| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3443 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 112 | Comments |
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Another great book interview by Chris Hedges, again with an extremely erudite author who’s written a book about Gaza. Their discussion ranges to places that most are unwilling to go, like: why should the rest of the world grant primacy to the Jewish holocaust as a historical occurrence? Why should they even know about it when they’ve suffered their own holocausts, at the hands of the same empire that is browbeating them to bow in obeisance to the memory of the horror of the last holocaust it... [More]
Published on in Philosophy
This is a brilliant 52-minute interview with the author of a book whose title is already being misinterpreted by misguided liberals as being about Trump. More’s the pity. The author is young and brilliant. May he have a long and illustrious life and career.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (w/ Omar El Akkad) by The Chris Hedges Report (YouTube)
At about 09:42,
“All of this sort of stuff, I think, makes perfect sense if you believe in a world where there are only two options: you are either wearing the boot or you’re having your neck stepped on. And, so, to speak up on behalf of... [More]”
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Technology
About a month ago, my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015) crashed very hard. It would no longer restart into anything but the recovery console. It seemed pretty clear that something was very corrupt and I found myself facing a system reinstall, at the very least.
Since it’s a desktop, I have a backup drive attached to it at all times. Time Machine runs several times per day. My latest backup was from about ten minutes before the system crashed. I cannot stress how... [More]
Published on in Design
A friend recently asked me to review their UI/UX design in a private app they’d written. I responded with the following in an e-mail, reproduced and lightly edited/extended here for limited posterity.
The following factors strongly influence and/or limit the kind of review I’ll be able to provide.
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
Let’s start with a terrible take from a terrible source: the article The big idea: what do we really mean by free speech? by Farrah Jarral (Guardian) writes,
“What the right calls cancel culture, philosopher Arianne Shahvisi writes, “is often just the supersized celebrity version of what the rest of us experience all the time: consequences for our mistakes and bigotries. You do something shitty and people distance themselves from you, especially if you refuse to acknowledge your... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The following citation illustrates what I consider to be one of the dumbest (simplest? Most ignorant?) but extremely popular interpretation of the changing alignment of the U.S., NATO, Europe, and Russia in early 2025,
“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week ordered U.S. Cyber Command to stand down from all planning against Russia, including offensive digital actions.” Because the US is a Russian ally (or satellite?) now I guess.”
It comes from a post... [More]
Published on in Technology
The pair of articles survivorship bias and the algorithmic gaze by The Etymology Nerd (Substack) and when everything becomes a fragment by The Etymology Nerd (Substack) expresses, for me, a good argument for caution about the tools that you’re using.[1]
AI is definitely a paradigm-shift for programming, but I think in a way that’s not discussed very much. We focus very much on how AI enables people who couldn’t program anything before to be able to program something. The scope of what it allows them to program grows with each version. Until it doesn’t. That is,... [More]
Published on in Technology
I follow Simon Willison for news about all things LLM and he’s generally quite balanced. Even though he has drifted farther and farther toward what might be optimistically called “unquestioning fanboy,” that’s probably an inevitable effect of actually enjoying something. He seems to get a lot of value out of using these tools. I think he might be spending too little time wondering what he would have been producing had he not been grabbing all of the low-hanging fruit that the LLM is delivering... [More]
Published on in Technology
The discussion Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino (Reddit) is about the article Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino by John Gruber (Daring Fireball), which was a much-longer post than usual, discussing the failure of Apple Intelligence features and the failure to focus on software-quality that it illustrates.
Although Gruber focuses on Apple’s iOS, a decrease in quality in user experience has become endemic in their auxiliary products on MacOS as well. I added a few quick examples to my... [More]
Published on in Technology
The article Adding AI-generated descriptions to my tools collection by Simon Willison includes the following snippet,
“I decided that the descriptions were too long, so I modified the script to add “Keep it to 2-3 sentences” to the end of the system prompt. These new, shorter descriptions are now live—here’s the diff. Total usage was 283,528 input tokens and 6,010 output tokens for a cost of 94 cents.”
First of all, I’m not surprised that he asked it to shorten its descriptions. The initial versions were... [More]
tsc is going native Published on in Programming
The article A 10x Faster TypeScript by Anders Hejlsberg (Microsoft) includes the following text, as well as a link to the video below,
“[…] we’ve begun work on a native port of the TypeScript compiler and tools. The native implementation will drastically improve editor startup, reduce most build times by 10x, and substantially reduce memory usage. By porting the current code-base, we expect to be able to preview a native implementation oftsccapable of command-line type-checking by mid-2025, with a feature-complete... [More]”
Published on in Programming
How to Add files to a Large Repository? (Reddit)
Git has opt-in support for handling large files.
–depth option to control how much history to clone (good for pipelines, where you’re usually only interested in the tip, so depth 1)depth controls how much you clone (size of the .git folder), sparse-checkout controls the size of your working tree. 
git logoUse LFS (Large File Storage) to store files. This will not remove large files from existing commits. This feature is seamless to enable and... [More]Published on in Philosophy
I wrote the following quip to a friend the other day, “Charisma is an underrated stat,” to which they replied quite pithily,
“Charisma is underrated in the engineering space. A charismatic engineer is often labeled as a “charlatan” or “all bark no bite” or “a sales guy”, but what the people who say that often gloss over is the fact that a charismatic engineer is often really labeled as a CEO.”
Charisma 20+Perhaps a better word than “underrated” is “unnoticed”. It’s the stat that hides itself. Part of the... [More]
Published on in Finance & Economy
This is a 40-minute discussion between Zain Raza and Professor Richard Wolff on a wide range of topics, but focusing on the effects of the U.S.‘s retreat from Europe on Germany, in particular.
Prof. Richard Wolff − The Decline of the US Empire & Germany's Economy by AcTVism Munich (YouTube)
At about 35:00,
“Zain Raza: We have seen the emergence of AI like China’s DeepSeek, which you mentioned, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. And there’s a major transformation taking place across the global economy. Many industries are being affected. The world economic forum’s “future of jobs” report 2025... [More]”
Published on in Programming
Recently, I saw that the following error had been fixed in a code review.
Classic primitive obsession error
The error shown above is an example of a design smell called Primitive Obsession. This is where code is “obsessed” with primitives, in that it uses a much “wider” type than is actually acceptable.
Whereas C++ has a typedef, TypeScript and Delphi Pascal have a type, C# has … nothing simple. The linked article describes a hand-coded version for making “narrower” types (e.g., MeanLength or ShortFiber). Our go-to... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This is a fantastic seven-minute refresher on what the first amendment means in the U.S.—specifically the right to free speech, The government is bound quite strongly to respect one’s right to say anything one wants, even if one is benefiting from a government program, like unemployment or a visa program. While the government is allowed to curtail benefits in the case of criminal prosecution—predicating them on being law-abiding—it cannot retract them based on one having expressed... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This was an interesting 21-minute discussion about the importance of multi-polarity, multi-civilizational humanity. Dugin points out how the globalism that we’re seeing trying to take over everything has deemed itself the winner and chooses not to integrate anything from other, “conquered” civilizations. He cites the Chinese Confucian approach to law and philosophy, the Russian Orthodox Church, and so on, as deep and ancient influences on cultures and civilizations.
Alexander DuginHe calls out globalists for... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
This is an absolutely brilliant 45-minute video: as history lesson, as political analysis, as military analysis. Many, many more people should be watching this.
In particular, the two sections comprising about 18 minutes and starting at 15:35, called “EU’s militarisation & Russia’s plans” and “EU’s fiscal discipline” are brilliant and are well-worth listening to in their entirety.
Vijay Prashad – The Collapse of NATO and Europe's Dilemma by acTVism Munich (YouTube)
At 04:56,
“Vijay PrashadTrump interestingly said, ‘look, this is not a prestige issue for us in the United States. We don’t... [More]”
Published on in Finance & Economy
Danielle BrianThe following 22-minute video is an excellent interview by Lee Fang with Danielle Brian of POGO (Project on Government Oversight) about corruption, waste, and fraud. Whereas you may deem anything the government spends money on that you don’t like or approve of as “waste”, “fraud” has a legal definition. Somewhere in the middle is “corruption”, which is when you’re paying far too much for services that you actually want or need. The major sources of corruption are the Pentagon budget and... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article Trump bans transgender athletes from entering the United States by Isla Anderson, Evan Winters (WSWS) writes,
“SemenyaRubio justified the ban on international transgender athletes under the 1952 Immigration and Nationalities act, which authorizes a “permanent fraud bar” as punishment for “lying” on a visa application. The pretense is that a gender marker matching a transgender person’s gender identity, rather than one that aligns “with their sex assigned at birth,” amounts to “misrepresenting the purpose of... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The article European Leaders Voice Support for Zelensky Following Heated Exchange With Trump by Kyle Anzalone (Scheer Post) describes Trump’s feelings about where he and Zelenskyy differ.
“Following the presser, Trump expelled Zelensky from the White House, and posted on Truth Social that the deal was off. “I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE,” he wrote.”
... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
In the following seven-minute video, Glenn “responds” to a critique of the Trump administration, written by Chris Hedges and sent to him by a listener. I’m a bit confused by the response, though … it seems as if Glenn thinks that Chris Hedges supports the continuation of the empire. Chris’s admonition is not a lament for the end of the empire, it is more a warning to pay attention to and to influence what will replace it. I think Glenn should have Chris on his show to make himself more... [More]
Published on in Philosophy
I’ve seen that people in Europe and Switzerland are starting to proudly boycott U.S.-American products, as if they’re standing on a principle or something.
They are not anti-Empire. They are anti-Trump.
They are pissed at Trump for having “abandoned” Ukraine and Europe, which they think leaves them wide open to be invaded within weeks by what they call the U.S.‘s new ally Russia.
This is almost laughably stupid, if it weren’t such a prevalent view among otherwise intelligent and... [More]
Published on in Programming
The article Can You Get Better Doing a Bad Job? by Jim Neilsen cites Woody Harrelson as saying, “I think when you do your job badly you never really get better at your craft.”
Of course that’s true on the surface: If you manage to avoid learning anything else, then you will only ever get better at doing a bad job. The author expands on this point as follows,
“Experience is a hard teacher. Perhaps, from a technical standpoint, my skillset didn’t get any better. But from an experiential standpoint, my... [More]”
Published on in Technology
The upshot of the video linked below is that prompt injection has not really been addressed in any significant way because the LLM, by its nature, doesn’t give us a good way of doing so without neutering the main advantage of it.
Generative AI's Greatest Flaw by Computerphile / Mike Pound (YouTube)
The problem boils down to the inability to distinguish between query and parameters. The prompt is the prompt. It’s all just arranged in a way that will hopefully influence the result of pouring it all into the same funnel. There is no analogue in LLM prompts to... [More]
Published on in Technology
A while back, during the Super Bowl, I paused to see whether a player’s foot was really out of bounds when he caught the ball.
NOT ALLOWED. READ THIS ADVERT INSTEAD, PEASANT.
This is the state of German cable television
I managed to do something that got rid of the advert, but ended up showing a bunch of extra chrome on the screen instead, nearly but not entirely obscuring the thing that I wanted to see. #Enshittification
Next up, I was greeted a couple of weeks later with the message, “The order of your TV channels now matches your... [More]
Published on in Philosophy
The article Trump vs. the Deep State by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post) included the following passage as part of a longer discussion .
“I do not think, I mean to say, the deep state’s presence in America’s political life will ever be off the table now that Trump has put its insidious presence on it. This is a good thing.”
I wouldn’t be too sure of that. People are remarkably capable of going back to sleep, especially when their salaries depend on it, especially when their lifestyles depend on it, and especially with an... [More]
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
