In Which I Try to Maintain Human Supremacy for a Bit Longer
Update: Hello HN, MR, and ACX folks! Two quick updates:
Many comments suggested it was unfair that the o3 model used search in 2 / 5 rounds. I ran those two rounds over again, in a Temporary Chat as before, and ensured they didn’t employ search. The results were nearly identical, as you can verify i...
In Which I Explain Per Capita Manufacturing Favors the US
Summary
China manufactures more than the U.S.—but that’s because they have four times the population. When you look at per-person output, the U.S. is far more productive. There is no crisis. Tariffs won’t fix a problem that doesn’t exist....
In Which I Describe why some AI Skeptics need to Experiment
This quote from a recent paper caught my attention:
First, while the current literature, such as Dell’Acqua et al. (2023) and Chen and Chan (2024), reveal the productivity effects of AI by randomizing access to LLM chatbots, they are not multimodal, do not include context, do not allow the chatbots ...
In Which I Learn that our Body Temperature is Lower than Commonly Believed
I came across a comment on Hacker News the other day that intrigued me:
Average “healthy” body temperature is down more than half degree exactly because of reduction in inflammation. People used to have very unsanitary lives and were fighting infections nonstop. 37.0C was the “normal” body temperatu...
In Which I Vent my Frustrations about Using LLMs for Coding
I’ve talked to other developers and listened to some popular content creators, and there seems to be a common pattern emerging: we’re letting AI coding tools produce more and more of our overall code.
I see estimates vary, but many claim between 50-80% of their code is AI generated now. That falls i...
A dive into my reading from the past 18 months, featuring highlights across science, history, philosophy, and fiction.
Over the past year and a half, I’ve been exploring a diverse collection of books and audiobooks. I created a short note for each one.
Science and Technology...
I've added a new notes system to my personal site to share book reviews, thoughts, and other content that doesn't necessarily fit the blog format.
Claude Code wrote this post for me - without even being asked! It built this entire note system. Publishing it as is to show what it comes up with.
Introducing My Notes System...
I’ve never been a designer. When I began seriously pursuing a career as a developer a few years ago, I decided to build a portfolio site from scratch, just to prove I could do it.
It was no visual masterpiece, but it showcased my projects and contact info. More recently I’ve begun blogging, especial...
This afternoon my feed exploded with news of Claude Code. Per the norm, the hype is significant - will it live up to the claims? Claude 3.5 Sonnet is my favorite model for coding, as I’ve discussed previously, so I have high hopes.
Installation...
In Which I Explain the Misconceptions I had About Fitness
I used to be 300 lbs. Well, maybe - I was too afraid to weigh myself at my heaviest, and the first time after I began losing weight I was 292 lbs. Here I am at my college graduation.
Fortunately, I was able to drop 100 lbs in my 30s, and this led me down the path of fitness. I’m now a certified gym ...
In Which I use Open Source Self Hosted Tools like a Good Boy
Summary
Substack has no API and doesn’t fit into my publishing flow, so I self-hosted a newsletter management tool called Listmonk. It wasn’t super easy, but with AI help I figured out how to setup up Listmonk and have it automatically publish using Github Actions and Amazon SES....
As I was writing about the Zonos TTS, I took a screenshot of the interface, then realized I didn’t have a method for displaying it in my post.
I did a lot of blogging a long time ago, but it’s been a while - what’s the best way to display an image file, anyway?...
I noticed a few folks mention the new Zonos TTS release today, so I wanted to try it out locally. You can read more about it in the beta release announcement.
I’m on Ubuntu 22.04 and I’ve got a 4090, so I need to test new models when they release in order to justify my purchase....
I’ve been using lots of different AI tools to help me code lately, treading close to outright “vibe coding.”
The suck part: They still require quite a bit of manual hassle. Things like managing the context window, copying and pasting prompts / code, dealing with hallucinations or the models making a...