Does anyone have a recommendation for a learning resource that approaches emacs as a computing environment in general, rather than as a text editor specifically? I think I may have had a lot of false starts learning emacs because I've been thinking of it too much like a replacement for vim, rather than a scriptable environment.
It is gaslighting even. It is extremely manipulative to be sorry about a thing someone else did, while in fact the the fuckup originated from you. Own it or offer to investigate/fix it.
A decent answer would have been worded among the lines of:
"I am personally deeply sorry to see you go [acknowledge you take their decision serious]. I don't know the details, but if what you describe is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), this is clearly unacceptable and should never have happened [acknowledge the issue is serious and confirm it wasn't intentional]. You feeling betrayed as a result of this is only natural and understandable, and it is Mozilla that should feel ashamed for it coming to this [validate feeling, admit guilt]. I will investigate why this happened and want to find ways to ensure something like this never happens again [show that you're willing to do something substential solbing the root of the problem]. Nobody should have their hard work just automatically replaced by AI, not you, nor anybody else [afirm you're on the same page as them by appeal to general principle]. I know you likely don't want to have anything to do with this now, but I would be deeply grateful if you had a moment to talk about this with me, personally, not as a member of Mozilla but as a member of the community [ask them about help, acknowledging you can't expect any, show that you care about this beyond any purely official duties]."
Of course that means some work, but this is how I would answer such a thing.
Every country I have ever discussed with its residents has something that, on its face, is a reasonable safety precaution (I definitely don’t want to blow up my house), but in practice is just a way to make your life miserable while helping the people who work there have an easier day.
This just happens to be the one that affected me. Like modern gas water heaters that have electric ignition instead of pilot lights, because the one serious reason to have gas water heaters is that they work when there is no electricity. Now it’s just a price distinction.
I’ve seen some receipts whose paper it was printed on proudly stated to be BPA free, but for all we know it might use chemicals that are even worse for our health than BPA.
I'm curious about the effect of "hand writing" a card for spaced repetition. It sure feels like it helps me learn more effectively when I write high-quality cards myself, but n=1 in this case. Even when I use an LLM to help, I have never find the cards to be useful by default—same goes for trying to use other's decks.
That said, what I'd really love is a better card writing UI. If I could simply edit the table when in the browse view instead of opening the form view, that'd be a big step up!
> Before being considered for submission to arXiv’s CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review.
Edit: original title was "arXiv No Longer Accepts Computer Science Position or Review Papers Due to LLMs"
Isn't arXiv where you upload things before they have gone through the entire process? Isn't that the entire value, aside from some publisher cartel busting?
Agree. Additionally, original title, "arXiv No Longer Accepts Computer Science Position or Review Papers Due to LLMs" is ambiguous. “Due to LLMs” is being interpreted as articles written by LLMs, which is not accurate.
No, the post is definitely complaining about articles written by LLMs:
"In the past few years, arXiv has been flooded with papers. Generative AI / large language models have added to this flood by making papers – especially papers not introducing new research results – fast and easy to write."
"Fast forward to present day – submissions to arXiv in general have risen dramatically, and we now receive hundreds of review articles every month. The advent of large language models have made this type of content relatively easy to churn out on demand, and the majority of the review articles we receive are little more than annotated bibliographies, with no substantial discussion of open research issues."
Surely a lot of them are also about LLMs: LLMs are the hot computing topic and where all the money and attention is, and they're also used heavily in the field. So that could at least partially account for why this policy is for CS papers only, but the announcement's rationale is about LLMs as producing the papers, not as their subject.
I don’t know about this. From a pure entertainment standpoint, we may be denying ourselves a world of hilarity. LLMs + “You know Peter, I’m something of a research myself” delusions. I’d pay for this so long as people are very serious about the delusion.
Whenever there's a change like this, my gut reaction is to grieve and try to imagine ways that things could be kept the same.
After thinking, "maybe puzzles could be designed by a group instead of an individual and they could share the work," I then thought, "and couldn't an LLM help?"
And with that, I had to remind myself: Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it.
And aren't we so lucky that it isn't! Aren't we lucky to have had the prior 500+ challenges given as gifts over the years! Aren't we lucky to have a great demonstration of humility and care! Aren't we lucky to have 12 new gifts to look forward to this year!
I’ve been trying to design a puzzle for a game this year that humans can solve but LLMs can’t. I’ve come up with one, but it was hard work! It’s based around message cracking.
There was one in a previous AoC that I think stumped a lot of AI at the time because it involved something that was similar to poker with the same terminology but different rules. The AI couldn't help but fall into a "this is poker" trap and make a solution that follows the standard rules.
We all have our writing quirks, like how some people use shorthand for words where there is only a marginal difference (like "people" => "ppl"), or even people who capitalize the start of sentences, but not the start of their whole text.
There's plenty of prior work to go on. I mean, you could use a font ligature or one of the browser extensions (although I don't know if Chrome still lets you have a browser extension touch all text).
Change ChatGPT to 'my drunk uncle' while you're at it.
It affects a certain disposition for the writer; the information it contains isn't in the actual data they are expressing, but rather the state of mind that they express it from, which can be important context. Oftentimes it can indicate exasperation, which is an important social queue to be able to pick up on.
A little excerpt from Arlo Guthrie
"I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench,
I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench, because you want to know if I'm moral enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug."
Imagine that without the "I mean"s in it, and the importance of how they convey his stance on the situation.
They have hundreds of challenges that humans can solve in under a minute which LLMs can not. Seems the general trend is figuring out the rules or patterns of the challenge when there are few examples and no instructions.
Perhaps coding exercises that require 2d or 3d thinking, or similar. This is where I have seen LLMs struggle a lot. There are probably other areas too.
I think the easiest way to have 24/25 of something would be to have the "part 2" for each puzzle get released the next day. It would probably ruin the momentum about as much as having days off would (as another alternative to make the timing fit "advent"), but there could be a fun extra layer of puzzle with a hint of what the part 2 will be so people can try to speculate and modify their code in anticipation.
I am not aware of Eric saying something about that alternative, but this comment on reddit[1] makes a lot of sense to me:
> Given that part 2 is often a very simple modification of part 1, this could lead to many of the days being total letdowns. I can enjoy a simple puzzle, but I'd be a bit disappointed if one day is a single line change to the previous day.
I'd also add that not having to be worried everyday about something makes a lot of sense. He can have fewer days "on call" in December with.
Hate to be the... whoever I'm being right now, but names have meaning. It's the reason to have them in the first place.
> Advent of Code isn't about there being 25 puzzles, and so maintaining volume at all costs has nothing to do with it.
It's the Advent of Code. Not "Random late year event with no religious / commercial tradition connotations whatsoever" of Code. The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).
Advent does not mean 25. It just means 'the coming', so 12, 25, 1, 8 are all acceptable lengths. And if you reay need it to be 24 you can calm it 0.5 per day.
It's a reference to a German tradition of Advent Calendar with 24 small doors. Every day from 1st to 24th of December children would open one door and find a candy, a picture, a small toy, a quest etc. depending on calendar's theme
I get it, but Advent calendars are not just German. I am pretty sure they are common all over the western world where Xmas is celebrated. But Advent doesn't in any way mean 25.
They're definitely not German now. They may have been originally, but these days, they're first and foremost a commercial phenomenon, meaning they went global. Chocolate advent calendars. Trinket advent calendars. DIY advent calendars. ${insert your most hated kids toys franchise} advent calendars. And so on.
Really though, for Catholic and protestant churches, Advent starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas, so isn't always the same length. In Orthodox Churches, Advent is 40 days (starting Nov 15) just like Lent.
Right, mini-spoiler if you've never reached 50 stars for a year:
The 50th star is awarded for having the other 49 stars and then basically clicking OK I think. If you've been diligently solving them in order, it means you effectively get two stars for your final 49th puzzle of the year on Christmas Day, which makes sense because then the puzzles are very hard and a "normal" puzzle wouldn't leave much time for other Christmas Day activities. But if you're the sort of person who often gives up on a day and never comes back you may never have seen this because you never got to 49 stars.
You're not quite right that the Christmas Day puzzle is trivial - it's the first half of a maybe week 1 type difficulty puzzle, but there just isn't a second half:
Here's the puzzle text for last year's Xmas Day (if you are logged in you can play, but even without it will explain the puzzle it just won't give you an input to test your solution):
> The 25 is there in the name. It's the whole point :).
You're overly attached to the meaning of Advent, but you aren't even aware of the meaning. It doesn't mean exactly 25. This year Advent Sunday is November 30th.
And the creator of Advent of Code can do whatever they want with it, despite the name. They've put an immense amount of effort into this for so long - if that had been me, I would have been incredibly disheartened to see people saying "the whole point is just 25".
Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means “arrival” or “coming.”
It refers to the coming of Christ. There is no 4 in the name, no 24, 25 or whatever else.
And even in the places where it’s 25 days, there’s plenty of advent calendars that only have 12 doors - though they’re typically budget versions of expensive calendars (eg a dram of whisky behind each door)
This largely depends on who you're asking? I don't know anyone who wouldn't consider 24 the course correct number of Advent, simply because that's the common number here (we celebrate Christmas on the 24th). So 12 makes perfectly sense, just do every second day.
There are also many groups who don't start on the 1st of December, but on the first Sunday of Advent. And probably many others.
Christian holidays are not meant to be fun; literally, the whole theme is about sins, suffering and death (or in this case, being born into life of suffering and culminating with death).
If, as you claim, the association of 25 to "advent" is primarily commercial, that's much more of a reason to avoid that association. In any case it's very culture-specific. In many countries, including mine, Christmas Eve is the "main" event that people look forward to, and the number of "advent days" in calendars and such is 24. On the other hand, ecclesiastically there are four Advent Sundays, and the number of days is thus variable and also not really pertinent.
Technically the event needs to go for a certain number of days, but Advent doesn't mean puzzles must come every day. They can do puzzles every 2-3 days if they want to.
"pedant who didn't look up their own point or consider other world perspectives before boldly declaring that the way they thought about it first was the only true way"
In the spirit of pedantry, I added even more minor detail!
For Christian Advent to be exactly 25 days long, that would be a coincidence.
Advent is not the time from December 1st until Christmas, it starts on whatever days the fourth Sunday before Christmas happens to fall on that year. This way, there are exactly four Sundays in advent.
If Christmas itself should fall on a Sunday one year, it doubles as the fourth Sunday of Advent, i.e., then the first of Advent will be only three weeks earlier.
All correct. Which is why I said religious slash commercial tradition - Advent is first and foremost just another sales event, and for convenience of sellers and buyers (and their children) the commercial advent got regularized to 25 days, so the stock of calendars that failed to sell last christmas season can be put up to sale in the coming one.
You're forgetting about Halloween, Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and the most recent Singles Day (11.11); the Commercial Calendar is steadily squeezing the Christmas Season into December and out of the rest of the year!
Commercial Halloween starts during October just after or parallel with October-fest. It ends before end of October because people buy things for an event before it starts. End of Halloween is when Commercial Christmas starts.
There is no time for actual advent or winter calmness in general.
I decided to indulge in a Dunkin' pumpkin donut this morning, what with it being late October and the weather actually now fall-like. Apparently they have already discontinued them!
Right, my local grocery store moved Halloween stuff to where Diwali stuff was near the front of the store, and immediately put Xmas stuff where the Halloween stuff used to be, in a week's time it'll be a whole aisle of Xmas.
(I never could wrap my head around all this. I had enough problems with Easter events, where the math makes a detour through a Lunar calendar.)
EDIT: And my memory of the Tradition is wrong too, it's supposed to be 24 - as confirmed by https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710618, and corroborated the two "Paw Patrol" themed Advent Calendars I just found still stashed in my home office.
It's actually the March equinox. "Spring" is true only in the northern hemisphere. What's more it's the ecclesiastical equinox, not the astronomical equinox, whose date actually varies depending on the year.
Never mind that all this is descriptive of dating in countries that grew up with Western Christianity. Countries where Eastern traditions dominate often date it differently.
Not necessarily. If they insist on there being only 12 puzzles, all they need to Save Christmas is to start the event on Christmas day, and rename it to "12 Puzzles of Christmas" or "Advent of Three Kings of Code", or such -- see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45710963.
That was my first thought too, and I'd prefer it, cause sometimes I'll get stuck on a problem, or I'm busy, or I forget, and I'd rather have one more day. Bur it's Eric's call in the end.
Give a kid half of an advent calendar and tell them to open the window every second day, let's see how long it'll keep their interest (I expect much less than 12 days) :). That's not how Advent Calendars work!
IMO "Advent of Code" only determines the timeframe in which it happens, not the amount of puzzles it must contain. It could just as well be four puzzles, one for each sunday of the advent, or any other amount, as long as they are released within those roughly four weeks before christmas.
Eh, the implication has always been that it's a Christmas calendar where you open one door per day until it's Christmas eve - just with code riddles instead of chocolate.
> Advent calendars in their earliest forms were invented approx. 80 years ago.
Well, Wikipedia starts its "History" section in 1945, which is 80 years ago. But what it says about advent calendars in 1945 is that they were lower-quality reprints of earlier designs. This strongly implies that they weren't a new concept in 1945.
The German wikipedia is more interested in the concept and cites the word Adventskalenders to the novel Buddenbrooks, which features one set in the year 1869 but was published in 1901. Either way, the calendars were clearly an established cultural phenomenon well before 1945.
Looking at the talk page (for the English article), it seems that the history section was provided by a "translation group" from their translation of a matching section of the German article. It's not clear why they began with the post-war period; the German page goes back much further than that, which was also true at the time they provided their translation. But this does explain why the English "history" section begins by referring to prior context that doesn't exist in the English article.
I'm not arguing this point. I conceit, I thought the sentiment was obvious. If it wasn't—and if read literally—I thought that that statement was the weakest and most uninteresting part of what I shared. However, to my surprise, this statement, and its specific interpretation, is what people found compelling!
We have a thing called "Three Kings" (aka. "three wise men") in Poland, that falls on Jan 6th. If My Math Is Correct™, there's 12 days between the Christmas day (Dec 25th) and Jan 6th, so maybe the song is about this period?
The set of open source code and verifiable code overlap, but one doesn't always imply the other. In either case, provenance needs to be established. I think it would be reasonable for Obsidian to ship signed checksums and a public transparency log (e.g., Sigstore) for builds (plugins authors could do the same?). A more granular plugin permissions system would be great too, even though most plugins are OSS.
