It’s been quite a year already.

A lot of the current hype around LLMs revolves around one core idea, which I blame on Star Trek:

Wouldn't it be cool if we could use natural language to control things?

The problem is that this is, at the fundamental level, a terrible idea.

There's a reason that mathematics doesn't use English. There's a reason that every professional field comes with its own flavour of jargon. There's a reason that contracts are written in legalese, not plain natural language. Natural language is really bad at being unambiguous.

When I was a small child, I thought that a mature civilisation would evolve two languages. A language of poetry, that was rich in metaphor and delighted in ambiguity, and a language of science that required more detail and actively avoided ambiguity. The latter would have no homophones, no homonyms, unambiguous grammar, and so on.

Programming languages, including the ad-hoc programming languages that we refer to as 'user interfaces' are all attempts to build languages like the latter. They allow the user to unambiguously express intent so that it can be carried out. Natural languages are not designed and end up being examples of the former.

When I interact with a tool, I want it to do what I tell it. If I am willing to restrict my use of natural language to a clear and unambiguous subset, I have defined a language that is easy for deterministic parsers to understand with a fraction of the energy requirement of a language model. If I am not, then I am expressing myself ambiguously and no amount of processing can possibly remove the ambiguity that is intrinsic in the source, except a complete, fully synchronised, model of my own mind that knows what I meant (and not what some other person saying the same thing at the same time might have meant).

The hard part of programming is not writing things in some language's syntax, it's expressing the problem in a way that lacks ambiguity. LLMs don't help here, they pick an arbitrary, nondeterministic, option for the ambiguous cases. In C, compilers do this for undefined behaviour and it is widely regarded as a disaster. LLMs are built entirely out of undefined behaviour.

There are use cases where getting it wrong is fine. Choosing a radio station or album to listen to while driving, for example. It is far better to sometimes listen to the wrong thing than to take your attention away from the road and interact with a richer UI for ten seconds. In situations where your hands are unavailable (for example, controlling non-critical equipment while performing surgery, or cooking), a natural-language interface is better than no interface. It's rarely, if ever, the best.

New year, new look 🚀

passkeys.dev has been refreshed with some new paint, better performance, cleaner dark mode and mobile views, and improved accessibility!

Happy New Year!

#passkeys

The guide demonstrates how LoxiLB can work with multiple CNIs in a Multus environment, offering load-balancing capabilities for secondary network interfaces alongside the primary Kubernetes network

➤ https://docs.loxilb.io/latest/loxilb-incluster-multus

Christmas Sea Shanti song for but with @racheltobac Voice
#Christmas

📢NEW: 'Open' AI systems aren't open. The vague term, combined w AI hype is (mis)shaping policy & practice, assuming 'open source' AI democratizes access & addresses power concentration. It doesn't.

@sarahbmyers, @davidthewid & I correct the record👇
https://nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08141-1

Discord is working on profile connections for Mastodon and Bluesky.

@joannastern interesting

FreeCAD Version 1.0 Released
After more than twenty years of intense and sustained development, the FreeCAD community is proud to announce the release of version 1.0. FreeCAD 1.0 is now available for download on all platforms.

https://blog.freecad.org/2024/11/19/freecad-version-1-0-released/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5oXSGhK7EY

#Announcement #Releases

You don’t actually miss Twitter. You miss who you were 10 years ago.

White men and women carried Trump to the White House. And non-whites without a college degree have proven to be far more informed about what Trump would mean to them and their friends/families compared to white voters without a college degree. WaPo exit polls (possibly paywalled) https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/interactive/2024/exit-polls-2024-election/?itid=hp_trending-bar_1

#humor #foundontheinternet #genalpha #skibidi #toilet

@JustOneMoreThing go vote America
The world is watching

Let me say it OUT LOUD. People who live in multicultural cities, travel, or are otherwise obligated to -see different types of people as human- statistically tend to be more liberal. Period.

@claushoumann @hack_lu @adel interesting name
'Karimi' has some kenyan origin

@alternativeto

Looks like a packaging bug as mentioned by @bitwarden

Link below

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/s/XZKPd4fubv

@snazzyq doesn't the light from the back window affect you (reflection) on the screen ?

Windchimes

I really like the latest "click to cancel" rules from the FTC. Now can we have a rule that says if you are re-billed for a software or service, said bill has to tell you WHICH FREAKING SOFTWARE OR SERVICE YOU JUST PAID FOR!

I realize there may be some small privacy issues to wrestle with (porn subscriptions etc) but feels like we can do better.

I sleep now. 🖤