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Cake day: June 27th, 2024

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  • Berries like raspberries blackberries blueberries and even strawberries don’t have lots of sugar, maybe 5g per 100g. That’s one level teaspoon.

    The lactose in milk is almost all consumed in the fermentation process, so maybe a few more grams per 100.

    The rest of the sugar in those glasses is just sugar manufacturers include to make their product more appealing.

    One of the problems with sugar is that it represents empty calories.

    Given my age, weight, and activity levels maybe I need x calories per day, any more and I’ll gain weight. I also need protein and fibre and micronutrients. As you get older (like me) you get less good at extracting nutrients.

    The challenge is, getting enough nutrients in few enough calories to avoid gaining weight.

    In this context sugar is just dead weight.








  • Just several years ago I was shocked to learn that you do CPR if someone doesn’t have a pulse, not a defibrillator.

    It’s a very, very common misconception.

    Since then those portable defibrillator units have shown up in public places, which has led me to morbidly wonder two things:

    Firstly, how often are they used incorrectly?

    And secondly, how do you know when you’re supposed to use it? I suspect the answer to this one is “the EMT on the phone will tell you to” but… IDK it would seem unlikely that most people could do something like that in an emergency.










  • Does anyone actually have jobs writing emails like that all day though?

    Ticket systems often have an auto-response like “did you turn it off and on again”.

    Most email clients or even gmail have canned response plugins.

    IDK. This probably is a great use case and someone doing this might be quicker and better than me using canned responses or whatever… but only incrementally, not by an order of magnitude.



  • This thread has convinced me that LLMs are merely a mild increment in productivity.

    The most compelling is that they’re good at boilerplate code. IDEs have been improving on that since forever. Although there’s a lot of claims in this thread that seem unlikely - gains way beyond even what marketing is claiming.

    I work in an email / spreadsheet / report type job. We’ve always been agile with emerging techs, but LLMs just haven’t made a dent.

    This might seem offensive, but clients don’t pay me to write emails that LLMs could, because anything an LLM could write could be found in a web search. The emails I write are specific to a client’s circumstances. There are very few “biolerplate” sentences.

    Yes LLMs can be good at updating reports, but we have highly specialised software for generating reports from very carefully considered templates.

    I’ve heard they can be helpful in a “convert this to csv” kind of way, but that’s just not a problem I ever encounter. Maybe I’m just used to using spreadsheets to manipulate data so never think to use an LLM.

    I’ve seen low level employees try to use LLMs to help with their emails. It’s usually obvious because the emails they write include a lot of extra sentences and often don’t directly address the query.

    I don’t intend this to be offensive, and I suspect that my attitude really just identifies me as a grumpy old man, but I can’t really shake the feeling that in email / spreadsheet / report type jobs anyone who can make use of an LLM wasn’t or isn’t producing much value anyway. This thread has really reinforced that attitude.

    It reminds me a lot of block chain tech. 10 years ago it was going to revolutionise data everything. Now there’s some niche use cases… “it could be great at recording vehicle transfers if only centralised records had some disadvantages”.