Viewing profile — nemo1618

Your assumption is mistaken (and a little rude). I love programming. It's in my blood: my father and grandfather were programmers too. I have written everything from SIMD assembly …

Further evidence that there is some kind of weird parallel universe thing going on with LLMs. "Figuring out esoteric errors" is one of the things I would cite as a particular stren…

I am quite tired of this take, frankly. The implication is that if we continue iterating on prompt optimization, we're going to reinvent what, JavaScript? BASIC? Lisp? English is n…

After Christmas this year, I removed the tree from our living room, and in the process of being moved, it shed of needles everywhere . I swept them up, but I missed a few areas on …

I would love a crank-powered router. Would be a good way to curb internet addiction!

I think the key is that, while you may think you have a full formal spec of f(), you actually do not. You have a program written in some language, and that language has its own spe…

The first moment I specifically remember was writing a test of a new RPC protocol back in 2021. There were no agents yet, only "AI autocomplete" in the form of GitHub Copilot. I wr…

It really is crazy. I have been contributing the Melee decompilation project for the past year-ish, and things have really accelerated in 2026. Just today I decided it would be nic…

You should not swear at LLMs, for the same reason you should not shout a slur even if no one is around to witness it: You witness it, and witnessing yourself being toxic updates yo…

Good git hygiene is also less important post-LLMs, as the LLM can make sense of even a messy history.

Agreed. In fact, one of the things I now watch for is my mind starting to "slide off" the text, or finding myself re-reading a section multiple times. It's like the brain subconsci…

LLM writing tells are getting more subtle, but they still jump off the page for me, in particular the word "genuine:" "This is the area where Go genuinely shines, and it’s worth be…

Evidence for 1992: > After a disorienting visit from the FBI in May of 1990, I wrote a rant called Crime and Puzzlement, which led to my establishing with Mitch Kapor (who had prev…

It's interesting to revisit Brooks' "surgical team" in light of AI. For example, I frequently have Claude act as a "toolsmith", creating bespoke project-specific tools on the fly, …

Huh? I'm not aware of anyone else who defines "deterministic" that way. "Deterministic" comes from "determinism," as in "the effects are fully determined by the causes" -- not "det…

LLMs are not inherently non-deterministic. This is a common misconception. You used to be able to set temp=0 and a fixed seed and get the same output every time. This broke when la…

Sufficiently-developed concentration gives you access to the jhanas, which are extremely blissful states of consciousness. Having reliable access to high valence reduces your need …

I'm old enough to remember when companies worth $1 billion were called "unicorns." Now we have a company raising 122 times that? Valued at nearly 1000 times that...? At least they'…

yep, I do a simple version of this in Google Sheets. Very useful to be able to "Ctrl-F" your life, especially when combined with Google Maps location history.

If this was a joke, it certainly flew over most people's heads...

This will happen with GUIs as well, once computer-use agents start getting good. Why bother providing an API, when people can just direct their agent to click around inside the app…

> But like humans — and unlike computer programs — they do not produce the exact same results every time they are used. This is fundamental to the way that LLMs operate: based on t…

IMO this is one of the best use cases for AI today. Each function is like a separate mini problem with an explicit, easy-to-verify solution, and the goal is (essentially) to output…

"The steamroller is still many inches away. I'll make a plan once it actually starts crushing my toes." You are in danger . Unless you estimate the odds of a breakthrough at <5%, o…

I think it's a combination of a) reflexive dislike of any hyped-up tech, mainly due to the crypto era, and b) subconscious ego protection ("this can't be legit, otherwise everythin…