peterb from Tea Leaves Programming

New video: The Message from Deep Space. youtu.be/fDDmdWt0e8Y Thumbnail painting: The Meteor of 1860 (1860) by Frederic Edwin Church

Time for an event at Alma Lewis. #Pittsburgh

All I am saying is that for all the "community organizing" and "providing for each other" the edgy doomers say they do, whenever I go to a community support or civic event I am often the only one under 50

Today in Rust for Dilettantes, we explore my favorite language feature, enumerated types. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVxk... Thumbnail painting: "The Judgment of Paris" (c. 1510) by Antonio da Vendri

New Paradox game just dropped.

Name a song cover that is so good that it has completely replaced the original in your memory. Mine: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppYM...

The Billy Joel song "The Stranger" is about a Persona game. I will be taking no questions at this time.

In retrospect, maybe putting a dude whose core competence is "defaulting on his debts" in charge of America was a bad choice.

The future belongs to the trijet loyalists.

What if "Make sure companies are held legally liable for the things their AIs say" was the real alignment all along?

What is more likely to be conscious? a) An LLM b) A fungus-like organism c) Neither d) Unknowable Notes: (1) I'm restricting the AI answer to "LLM". Do not substitute "a sci-fi AI I read about in the Culture books" for "LLM". (2) Beating a dead horse: I said "conscious" not "thinking".

Dead Ends in Proving: I describe trying to prove a simple property of my emulator in #Lean 4 by writing "For all x..." theorems, rather than by construction. It went poorly! www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zcy... Thumbnail painting: "The Temptation of St. Anthony" (circa 1500), Hieronymous Bosch

In all honestly on a monthly basis I whipsaw between "lazy evaluation is the best thing since sliced bread" and "lazy evaluation is a whirling nightmare of hatred, pain, and misery."

candlelight and Dubonnet on ice

hey @erinkpgh.bsky.social @chrisbriem.bsky.social I need an explainer for this: www.lwvpgh.org/content.aspx...

Chapter 7 of Rustlings is all about structures. I complain more about Rust. What a complainer! Thumbnail painting: Heads Landscape (1928) by Francis Picabia youtu.be/aGU_3i5BYVg

Me: "I don't think there's a realistic nightmare scenario where AI takes over (or destroys) the world. The ACTUAL risk is that incredibly dumb humans just read what it says and uncritically implement its worst suggestions." The world:

Martin Amis once wrote "It was...a symmetrical convenience—for Stalin—that a true description of the Soviet Union exactly resembled a demented slander of the Soviet Union." So anyway this is a subtweet about the EA / AI community in the Bay Area.

The entire problem with monads - the WHOLE ISSUE - is that it's a dumb name, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't. If they were called "sequenceables" everyone would understand them immediately.

Some magnificent bastard basically made Haskell but for Proto-Indo-European.

How is it possible that Slapp Happy's _Casablanca Moon_ hasn't made it into a TV or movie soundtrack yet? www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppq9...

Average AI dude on social media this weekend. IYKYK.

6502 Opcodes in Lean! I continue porting my NES emulator from #Haskell to #Lean. In this edited (and much shorter) version of the 4-hour livestream, I muse about syntax and my philosophy of programming. The thumbnail painting is Gisele (1908) by Kees Van Dongen www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuYn...

People who believe they it's meaningless authoritarianism to say people can't bring an iced coffee to a job interview are going to lose their minds when they learn about what the "no brown M&M's" rider was for.

Reading "text elemental" as the description of an LLM is a real Oscar Wilde "I wish I had said that" moment.

Those aren't pen lines. Those are freaking BRUSH LINES.

This is absolutely the dynamic in rationalist and EA-adjacent spaces. Do they just not teach Pascal's wager at school anymore or....?

This latest "EA's are determined to prove they understand neither altruism nor being effective" discourse about insects is an example of Kurt Vonnegut's advice from the book Mother Night: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

What city were the Midway City exterior scenes filmed at? #Lanterns @jamesgunn.bsky.social

FACT CHECK: true.

Tired: "What's your p(doom)?" Wired: "What are the assumptions and probabilities that go into calculating your p(doom)? Show your work."

ChipWits was a 1984 Mac programming game recently remade for Mac+Windows. In Chipwits Worlds, you program bots directly in 6502 assembly language. Let's check it out. Thumbnail image: A still from Fritz Lang's movie Metropolis. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHLB... (@snell.zone probably cares...)

Every single fact I have learned about effective altruists has been against my will, so at least their practices are consistent.

Gamers, Just Let People Enjoy Things Challenge (level: impossible)

ML Researchers: we added an input to the system that introduces randomness. LLM: [does something unpredicted] ML Researchers:

I used to like Talking Heads, but I was really disappointed in how David Bowie treated the other members of the band.

the Substack article has very strong “I can fix her” energy

Me and @psu-1313.bsky.social did a “let’s read” of this issue. Zero Page: Reading Byte's 1979 "LISP Issue" youtu.be/WQEJ1aDY9Z4

Software developers when asked if maybe they could reduce the number of security holes and bugs in their software by using formal verification techniques.

For those of us who remember Tony Mowod music.apple.com/us/album/hym... @opg.bsky.social

Today we get into the first chapter of Rustlings that tackles something truly Rust-specific: move semantics. Peter is unimpressed with Rust so far, and also with Rustlings as a didactic tool. Thumbnail painting: "The Execution of Lady Jane Grey" (1833) by Paul Deleroche youtu.be/-0fkGKg9MeE

I know the Zelda remake is on everyone's mind, but this topic actually came up in context of the Wizardry I remake. Remakes are good. Engaging with art is good. Remaking a work of art is not inherently disrespectful.

I've arrived at the conclusion that "AI Doom" takes are wrong by applying the ironclad rule of "religious apocalyptic predictions are always, 100% of the time, wrong" and AI doomerism seems to simply be the latest bad religion.

Today: The best Wikipedia page you never read.

If you want a "non-adaptation" example, _La Traviata_ has been staged approximately 6,700 times.

My main observation to people upset at the existence of the Ocarina of Time remake (yes, I am going to play it) is: The Count of Monte Cristo has been made into a film over 25 times.

/signed. This is an AAA+++ 10/10 would buy on eBay again use of LLMs.

TLDR: OpenAI researcher saying "Awfully nice proof you've got there. Would be a real shame if something...*happened* to it."