I’m really not. This was my daily workflow, one day it was working, the next it was not. There were gradual changes before and after as websites locked themselves down to scraping, but there was a specific update to Google’s search, followed by Bing and the sites that repackage it. I switched to using searxng and quant, but neither of them were ever as good
I couldn’t narrow down to the day, but I could probably pin it down to a specific week if I dug through my notes
Not through search though… That free access to all the knowledge of humanity is a shell of what it was
Llms are a tool. A very useful tool. But it’s also a tool that depends on other tools. It could have automated the process I described and gotten to the answer very fast.
Instead, it needs to read through the code. It’s still relatively fast, but it only works up to a point. After a certain level of complexity, it chokes on the problem
Something has been taken from us. And it’s more than just a tool for coding, it was access to primary sources of information on everything
If it was true it would be a huge problem. The issue is it’s not true. I’ll refer to the xkcd from 2011 again. In the early 2000 it was even worse, you still had to consult paper books quiten often. In the 1990 I remember even finding those books was a challenge, I had to go to a book shopin a big city to find books about the topic I wanted.
Not only we are not losing knowledge, there is more everyday. More people are sharing more in more public settings with mailing lists, github issues, cves, medium, reddit, even tiktoks if you’re into that. There are more tools to access this knowledge everyday, from specialized search engines, to automatic translation tools, to LLMs. And there is more ways of interacting with people who might have the knowledge if it’s not already public: email, Twitter, github, discord, even YouTube comments if you want to be exotic. Lemmy if you want to rant.
You’re welcome to yell at a cloud, progress is made all around.
This was published in 2011: https://xkcd.com/979/
This was the rule, not the exception. I remember spending a whole afternoon with a PHP error where the error message was in Hebrew. It was bad.
You are seeing the past with rose colored glasses.
I’m really not. This was my daily workflow, one day it was working, the next it was not. There were gradual changes before and after as websites locked themselves down to scraping, but there was a specific update to Google’s search, followed by Bing and the sites that repackage it. I switched to using searxng and quant, but neither of them were ever as good
I couldn’t narrow down to the day, but I could probably pin it down to a specific week if I dug through my notes
You said in a previous post you had to “dig through it”. That’s not needed nowadays. It is measurably faster.
Not through search though… That free access to all the knowledge of humanity is a shell of what it was
Llms are a tool. A very useful tool. But it’s also a tool that depends on other tools. It could have automated the process I described and gotten to the answer very fast.
Instead, it needs to read through the code. It’s still relatively fast, but it only works up to a point. After a certain level of complexity, it chokes on the problem
Something has been taken from us. And it’s more than just a tool for coding, it was access to primary sources of information on everything
We still have man pages, stack overflow, reddit, github… LLMs are in addition to the rest.
Again, all useful for easy answers…
Knowledge is actively being lost. Lack of discoverability is making the Internet sanitized and corporate
If you don’t understand why this is an ongoing problem, I don’t know what else to say
If it was true it would be a huge problem. The issue is it’s not true. I’ll refer to the xkcd from 2011 again. In the early 2000 it was even worse, you still had to consult paper books quiten often. In the 1990 I remember even finding those books was a challenge, I had to go to a book shopin a big city to find books about the topic I wanted.
Not only we are not losing knowledge, there is more everyday. More people are sharing more in more public settings with mailing lists, github issues, cves, medium, reddit, even tiktoks if you’re into that. There are more tools to access this knowledge everyday, from specialized search engines, to automatic translation tools, to LLMs. And there is more ways of interacting with people who might have the knowledge if it’s not already public: email, Twitter, github, discord, even YouTube comments if you want to be exotic. Lemmy if you want to rant.
You’re welcome to yell at a cloud, progress is made all around.