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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • As someone who was working really hard trying to get my company to be able use some classical ML (with very limited amounts of data), with some knowledge on how AI works, and just generally want to do some cool math stuff at work, being asked incessantly to shove AI into any problem that our execs think are “good sells” and be pressured to think about how we can “use AI” was a terrible feel. They now think my work is insufficient and has been tightening the noose on my team.



  • I agree with that, and I don’t think what I said alleges that all Jews are Zionists. Mahatir is labelled an antisemite and openly critical of Israel. He claims to have Jewish friends however. Now I don’t agree with this old fart on a lot of things, and I definitely condemn the fact that he’s using the word “Jews” when criticizing Israel and Zionism. But when you have wealthy Jewish organizations actively lobbying for Zionism in one if not the most powerful nation on Earth to continue facilitating the horrors that we see playing out in the Middle East with no intention or desire of stopping, even when their own people are dying in the process, I find it hard to disagree that these Zionsists aren’t in control of the world to some extent.





  • I mean, if he can muscle his way through municipal affairs to stop some bike lanes being built, it’ll keep car dependency high enough that there would be sufficient frustrations with congestion for his car-dependent policies to look more appealing, and to also further push people who already don’t support alternative infrastructure further into his base. And to be fair, a lot of Canadians are dependent on cars, and don’t really see an alternative to cars, and it’s likely that he sees those as the base he needs to win and thus cater to. It all looks like part of the wedge politics that he’s playing.





  • Comments get stale and over time transition from: accurate to outdated, to eventually flat-out lies.

    Sounds like some people aren’t doing their work enough then. Code comments are part of the work that a programmer should do, not an afterthought. Who else is gonna update that code if not the programmer? And if a programmer isn’t supposed to update their code and we can just all write clean code that would somehow make us all be better engineers (yeah, I use this title differently from programmers), then why are code comments even a thing?

    Self-documenting code is good and all, but so should there be good comments.




  • Hard disagree that documentation is a waste of time. I think you’re just failing to see and use documentation correctly.

    Tech documentation should never:

    • record implementation details; that’s what commits and PRs are for
    • be about the code, but about the solution, information, or provide guidance; use code comments when talking about code
    • be taken as 100% accurate or infallible, but the general direction or essence should still remain true (related to the 2nd point)
    • be expected to be up-to-date; readers should always look at the created / completed / last edited date and make a judgement how much salt to actually take from it

    Documentation can

    • be some kind of paper trail that shows how we got to where we are
    • provide guidelines for getting started on a project, or some part of a larger project, with more context with respect to the business, so that readers are equipped with sufficient context when diving into the code (READMEs can then just focus on setup and testing instructions)
    • go further into what goes around a solution, eg considered alternatives, what actually requires solving given a functional requirement (it’s not always the case that we can fit a solution within a sufficiently small ticket, so tickets might be too localized to give a bigger picture of how a problem is being solved)
    • record system architecture, with actual illustrations, which can be easier to grok than 50 Terraform files

    Writing these out is also good for people who don’t read code or don’t have the time to read code, eg your tech lead, your manager, Tech VP, etc, people who should have some idea of your system or solution, but not necessarily the implementation detail, so that they can do their work more effectively.

    There’s also a culture where a project, or a sufficiently complex problem, starts with a tech proposal, which would properly capture the problem and do solution planning. It’s easier and faster to change than a PR, and reviewers can read that for context. In any case, this democratizes knowledge, instead of creating more tribal knowledge.



  • It’s not possible for everyone to just tell if it’s supposed to be sarcasm. ADHD makes it hard. A bad day makes it hard. A tiring day makes it hard.

    The downside of the misunderstanding isn’t just downvotes. It’s possibly a proliferation of misinformation and an impression that there are people who DO think that way.

    Being not serious while saying something grim is not a globally understood culture either. It’s more common and acceptable in the Western world as a joke.

    So… call it accessibility, but it’s just more approachable for everyone to just put an “/s”.


  • (Rant) Seriously, how this useless attack dog brought the Conservatives to its status today is still beyond me. He provides little to no policy plan even today, basically nuke and no pave. Okay, maybe there’s some paving, but it all just seems like paving the way for the rich and for industries we should be moving away from. Our current policies don’t work well for us anymore; we know that. But why does it seem like we’re looking in the direction of the party that seems to offer nothing, possibly worse? I’m scared of our future, and I’m already very afraid of where we are right now.



  • Lots of moments in Honkai Impact 3.

    There’s literally a YT channel that collects tears from streamers playing the game.

    https://youtube.com/@Ollyt_

    There’s a lot of context needed to understand why anyone would cry playing through HI3 though. I’ll give a high level summary here, but I highly encourage people to play it, even if it’s a gacha game. You can really ignore the gacha and just play the game for the main story. Do be warned that the story isn’t something suitable for kids — it can be quite a bit too heavy for them.

    The theme of self-sacrifice is covered quite extensively, with the main character being the centrepiece of the theme. There’s also deep self-loathe, with an eventual self-acceptance, also from the MC. Mix that all in with some sense of duty.

    There’s also a tragedy, but from the tragedy, a narrow path to hope was born. The people in the tragedy mostly hoped only for a simple life, or to live their lives atoning for their sins, but circumstances forced them to become warriors against a great, unstoppable force of destruction. As if to make things harder to swallow, their digital clones that survived into the future have to experience yet another tragedy that would eventually destroy all of them, and the player will see this through. Yet, in the second tragedy, these clones further sowed the seeds of hope for the future.

    Chinese company or not, HoYo has pumped out a lot of very human stories that I think deserves attention and praise. Genshin Impact has also started to go down a similar path.