2024-01-08: I still hold 14 draft posts in my inbox, but for now let’s start this fresh new year with some good vibes.

sysuse auto
graph box mpg,  over(foreign) box(1, color(white)) ///
  medtype(marker) medmarker(mcolor(black) mlwidth(0)) ///
  cwhiskers alsize(0) lines(lpattern(solid) lwidth(medium)) ///
  ylabel(, nogrid) yscale(noline) ///
  title("{bf}Box Plot", pos(11) size(2.75)) ///
  subtitle("City Mileage over number of cylinders", pos(11) size(2))
graph export /home/chl/tmp/better-bxp.eps

No, really, I’m astonished at how much software is basically useless without an internet connection. Net is no longer something additional to your daily tasks, it is essential for your daily tasks. — We’ve become overdependent on the net

2024-01-15:

What strikes me about my personal experience with LLMs is that I have learned precisely when to use them and when their use would only slow me down. I have also learned that LLMs are a bit like Wikipedia and all the video courses scattered on YouTube: they help those with the will, ability, and discipline, but they are of marginal benefit to those who have fallen behind. I fear that at least initially, they will only benefit those who already have an advantage. — LLMs and Programming in the first days of 2024

2024-01-15: Wanna get a plain text list of your Pocket bookmarks? Go to getpocket.com/export, then apply the following snippet on the HTML result file:

cat YOURFILE.html | grep -o '<a .*href=.*>' | sed -e 's/<a /\n<a /g' | sed -e 's/<a .*href=['"'"'"]//' -e 's/["'"'"'].*$//' -e '/^$/ d' > pocket.txt

When optimising code, never guess, always measure. — When Optimising Code Measure

2024-01-16: Lots of tips and tricks for Mathematica aficionados.
2024-01-16: TIL about Asahi Linux. Looks cool, although Ubuntu LTS already runs fine on my Mac, but it’s an old one, not one of the newest cool kids made in Silicon.
2024-01-16:

This difficulty is often not due to math - because of the aforementioned frameworks machine learning implementations do not require intense mathematics. An aspect of this difficulty involves building an intuition for what tool should be leveraged to solve a problem. This requires being aware of available algorithms and models and the trade-offs and constraints of each one. — Why is machine learning ‘hard’?

2024-01-24: I recently switch from MC 1.19.4 with Forge and Optifine to MC 1.20.4 with Iris and Sodium. Now I got a lot more mods available with less frictions overall. And it looks like we can now play MC on a laptop with texture packs and shaders all time long.It’s probably time to stop building on 1.19.4 I guess, and just start a new survival journey.

2024-01-24: TIL about Faircamp which looks amazing.
2024-01-24: Time Machine like Backups on OpenBSD.
2024-01-25: ♪ Passenger · Summer Rain