Interesting Links for 07-05-2025

[andrewducker]

1. How to reduce the spread of crypto

(tags:cryptography virus funny newzealand )

2. Dozens of clubs fight back against FA ban on trans women

(tags:football transgender women uk )

3. Fear and intimidation at Newark airport, as a Palestinian-American re-enters the USA

(tags:usa palestine OhForFucksSake )

4. Peak rail fares to be scrapped by Scottish government

(tags:trains GoodNews )

5. Hugo Administrators Resign in Wake of ChatGPT Controversy

(tags:Hugo awards conventions ai OhForFucksSake )

6. Scientists issue new warning linking microplastics with strokes

(tags:plastic stroke )

7. The county that shows how benefits cuts and bills drove voters from Labour to Reform

(tags:politics economics uk poverty )

8. Orsted pulls plug on Hornsea 4 windfarm (one of the world's largest)

(tags:windpower doom )

9. Scottish 'Hollow Mountain' hydro power plant expansion put on hold

(tags:hydroelectric scotland doom )

Comments

[simont]

Wow, yes, that does seem quite optimistic. Has that person ever tried looking for an answer on the Internet themself?!

[andrewducker]

Goodness only knows!

On a small tangent, I was discussing with someone at work the use of ChatGPT vs "Looking things up on Stack Overflow" - and a big bonus to me on Stack Overflow is that I get multiple answers and discussions in the comments on each of them of what works well/badly. I'd much rather have that, work out what I want of the various options, and make something work. Getting The One True Way, even if correct, would be less helpful to me!

[simont]

There's also some chance on Stack Overflow that you might find not just the answer, but some hints about the thought process or deeper understanding that led the responder to the answer they gave, or the debugging process someone used to find out the answer. Separately from getting the immediate problem fixed, those things can improve your ability to answer similar questions yourself in future. Not every SO post manages this, but the best ones do.

[andrewducker]

Yes, absolutely. It adds to my knowledge and makes me a better developer. Which is what I want.

[hilarita]

Also, if I adopt some clever StoatOverflow thing into my code, I can link back (and I do) to the SO post where I got it, so it's easy to trace what I was thinking. I don't think there's a similar thing to point people back at an LLM-generated answer, unless you C&P the whole thing (plus prompts) somewhere.

Search results also produce the effect andrewducker alluded to: you can skim different results and get a feeling for some level of disagreement. This is rather flattened by LLMs, and of course they render it impossible to examine the source material yourself. It breaks traceability.