@brennansv@sfba.social
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

brennansv

@brennansv@sfba.social

San Francisco, CA

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brennansv, to random
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Heard of function coloring? It is about async code.

brennansv, to random
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Anyone remember the website that @benbrown made called Four Spaces? It was back in the days of mIRC and ICQ. It was a beautiful experiment of how the Internet and humanity could combined to create a meaningful experience.

brennansv, to random
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

Enjoy this heartwarming story about a bakery. Happy Friday! https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLgCLCrA/ #Bakery #Friday

video/mp4

brennansv, to OpenAI
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Random thumbnail placement on YouTube too good not to share. #SamAltman #OpenAI #TRexArms

brennansv, to vscode
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Gotta say, VS Code and LSP have raised the bar for the baseline developer experience for all IDEs. Recently I installed an extension for shell scripts and with LSP support for the first time I have IDE support for shell scripting. It has all of the core IDE features that I would expect.

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=mads-hartmann.bash-ide-vscode

drahardja, to science
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

Ho boy. This is a bad take.

Presenting scientific consensus as “fact” is harmful, because it means that it will be harder to change that “fact” when more data is available.

Scientists are humans, but what makes their consensus trustworthy is their commitment to a process of forming testable hypotheses, gathering data, getting rid of confounding noise, and publishing their results. Thence, a model of reality is constructed, and a consensus—a belief—is agreed upon.

But NEW DATA MUST RESULT IN REVISED MODELS. That is good, and that defines progress.

Labeling consensus as “fact” undermines the idea that MODELS WILL CHANGE as more data come in. A “fact” is an immutable truth, and a reporting a change in scientific “facts” over time will undermine trust in scientists much more than the phrase “scientists believe”.

The problem with the phrase “scientists believe” is not the “believe” part. It’s the “scientists” part, which has lost public credibility.

#science #journalism #reporting https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/112457986407944025

brennansv,
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@drahardja I’ve noticed disappointing headlines from Ars Technical like this lately. I believe this publication has gone downhill.

christianselig, to random
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Dumb question, but if I bought one of those "MagSafe stickers" on Amazon, that are traditionally used to give an Android phone MagSafe-like-stickiness, could I instead use it in reverse, and stick it to a non-MagSafe accessory so it would stick to my iPhone?

For instance, say I want to stick it to a banana so the banana magnets to my phone

brennansv,
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

@christianselig I just did a little experiment since I have a charging pad without a magnetic ring and rings with stickers that have used to make my cases magnetic. One of these rings could make this pad MagSafe-like.

The trouble I have had over the past few years is when the pad is not lined up perfectly it cause cause overheating. I think that condition is now detected and charging it terminated to stop it. You’ll need to be sure the magnetic ring is positioned perfectly.

With my experiment it works just fine with this metal bring in between the pad and phone.

image/jpeg

bens, to random
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So dumb. How could Martin erode their brand with this?
https://mastodon.social/@madewulf/112456796103060745

brennansv,
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@bens Dumb ideas lead to great ideas. I am full of dumb ideas. So any day now…

diana, to random
@diana@hachyderm.io avatar

@yvonnezlam Made famous in the NewCrafts closing keynote … was a perfect moment set up by other talks here.

brennansv,
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@diana The dishwasher and washing machine would be CI/CD or some kind of automation I suppose in this metaphor. And we know how much we let dishes and laundry pile up. Show me your kitchen sink! 😅

frozencanuck, to random
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It'd be nice if local Bay Area media outlets would have their own official presence on Mastodon. Wouldn't be hard from them to setup their own account on mastodon.social or on a more local instance like sfba.social

brennansv,
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@frozencanuck If locally media companies simply had basic RSS feeds for the various topics they cover it would not be much work for an automated bot to post the headlines and links. Hashtags would be helpful too for following a specific story.

The last time I looked into it the numbers just did not make sense to bother with Mastodon, but this would be such a simple effort which would allow their headlines and links to reach more people. And over time there could be some significant growth as legacy social media continues to fall off.

brennansv, to ai
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

Just heard a new track from Eddie Vedder so I was curious about his band Pearl Jam, touring and the conflict with TicketMaster. I asked ChatGPT which was helpful, but what was interesting is there are now links to sources which I often do not get in these responses. Linking to the source material is one key different just using Google. Perhaps this is a change which will help drive traffic to websites and address some of the concerns with OpenAI and ChatGPT.

https://chat.openai.com/share/281be4ef-71c3-4bcc-8cc4-dbf285c609d8

brennansv, to ai
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From Pong on the Atari to Mario Bros on Nintendo there as a massive leap in what appeared to be possible on such limited hardware. The hardware engineers and software developers at Nintendo were able to achieve such an amazing result due to their clever solutions.

Today we have these modern AI systems which clearly have limitations. I am now thinking what would it take for this same leap from Atari to Nintendo. We know there are problems with GenAI, but what could be done with it with these known limitations? The possibilities are still pretty hard to fathom.

joelanman, to random
@joelanman@hachyderm.io avatar

A lot of people are finding LLMs more useful than Google search.

I think a huge part of that is that Google and web in general has massively deteriorated in terms of finding clear, concise answers. Even if you can find it, it's covered in ads, cookie popups and so on.

But LLMs will inevitably follow the same path - investors want their returns. And the complete non transparency of LLMs will make it even worse this time around. Is that really the best answer or is it sponsored?

#ai

brennansv,
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@joelanman SEO consultants basically wrecked the system with some recently decisions by Google execs to speed along this decline. Recently I found ChatGPT 4.o has included links to external resources which I normally have not seen. If LLMs were to screen out bad actors which throw up a ton of ads and pop-ups it could be a welcome alternative to Google.

I still think ChatGPT and others should be paying some kind of royalty to the services like Stackoverflow and others which were used to train their models in addition to linking to them.

dimillian, to random
@dimillian@mastodon.social avatar

Animal Well is a piece of Art. So much creativity, it’s pure joy to play at every moment. It’s been a while since I played a video game just for playing a video game.

video/mp4

brennansv,
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@dimillian Seeing those pixels is pure nostalgia. 🤩

brennansv, to random
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The has continued all weekend after it was prompted by a “let them eat cake” video posted on TikTok as a part of the Met Gala. Top celebrities and influencers have seen their follower counts drop significantly. This hashtag has been making it into the mainstream news as well.

Meanwhile over a million civilians are at risk in Rafah as the Israelis continue to attack with by dropping bombs and shelling with tanks.

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/viral/social-media-users-are-blocking-celebrities-silent-on-gaza-rcna151880

Alleman, to animals
@Alleman@mastodon.world avatar

But it is

brennansv,
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

@Alleman Initially I read “liking” as “licking” due to the context with a dog.

brennansv, to scifi
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

Alien was released in 1979. It is hard to believe that film was made 45 years ago. Some plot details in the movie are still so relevant today. The sci-fi styling, visual aesthetics and music also really hold up.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

brennansv,
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

Weird Science was released in 1985. It would be interesting now due to Generative AI and Stable Diffusion as well as modern robotics.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090305/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

nicklockwood, to random
@nicklockwood@mastodon.social avatar

I briefly considered using this image to illustrate the concept of "progressive disclosure" in my Swift talk but ultimately thought better of it 😅

brennansv,
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@nicklockwood Maybe better for a talk on Stable Diffusion. 😭

brennansv, to random
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“Rafah Once Was a Refuge From the War. Now Gazans Don’t Know Where to Go.”https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/rafah-gaza-evacuations-a81a242c

brennansv, to random
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On TikTok the hashtag is trending. Any major celebrity or influencer or brand which has not spoken up about Gaza is bring blocked. It impacts them significantly. Kim Kardashian is down millions of followers and is angry about it.

annmlipton, to random
@annmlipton@esq.social avatar

that is not where i expected this sentence to end

brennansv,
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@annmlipton 😦 Just read up on it. She’s alright, but he should be facing real consequences. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/10/man-behind-viral-dress-pleads-guilty-endangering-wifes-life

brennansv, to random
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Hack the Planet! https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2024/04/18.html

brennansv,
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@pixelscience Do I got there on rollerblades? 🫠

drahardja, to ai
@drahardja@sfba.social avatar

This is anecdotal, but I now personally know two employees of -related companies whose valuations have imploded within the past month, and they are now looking to bail. One company lost 73% of their (publicly traded) value in a month. The other one is a startup whose founder (according to my friend) has “finally snapped”, and the company is now in freefall.

It feels like the bubble is bursting right now.

brennansv,
@brennansv@sfba.social avatar

@drahardja I expect more of the same will come from many AI researchers over the next year to explain why GenAI has stalled.

It made me think of how I did not need to see millions of cats to be able recognize any cat as a cat. Humans and other animals just have some innate ability to figure that out. If researchers can work out how to do that I expect that would be even better than GenAI and use far less compute.

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