guildem , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime I have mixed feelings about IA assistants. Sometimes they understand, expand and anticipate things like magic and I win a pretty good amount of time. Sometimes they do shit and even after taking time to check and fix their guess, I forgot one last error and get stuck some time to debug it uselessly.

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

FAQ:

Q: Can't you do that translation off the top of your head???
A: No. Not anymore. I'm in my thirties now, leave me alone.

Q: Do you trust the LLM to get it right?
A: No, but it's trivially verifiable, and I do verify it.

dngrs , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime version without copilot (less typing, too!):

2 << (16777216f32.log2()) as i32

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

@dngrs I get to do arrow-up to use the prompt on all the magic constants I find, so.

(also just for facts' sake, zed's inline assistant uses GPT-4o by default, not GitHub Copilot — completions are a different thing)

dngrs , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime I would not in earnest suggest my solution 😬

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

@dngrs Ohh I’m just now reading it correctly lol, that’s evil!

whitequark , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime huh, i got better at that in 30s

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

@whitequark how much do you charge per token? 👼

whitequark , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime hm! we could pair and see

natty , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime Modern desktop calculators can do bit conversion natively without eating dozens of kWh ​:neofox_woozy:​

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

@natty okay I forgot this frequently asked question:

Q: But this is trivial math
A: Yes but the assistant can do many other tasks I ask it to and it frees up my brain to think about other more important things

natty , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime is the the mental overhead of checking if it didn't make shit up significantly lower though

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

@natty yeah, I didn't even have to think about log2 before someone brought it up.

it's not like I don't know what logarithms are, it's just I'm wrestling a big bunch of context in a completely different area — the more I can delegate, the more focused I can be.

I know it sounds silly, believe me.

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

@natty I was already heavily using the assistant to help translate Go code to Rust (I do a lot of review + cleanups afterwards, and provide a lot of context to get quality results), I just thought "huh maybe I can clean up those magic numbers with it too" and I tried and it worked.

Elarcis , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime

Me: opens up the calculator app, types 2×2 and presses Enter until I get the right power, counting the presses

hisham_hm , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime Another one for the FAQ: do you think such trivial conveniences are worth the ethical issues involved with promoting LLMs?

(You're an "influencer" now, even so saying "I use X" is unavoidably a kind of endorsement)

fasterthanlime OP , vor einem Monat

@hisham_hm This is certainly one of the least impressive things I’m currently using LLMs for.

my perception of them has changed in the past couple years, and I’ve decided to accept that they’re here to stay. AI companies are overpromising, but LLMs are useful for certain things, and we better grapple with the labor implications sooner rather than later.

kinnison , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime @hisham_hm I'd add a Q to that of "If you use LLMs for something more substantial than refactoring a constant, can you be confident of the licence terms under which you receive its output and whether or not it is violating other licence terms in order to give that output to you?"

PierreLebeaupin , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime Even though I’m reaching 40 this year, all of these have been burned into my memory so thoroughly that I couldn’t forget them even if I wanted to…

scoopr , vor einem Monat

@fasterthanlime i thought this was the easiest to remember, back when “true colour” was a new thing, everywhere the “16 million colours!” was mentioned. And because the RGB components are 8bit each, it is 2^(8+8+8), so 2^24.

Once in school teacher had a silly task, calculate how many cells in excel spreadsheet. I was late, so wasn’t at a computer. Heard it was 256 by 65536, so 2^8 by 2^16, I could calculate it in my head, and rattle off the one big pow2 I knew, before others :)