As someone that works in AI, most of what Lemmy writes about LLM’s is hilariously wrong. This, however, is very right, and what amazes me is that every big tech company had made this realisation - yet doesn’t give a fuck. Pre-LLM’s, we knew that manual patching and intervention wasn’t a scalable solution, and we knew that LLM’s were prone to hallucinations, but ChatGPT showed companies that people often don’t care if the answer is wrong. Fuck it, let’s just patch this shit as we go…

But when this shit happens, oh boy, do I feel for the poor engineers and scientists on-call that need to fix this shit regularly…

Easy.

1. No one outside of the fediverse bubble gives a fuck about federation. It solves a problem no one has, and offers no real solutions to problems users have.

2. Mastodon offers nothing on the Twitter experience outside of “but it’s federated”

It absolutely fucking BAFFLES me that Brooks’ Law isn’t known by every software manager on the planet.

I’ve quoted it so many times at work, even in engineering focused teams in at least two big tech companies. It’s not a concrete fact, but it explains why so many teams are hilariously shit at delivering software.

Oh boy, I’ve seen a few:

• At a startup, one dude had obviously lied about his credentials. He was hired as a writer, but couldn’t write shit. He spent the entire day hitting on women and bitching about how his ex wanted support for a child he wasn’t convinced was his. He was fired about 3 days in…

• When I was a student, I worked at a sports store. One girl there was, let’s say, packing in the chest compartment. She was also about 17, maybe 18. Most people were nice enough to not hit on her, but one day the security guard (who was maybe late thirties at the youngest) made a comment to me to say “I would absolutely destroy her back door, you know?” (but slightly more graphic). I told management, and she was brought in. She broke down, and went over all the off-hand comments he’d made to her. The manager immediately walked out, told him he was fired, and apologised to her.

• An old employer hired this guy who was a Microsoft MVP nominee. The guy was one of those types that could talk brilliantly, but couldn’t take criticism. He listened to me, as I was senior, but ignored anything from managers or people at his level. To cut a long story short (I could write a book on this guy, and it would be hilarious) he lied about a project he worked on solo for six months. After checking in on his work we found he had bypassed our PR system and had been accepting all of his own requests, so no one has verified his code. It was an absolute mess. It cost the company a quarter of a million, for a project that should have brought in £50k. We later found out he was a nominee because he was so active on some Microsoft support forums, and mostly got that through posting “yeah I had the same problem” or from supplying easy or wrong answers. That loophole was closed shortly after…

Maybe try:

• The Rise of Hobo Johnson by Hobo Johnson
• Outside The Box by Hacktivist
• Jurassic 5 by Jurassic 5
• Control System by Ab-Soul

I got into cooking during lockdown, and have managed to get surprisingly good at it, to the point where if you asked me to make a meal of your choosing I could probably make it without looking up a recipe. It’s actually unbelievably simple to make even complex stuff, basically using all the same rules you apply at work:

• Use the right tools for the job
• Plan it out first, do your prep and the actual work is simple
• A simple dish will take much longer than you think
• RTFM. Many sauces and dishes from classic cooking are basically a mixture of a small handful of base ingredients/techniques, and they’ve been written down for decades.
• Once you have the basics down, you can basically make it up as you go. You’ll make amazing meals, and you’ll never be able to replicate it again because you eyeballed it or cooked it in a way that made sense at the time. You say you’ll document it well, but deep down, you know you won’t.
• Nothing is original, everything is stolen. Adapt recipes you see, look at ingredients of sauces and sachets you buy/use, etc.
• You can be a solid hobbyist, but against a pro that does this shit all day every day, you don’t know a fucking thing. You’re also probably not going to replicate what they can do in a professional setting while at home unless you’ve got money.

When I was a kid, the saying (here in the UK) was “right ear, right queer”.

Haha no.

A lot of people don’t realise how shit a war can be, even when you’re hundreds of miles away from it. Your local economy fucking TANKS, jobs disappear, workers disappear on the next plane out, and you’re left with a population that’s struggling on all fronts, trying to make a brave face.

America is full of crazy disparity, but war doesn’t care. The one benefit is that the billionaire class would get fucking rinsed by the locals for every shiny trinket they have when suddenly food costs a fortune because your last shipment got shot up.

Chrono Trigger is a must for anyone that likes RPG’s.

One of our engineers: Unbelievably helpful, all the time, to several dozen people. I have no idea how you find the time, but for someone in your position to respond to messages to request for any help is an achievement in itself.

One of our managers: I’ve worked with you for 3 years, and I have absolutely no idea what to do day-to-day. I also have no idea how you’re still in a job. I’m not the only person either.

Tomato pasta.

Boil a pot of water, and add your pasta. In a separate pan/pot, throw some cherry tomatoes in with some olive oil and cook on a medium/high temp. The skin will char, and it breaks down the juice will come out. Add some.garlic (sliced, crushed, whatever suits), and after 30 seconds throw a splash of red wine in with a stock cube and let it reduce to a jammy consistency. As things get dry, add some of the pasta water to keep things jammy. Once the pasta is a minute from being done, throw it in with the sauce and cook until everything is done. Add some basil at this point if you want, and maybe some chilli. Lunch is done in 10 mins.

Another fave is Tomato and Pepper Soup. Cut some big tomatoes, an onion, and a pepper (equal numbers of these), along with some garlic cloves in their skins, and put in a ceramic container to go into the oven for 30-45 mins. Once done, blitz in/with a blender until smooth (make sure the garlic is out of the skins first), add some stock, and finish with some cream, and you’re done. It’s much slower, but takes maybe 5 mins of effort.

I’ve fought this battle so many times.

My most recent battle was being told to implement Scrum and agile practices. When the subject of standup NOT being a status update came up, and I forcibly told people to keep their updates brief, it was changed to a “Sync Meeting” that lasted over an hour. Apparently, despite delivering stuff faster, being able to track velocity and ensure we’re not overextending ourselves each “sprint”, and actually knowing what we’re delivering through actionable tasks - we’re not doing agile any more…

Out of interest, what do you do and where are you based? It’s a shitty place to work, but if you’re near an Amazon office and you do Amazony things I’m happy to send a reference your way.

Eh, to some extent, but we’ve got the foresight to accept these dishes as being British when you consider that the foods we eat aren’t authentic to those areas. Spag Bol isn’t being eaten in Italy, nor is Chicken Vindaloo in India.

We’ve got a long enough history that we can trace back when the Normans and Saxons came here, alongside the culture changes of Indian settlers, Jamaican workers, Irish, etc. That acceptance is not only why there’re a lot of distinctly British versions of different cultures’ food, but why many cities in the UK also serve decidedly authentic food at some of the best restaurants in the world - and that doesn’t even factor in how some cultures have fused over time.

Or a Kebab, absolutely fucking loaded with enough spice to blow your insides out the morning after.

The perception of Britain that most Americans have is that of the 40’s and 50’s. It’s hardly surprising that it’s completely fucking wrong.

IMO, it should be 16. It should be the earliest age that you can work in a traditional job, or begin service in one’s armed forces. Many right-wing people hate this idea because young people are very left-leaning, but it is unfair to expect someone to contribute to a society that bans them from having a say in its outcome.

The Gordon Ramsay anecdote is actually really good, in that in my experience VC’s get a LOT of say in what your business ultimately becomes.

I worked with someone that was, in all fairness, absolutely clueless about what they wanted, and wanted some VC alongside their rich parents money. The VC took a huge chunk of the business, and ultimately their business launched as something that was completely different to what they thought it would be - because that’s what the VC believed would give them some return. The business went bust in less than a year and launched for maybe 2 months?

Much like how Ramsay says “your Jamaican restaurant is shit, I’ve remade it into an Italian restaurant because there aren’t any nearby”, taking a lot of VC money almost certainly means they’ll want an equivalent say in your business. It’s not free money, and it absolutely fucks a lot of people up when they take that money and realise that their dream isn’t theirs any more.

I’ll die on this hill.

If you want an easy language for beginners, Ruby is a much better alternative. It’s like a simpler Python, and aside from a crazy loop syntax teaches clean programming principles better than most languages.

With that said, Rails IS a ghetto, and many of the kinds of companies that use Ruby as their main language are stuck in the past or are full of the biggest toolbags you’ll ever meet. DHH, in particular, built a reputation on being a programming contrarian, so much so that there’s a golden rule where if he says something, the opposite is probably the correct choice.

Aside from all of the praise that BG3 gets, I haven’t played a linear story-bssed game with such length and depth for YEARS! I got to around 70 hours of game time in my first play through, and I wasn’t remotely bored, ever. For any major game to achieve this almost seemed impossible in this generation.