stochastictrebuchet

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Vivaldi is chrom_ium_. Been trying out the last month on macOS. Great browser, although it’s funny how for some settings you get taken to a different page that looks 100% like Chrome except with Vivaldi branding.

    Vivaldi on iOS doesn’t feel as great though – less ‘native’. Certain gestures and animations just don’t quite fit.

    Shoutout to Webkit-based Orion for both platforms. Slowly gravitating to that



  • Just fyi, that’s not entirely true. If we’re just focusing on LLMs, structured and guided generation exists. Combine that with an eval set (= unit tests), you can at least track how well you’re doing. For sure, prompt engineering misses the feeling of being in control. You’ll also never be able to claim 100% coverage (although even with unit tests that’s not something you can claim, as there are always blind spots). What you gain over traditional coding, however, is that you can tackle problems that might otherwise take an infinite number of years to express in code. For example, how would you define the rules for detecting whether an image shows a bird?

    It’s just a tool like any other. Overuse is currently detestably rife. But its value is there.

    Source: ML engineer who secretly hates a lot about ML but is also in awe at the developments of the last few years.






  • Row after row of copy-pasted high-rise apartment buildings does not spark joy.

    Unfortunately, Hong Kong has so little buildable land, its terrain hilly with scattered flat patches, that this approach is the only one that gets you enough units for everyone. Last I heard though property prices were absolutely skyrocketing.

    More to the point, a huge mall does not compare with green outdoor space to walk around in. On the other hand, there’s at least four months each year when outside is a fucking steam oven and a mall with air conditioning is 100% where you want to be.






  • I’d love to switch back to Linux but this is why I moved back to macOS for good several years ago. Once I got a taste of reading code at 4k/retina (faux-4k) – not to mention the better font support – there was no going back, for me at least.

    If it’s considered user error for someone to want a high DPI display in 2024, then I can only surmise that people who share that sentiment have convinced themselves that more eye strain is a worthwhile tradeoff for FOSS. Commendable but a tough sell.






  • All my old macbooks eventually get the Linux treatment. On modern hardware, however, the trade-offs of non-macOS just don’t make sense to me.

    For now, Apple Silicon has made a fanboy out of me. I can’t overstate how big the jump in performance felt going from intel to my first M1 – not to mention the improved thermals. And obviously part of that is due to excellent alignment between hardware and software.

    Still, once that first M1 hits retirement, I’ll no doubt experience that familiar pang of gratitude towards those engineers that put up with the trade-offs of running Linux on it today in order to get everything working.


  • Community consensus is that AoE 2’s mechanics are an improvement on its predecessor, but I personally have a weak spot for AoE 1: Rise of Rome expansion. Fewer things to manage, beautiful wonder structures, and cheap axe man hordes.

    My dad and I used to play against each other over LAN. Hearing him shouting and cursing from the other room while I razed his city with scythe chariots is such a happy memory. Man, I miss him. To the dads here, play AoE with your kids.