skybrian's recent activity
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Comment on Why should anyone care about low-level programming? in ~comp
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Comment on Why everyone is suddenly in a ‘very Chinese time’ in their lives in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI see it as more of a fun article. Nothing too deep, really.I see it as more of a fun article. Nothing too deep, really.
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Comment on Why everyone is suddenly in a ‘very Chinese time’ in their lives in ~tech
skybrian (edited )Link ParentI think cultural diffusion happens when people actually enjoy cultural products. It’s possible to do that deliberarely. For example, pad thai’s popularity was the result of a government project.I think cultural diffusion happens when people actually enjoy cultural products. It’s possible to do that deliberarely. For example, pad thai’s popularity was the result of a government project.
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Comment on Curl will end its bug bounty program by the end of January due to excessive AI generated reports in ~comp
skybrian LinkI wonder if it would make sense to change it to an invite-only program rather than ending it? For Tildes, getting an invite isn’t so hard, but it seems effective in keeping things under control.I wonder if it would make sense to change it to an invite-only program rather than ending it? For Tildes, getting an invite isn’t so hard, but it seems effective in keeping things under control.
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Comment on Why everyone is suddenly in a ‘very Chinese time’ in their lives in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentIt's my vague impression that Ice-cold beverages everywhere are a specifically American thing. Do other countries put ice in drinks by default? Perhaps it made more sense before air conditioning....It's my vague impression that Ice-cold beverages everywhere are a specifically American thing. Do other countries put ice in drinks by default? Perhaps it made more sense before air conditioning.
I usually ask for no ice.
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Comment on Why everyone is suddenly in a ‘very Chinese time’ in their lives in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentEven now that the Trump administration is doing its best to tear apart US alliances, Russia's alliances are nowhere near as good as US alliances. That's because it's hard to build alliances when...Even now that the Trump administration is doing its best to tear apart US alliances, Russia's alliances are nowhere near as good as US alliances. That's because it's hard to build alliances when your neighbors are afraid you're going to invade. China's neighbors seem similarly wary?
[...] a critical mass of supporters to galvanize China to take up the reins as the deal broker, the industrial powerhouse, the purpose-driven collective that's able to do things now [...]
This seems like a luxury belief that can only be workable in countries far away from China.
But I think this article is more about people being interested in Chinese culture.
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Comment on Why should anyone care about low-level programming? in ~comp
skybrian LinkFrom the blog post: [...] [...] [...] [...]From the blog post:
We in the Handmade community often bemoan the state of the software industry. Modern software is slow and bloated beyond belief—our computers are literally ten times more powerful than a decade ago, yet they run worse than they used to[...]
The Handmade crowd seems to think that low-level programming is the key to building better software. But this doesn’t really make sense on the surface. How is this practical for the average programmer? [...]
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New Reddit exemplified this perfectly: collapsing a comment would dispatch a Redux action, which would update the global Redux store, which would cause all Redux-connected components on the page to update, which would cause all their children to update as well. In other words, collapsing one comment triggered an update for nearly every React component on the page. No amount of caching, DOM-diffing, or
shouldComponentUpdatecan save you from this amount of waste.At the end of the day, I had to conclude that it is simply not possible to build a fast app on this stack. I have since encountered many web applications that suffer in exactly the same way. [...]
Thankfully, React+Redux is not the only possible software stack. We can choose alternatives at every point:
Together all these choices actually form a tree.[...]
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So, to recap: the first reason we care about low-level is because low-level knowledge leads to better engineering choices. The second reason we care about low-level is because, in the long term, low-level knowledge is the path to better tools and better ways of programming—it is a requirement for building the platforms of the future.
But there is still one big problem with all of this: low-level programming today is absolutely terrible.
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What then does this mean for “low-level”? The conclusion is inevitable: the reason we call things “low-level” is because they are terrible to use. They are “low-level” because we do not use them directly! Because we sweep them under the rug and build abstractions on top, they become this low level that we don’t want to touch anymore!
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Low-level programming is not the goal unto itself. High-level programming—a new kind of high-level programming—is the goal, and low-level is how we get there.
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Why should anyone care about low-level programming?
18 votes -
Comment on Why everyone is suddenly in a ‘very Chinese time’ in their lives in ~tech
skybrian Linkhttps://archive.is/tDSQP From the article: [...] [...] [...]From the article:
In case you didn’t get the memo, everyone is feeling very Chinese these days. Across social media, people are proclaiming that “You met me at a very Chinese time of my life,” while performing stereotypically Chinese-coded activities like eating dim sum or wearing the viral Adidas Chinese jacket. The trend blew up so much in recent weeks that celebrities like comedian Jimmy O Yang and influencer Hasan Piker even got in on it. It has now evolved into variations like “Chinamaxxing” (acting increasingly more Chinese) and “u will turn Chinese tomorrow” (a kind of affirmation or blessing).
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As is often the case with Western narratives about China, these memes are not really meant to paint an accurate picture of life in the country. Instead, they function as a projection of “all of the undesirable aspects of American life—or the decay of the American dream,” says Tianyu Fang, a PhD researcher at Harvard who studies science and technology in China.
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Part of why China is on everyone’s mind is that it’s become totally unavoidable. No matter where you live in the world, you are likely going to be surrounded by things made in China. Here at WIRED, we’ve been documenting that exhaustively: Your phone or laptop or robot vacuum is made in China; your favorite AI slop joke is made in China; Labubu, the world’s most coveted toy, is made in China; the solar panels powering the Global South are made in China; the world’s best-selling EV brand, which officially overtook Tesla last year, is made in China. Even the most-talked about open-source AI model is from China. All of these examples are why this newsletter is called Made in China.
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For the most part, this is a fun and innocuous trend, often interpreted as a show of admiration for China and Chinese culture. That’s why some Chinese or Chinese diaspora creators have joined in on the meme, telling their followers yes, you are Chinese if you enjoy hot pot. Chinese artists have also rode the viral wave by producing art that is “Orientalism chic,” a term coined by the culture writer Patrick Kho. By repackaging orientalist tropes with better taste and a light dose of identity politics, they can meet Western audiences where they are, without fully surrendering to familiar caricatures.
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Why everyone is suddenly in a ‘very Chinese time’ in their lives
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Comment on Canada agrees to cut tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products in ~transport
skybrian Link ParentAre US import laws any better for used foreign cars?Are US import laws any better for used foreign cars?
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Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
skybrian LinkOne reason I haven't used debuggers all that much is that in a new programming environment, it often takes time to learn how to set them up and use them, and debugging with print statements or by...One reason I haven't used debuggers all that much is that in a new programming environment, it often takes time to learn how to set them up and use them, and debugging with print statements or by improving logging is often easier. I used them the most when I was a Java programmer, and sometimes in Dart or when using Chrome Devtools to debug a website.
That excuse goes away now that we have coding agents. Even if you don't know how to set up and use the debugger, your coding agent probably does, and they are fairly good at debugging, or so I hear.
So far I haven't seen a coding agent try to use a debugger, though; instead it runs little programs from the command line to test things using 'deno eval.' It will also connect to SQLite and execute SQL queries to learn what's in the database. And that seems good enough.
I believe it's just a matter of asking it to use a debugger, though? I haven't asked yet.
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Comment on Canada agrees to cut tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products in ~transport
skybrian LinkI'm wondering if there would be any way for Americans to go to Canada to buy them.I'm wondering if there would be any way for Americans to go to Canada to buy them.
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Comment on Canada agrees to cut tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products in ~transport
skybrian Link[...]BEIJING — Breaking with the United States, Canada has agreed to cut its 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday.
Carney made the announcement after two days of meetings with Chinese leaders. He said there would be an initial cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports to Canada, growing to 70,000 over five years. China will reduce its tariff on canola seeds, a major Canadian export, from about 84% to about 15%, he told reporters.
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Canada had followed the U.S. in putting tariffs of 100% on EVs from China and 25% on steel and aluminum under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Carney's predecessor.
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Canada agrees to cut tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower tariffs on Canadian farm products
33 votes -
Comment on exe.dev, a service for creating Linux virtual machines and vibe-coding in them in ~comp
skybrian LinkI see that exe.dev went invite-only. If anyone needs one, let me know.I see that exe.dev went invite-only. If anyone needs one, let me know.
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Comment on Why we are excited about confessions in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentI think even if you consider it a kind of sentience, it's temporary and vague. AI characters are more like ghosts than animals. For example, how many sentient creatures are we talking about?...I think even if you consider it a kind of sentience, it's temporary and vague. AI characters are more like ghosts than animals.
For example, how many sentient creatures are we talking about? Character.AI lets you talk to hundreds of characters that differ based on how the LLM is prompted. Are they actually different or is the "same" entity that's just playing a role? If they are different, that means every conversation is a different entity. And like in a novel, you could get an LLM to take both sides of the conversation, too. Is that two different entities or not?
Counting AI ghosts is like counting clouds or the number of fictional characters in a library. Maybe you could say it's a kind of reasoning (certainly coding agents do seem to reason) but it's missing something in terms of having a fixed identity.
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Comment on Why we are excited about confessions in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentYes, it's possible if you can set temperature to zero and also deal with non-determinism from batching requests together. See this article. But making it deterministic doesn't help with external...Yes, it's possible if you can set temperature to zero and also deal with non-determinism from batching requests together. See this article.
But making it deterministic doesn't help with external validity. The results aren't useful unless they generalize to non-zero temperatures, minor changes in wording, slightly different questions, and so on. And hopefully even to different LLM's. Under realistic conditions, LLM's are nondeterministic.
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Comment on Why we are excited about confessions in ~tech
skybrian Link ParentLLM's are non-deterministic but they are much, much cheaper and easier to test than people. No need to run it by the ethics board, recruit volunteers, etc.LLM's are non-deterministic but they are much, much cheaper and easier to test than people. No need to run it by the ethics board, recruit volunteers, etc.
“Failed” seems too strong. Sure, mobile apps are popular but there are also plenty of web apps. Anyone starting a new platform would love to be as successful as the web.