fasterthanlime 🌌

hi, I'm amos! 🦀 I make articles & videos about how computers work 🐻‍❄ cool bear's less cool counterpart ✨ be kind

articles: https://fasterthanli.me
pronouns: they/them
github: https://github.com/fasterthanlime
youtube: https://youtube.com/@fasterthanlime

Public Key

npub15vn9wvp7aqleey6dqkx2xk5q866lgxvndzgjewa988rlpq8uhruqdkm4th

NIP-05 Address

fasterthanlime_at_hachyderm.io@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs2xfjhxqlws0uujdxstr9rt2qrad05rxfk3yfvhwjnn3lssr7t37qq984ee

Author Public Key

npub15vn9wvp7aqleey6dqkx2xk5q866lgxvndzgjewa988rlpq8uhruqdkm4th

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Last Notes

2024-08-23 09:40:27

are your logs boring?
try: randomly generated marine line
🐠 https://gist.github.com/fasterthanlime/bcbc16c936bd28e3a117a505ebac8b01
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/113/010/673/298/730/813/original/56f73ed5749b72b2.png

2024-08-23 08:57:02

rust forces the devil
you to think is in
about
🤝
the details

2024-08-22 14:50:30

current status: weeping at liquid's issue tracker
(no there hasn't been any activity on this since 2018)
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/113/006/230/205/817/969/original/69c2bde790132086.png

2024-08-21 16:25:07

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yeah. (lots of people in this thread, hi) after a while you get a sense of what you can get out of each model / what's better-suited for a "traditional" search engine (if there is even such a thing anymore — even DDG serves me AI answers I didn't ask for)

2024-08-21 15:25:40

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yeah — LLMs are very good at "tip of my tongue" queries — it's a really weird, really fuzzy query interface, and obviously depends a lot on what's in the original dataset.

2024-08-21 15:22:12

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yeah, my experience is almost exclusively with Rust where the type system is.. borderline restrictive at times, so there's _a lot_ of context to pull from and it tends to perform okay.
the key is really to pick which files/diagnostics/docs to give it: enough so that it's useful, but little enough that it fits in the context window

2024-08-21 15:05:56

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I'm not going to engage much more with this thread but I'd like to thank "the fediverse" for being more constructive on this than birdsite this time around, even though I would expect fedi to be at least 400% more anti-LLM on principle

2024-08-21 15:04:12

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I think you might be working into one of the "exceptions" domain where every little detail matters — perhaps made even worse by using non-strongly-typed langs like Python?
strong types make for great context for an LLM (so do docs, but.. those get out of date etfc.)

2024-08-21 08:47:23

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But also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

2024-08-21 08:46:05

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it's been a focus of the various labor movements in France for.. centuries? They're trying to protect jobs because jobs are a prerequisite for human dignity. I get it. But they shouldn't be.

2024-08-21 08:40:12

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Defending "every single bit of labor should be done by hand and we should protect those jobs" does not make you a compassionate human being.
Dissociating basic human rights (shelter, food, health care) from "having a job" does. The EU has a bit of a lead there — it's a start.

2024-08-21 08:37:55

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It's a bit disheartening to be put in the same camp as tech bros milking VC funding from whichever current trend is happening.
I'm aggressively trying to stay current /as a matter of survival/. If I'm gonna live in the torment nexus, I may as well make myself at home.

2024-08-21 08:37:47

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Would anyone argue that trains are a net negative for society because it put stagecoach drivers out of a job?
It feels different now because we can see people lose jobs in real time, and I have zero faith in society for handling this transition well. But it's happening.

2024-08-21 08:37:40

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The problem with technology replacing labor is not jobs becoming obsolete.
The problem is that society reacts to "jobs becoming obsolete" not by "redistributing wealth and lowering overall work" but by stripping people of homes, health insurance, and food.

2024-08-21 08:37:33

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I'm fairly sure I alienated part of my audience by "not shitting unconditionally on LLMs" and, well, too bad?
What's happening to artists is vile and I will commission art as much as I can. What's happening to developers is exciting: you can build so much on your own now!

2024-08-21 08:37:26

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All the architectural decisions should be made by humans. Humans are in the driver's seat, always.
I don't give a shit about the "my 8yo built a React app" demos (maybe I will when I have an 8yo?). I care about senior developers being able to think at a higher level.

2024-08-21 08:37:19

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Most folks work in boilerplate-heavy environments.
You can write macros, you can do codegen, you can use types or use dynamic typing to reduce repetition, there's still a lot of things that "a whole bunch of weights" can figure out for you, filling in the outline you created.

2024-08-21 08:37:12

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I do believe there are domains where LLMs are /completely useless/: domains where you have to think hard about every little bit of every little line and every little detail matters.
And I'm kinda jealous of people working in those domains. Those are the exception.

2024-08-21 08:37:04

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LLMs bridge the gap whenever repetition is needed, whenever you need to "draw the rest of the fucking owl".
If you can read/review/validate faster than you can write all these details (maybe you have RSI?), then LLMs are valuable.

2024-08-21 08:36:55

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Things I agree with:
- there's an AI bubble
- many uses of "AI" are shit/vile/immoral
- LLMs are bad at many things (counting etc.)
- LLM output /must/ be human-reviewed
- the copyright/labor question remains open
And:
- current-gen LLMs are a tremendous tool for programming

2024-08-21 08:36:40

Wonder how long we’ll get “LLMs do nothing for productivity” takes from folks who have ~zero first-hand experience with current-day solutions.
I respect y’all a lot, but come on.

2024-08-20 19:27:19

A lesson I keep relearning in Rust is: if you have a finite number of values, you don't have to use a String, &str, Cow<'a, str>, smartstring type or whatever, or a structured parsed version thereof... you can just an enum
I only have maybe 15 mime types to deal with — now they're an enum, bam, they're Clone and Copy. Bye allocations!

2024-08-17 14:33:50

Used zed's collab features for the first time last night with a client (to do pair programming) and everything works exactly as you'd expect?
It has built-in calls, and... then I go "what's that button" and oh, it has built-in screen sharing too!

2024-08-07 14:14:38

~ AND NOW FOR SOME NEWS ~
I started a podcast with James, I’m stable on antidepressants, I’m giving a P99 CONF about my Rust/io_uring/HTTP work, I’m trying on “they/them” as pronouns, I’m open-sourcing merde_json, rubicon and others, I got a divorce in 2023, I found a new business model.
extry extry read all about it 🗞️:
https://fasterthanli.me/articles/state-of-the-fasterthanlime-2024

2024-08-05 09:55:22

Notion just took six full seconds to load a page and I'm going to turn into the joker

2024-07-12 09:43:09

If you're sleeping on https://zed.dev "because AI" I get it, but you're genuinely missing out — it is an incredible engineering feat, a jewel of product design, and a very active ecosystem.
I think you owe it to yourself to find out what code editors could be.

2024-06-21 09:25:21

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I think we’re still not collectively over the “well if we don’t need to go pump water out of the well ourselves anymore, then what does it even mean to be human??” moment, but we’ll get there.

2024-06-21 09:22:35

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I’m just tired of reading that they are either completely useless or going to replace us all.
They’ve become a really useful tool, in my opinion there’s never been a better time for small teams to compete with larger companies. And it’ll drive the rebirth of bespoke software!

2024-06-21 09:21:12

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Even hallucination in the context of software development is not necessarily a bad thing? When an LLM tries to use an API that doesn’t exist, it’s often a sign that it should exist!
Think “they didn’t know it was impossible so they just did”, junior dev perspective

2024-06-21 09:18:48

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Even if models don’t get any bigger or any “smarter”, a big difference compared to even a year ago, is how up-to-date the recent models are?
I’ve gotten GPT-4o to port code between two rust crates just by mentioning them my name.

2024-06-21 09:16:16

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I think LLMs make “loose” languages less appealing than before. Nowadays, I would rather instruct a model on which Rust code to write for me, and end up with a very fast solution, than hack some Python/JS myself and pay the performance tax (+ maintenance burden) forever.

2024-06-21 09:11:25

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It’s gotten me excited about working on some systems again. It used to be complete drudgery but large language models are excellent at taking care of boilerplate for you.
They end up plugging the developer experience holes in a lot of technologies .

2024-06-21 09:09:50

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I’ve gotten good results carefully designing prompts in the Notes app before submitting them to the model.
If you know where you’re going, use technology with safeguards (e.g Rust), and the task fits in the context window, then you get to operate one level of abstraction higher.

2024-06-21 09:05:44

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I feel getting what you want out of an LLM is a good exercise for software engineering types in general.
Coming up with a prompt that is unambiguous and contains all the relevant context is an incredibly valuable skill that obviously translates to human collaboration.

2024-06-21 09:04:10

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I feel like a lot of people keep seeing pathological cases with poorly written prompts or tasks really not well suited to LLMs, and end up dismissing them as “completely useless”. That’s not true!

2024-06-21 09:03:09

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One thing that hasn’t changed is how polarized people are about LLMs. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but it is changing things even if you don’t personally use them, so I would recommend getting some first-hand experience to learn more about what they can and cannot do.

2024-06-21 09:01:06

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I guess we’ll see over time, but we are carrying in our pockets and amount of computing power that was completely unfathomable at some point in the past, so… we’ll see.

2024-06-21 09:01:03

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I remember reading about how AI companies were currently undercharging for models and they would pull the rug later — experimenting with local models, which are much smaller, but also still useful has changed my mind about that.

2024-06-21 08:54:34

One thing that is cool about LLM‘s right now is how there’s actual competition, the likes of which I haven’t seen in other fields lately.
I’ve been enjoying GPT-4o, now Claude Sonnet 3.5 is out and I can just switch to it with one line of config. Until next time.

2024-06-14 08:04:42

One thing code has that zed is missing is narrowing down by dirname in fuzzy search
In code I can do "Cargo.toml", it shows 8 results, I add space, then "cratename", it narrows down. In zed the query has to be "cratename/Cargo.toml", which is annoying.

2024-06-11 20:13:42

Current status: doing my first ever Time Machine backup to a 512GB microSD (because that's all I had on hand that was big enough)

2024-06-10 07:43:20

I've been learning a lot of new software lately and amidst the frustration there's a lot of trying something logical and going "ooooh they thought of that, that's so neat!"
Going back to Google products though, there's none of those moments. None at all.

2024-06-06 09:04:26

ah yes, the two genders
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/568/871/484/953/891/original/5018e10c7471d39e.png

2024-06-05 12:53:12

GOD YES everyone in charge of a database anywhere should read this:
>>> https://blog.ploeh.dk/2024/06/03/youll-regret-using-natural-keys/

2024-06-04 10:47:25

Re: Microsoft Recall

2024-05-30 12:57:11

I often think about "computer bad" and similar defeatism — so much is fixable via training, customization + just not buying garbage (which requires money, money solves a lot of problems!).
I'll never understand folks complaining about something they have the means to fix.

2024-05-29 21:45:19

I have a MIDI keyboard and Ableton open and my cat and I are playing a game of "find what setting my paw toggled"
I'm losing, btw

2024-05-16 21:43:33

After surveying current OpenAI, Claude, and Meta LLMs, I can safely say none of them are able to answer questions about HTTP/2 flow control.
(Which puts them on par with most humans)

2024-05-14 14:51:38

Last Saturday I went to a computer parts store and asked for one of these SD cards and they said "...they make V90 cards???"
Yes they do, for idiots like me who want to shoot 4K25 all-intra (also a V60 would probably work, but... not taking chances).
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/440/003/590/212/552/original/04875f7fbf6d65a1.jpeg

2024-05-13 16:37:51

Does your native language use the same words or different words for "borrow" and "lend"?
And do you struggle with that distinction in English? (if English native, answer "diff words")

2024-05-05 13:46:56

Y’all still use unflavored assemblers???
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/388/787/272/014/705/original/ee7e928c20697200.jpeg

2024-04-25 12:24:48

Imagine confessing in a press release that your margin used to be 99%+?
https://corporate.comcast.com/comcast-voices/comcast-response-to-netflixs-opposition-to-time-warner-cable-transaction
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/331/842/363/225/195/original/ff3237c2870318b9.png

2024-04-18 11:45:51

my TV updated and now it has an "AI concierge" feature, where do I apply for euthanasia?

2024-04-18 09:01:46

HOLY FUCK
google drive got dark mode
this is not a drill
finallyyyyy
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/291/407/803/862/233/original/7f5f8e0827c13e2c.png

2024-04-17 07:48:43

PSA: if you enable -Werror in release versions of your software, you're going to extra hell
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/285/458/237/988/037/original/e21e927d28207cdb.png

2024-04-14 19:36:48

I might cry a little. I’ve come so far.
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/112/271/251/267/990/999/original/b24fecd995b99848.jpeg

2024-04-07 21:02:13

Man, what a comfort to have “bought blu-rays” for most of the shows I want to watch.
Gone is the fear of them getting pulled from the 5 streaming services I still pay for, I know I’ll always find them in my “blu-ray collection”.