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johnlyle.com
British parent with interests in technology, security, and 90s computer games. Previously a software engineer at a large social network (not this one). He/him.
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Posts 17 Comments 21

Do LLMs hallucinate so much because they lack training data where people said “I don’t know” when attempting to answer a question?

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

AI could have a very positive impact on teaching. AI to tailor assigned work to student interests, to be endlessly patient answering questions and to effectively be an always-on 1:1 tutor. But it shouldn’t reduce the number of teachers it should increase the impact of teaching.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Everyone wants to cut “administrative overhead”. But you have to do that by cutting *the need for administration* otherwise you are just shifting the admin work to other people. Oh, and those other people are specialist, expensive, hard to hire, and are now unhappy and inefficient. Great job.

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

I am not an economist. But it seems like the fundamental problem (why the UK is broke) is *wealth* inequality, but government only has tools to tax *income*. How can that possibly be fixed when wealth is easily hidden and any tax on wealth would be inherently unpopular with political donors?

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

I'm really curious about the best ways to reduce wealth inequality without a lot of evasion. Property taxes seem one option, but do any others exist? Higher sales taxes on the most wealthy, somehow? More inheritance tax?

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

I’m not sure how any of this works, but if the US President can bring back TikTok can Sir Kier Starmer bring back the Matt Hancock app? Also maybe Ceefax? www.bbc.com/news/technol...

submitted 51 days ago • 1 comment

AI is a double-edged sword for education. If unchecked, AI tools could damage critical thinking skills and enable cheating. But the potential of personalised 1:1 AI teachers is really exciting and could radically transform educational outcomes. Overall, this is an area I'm very optimistic about.

submitted 57 days ago • 1 comment

AI for making small business more efficient seems like a really good opportunity to boost the economy. If every sole trader could have an AI assistant to do scheduling, accounting, invoicing, etc it would surely be a good thing. AI for fixing potholes? Less convinced. www.bbc.com/news/article...

submitted 58 days ago • 0 comments

I still can’t get used to Bluesky popping open links in my system browser of preference rather than a web view. It’s excellent, but also amazing how accustom I’d become to finding the “open in chrome” icon in other apps.

submitted 58 days ago • 0 comments

Diverse teams are the best teams. They perform better, make better products, and it’s more fun to be part of them. They are the peak of human collaboration. Equity and inclusion are necessary to ensure everyone on a team is treated with respect and empowered to do their best work.

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments

I really like the "Expanding Atmospheric Sponge" analogy.

submitted 60 days ago • 0 comments

As a positive spin, Bluesky must be doing pretty well - spammers seem to think it’s worth monetising our attention here.

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

This is one of the best things I've read about engineering culture this year. Thank you @mcfunley.com egoless.engineering

submitted 98 days ago • 0 comments

We are pretty obviously in an AI bubble right now. Companies are being insulated from failure due to optimistic VC funding. Given bubbles in tech are common, does anyone have a prediction for how this one bursts? Loans get called in? A big player or much-hyped product falls? An IPO goes badly?

submitted 110 days ago • 0 comments

As a user I agree intuitively - I want all the links! It will make spam a bigger (though not insurmountable) problem, as it'll make each spam attack more lucrative for driving traffic to external sites. But hopefully the content moderation efforts here will be up to the job.

submitted 113 days ago • 0 comments

Keen to learn how BlueSky's design choices pan out, particularly when it eventually needs to care about MAU, DAU & revenue. My guess is that feed options will be seldom used, and at worst bad for retention. But maybe it will retain power users and those will create incentive for broader appeal?

submitted 114 days ago • 4 comments

I look forward to seeing BlueSky speedrun through all the work on anti-spam and account integrity that the likes of Facebook have done for years. Good luck!

submitted 115 days ago • 0 comments