I could have done many different things as a career - I chose what I do because I love(d) it. I think many of us were raised believing that a job you love is not a job and we’re now grieving the loss of fulfillment that came along with doing something you love and getting paid for it. I spend far more time working for people I don’t know than I do with my family or my hobbies, and perhaps I was foolish enough to think I’d escaped from wasting my life doing something I despise. You are correct that we can all seek fulfillment outside of work, but for those of us that used to get it there it hurts, or maybe it’s just me.
I know things get worse before they get better - but some of us are at the point in our career where we likely won’t be around to see it get better again.
I think you're right. And no, it's not just you. You've tapped into something very central and animating about software as a craft, and the cognitive and psychological feedback that got most of those who are really good at it to be interested in it in the first place. I share your sense that we'll probably not be arounds to see what "better" looks like, if it ever even happens.
San Jose. My wife and I have lived in the same house for 10 years and know about 80% of the neighbors in a two block radius. We also probably know 50 additional families within a square mile as a result of our kids going to public schools here. This is essentially just like how it was when I grew up in the 80s, in a rural East Coast City of about 75k.
In the area where instead of Waymo, local taxi driver who still look like me and speaks my language drives the cabs and gives me discounts when we both have last ride back home from downtown. And we talk to each other more than sue each other
I don’t understand why people jump so readily to seeing intelligence here. Science fiction has as a core, central trope that humans will debase and devalue other types of life they do not understand. Even the storied Commander Data has to fight for the right to self-determination (probably the best episode of STTNG by the way - ‘The Measure of a Man’). We were so worried that we’d undervalue intelligence when apparently our knee-jerk response is to overvalue it. Perhaps this has changed over time and we’re now primed by science fiction and instincts towards social justice, but I worry that we’re really just undervaluing ourselves.
The one thing this 2023 article gets partially correct imo is that any intelligence we see in AI (as of 2026) is our own - not that it’s a mirror but that the intelligence comes from the way that the words are put together, which comes from written human language created by (allegedly) intelligent creatures put in as input in both the training and prompt, among other places.
Rearranging and repeating the words, even in context, does not intelligence make. I’m not even convinced that you’re intelligent, dear reader.
Because to the general public, LLMs are an example of Clarke's Third Law. Most folks, who are not remotely close to even a basic understanding of how LLMs operate at a technical level and only view their output cannot possibly evaluate what they're experiencing other than to believe it's conscious, alive, and/or magic.
Most people on Earth try to put what they're seeing into the context of what they understand; mental gymnastics to try and understand what is happening based on their prior experience. They have absolutely 0 understanding of how it works under the hood so, to them, it must be alive.
> a basic understanding of how LLMs operate at a technical level
An LLM with CoT is Turing-complete. Training is, basically, compression (the training data gets lossily compressed into the model's weights). The information-theoretic limit of compression is an algorithm that reproduces functionality of a system that produced the training data.
No "magic" is required to get to a system that reproduces at least some facets of the human brain functionality.
Three years ago I was skeptical that stochastic gradient descent (and other known techniques) are the way. But evidence kept piling up.
Read the porting document - do we think this would be a difficult port to the Libra Color? I’m reluctant to order a Clara BW in addition, but also not sure I know enough about the ecosystem to contribute a working port. Anyone interesting in teaming up to take a crack at it?
Hey, we have merged support for the Color devices, actual colorful displays still testing. Let me know if you would like to test it. Happy to get any feedback on this.
Thanks for taking this up. I’ve been following along on GitHub and I see the newly supported models. I’ve also picked up a b&w model for testing, should arrive in a few days. Is the Libra build in a separate dev branch? Are folks generally communicating via issues?
Perfect! BW should work the best as it is the one I test on. We have merged the Libra branch to main, it will still show grayscale but should work. I am working with contributors on adding Color support to the UI components.
Yes, issues is where we are talking currently, though we have started a sub on Reddit too for those who are not on GitHub and want to share suggestions, bugs, app requests /r/CobaltForKobo
Current priority is a stable SDK, support for oauth and token for adding apps like Dropbox, read later ones etc. and a larger app ecosystem eventually.
This is excellent - I’ve been looking for a reliable way to get a manga reader onto my Kobo for a while now, specifically one that can directly connect to sources like MangaDex. The alternative I’ve settled on is to download to my PC, bundle with KCC into a cbz, upload to Dropbox and then download onto the device’s local storage. It takes far too long. I’ve been considering writing something myself but I’m not familiar with the device hardware or OS… this is definitely going to save me a ton of time. I don’t care if this was created with LLM assistance, I’m just happy to have a viable alternative in an approximately closed ecosystem.
“On the wire, each label is stored with its length in front, 3 api 11 thenodebook 3 com 0, and the final 0 marks the end of the name, where the last dot would go.”
Am I the only one that doesn’t think of this as ‘api.thenodebook.com.’? What does the LLM mean by the zero after .com marking where the last dot would go?
The last '.' is essentially the equivalent of the first '/' in a file path: it refers to the root of the DNS and marks it as an absolute name (otherwise, in principle, it could be treated as relative even though it usually is not outside of the DNS machinery).
My best friend and I started a journal together about 10 years ago. It folded when he passed away and now there’s almost no proof it even existed. Kinda sad.
I really like Hover Zoom+. I’d be willing to pay $7,000 to $8,500 USD for each kidney you’d be willing to sell. Once we know the size/functioning we can determine exact figures. Happy to buy both if you no longer need them, you probably barely use them anyway.
As a 15yo in the mid-90’s I was a member of and courier for a group called FaTe. Did it all over a 28.8k and later 56k modem. It was so much fun and I never once considered actually getting caught - it never felt real and the friends made along the way were worth it, at least in my case. Went to college and gave it all up. Studied a science but came back to IT and get paid today off of the skills I started learning back then.
Hope you guys are all using VPNs. I wasn't busted for piracy, but almost lost my freedom (even though I was a minor) for other computer related 'stuff'. I will neglect to say anything more for 'reasons'. :)
IIRC the statute of limitations for the CFAA only has a statute of limitations of 2 years, but there are so many other laws outside the CFAA (and copyright, etc.) that you can violate.
I agree with your sentiment as well as with the parent comment. I think it’s mostly young relationships that aren’t like this, or rather relationships we have when we’re young. I would wager that 99% of people have had or will have at least one relationship like this in their lives before we learn healthier ways of being with another person.
Anecdotally, long term relationships where one party improves significantly often do not last so it’s good advice to improve yourself before you find the right person.
I know things get worse before they get better - but some of us are at the point in our career where we likely won’t be around to see it get better again.
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