thebestaquaman

@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grieve with me⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I honestly enjoy it when this happens. It’s so satisfying getting to pull obscenely large wads of lint out of the port

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Github Discussion: Allow us to block Copilot-generated issues (and PRs) from our own repositories #159749⁩ ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I would absolutely be happy to have a feature where an LLM could read previous issues, the docpage, and the FAQ/wiki, then you could query it regarding your issue to (a) see if it is a legitimate issue, (b) check that the issue you submit contains the info you need, and © help you link in previous issues/PR’s referring to relevant stuff.

  Never in hell do I want an LLM to be generating issues by itself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly: I have friends that got a drivers license in th US, and the education/test is honestly a joke compared to what they require here, and it clearly shows in the number of driving-related deaths.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grok’s “white genocide” obsession came from “unauthorized” prompt edit, xAI says⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say that the “bad part of town” usually has overlap with the poorer part of town, regardless of what skin colour people have there. Of course, especially in the US, there’s significant overlap between economic status and skin colour. I just hate how the typical American view on “race” is projected onto other countries.

  Americans typically have this hang-up on “race” that you really don’t find anywhere else. A lot of places you have talk about “ethnicity” or similar, but the American fascination with categorising people by their skin colour and then using that to make generalisations is pretty unique.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Love this⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Drinking age is 18 in most of the world (with 16 also applying some places). Additionally, my impression is that it’s not as big a deal for 16-17 year olds to get ahold of alcohol in other places.

  Where I’m from, the drinking age is 17, but it’s not uncommon or a big deal for people to get some beer or drinks for their 17th birthday party.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You might want to check the details here: I know that in some European countries, you’ll have trouble renting a car at all with an American license unless you pass a driving test in a European country first to get certified. In fact, in several countries I don’t think an American license is valid at all until you pass a test. It’s probably worth checking out the details for Romania.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For that exact reason some countries (my country included) don’t accept an American license unless you do a test here first.

  Though IIRC, that applies for both manuals and automatics, because American drivers education isn’t really trusted here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the point of constitutional monarchies? Why even keep the monarchy in place if they aren't even doing anything?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I just want to underscore the crucial part of the monarch being apolitical. I believe the only Norwegian citizens that cannot vote are the royal family (whether by tradition or law I’m not sure).

  I think it definitely has an effect of bringing cohesion and stability to a country that you have a formal head of state, or a “personification” of the nation, that is not tied to any political party. One thing is I foreign diplomacy, another thing is in bringing the country together during a crisis. In the latter case, the monarch is a figurehead that everyone can gather around, regardless of political affiliation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Klarna Hiring Back Human Help After Going All-In on AI⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  With all the AI rollout in customer support, I’ve essentially built up a habit of almost immediately trying to get in touch with a human if the bot doesn’t give me what I’m looking for right away. My experience is that in most cases, the bot will try to walk me in circles, recommending that I try stuff I’ve already tried (that’s why I’m contacting support). In all those cases, the bot isn’t saving the company any time, it’s just wasting my time and making me irritated.

  In some cases it does save them support capacity, if only because I eventually give up on getting any support and just quit the service.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨doctors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  When you look at how strongly obesity correlates with everything from back- and knee pains to weakened immune response to sleep issues and cardiovascular disease…

  When a severely obese person has any of the above, it’s reasonable, scientifically backed diagnosis/prescription to say “these issues will probably go away by themselves if you lose weight”. This is about treating the cause and not the symptoms: When severely obese people are heavily over-represented among those with a certain disease or problem, you can try treating the symptoms, but should expect that they return rather quickly.

  Of course, there are cases where the issues come from something else, but no matter who goes to the doctor with health issues, their first response will be to try to treat the post probable cause.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I definitely have a hangup on students I teach saying something along the lines of “I don’t know how to get started on this, I asked GPT and…”. To be clear: We’re talking about higher-level university courses here, where GPT is, from my experience, unreliable at best and useless or misleading at worst. It makes me want to yell “What do you think?!?” I’ve been teaching at a University for some years, and there’s a huge shift in the past couple years regarding how willing students are to smack their head repeatedly against a problem until they figure it out. It seems like their first instinct when they don’t know something is to ask an LLM, and if that doesn’t work, to give up.

  I honestly want shake a physical book at them (and sometimes do), and try to help them understand that actually looking up what they need in a reliable resource is an option. (Note: I’m not in the US, you get second hand course books for like 40 USD here that are absolutely great, to the point that I have a bunch myself that I use to look stuff up in my research).

  Of course, the above doesn’t apply to all students, but there’s definitely been a major shift in the past couple years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the likelihood I see trump shoot someone on 5th Ave? It's gotta be non 0, right?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is actually a good question. For pretty’s much any previous president, the chance that they will be shot heavily outweighs the chance that they will shoot someone while in office. With trump, I think it’s more of an open bet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Loudly cheer them on and clap when they finish.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should naming your children stupid names be illegal?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Who dictates what’s stupid? Where does the sanity end and crazy name start?

  Sanity ends when the name has an objectively high likelihood of causing the child harm, or otherwise severely hindering them in life. For example, naming your child “Hitler”, or “<insert slur of choice>” is objectively likely to be harmful to them. Likewise, naming them “Helicopter” or “Rollercoaster” is very likely to set them back in life through childhood bullying.

  Who dictates this? In all countries I’m aware of that have laws around this: A government body of some kind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should naming your children stupid names be illegal?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Plenty of countries have this. Examples of forbidden names are “Hitler”, “Asshole”, “<Insert demeaning word here>”, and “Quisling” (name of a Nazi collaborator, commonly used as a synonym for “traitor” in daily speech).

  The point is that “stupid” is defined as a name that is objectively likely to severely negatively impact the child. It’s not based on “I think X sounds stupid” but on whether “X” carries significant cultural baggage like being the name of a famous Nazi, a slur of some kind, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The next best time is now

  If my Easter break gets boring I might just start cleaning up that Python library… It’s the prime example of something that developed from a POC to a fully functional code base, was left largely unused for about a year, and just the past weeks has suddenly seen a lot of use again. Luckily we’re strict about good docstrings, but type hints would have been nice too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I really do agree on all your points, so at the end of the day I think a lot comes down to use-case and personal preference.

  My primary use cases for Python are prototyping and as a frontend/scripting tool for software written in C/C++/Fortran. I’ve written/worked on only one larger code base in pure Python, and my personal opinion became that I heavily prefer strictly typed languages once the code base exceeds a certain size. It just feels so much smoother to work with when I have actual guarantees that are enforced by the language.

  With that said, we were a bunch of people that are used to using Python for prototyping that developed this larger library, and it would probably have gone a lot better if we actually enforced use of proper type hinting from the start (which we were not used to).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Type hints are usually great, as long as they’re kept up to date and the IDE interprets them correctly. Recently I’ve had some problems with PyCharm acting up and insisting that matplotlib doesn’t accept numpy arrays, leading me to just disable the type checker altogether.

  All in all, I’m a bit divided on type hints, because I’m unsure whether I think the (huge) value added from correct type hints outweighs the frustration I’ve experienced from incorrect type hints. Per now I’m leaning towards “type hints are good, as long as you never blindly trust them and only treat them as a coarse indicator of what some dev thought at some point.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Then I absolutely understand you :)

  How common it is 100 % depends on the code base and what practices are preferred. In Python code bases where I have a word in decisions, all Boolean checks should be x is True or x is False if x should be a Boolean. In that sense, if I read if x or if not x, it’s an indicator that x doesn’t need to be a Boolean.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I definitely agree that len is the preferred choice for checking the emptiness of an object, for the reasons you mention. I’m just pointing out that assuming a variable is a bool because it’s used in a Boolean context is a bit silly, especially in Python or other languages where any object can have a truthiness value, and where this is commonly utilised.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no guarantee that the comment is kept up to date with the code. “Self documenting code” is a meme, but clearly written code is pretty much always preferable to unclear code with a comment, largely because you can actually be sure that the code does what it says it does.

  Note: You still need to comment your code kids.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly as you said yourself: Checking falsieness does not guarantee that the object has a length. There is considerable overlap between the two, and if it turns out that this check is a performance bottleneck (which I have a hard time imagining) it can be appropriate to check for falsieness instead of zero length. But in that case, don’t be surprised if you suddenly get an obscure bug because of some custom object not behaving the way you assumed it would.

  I guess my primary point is that we should be checking for what we actually care about, because that makes intent clear and reduces the chance for obscure bugs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would say it depends heavily on the language. In Python, it’s very common that different objects have some kind of Boolean interpretation, so assuming that an object is a bool because it is used in a Boolean context is a bit silly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len()⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I write a lot of Python. I hate it when people use “X is more pythonic” as some kind of argument for what is a better solution to a problem. I also have a hang up with people acting like python has any form of type safety, instead of just embracing duck typing.This lands us at the following:

  The article states that “you can check a list for emptiness in two ways: if not mylist or if len(mylist) == 0”. Already here, a fundamental mistake has been made: You don’t know (and shouldn’t care) whether mylist is a list. These two checks are not different ways of doing the same thing, but two different checks altogether. The first checks whether the object is “falsey” and the second checks whether the object has a well defined length that is zero. These are two completely different checks, which often (but far from always) overlap. Embrace the duck type- type safe python is a myth.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube Star IShowSpeed Woos US Consumers With Futuristic China Tech⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Of all youtube jackasses, this might be one of the biggest. Imagine making a living off pushing semi-scams on twelve year olds and being a nuisance at sporting events…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Algorithm Deemed This Nearly Blind 70-Year-Old Prisoner a “Moderate Risk.” Now He’s No Longer Eligible for Parole.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree on a general basis that it’s bad that these kind of decisions are offloaded to an AI. A human should be the one to consider whether the blind 70 year old is dangerous, because they definitely can be.

  Operating a vehicle or weapon requires neither eyesight nor a clear mind if you don’t intend to do it safely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You know architect was an god you thought now

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Since militaries are authoritarian, even in democratic countries; What would a military of a stateless/anarchist society look like?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Isn’t the idea of having an authority at all contrary to the anarchist ideology? Sounds to me like they were more “representative democratic brigades” than anarchistic brigades, since they elected officials that had full control until the next election.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s an interesting take, to me it’s always been either porn or not porn, and the idea of “porn but censored so I fill in the gaps myself” hasn’t ever had any appeal. I don’t know if this is related to what I’ve been more exposed to (probably is), but anytime I come across porn that shows everything except a tiny pixelated part (as in, only pixelating part of the junk) kind of funny.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is just another step down “I honestly just can’t comprehend the stupidity of what is going on in the American government”-alley…