When hn first started taking llms seriously maybe, 2-3-4 years ago (?) one of the most interesting recurring comments was that the real research goals in the field would be reducing cost, doing more with fewer parameters, making lean models, and generally improving efficiency. Of course, those research goals run counter to the need to raise capital and do massive real estate land grabs for data centers, so they are not being prioritized by the top firms running the bubble game.
Wow, I feel this deeply. I work with bad software. It is bad because people built it using tools that were designed to "make coding easier". I feel a cold chill imagining the level of institutional cruft that could be allowed to build up with unrestrained ai coding.
With that said - the process of fixing those old mistakes is greatly aided by llms... but you still need to understand what you are fixing, and understanding why giant blocks of code are copy-pasted everywhere, or why convoluted hacks evolved over time as reactions to bizarre underlying untreated bugs is, imo, ultimately a human/organizational/processes problem.
There's a minimum threshold of knowing what you don't know that's needed I think.
Below that the AI will need to get good enough to compensate for people's lack of knowledge. But that will cost money so not sure how it's going to be balanced.
I have friends codebases where I had them just run a stupid simple prompt like "spawn subagents to find the top 5 worst issues in this codebase".
Wide open APIs allowing anyone to modify the database and charge customers among other things. The mere awareness of needing to secure things is lacking from most vibe coders.
Am I the only one who sees this as the only viable solution to shutting down foreign interference through social media ? We certainly can't rely on the companies themselves doing it. Fifth column warfare is a thing and we are a ripe target.
My understanding is that this is the opposite of what is typically understood to be true - organisms with less truthful (more reductive/compressed) perception survive better than those with more complete perception. "Fitness beats truth."
Fitness is effective truth prediction, appropriately scoped.
A frog doesn't need to understand quantum physics to catch a fly. But if the frogs model of fly movement was trained on lies it will have a model that predicts poorly, won't catch flies, and will die.
There is another level to this in that the more complex and changing the environment the more beneficial a wider scoped model / understanding of truth.
However if you are going to lean fully into Hoffman and accept thatby default consciousness constructs rather than approximate reality I think we will have to agree to disagree. Personally I ascribe to Karl Friston free energy principle.
"I have been self-hosting my email since I got my first broadband connection at home in 1999. I absolutely loved having a personal web+email server at home, paid extra for a static IP and a real router so people could connect from the outside. I felt like a first-class citizen of the Internet and I learned so much.
Over time I realized that residential IP blocks were banned on most servers. I moved my email server to a VPS. No luck. I quickly understood that self-hosting email was a lost cause. Nevertheless, I have been fighting back out of pure spite, obstinacy, and activism. In other words, because it was the right thing to do.
But my emails are just not delivered anymore. I might as well not have an email server.
(After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel, Carlos Fenollosa, 2022)"
If you do all the stuff (DKIM etc) AND you're not on a banned IP, you're fine. It seems like this person couldn't find a non-banned IP. I know plenty of people who self host email and successfully send to Gmail.
Yep. Know plenty of selfhosters who run email successfully. In fact, with all the email in a box packages out there, it's never been easier to self-host emails. One recommendation for those who are interested, is to choose a reputable VPS host with clean IP:s.
