🇨🇦 tunetardis

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 8th, 2025

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  • fwiw family names in English come typically come from several sources. They may be place names (e.g. London), descriptions of places (e.g. Ford: a shallow place where you can cross a river), occupations (e.g. Smith), or the name of a family business (e.g. if your name is Fox, your ancestor likely owned a tavern with a name like The Fox & Whistle or something random). If it’s an occupation that sounds too good to be true like King or Bishop, your ancestor was probably not royalty but served a royal estate.

    Not that you need to follow any of that. Is there a Chinese ancestral name in your family you’re aware of? Maybe you could get it’s meaning and find a close English equivalent? I’m part Japanese myself, and Japanese family names are almost all of the descriptions of places variety. So say your name was Watanabe: a shallow place where you can cross a river. You might then choose to go with Ford as your English name? Just a thought.



  • I have mixed feelings on the Catholic church and religion in general.

    My father was an academic with a disdain for Catholicism, but my wife is a devout (though non-evangelical) Catholic. I decided to attend Mass just for the hell of it (ok maybe not the best choice of words?) and noticed the church in question had a desperate need for musicians. I play violin, so I wound up joining their music ministry.

    I’m still not Catholic (let alone religious) to this day. When cornered, I say I’m a practicing non-Catholic (as opposed to the far more common non-practicing Catholic), as I attend weekly music practices. I understand all of my father’s well-reasoned arguments against, most of which are still all-too-relevant. Otoh I have to acknowledge that my church experience has been a net positive. I made contacts within the Irish Catholic community and started playing in Celtic bands and such. As an introvert, I don’t think any of this would’ve happened by default, and it’s been quite a ride.


  • This reminds me of my trip to northern Honshu in Japan. I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) which was so smooth and quiet you literally had to look out the window to even realize you were moving. But then we switched to an old clunker that was shaking around and belching smoke and working so hard just to pull out of the station.

    And the on-board experience was a huge contrast as well. The Shinkansen was full of people in suits minding their own business and it was clean and space-age-looking. The other train had a lived-in look and was full of chatty country folk who started asking me all sorts of questions and laughing because we could barely understand each other. My Japanese is a little iffy and they had this country drawl that wasn’t helping. But I enjoyed both trains for different reasons.


  • I’m around 6’1 or 2. I’d say overall, I’m comfortable with the body I have (like I don’t think I have a dysmorphia issue), but it can be a literal pain when I’m visiting Japan. I learned the hard way that some older homes have head clearance of exactly 6’ in doorways. If I were just a little shorter, this would not be an issue. In fact, if I were taller, I’d probably see the obstruction better and know to duck? But as it is, I develop a nasty bruise after repeatedly hitting the exact same spot on my forehead over and over again. Otoh it’s nice to have some breathing space above the teeming masses of people packed onto a subway car.




  • For instance, if an AI model could complete a one-hour task with 50% success, it only had a 25% chance of successfully completing a two-hour task. This indicates that for 99% reliability, task duration must be reduced by a factor of 70.

    This is interesting. I have noticed this myself. Generally, when an LLM boosts productivity, it shoots back a solution very quickly, and after a quick sanity check, I can accept it and move on. When it has trouble, that’s something of a red flag. You might get there eventually by probing it more and more, but there is good reason for pessimism if it’s taking too long.

    In the worst case scenario where you ask it a coding problem for which there is no solution—it’s just not possible to do what you’re asking—it may nevertheless engage you indefinitely until you eventually realize it’s running you around in circles. I’ve wasted a whole afternoon with that nonsense.

    Anyway, I worry that companies are no longer hiring junior devs. Today’s juniors are tomorrow’s elites and there is going to be a talent gap in a decade that LLMs—in their current state at least—seem unlikely to fill.