jayrh's recent activity
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Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental
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Comment on For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day. In 2026, the music is out of phase with the work. in ~tech
jayrh Link ParentI'm in the middle. I love the AI workflow for some coding tasks and don't for others. I'm lucky to be at a job where we aren't being judged in any way by our usage of AI so I get to find that...I'm in the middle. I love the AI workflow for some coding tasks and don't for others. I'm lucky to be at a job where we aren't being judged in any way by our usage of AI so I get to find that middle ground for myself. I'm very aware of the skill degredation that comes along with reliance on AI and I'm also wary of the mediocrity and hallucinations. The more I know about a topic the more I see how limited it is. But there are times when I save hours on menial coding tasks and that is an undeniable boost and feels great!
I'm not certain but I want to say more people do use it in moderation, but strong opinions rise to the top. How many times does nuance and "it's complicated" hit the top of the algorithm? Perhaps also an element that there's such strong feelings around the tech that even what counts as moderation is up for debate? I vibe more with the "hate it" crowd but may not be considered a moderate user by those who want zero AI usage seeing as I use it daily at work. And I'm sure I seem almost Luddite for those who have gone all in on agentic usage.
I guess at the end of the day this is a tech with scary potential and that makes it easy for opinionated people to grab a lot of attention. A lot of us are looking for answers and by golly there are a lot of answers out there haha
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Comment on A writing professor’s new task in the age of AI: Teaching students when to struggle in ~life
jayrh Link ParentWhile I broadly agree with you, I have a sense that LLMs are a bit more of a paradigm shift than Wikipedia/Google. We've moved from "websites that have an article on almost anything" that you can...While I broadly agree with you, I have a sense that LLMs are a bit more of a paradigm shift than Wikipedia/Google. We've moved from "websites that have an article on almost anything" that you can plagiarize to "language generator that can create text about almost anything" that you can customize. I'm curious on whether you feel the same as far as LLMs being a larger leap or if I'm just being old haha!
Either way, I think at this point the can of worms is open and it won't be an effective strategy to straight ban LLMs. So teaching how to use them seems like a good way to go.
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Comment on Alternative news source recommendations in ~news
jayrh Link ParentIn reference to the slow journalism publication you linked. I was a subscriber for almost 3 years. It's UK based and much of the news is focused in that direction, but there are also a lot of...In reference to the slow journalism publication you linked. I was a subscriber for almost 3 years. It's UK based and much of the news is focused in that direction, but there are also a lot of world news stories. It's released quarterly with a few page section dedicated to summarizing the headlines for the last 3 months. Then there are deeper dives into other news topics and random pop culture factoids. I really enjoy the writing but it feels more like a quarterly magazine that news to me and was just a bit pricey for where I'm at. I'd love to support them again in the future though!
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Comment on The average US college student is illiterate in ~life
jayrh Link ParentYour initial thought mirrors mine. I think phones are an issue, but what the article mentioned and then didn't follow up on was: Yes. Hard to care about Kierkegaard if you don't feel like you have...Your initial thought mirrors mine. I think phones are an issue, but what the article mentioned and then didn't follow up on was:
They go through the motions and maybe learn something along the way, but it is all in service to the only conception of the good life they can imagine: a job with middle-class wages.
Yes. Hard to care about Kierkegaard if you don't feel like you have a future. At least in the US the prospects for a young person are bleak. Heck, I'm a working professional and the future can look bleak. I think social media can exacerbate worry about the future, but there are real problems of AI taking jobs (or being used as an excuse to fire), housing being extremely expensive, lack of affordable health care, lack of social safety net (and what we have being torn down). Not to mention global issues like geo-politics and climate change. I believe that for young people, the good ol' Americanism about working hard and making it seems like a joke.
So yeah, I think phones are an issue, but I think this article landed on the easy answer with a bit of a, "Phones bad, young people need to grow up" vibe. The issues facing young people are much bigger, and I don't think higher education is giving them satisfying answers. That said, I understand the frustration. education is hugely important for addressing these big issues and having a motivated critical thinking populace is key as well.
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Comment on What’s your preferred work monitor setup? in ~comp
jayrh LinkI'm in software development and have gone through a couple different multi-monitor setups and landed on a single monitor as well. Currently using a single 27" 1080p (had a 30" 4k which tipped and...I'm in software development and have gone through a couple different multi-monitor setups and landed on a single monitor as well. Currently using a single 27" 1080p (had a 30" 4k which tipped and broke and haven't minded the smaller/lower res). I plug my monitor into my laptop and close the lid of the laptop. Part of my motivation is I work out of the office a couple times a week with just my laptop and I like my workflows to be the same between office and out. I also didn't find any extra productivity or enjoyment in multi-monitor setups.
Couple things that I find necessary for this to work for me:
- Monitor on a height and angle adjustable arm NOT mounted to my desk. I hate my monitor jiggling when I type so I have my desk against a wall and the monitor arm mounted to the wall. I have a sit/stand desk and the mount arm has just enough vertical adjustment to get a comfortable height in either position. I just have to remember to move it up so I don't crash my desk into it haha!
- Multiple desktops. I have either 3 or 4 virtual desktops in use most days. Music/Communication apps on one. Browser tabs for reference and research in another. Actively working project/s in the 3rd and 4th.
- Custom hotkeys for quickly and easily switching tabs and virtual desktops. I use cmd + h/l for switching to an adjacent virtual desktop and cmd + ctrl + h/l for moving a window to the adjacent desktops. I then have cmd + j/k for cycling through windows on a particular desktop.
I think I'd definitely use a second monitor if the virtual desktops/hotkeys weren't setup. It took a bit of getting used to but the more regimented I am in keeping apps in their "correct" virtual desktop the less time I spend lost among windows or hunting for what exactly is playing music etc.
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Comment on How do you remember? in ~tech
jayrh LinkI like to use an Obsidian-style set of markdown files for anything I need to remember long-term. (I use an nvim plugin because I already use nvim frequently but same diff) Otherwise I use browser...I like to use an Obsidian-style set of markdown files for anything I need to remember long-term. (I use an nvim plugin because I already use nvim frequently but same diff) Otherwise I use browser bookmarks for things I find interesting or want to check out but haven't had the time. For everything else I have a TUL notebook with the little rings and the custom hole puncher to go with it. That lets me take physical notes or draw diagrams/doodles.
I've gone down the rabbit hole of "perfect" knowledge system storage and have settled on those three methods as good enough for me. Markdown/Obsidian is great for just dumping things with keywords and being able to search and find them later, bookmarks for online stuff that's not so important but I want to remember, and then the physical notebook with pages I can re-arrange for anything that I don't want to type.
I'm curious about how you feel about other transformer-type AI. Is there something special about language/conversation token prediction that you think could lead to consciousness? Would a speech-to-text model that's taking in audio tokens and predicting text be conscious or something even less human along the lines of AlphaFold with protein structure prediction?
I'm asking because I guess I view LLMs as just probability prediction machines and haven't given consciousness much serious consideration. I know I'm biased and resistant to the idea partially because I don't want them to be conscious, so I'm interested in arguments for it. I do think it would be a terrible thing to invent/create other consciousnesses and don't think we're collectively ready for that burden. (Thinking about how we as humans tend to treat animals, natural resources and each other)