mastodon 4.7.2Upstream LLVM contributor and Formal Methods researcher. Expect a mix of technical posts interspersed with cute real-world musings.
Brilliant essay on the human tendency to constantly use metaphors to explain what we don’t even remotely understand: the human brain. We’ve been stuck on the information-processing metaphor for decades now. (via @linguacelta@toot.wales)
https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
My overall vision for what #LLVM VPlan should ideally be is becoming clearer. It's going to be huge design overhaul, and the work has to be done piece-wise with no unit of work causing regressions. The hard part is convincing all stakeholders to align on the vision, which I cannot explain in natural language sufficiently well.
I think what people often forget when discussing AI is that the thing is simply a computer program you run to get some output, not unlike git or tar. Unlike git and tar, which are highly reliable and useful programs, this unnamed program is highly unreliable and has questionable utility. Why are we all getting so riled up about a poorly-written computer program?
Happy to report that my milk misadventures are behind me. I never expected it, but the best milk is available at an express supermarket (Tesco) near me! Better than any premium milk you get at large fancy supermarkets.
This milk is thick with chunks of cream. Not for the weak.
RE: @mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
Look writers, we're not coders. We have no skills to work on this machine that generates volumes of beautiful prose in a few minutes -- something that would take us a few months to produce. There is no way to turn our prose into precise instructions to a machine -- the skills of these coders lie out of our reach. It always has, and always will. Writing is an outdated craft. Let it go.
I found this 2015 interview of Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life and The People in the Trees quite interesting. Few people understand humans as well as some fiction writers.
Ugh, what a security loophole! "FBI managed to extract Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone by accessing the phone’s notification database, where incoming messages were viewable even after the app was deleted. Signal users may want to turn on the app’s settings feature that hides message content in notifications."
Hm, the layout of Dublin is a bit strange: looks like the effect of some heavy zoning laws? Very large parts of it are highly residential.
I don't have any Ali Smith lying around at home, and a friend sent me photographs of pages from his copy of Winter. It was a much-needed reminder of exactly how atrocious my writing is :)
How apt: the headline mixes politics with technology 🤦
In the latest piece, I tease apart intelligence and ego, and argue that we successfully synthesized ego with our language machine. Spent nearly two days on it.
The latest in the hunt for great coffee.
The latest in the hunt for great kefir.
