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perrygeo

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perrygeo
·9 giorni fa·discuss
It's not just "the code itself looks LLM generated" - it's also LOC/hr by a particular author which suggests vibe coding. You could look at the author's github contributions to identify time periods when the author was generating code at super-human speeds. Combine the two signals and you might get something better than a pseudoscience?
perrygeo
·11 giorni fa·discuss
Love it. Another great site along these lines: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
perrygeo
·24 giorni fa·discuss
Point datasets have two distinct modes of visualization. First is an aggregate view which serves to show you the trends and spatial distribution. Second is the individual view showing details about the point itself, its attributes, etc.

Clustering (for all its faults) is the only off-the-shelf technique for seamlessly switching between these two modalities without having to change the underlying data representation. Need more detail? Zoom in. And the zoom level is adaptive so it works with any scale.

There are better aggregation techniques (summing to a hexagonal grid, heatmaps, etc) but they generally require a separate calculation (possibly server side) and then switching to the raw source for the individual point view, either manually or at some hardcoded zoom level. It's not the same experience - it feels like two separate map layers instead of one integrated clustered layer.

This is mostly a matter of what's available in the mapping libraries. You could imagine building an alternative to clustering that calculates a heatmap on the fly when zoomed out, eventually revealing points as you zoom in. But presently this is something you'd have to DIY. For now, clustering is the only thing that works right out of the box.
perrygeo
·25 giorni fa·discuss
> Ask your favorite GPT to generate manifests, ... > Before LLMs writing consistent YAMLs was PITA but today on low/development scale it's pretty much free lunch.

Writing manifests seems like a trivial thing to focus on. Who operates the k8s cluster in production? Who runs upgrades? Who's on call to monitor the system? Of course if someone else is doing all the work for you, it feels like free lunch!
perrygeo
·26 giorni fa·discuss
This is a consequence of our "AI accusation culture" that has arisen in the last year. An obvious reaction to the "AI slop culture" (seriously, stop doing that) but its a shame to see legitimate creators caught in the crossfire. This is not the first human-written article that's been wrongfully accused and it won't be the last.
perrygeo
·28 giorni fa·discuss
I don't think people fully grasp the scale of a trillion dollars. A trillionaire is a million millionaires.

It's impossible to efficiently manage that much wealth in one brain. Distribute it!

I'd run an essay contest. Every year the best thousand ideas are selected by yours truly and get funded at $100 million each. Even then, it would take a decade to burn through one trillion. It's a tough job, but I accept.
perrygeo
·29 giorni fa·discuss
At what point does this become an issue for data quality and global epistemology?

It seems inevitable that we ask for more AI assistance on topics we don't understand. And therefore have the least context to correct. Result: a flood of poor quality information.

In areas we DO understand, we'll either not ask AI at all, or treat its results with a higher degree of skepticism. Result: a lack of high quality information.

Inevitably this means a higher volume of non-expert prompts gets translated into the next generation of internet content. AIs are pumping out more novice-level text and less expert guidance.

The result will be an internet full content written from the perspective of an ignoramus; not addressing any complex issues, staying surface level on every topic. Which will cascade into future models, etc.
perrygeo
·mese scorso·discuss
Learn SQL (because it's basically the only option) but much more importantly, learn databases. Know why atomicity, consistency, idempotency, and durability matter. Understand the wire protocol and the client-server model. Do relational data modeling; think beyond databases as a dumb store. Join. Know when to normalize. Internalize indexing strategies. Think deeply about what work belongs on the database server (work that can leverage relational set theory) and what work stays in the application. Once you figure the true capabilities of databases, SQL as the language interface is a side note - about as important as the leather on your steering wheel.
perrygeo
·mese scorso·discuss
Navigating and manipulating code as a tree, directly in your editor. There is nothing like it.

Going back to code as bunch of carefully arranged ascii chars feels like a regression.
perrygeo
·mese scorso·discuss
Friction is the mechanism by which mammalian brains acquire skills. This is as close to proven as we get in cognitive neuroscience; without a struggle, we literally don't learn. This is not a controversial statement. The only way to improve our cognitive skills is to intentionally add friction - aka practice. Use it or lose it.

This isn't necessarily anti-AI. Imagine a tool that could quiz you, provide context for decisions, and make sure you're up to date on your knowledge of the codebase - instead of just writing code for you. IOW an AI-based system could intentionally add the right kind of friction to improve understanding.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
yes, sorry its an important distinction. Especially raw whole fruits since they are packed with fiber and nutrients and hard to overeat.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
Yep. If there was one single thing that literally every person should do for their health, that is to greatly reduce or completely eliminate sugar. The evidence is overwhelming.

The evidence against seed oils is not quite as convincing. I see seed oils as a low quality food to be avoided - goes rancid too easily, requires chemical processing, etc. - but it's not strictly poison. These oils are in virtually every industrial "food product" which makes them unhealthy by association. Stop eating highly processed crap and you'll see the benefits - cutting out seed oils is a side effect.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
I watched people ask LLMs for linting/refactoring help, burning easily 5 minutes for something that could be completed deterministically, locally, in ms using any modern editor.

Quite frankly it was embrassing. We've had tools for static analysis for ages. Use them.

Someone with better knowledge could work 100x faster using 100x fewer resources. They did it the slow, expensive way but at least didn't have to think? Odd flex.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
Another framing is "Prioritize". It's not yes or no; it's what are you focusing on right now. There may be plenty of good ideas that are "no" today because you can only work on one at a time.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
> The unit you plan in is the truth you will or will not face.

This 100x. "Story points" are evil, simply because they can't be measured. The qualitative nature of story points means that planning assumptions are NEVER checked against reality. It's a strong incentive for management to avoid any responsibility; stay "agile", use "story points", and never ever assess your actual performance or velocity.

The worst managers I've seen straight up forbid talking about the story points. Anyone asking for more information or discussion gets shot down; story points are "just an estimate" after all. Then when that lack of information becomes a problem, employees are forbidden from referring back to previous estimates. Even calibrating story points in a relative sense is expressly forbidden. There is no feedback mechansim to correct poor planning. And that's by design; the system protects and shields mediocre managers from accountability, period.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
No, this is quite backwards. I find myself reading code more, to gain context and build the theory for the feature I'm working on. The time it takes to write the code is now trivial compared to designing a good idea. Reading/thinking about code absolutely dominates now that writing code is cheap.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
> Muddled prompting by humans gets you the Homer Simpson car you wished for

Well put! Now that we have a magic tool that can generate tokens on demand, the quality of the underlying idea gains enormous importance relative to the code. Tokens are cheap. Good ideas are not.

I would like to hope that some people take advantage of this newfound agentic power to create better theories. But there's a sizable population that seems intent on generating more and more code, regardless of quality.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
Super strange framing.

The plant still need solar energy. They still need electricity within the tissues of the organism to survive (ATP and krebs cycle). Humans have always burned organic matter for light.

Not trying to be a pedant but "Light without electricity" falls down when examined from any angle. It's not a serious claim.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
Partly true, but don't blame GeoJSON. Blame the data model.

GeoJSON is firmly rooted in the "simple features" model of spatial data. Sometimes called the "vector data model", this is ubiquitous in GIS. Each geographic entity (aka "Feature") has a single geometry and many non-geometry attributes. Each feature is independent.

The vector data model (for better or worse) is the basis of many systems because it fits the tabular/relational style so closely. What is a feature but a row in a table plus a special column describing its geometry? Topological relationships are ignored by design.

TopoJSON, ESRI coverages, the internal OpenStreetMap data model, and a few others are notable exceptions. They explicitly handle spatial relationships, at the cost of making the model unintelligible to row-based processing.
perrygeo
·2 mesi fa·discuss
14x is insane, especially since the quality and quantity of IRL software has barely budged.

One could hope that we'd use these newfound agentic coding powers to actually realize value, improve quality, etc. Instead I see enshittification and stagnation. What are we even doing with all these tokens?