> Algorithms and data strictures are important — to a point. I don’t see pharmacist interviews test trivia about organic chemistry. There’s something fucked with our industry’s interview process.

Pharmacists have to get a special degree before they can even get an interview, and I've heard that the education is heavy on organic chemistry. Then you get a job as a cashier selling pills.

> Hacker news and r/programming is only good to get general ideas and keep up-to-date. The comments are almost worthless.

You got me.

> Once, someone asked me who I looked up to and I said Conan O’Brien [...]

He wrote for SNL and studied literature at Harvard, so there's probably plenty going on up there.

> on his last show on the Tonight Show, he told his audience to be kind and work hard

Conan really handled that disaster with tremendous grace and it paid immediate dividends. I can’t really think of a similar situation in popular culture. It is a good reminder of how to handle oneself especially during turmoil.

`xor eax, eax` is less code when assembled. That's why compilers generate it.

..and reliably generate it for decades, but you can still manually do it in C for bonus stylistic points!

I did undergrad in Physics at the University of Florida. Some (many?) labs there did condensed matter experiments involving Helium 3. It's a million times more rare than normal helium. Nonrenewable, all that.

There was a dedicated system underground. Vacuum jacketed tubes taking waste helium from the labs to a reservoir across campus.

Helium is rare, helium 3 is precious.

I read, for probe missions, that one technique is to get a bunch of consumer chips and irradiate the hell out of them. Now take the winner model and get a bunch of those. Irradiate them. The winner goes to Mars.

The claim was that some plain old chips are exquisitely radiation resisitant, and it's not clear why.

600 descendant comments that obscure the main thread.

Admonishing the joke for excluding some, allegedly, particularly me, as a venue for wider grievences about feeling to be in the out group.

Detroit is moving southwest along with the rest of the [North American tectonic plate][1]. It's not moving relative to surrounding cities, though.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_plate#Plate_mot...

It's also moving through time at a rate of one second per second (but similarly not relative to the surrounding cities).

I was wondering about its reference frame as compared to surrounding cities, but I don't know if the difference could be measured. They are accelerating in different directions (towards the Earth, primarily).

Hm I gave the prompt:

> Summarize a technique for type erasure as is done in C++. Assume that your audience is familiar with all of C++'s features, but not with the technique of type erasure. The briefer the summary, the better, but don't omit any essential pieces or use vague language.

ChatGPT Plus generated a lot of text and code. Then I said:

> Now please summarize using only a few sentences.

and it replied:

> Type erasure wraps any concrete type `T` in a uniform container that stores a `void*` to the object plus a pointer to a type-specific static table of function pointers (the “vtable”). Each `T` provides its own table implementing required operations (destroy, copy/move, and any interface methods), and the container dispatches all behavior through that table. This lets unrelated types share a runtime interface without a common base class, with lifetime and semantics fully defined by the per-type table.

Not perfect, but pretty good.

Is it pretty good, though? :) I wouldn't let that go out the door. Needs a *lot* of TLC.

Yes, it's missing a few important pieces. As is, it more describes how dynamic dispatch works.

"missing a few important pieces."

Pmsl and you're missing the whole point.

A thing that eventually brute forces its way to a solution is not a) demonstrating understanding b) intelligent.

Im not sure why these basic things have to be uttered. I suppose its because many here don't really work on stuff that requires this level of thinking.

Reminds me of the same delusional people that think LLMs are the solution to education et al when they completely miss the point of what the real problems in education actually are.

You're not getting the point.

The point is you shouldn't have to re-prompt multiple times because a thing that 'understands' undergoes expressing the thing in a broad way and then abstracts away what matters whilst minimizing loss of important details.

The reality is LLMs are not intelligent, in any way shape or form.

Maybe not! Let's find out.

I appreciated learning what's involved, though.