From my experience the issue really is, unfortunately, that it is impossible to tell if a particular detail is irrelevant until after you have analyzed and answered all of them.
In other words, it all looks easy in hindsight only.
I think the the most coveted ability of a skilled senior developer, is precisely this "uncanny" ability to predict beforehand if some particular detail is important or irrelevant. This ability can only be obtained through years of experience and hubris.
While I know your comment was in sarcastic jest, the question folks are asking this month is "can't we just pay one person to prompt ten models to do that?"
Not just getting it wrong, but also learning from it and be able to internalize those mistakes. There are certainly people who do the same mistakes over and over again (either realizing or not) - it's not just a matter of experience.
At least in case of the kitchen contractor, you can trust all the electrical equipment, plumbing etc. is going to be connected in such a way that disasters won't happen. And if it is not, at least you can sue the contractor.
The problem with LLMs is that it is not only the "irrelevant details" that are hallucinated. It is also "very relevant details" which either make the whole system inconsistent or full of security vulnerabilities.
The login page example was actually perfect for illustrating this. Meshing polygons? Centering a div? Go ahead and turn the LLM loose. If you miss any bugs you can just fix them when they get reported.
But if it's security critical? You'd better be touching every single line of code and you'd better fully understand what each one does, what could go wrong in the wild, how the approach taken compares to best practices, and how an attacker might go about trying to exploit what you've authored. Anything less is negligence on your part.
It looks like it goes in cycles: after major catastrophic event subsequent generations that don't remember the catastrophe are willing to engage in another one (I think of WWI and WWII as one event). If the memory was stronger there would be more pressure to find other means of resolving issues.
Eg. as a "half boomer" European I remember well why EU was created. It looks like the reasons have been largely forgotten now.
The theory is that in both cases (ie. with and without tariffs) shipyards are going to die sooner or later. It is better for the society to let them die as soon as possible and direct efforts to things we are better at while taking advantage of cheaper ships produced elsewhere.
Some industries are of national security or other strategic value, so protecting them even if that means some stagnation is desirable over the offshoring of said industry.
The question is: how do you define "national security" and "other strategic value"? At the end of the day both really mean economic interest. Especially in case of US.
So if someone says "national security" is above economic interest of US, I would say these people mean _their_ economic interest is above economic interest of US and use both terms as a cover.
> Insofar as the country being conquered and Americans being slaughtered wholesale would be against our economic interests lol
> There are clear national security reasons for the government to prop up shipbuilding and semiconductors.
Are you saying countries without shipbuilding facilities or not producing semicondutors are being conquered and their citizens being slaughtered?
I'd say that is fear mongering done by the people doing business on "national security".
> Are you saying countries without shipbuilding facilities or not producing semicondutors are being conquered and their citizens being slaughtered?
Yes that is a clear risk. For most of human history, powerful leaders have unleashed violence on their neighbors to increase their wealth and prestige. For about 70 years, the cold war balance prevented very catastrophic wars between powerful nations but we now seem to be having an atavistic throw back of powerful nations being led by expansionist leaders. You either need to create your own manufacturing capacity or be at the mercy of others.
You can call it fearmongering but I can point to the whole of human history and tell you that not only has it happened, at a certain point it is inevitable. I can point at Ukraine, right now, as an example of what happens when one country appears much weaker than an aggressive neighbor.
The United States is the greatest power the world has ever seen. While the oceans protect us, the truth is that even the White House was once burned down in a war.
The economic interest is the US ability to as rapidly as possible convert those shipyards to military shipyards during a large scale prolonged war. The US did not make (relatively) many ships before WW2 and then during WW2 was briefly the largest ship builder in the world.
> The economic interest is the US ability to as rapidly as possible convert those shipyards to military shipyards during a large scale prolonged war.
Nah, that doesn't add up. US needs _ships_ and SOTA military equipment to make sure that any military conflict is as short as possible (ie. US wins). Losing money on unused production capability does not make sense because in case of prolonged conflict there is time to build the capability (as it happened during WWII).
In reality, what you call "prolonged military conflict", is nothing more than normal international competition. One could even argue US is in prolonged military conflict since WWII.
In which case making rational decisions based on hard economic criteria (ie. not losing money) is the key to success.
In-RDBMS computation specified in declarative language with generic, protocol/technology specific adapters handling communication with external systems.
Treating RDBMS as a computing platform (and not merely as dumb data storage) makes systems simple and robust.
Model your input as base relations (normalized to 5NF) and output as views.
Incremental computing engines such as https://github.com/feldera/feldera go even further with base relations not being persistent/stored.
Ha! I don't yet know much about 'incremental computing engines' but Feldera seem to be something I need. Because at some point I inevitably have to create materialized views to speed up some parts of the pipeline. Materialized views are of course a side effect and can become mildly dangerous if you're not careful to destroy/recreate them in time.
I was trying to think of a way to "only update new or changed rows" but it's not trivial. But Feldera seems to do exactly that. So thanks!
I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The banking cartel will outlaw any real alternative. Bitcoin, Brics crypto system, whatever. And they will confiscate gold like back in the 30s. If they don't their magic money faucet will end. And they started wars for much smaller threats to their dominance.
First, a French judge has no power in the US. Second, Bitcoin is utter shit: it is not sustainable and mainly used to prop up criminals. Third, if money can be hidden and taxation becomes very difficult or impossible, society will collapse, and the "elite" loses its position. Bitcoin is not an alternative.
Hawala is such a simple, effective, and relatively anonymous system that bypasses banking that the government had to convince the populace that anyone who uses it is a terrorist. It also helps they use the arab name even though it is of Indian origin.
Cryptocurrencies work fine. If the debanked were to use them, they would find 90% of their restrictions lifted immediately and without permission from anyone.
No, society will not collapse; it will stabilize. There are many forms of taxation, e.g. property, tarrifs, etc. that are unaffected.
Those who call Bitcoin utter shit always have an agenda and insecurities rooted in a feared loss of status.
Yes you might, because Bitcoin doesn't solve anything correctly (notably, its value is so volatile it can't be relied upon), while consuming an absurd amount of energy.
By design, it made its first users stupidly rich, which is not a good characteristic.
More importantly, it's a technical solution for a societal issue (aka, it's not at all a solution).
The article only discusses reasons why formal verification is needed. It does not provide any information on how would AI solve the fundamental issues making it difficult: https://pron.github.io/posts/correctness-and-complexity
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