antonvs's comments

On: Management = Bullshit (LLM Edition)

[antonvs]

I’ve used LLMs to generate text for a soc2 audit about our processes. For one requirement, it took me 20 minutes to produce 8 pages that otherwise would have taken hours at least. This wasn’t misrepresentation or anything - more like here’s the requirement, here’s a summary of what we do, describe specifically how that meets the requirement. Outside of coding, it’s a perfect application for the tech.

[Axolu → antonvs]

Agreed, I'm using it as a technical author, if you set your system prompt up well, you get consistent style and accurate output which would take me hours of manual work.

On: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

[antonvs]

Major monopolies tend to have the most resources, particularly excess resources that are available to spend on things like research.

[layer8 → antonvs]

That’s not suprising at all, though. It doesn’t imply that monopolies are a net benefit for society.

On: US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]

[antonvs]

I worked for a while at the company that used to be named Bellcore (Bell Communications Research), which was originally a research consortium for the Baby Bells. By the time I joined, it was a zombie cash cow shell that did no research, and it met the common fate of such businesses: acquired by a private equity firm.

On: Sofie: open-source web based system for automating live TV news production

[antonvs]

"Free software" is a term of art in the software industry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

The definition on that page is accurate:

Free software "allows users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price; all users are legally free to do what they want with their copies of a free software (including profiting from them) regardless of how much is paid to obtain the program."

On: Sofie: open-source web based system for automating live TV news production

[antonvs]

> no one dies.

Not counting all the people who watch a particularly shocking news story and then have a heart attack.

On: Fleurs du Mal

[antonvs]

Anime in many ways does a better job of communicating Western culture to young people in the West, than anything that’s produced in the West.

On: Itter.sh – Micro-Blogging via Terminal

[antonvs]

Kinda. The large context windows that recent LLMs have tends to imply that their attention to your input is selective. They're just humoring you really.

On: Structuring Competency-Based Courses Through Skill Trees

[antonvs]

Alastair Reynolds is who I thought of. PhD in astrophysics, worked at ESA. But there are several other scifi authors with decent physics resumes.

On: Rust Dependencies Scare Me

[antonvs]

> It’s pretty simple: you choose the dependencies you want to have. Don’t like having a ton of them? Either choose carefully (which you should already be doing), or write it yourself.

Exactly. Why this is even a point of discussion is, to me, an indictment of everyone raising it as an issue.

On: Rust Dependencies Scare Me

[antonvs]

Your “colleagues”?

You’re making the criticism, why not own it?

What you’re saying is the equivalent of Donald Trump’s “many people are saying”. It’s the recourse of the intellectually stunted who can’t muster a convincing argument.

[vsgherzi → antonvs]

Because I want my mind to be changed. I see orgs and companies I respect doing things differently than me but I don't understand why. I want to use this language, I want to use this ecosystem so I'm trying to get others who disagree with me to share what they think so I could possibly see things in a different way.