Yes, not so much because I'm trying to anthropomorphize it or interact with it like a human, but because I view such things as conversational signals that may influence the direction of the model.
- "Please" = Call to action for the model to perform a task that I either just described or am about to describe within this prompt. In other words, this conversational turn is not just about feeding more context to it, but I've given it everything I think it needs and it should go ahead and start.
- "Thank you" = I am satisfied with the results that it provided for that task and want to move on to something else now, where the new thing is contextually related to the recent task. (If I wanted an entirely unrelated task, I'd just start a new conversation with a fresh context.)
Wholly agreed with this. There are key phrases that can act as, as you said, 'conversational signals' for where to steer things. The amount of intense post-training that these models undergo to make them "helpful assistants" means these words/phrases have high 'steering ratio'. Double-win that you sharpen your own politeness habit when dealing with humans too.
Oddly, trying to occasionally place on the Advent of Code global leaderboard was the thing that got me most fluent in Python as its own language.
Before that, I tended to write Python in a much more imperative style, since C++ is my main language; think for loops and appending to lists. Thanks to AoC, I'm now addicted to comprehensions for transforming and filtering, know the standard library cold, and write much more concise, Pythonic code.
Ha ha, yeah, for sure. It is easy to tell the Python code coming from an experienced C programmer. The thing about Python is, you can just give C a semi-colon-ectomy and it pretty much works. But it isn't Python... it took me a while to get completely pickled in the Python way of doing things. Ramalho's book did more than anything to put my brain into Python mode.
I do a lot of hardware hacking, where I'm writing C for the hardware, and Python for my testing. Probably half of my syntax errors are typing C into the Python editor, or Python into the C editor.
And vast. IME, people often underestimate what it can do. For example, if you need to store IP addresses in a DB, you can use the stdlib library ipaddress to validate them, then store them as an INT, casting it back to dotted-quad with Python if needed.
Also, of course, Postgres has a native inet type, which performs validation and other operations, storing a v4 in 7 bytes – not quite as good as 4 bytes for an INT, but much better than the maximum 16 bytes to store a dotted-quad as a VARCHAR. But if you’ve got MySQL (or anything else without a native type), this is a solid way to save space – and more importantly, memory – that can add up over hundreds of millions of rows (session information for a large SaaS product, for example).
I did my first ever AoC last year and I'm old. It was fun. Didn't get very far though. First thing that mucked me up was forgetting negative indices in Python arrays are valid.
I'm an admin/SRE and don't spend enough time programming, in too many languages. C++, C, Perl, Ruby, Python, Awk, etc.
Alternatively for the non-random and arbitrary N case here, an approach based on Phyllotaxis that samples a Fermat spiral every ~137.508 degrees (i.e., the golden angle, or the golden ratio fraction of a circle) also works pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_spiral#The_golden_r.... It works nicely for any N, even if the N isn't square or close to square (just choose the scaling appropriately, e.g., c = 1/sqrt(N)).
The funny thing is, in my neck of Seattle (the city this post is complaining about), I've seen some of the harsh white LEDs that went in switched over to a warmer color. I remember being quite shocked when I pulled into a city-owned parking lot one night and realized that all of the lights around were all now a warmer color instead of the harsh white. The lights in my neighborhood also seem to have been switched over at some point. I suppose they're the tunable LEDs, but clearly someone here does care.
In my city they started turning off all streetlights at midnight outside of major driving lanes and active center areas.
It's weird and somewhat unnerving at first but brilliant. I'd argue road-wise it is possibly even safer because headlights work so much better when it's pitch black by virtue of the human eye having so much dynamic range.
Pedestrians can't miss cars as they're blasting light through the dark; cars can't miss bikes because even passive reflectors are blaring in the surrounding darkness; even pedestrians end up being more visible because of the higher contrast, cast shadows, and movement that conspire to make them plainly pop out like cardboard props or Doom 3 flashlight jumpscares.
And when you go out of the dark zone into a major axis that's bathed in light that feels warm and safe it's like everything is suddenly muted and flattened as if reality went through a low contrast sepia-tinted desaturation filter. You feel like you see better but everything is muddled together in the sameness of uniform lighting.
The experience is highly cognitively dissonant and counterintuitive.
I'm glad that darkness is respected in some places. The need to live in constant light is, to me, unnerving. Light pollution, like noise pollution, creates a myopic dome of sensory oblivion, separating us from experiencing the sounds of nature, the splendor the night sky, the emotions of isolation. I think we'd be better off with a nightly reminder of the natural world and expansive universe beyond our city block.
I really wish that wasn't the case. But removing lights is an uphill battle powered by irrational arguments and doomed to failure even on the cases where it's clearly the best option.
I've grudgingly come to admit that also people who don't have great vision love bright lighting. I can usually see perfectly well by starlight, but that's not the case for everyone.
I was once in the US Navy, and stood many a bridge watch. When it got dark, all outside lights except for the navigation lights (red light on port bow, green on starboard bow, a white light up top and another white light on the stern). And on the bridge, we used only dim red lights, to avoid affecting our night vision. None of the navigation lights was easily visible from the bridge. And you could see reasonably well, even on a cloudy night.
I'm a regular outdoor runner and also an extreme morning person, so I'm often out running at like 3 AM, and it is absolutely not safer to be in complete darkness. Surfaces are not perfectly uniform and unobstructed and the ambient light from the atmosphere and surrounding city, even dead in the center of a major metro area, is nowhere near enough to see everything you might hit. I've tripped many times and even broken my hand before. It is effectively impossible to ever go full speed.
I run at night on trails (during the summer, when it's too hot to run during the day). I wear a headlamp, and don't trip any more than I do in the day--despite the fact that the trails have rocks and roots. The only issue I have is that because the headlamp is inches from my eyes, shadows are almost invisible.
Where I come from they did change the lights to LEDs, but they turn off 2/3rds or 3/4ths of them after midnight; still enough light to navigate, but much less power usage and light pollution. There's a bike lane outside of town whose lights were motion activated, iirc that was installed about 20 years ago.
I walk a lot and support this, even though I am not convinced it makes me more visible when not in front of the headlights. Typically, the danger happens when walking on the sidewalk perpendicular to a road. I can see the car, they cannot see me until I'm a few feet in to the crosswalk when I'm not lit up by a street light.
> WTF? What about pedestrians? Are they walking in full darkness?
During a normal night, you get used to the darkness surprisingly fast, and if there even a slight sliver of moonlight, your eyes will within seconds adjust and let you see things again without trouble.
At least that's my experience growing up in the dark countryside in Sweden and seemingly retaining this as an adult, YMMV.
> During a normal night, you get used to the darkness surprisingly fast,
Then a car drives past and your sight instantly adjusts to that, but takes several minutes to adjust back. Then you're stuck in subjective total darkness for a while.
Or, if you're in an area with mixed lighting (e.g. you walk past a house that incidentally lights part of the street) then your eyes can never adjust and you have to walk through pools of total darkness. I know this experience from rare situations where a few streetlights go out in a row, and it's not as easy as you just portrayed it.
> At least that's my experience growing up in the dark countryside in Sweden
That's fair enough IMO. I don't think it's feasible or helpful to plaster every centimetre of every rural road in street lighting. But the comment we're replying to suggested removing them in cities "outside of ... active center areas". That's a different matter.
What range/years are you specifically referring to? It seemingly is as good as ever, and I'm 32 now. I'm guessing that would start being around 40s, when the general eye-sight starts to decline?
I don't think there is a rule for that? At least not in my case. My eyesight got worse really fast out-of-nowhere when I was like, 15 years old? And since then it didn't change anymore. I got myopia, after a few years of too much computer screen (the old CRTs).
While there was a suspicion of eyesight troubles in my late teens, it really kicked in during a period I was working on pretty crappy screens, that was in my late 20's. It's not much but enough to give me headaches when not wearing them.
I'm currently 37, I hope it doesn't start to get worse again anytime soon. I never used glasses regularly, btw. Always had the impression that would weaken my eyes long-term.
There’s a new-ish body of research that suggests aging is non-linear/happens in “cliffs,” and that the first big decline is mid-40s. Something to look forward to.
About the time you start needing reading glasses to see your phone or computer screen. Between 40-50 years for most people. You will develop an appreciation for the people who complain about small fonts and low-contrast color schemes. And yes, adapting to darkness takes longer.
Not everyone has excellent vision. In addition to those who are actually visually impaired, your eyesight simply gets worse as you get older even if you had perfect vision when you're young.
And even if you can adjust to the night, which is Moon and cloud-dependent anyway, that completely goes away every time a car goes past with its LED high beams.
LED lights have way more capacity to be directional. There's absolutely no reason why street lights can't mostly point down to light the street and sidewalks with minimal light pollution to any nearby houses.
Growing up on a island with 700 people where the most common mode of transportation is probably bicycle (besides walking, or possibly moped), it really isn't :) People are really eager to jump on the "ableist" accusation, aren't they?
> And even if you can adjust to the night, which is Moon and cloud-dependent anyway, that completely goes away every time a car goes past with its LED high beams.
It really doesn't, at least it didn't for me. It's true that for some seconds you'll see less, but your eyes will adjust faster after that than the initial adjustment when you go from a fully lit environment to unlit, even without direct moonlight.
I'm not arguing for completely dark cities, that'd be bananas. I was just giving another perspective about how we can (usually) adjust to darkness if we let our eyes be used to it. Of course we should have lights in cities so everyone (not just us with good night-sight) can navigate without issues.
I am night blind, among other things and cannot drive. If an area doesn't have street lights it's much more inaccessible to me, I become fully blind and I usually end up not going.
Lights off is bad for me, end of story. Whether my ability to walk around at night is a factor here is a subjective decision. I understand people in my situation are a minority.
I suspect your terror comes from lack of familiarity with natural light outdoors, and is a product of always having the lights on plus not being out of a house often.
The night is not 'complete darkness', we can generally see fairly well.
Also, I suspect your presumption on assault risk and assault rates comes from media, which is designed around building fear. Fear sells.
So I agree that you find the natural world terrifying, I just wish you didn't. Because the natural world is what we are fit for.
Let's put it this way. The fear is someone hiding in the shadows to jump a person, and then dragging the victim back into the shadows.
Bright lights on the street create more shadows. All you have to do is step out of the streetlight and no-one will see you, because the light-level contrast between the lit street and the surrounding space.
If there aren't any streetlights, so the surrounding space has the same illumination as the roadway, then that space is more present in more passerby's visual awareness.
So your proposed solution, "Streelights on every street" actually increases the risk you are so concerned about.
Numerous studies show crime goes down when streetlights are turned off.
Simply put, you don't get scrotes hanging about in groups up to no good without lights, and anybody who is walking around is carrying a torch, making it obvious what they are doing (e.g. if you are breaking into a house, needing a torch instead of using a streetlight makes it obvious to everybody what you are doing).
No to mention a lack of streetlights makes if harder for somebody to hide in the shadows.
The real question to ask, is why people like yourself are 'terrified' [sic] of the dark. Statistics show the real truth of what you should be worried about.
I'm don't see why this is downvoted, I think it's an honest and legitimate question. What are pedestrians supposed to do when there's no car passing them right this moment? Carry their own torch? Rely on ambient light from the moon and reflected from nearby lit streets? Are we assuming there's such a high volume of cars that there's never a gap? I'm genuinely confused.
Honest question: Do you mean that most pedestrians are actually using (not just carrying on their person) a torch while walking along lit streets? I have essentially never seen that where I live, except some joggers have lights attached to their clothing but that's just so others can see them better. I can't imagine street lighting in an urban/suburban area being so bad that that would be necessary. That's a terrible state of affairs which, in itself, is a gross anti-pedestrian move.
(Or did you just factiously mean that people have smart phones on them which can function as torches?)
Clearly you have lived your entire life in a city under streetlights.
Here, if you go the the pub at night as the streetlights are turned off at midnight, so you take a torch (your phone as a backup). Its perfectly commonplace. To suggest this is "anti-pedestrian" is a bit silly. Rather, it's anti-light pollution.
If you are walking in a place where there are cars, having a light on you is a great way to reduce your risk of being hit. So yes, you should absolutely be carrying a torch if you are walking near streets after dark. Nordic countries teach this in kindergarden.
When I'm crossing a street after dark, I always flash my torch at potentially oncoming cars. Even if I'm at a lit crosswalk.
If you are walking in a place without cars, then the place probably doesn't have the infra to provide street lighting. You may want a torch, depends on the phase of the moon and your comfort level with dim lighting.
This comment chain started with someone suggesting that in cities lighting be turned off almost everywhere, and someone replied that pedestrians won't be able to clearly see where they're going without a torch (and I agreed). Where I live, no pedestrian in a city would ever need to use a torch to see where they're going.
You've posted a couple of replies saying that pedestrians should carry a torch so that cars can see them. Well, maybe, maybe not. But that's a different matter.
> The experience is highly cognitively dissonant and counterintuitive.
Hitting the next homeless person and throwing them 10 meter in the space will be quite the experience.
Honestly, this is not shitty experience because of regulation, this is just councils cutting costs everywhere except their salaries. Los Angeles these last couple days has showed what it means to do that. You'll literally be on fire some day.
Neat! I remember contributing the expression parser code for the Knoll et. al 2009 work that you cited in your SIGGRAPH paper. That just rewrote a single user-friendly expression into nested function calls to our IA library in GLSL, without any sort of optimization.
You've clearly taken things waaay farther. Nicely done.
Interesting. I've been using the Hacker's Keyboard with Termux, but it doesn't seem to have received any updates in a long time. (I'm fine with programs being considered complete, but I also realize that Android is unfortunately a moving target.)
I've used both, though I'm not sure I can compare them directly, since it has been a year or more since I switched from Hacker's Keyboard.
Unexpected Keyboard works well for me when using Termux, possibly even better than Hacker's Keyboard, since I find it easier to swipe on a key to get to uncommonly-used symbols rather than switching to a different keyboard layer. Every now and then I accidentally swipe a key when I meant to press it, and end up entering a accented character when I didn't mean to, but this is fairly rare. I don't use Termux very often, but for occasional vim or terminal usage it's totally sufficient.
One cool feature of Unexpected Keyboard (which may be available elsewhere, I haven't looked at many others) is that you can swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and accurately scroll left and right in a text field. I find this about as fast as tapping at a position in a text field, but much more accurate.
> One cool feature of Unexpected Keyboard (which may be available elsewhere, I haven't looked at many others) is that you can swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and accurately scroll left and right in a text field.
Nice! That's a feature of Google's GBoard, which ships as the default on Pixels but is available to most Android phones. I use it extremely often (including twice while writing this comment) and not having it is one of the big reasons I found Hacker Keyboard frustrating. Hearing that Unexpected Keyboard has it is pushing me over the edge to give it a trial run.
Gboard's implementation is super annoying for me because it keeps trying to skip over word boundaries, and it's quite difficult to move just one or two characters over, because it waits for you to swipe far enough before activating any movement. Just awful.
> Gboard's implementation is super annoying for me because it keeps trying to skip over word boundaries, and it's quite difficult to move just one or two characters over, because it waits for you to swipe far enough before activating any movement. Just awful.
This is interesting—Gboard also by default uses a long-press on the space bar to change keyboards, so I often find myself triggering that while meaning to scroll (or, more often, meaning to long press 'n' for '!'), but, as long as I'm quick enough, I've never observed it to be hesitant about moving one or two characters.
One hugely underated offering of unexpected keyboard is the ease with which you can define entierly new keyboards. Want a keyboard for futhark runes? They're unicode so go for it, you totally can. Like thorn as a concept and a character, and want to use it with ease? þen add it for easy use. This keyboard is truly the hackers keyboard. I spent a month using termux exclusively, writing cli apps for things as i needed them and without unexpected keyboard that would have been a really painful experience, rather than mildly inconveniant at times.
> is that you can swipe left and right on the space bar to quickly and accurately scroll left and right in a text field. I find this about as fast as tapping at a position in a text field, but much more accurate
I recently learned about a hidden iphone feature. If you hold the spacebar for about halve a second you can move freely the cursor around any text field.
I used Hacker's keyboard for years before moving over to unexpected keyboard for any terminal work done via phone. Unexpected keyboard gives easier access to symbols and has slightly larger keys (less keys on the main layer) than Hacker's keyboard.
I still use Gboard for my main keyboard, but looking for replacement suggestions that have a good swipe to text
Swipe worked pretty well but I had some problems (perhaps switching languages or something? can't remember) so I switched back to plain AOSP keyboard for now.
I started with Hacker's Keyboard and moved to Unexpected because Hacker's stopped working on newer Android devices. It's not a 1:1 replacement, but it works really well once you get used to it, and it also works as a decent general purpose keyboard.
- "Please" = Call to action for the model to perform a task that I either just described or am about to describe within this prompt. In other words, this conversational turn is not just about feeding more context to it, but I've given it everything I think it needs and it should go ahead and start.
- "Thank you" = I am satisfied with the results that it provided for that task and want to move on to something else now, where the new thing is contextually related to the recent task. (If I wanted an entirely unrelated task, I'd just start a new conversation with a fresh context.)
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