Viewing profile — phaedrus

There was this persistent meme in bodybuilding discussions - I don't know if it's still a thing - to say about steroids "well they're just a shortcut". The justification that it ju…

Someone should make a parody site asking whether shades of yellow are red or violet.

If we had super-smart AI with low latency and fast enough speed, would the perceived need for / usefulness of running multiple agents evaporate? Sure you might want to start workin…

Mindstorms and the original RCX were a huge part of my college memories; I had a professor who used them for one of our classes. I built a substantially large "dragon" robot where …

I once attended a talk by someone who is or was big in the node.js world. He opened with the premise, "a static type check is just a stand-in for a unit test." I wanted to throw a …

When I was trying to improve compile time for my game engine, I ended up using compiled size as a proxy measure. Although it is an imperfect correlation, the fact that compiled siz…

This framework is a good example of something I call, "there's plenty of room in the middle." (In analogy to Feynman's "plenty of room at the bottom" about nanotechnology.) Much li…

See also: https://github.com/nucleic/kiwi

I want so much to be in the business of selling my own traditional downloadable software, that I've thought about (in the absence of an idea) just putting together a do-nothing app…

Four companies. The doctor's office which may be controlled by profit-optimizing administration, the big profit pharma corporation, the for-profit medical insurance company, and th…

Not every case of reflux is caused by the same things. Some people's esophageal sphincter (such as mine does) just... decides to let go at random times. For me, that I can tell, th…

50K context is an interesting number because I think there's a lot to explore with software within an order of magnitude that size. With apologies to Richard Feynman, I call it, "T…

But the G in AGI stands for General. I think the hope is that there is some as-yet-undiscovered algorithm for general intelligence. While I agree that deferring to a subsystem that…

It's not hearsay; I have a few engineer coworkers whose original job and training wasn't in tower climbing who now climb a couple times a year as installations require. I have seen…

From the article: "Some broadcast engineering tasks are a bit too daunting for me to consider. Climbing the massive towers that power radio and TV stations is one of them!" I work …

When I was still in school I scored over 900 on a reading speed test. For those skeptical how this is possible, I don't read linearly my eyes make saccades and groups of words come…

In context I assumed GP comment meant gut feeling is a lagging indicator rather than predictive.

Orbiting has more to do with velocity than altitude.

Can confirm female tortiseshell cats are, yes- lunatic is the best way to describe their personality. My family had several and they were all a combination of smart and crazy, most…

I recently learned of this new-design PC XT clone motherboard, which comes with a VGA card. I imagine this software is perfect for that system. https://monotech.fwscart.com/product…

Does mind wandering in this context refer to daydreaming or does it refer to blanking out? As someone with late-diagnosed ADHD and likely also on the spectrum, I find myself strugg…

Iain M Banks: (spoilers) the narrator is secretly an AI

I recently wrote an ANTLR4 parser for RC files, as part of software archeology on a legacy codebase I support. Considering how many programs over the last 30 (35?) years exist that…

Instead of an Overton window imagine an Overton amoeba. Microsoft, as a monopolist, has for two decades been pushing out pseudopods in all directions against the boundaries of acce…

(With the caveat I haven't read OP article yet) I was enamored of using relational programming for a games engine for many years. Ultimately I concluded it would be better to code …