is a bit of a disappointment IMHO.
munchler··on The lattice of sets of natural numbers is rich (2021)
What a beautiful illustration. It makes intuitive the very abstract concepts discussed in the text. It’s fun to zoom in and browse around the structure.
munchler··on Oracle cut its Always Free ARM limits to 2 OCPU / 12GB, enforced Aug 18
Thank you. The OP's article is clearly AI-written.
munchler··on Read the novels and forget everything else
It's not about immature people being unable to separate art from artist because it's difficult. The issue is whether it's the right thing to do.

I feel pretty confident that I could describe to you a case (either real or hypothetical) where you would reject an artist based on their personal behavior, rather than their art. You would find it quite difficult in such a case to separate the two.

So the question is where to draw the line, and everyone answers that question differently.

munchler··on F*: A general-purpose proof-oriented programming language
https://fstar-lang.org/tutorial/
munchler··on We have proof automation now
The flip side is that we currently put programs into production without understanding how they will behave in those edge cases. If you're lucky, they crash and then restart cleanly. If you're unlucky, they silently corrupt data or violate mission-critical invariants.
munchler··on Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment
Thank you for this. I probably don't have higher standards, but I do have way fewer than a million users!
munchler··on Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment
Thank you for this explanation. It makes sense, but I don't really understand why it has become so popular.

Professionally, my experience is that certain software components need to run together on an individual machine (e.g. database server, app server, web server), and then those machines need to be networked in a certain way (e.g. web server talks to app server, which talks to database server), so I really need to care about the architecture of individual machines. You can then scale this out horizontally (e.g. add another web server) or vertically (e.g. upgrade your database server).

I'm old, so maybe I'm out of date, but having a cluster of "compute" that I can run arbitrary workloads on sounds neat, but is a capability that I've never needed.

munchler··on Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment
I appreciate the effort and I'm in your target audience, but that document didn't help me. It seems to dive into the details of installing and running k8s without saying much about the purpose.

From my very ignorant standpoint, K8s seems to be about running a "cluster", but I don't know why I would want to do that.

munchler··on Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth
Nobody knows what anything is going to be worth in 5 years.
munchler··on Atomic Physics in Pure Anglo-Saxon
(1989)
munchler··on Microsoft deleted my account and OneDrive
> "This action is irreversible and ensures that your data remains protected."

This amounts to "We deleted all your data in order to keep it safe." WTF.

munchler··on Postgres rewritten in Rust, now passing 100% of the Postgres regression tests
> Code is code. It either does the job or doesn't.

Surely that is not the only dimension that matters when evaluating software. Maintainability and readability, for example, are crucial for any long-lived project.

munchler··on GPT‑Live
I love the chatty tone of this utterly dystopian question.
munchler··on Treasury Has an Internal Report Warning About the Dangers of an AI Bubble
If AGI is the goal and something like the Singularity is even a remote possibility, the difference between first and second place could be effectively infinite. Given China’s suppression of human rights, it’s not a chance I would want my government to take.
munchler··on Building relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as hoped
> I can think of exactly one customer in two years who was surprised that software costs money

I think you meant "I can think of exactly one customer in two years who was NOT surprised that software costs money"?

munchler··on 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)
To expand on this a bit, I appreciate some audio overkill because, if I do hear sizzle or distortion, it eliminates one possible reason and helps me figure out what’s actually happening.

It’s like having gigabit internet to my house: I don’t actually need it, but when a website is slow, I know the problem isn’t in my internet connection.

munchler··on The operating cost starts after the demo
It actually extends to all automation, even before computers. Replacing oxen with tractors? Now you have to keep the tractors running.
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