David Goddard

Combining software consulting with getting round to completing my PhD. Non-tech/science side is over at @davidmgoddard.

[David Goddard @cognoid]

Please nobody task it with making paperclips 😬

[Sully @SullyOmarr]

The code is straightforward:

We start with a goal eg: "Solve world hunger"

We tell GPT4 "In order to solve world hunger, how can we create simpler tasks?"

Then it's able to figure out what to do on its own, and runs until all the task are completed.

[David Goddard @cognoid]

😬

[John Arundel @bitfield]

If you feel the need to use a debugger, then it means you don't understand what your code is doing. Unfortunately, that's a problem the debugger can't fix. You have to either look closer, or make the code clearer.

[David Goddard @cognoid]

😑

[the finite physicist @FinitePhysicist]

As a PhD candidate at one of the world's top physics institutions, here is my daily routine:

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@PaulMainwood Also, being over 40 I have some floaters in my eyes that I can often notice when reading. So light text on dark background is often easier, and that would be a lot of ink…

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@PaulMainwood Over 40 here: screen is not a problem per se, but the distractions screens facilitate are. Got to a particularly gnarly bit of a paper? Alt-tab to something less demanding in another window for a bit. So taking a tablet or printout away from desk works better

[Ken Kirtland IV @KenKirtland17]

What's your space opinion that gets you in this position?

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@timspector Yes - vaccination centre in a SW London shopping centre refused to budge, insisted minimum 182 days and I was on 170. They were also very quiet indeed, no real queue (frustrating). However a nearby pharmacy-based popup was more than happy to do me.

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@JamesWard73 I’ll confess to borrowing the idea of Channel Tunnel from another list I saw, having failed to find a pithy way of making a “Nth circle of hell” joke for that entry

[David Goddard @cognoid]

North: Helsinki 🇫🇮
East: Picton 🇳🇿
South: Queenstown 🇳🇿
West: Honolulu 🌺 🇺🇸
Up: Aiguille du Midi cable car (3780m) 🇫🇷
Up (under my own steam): Heinrich-Schwaiger-Haus (2802m), Großes Wiesbachhorn 🇦🇹
Down: Channel Tunnel I guess

[James Ward @JamesWard73]

some matches with @DevanSinha here:

What’s the furthest in each direction you’ve ever been?

North: Reykjavik, Iceland 🇮🇸
East: Napier, NZ 🇳🇿
South: Invercargill, NZ 🇳🇿
West: Denali National Park, Alaska 🇺🇸
Up: Aiguille du Midi, 3780m 🇫🇷
Down: Dead Sea, -420m 🇯🇴

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@British_Airways hi, we are flying with you on Wednesday, taking two bikes. Your website says to call you to confirm hold space for bike bags, but you’re not answering your phone… can you help please?

[Ordnance Survey @OrdnanceSurvey]

Looking for some #GetOutside inspiration? Take your pick from our data visualisation of Great Britain's 15 National Parks🏞️ https://t.co/m8hWmjRzHF

[Beth Fisher @BethFisherSport]

So grateful I learnt this on my year out when I was a lifeguard.

RT, save & learn ❤️

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@BobbyBorkIII (Although I guess we gave our answer by not buying enough Olympic Breakfasts)

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@BobbyBorkIII We were never asked.

[David Goddard @cognoid]

"the President of IBM just called and fuck your thesis, it’s yacht-racing time"

[Durand Sinclair @durand_sinclair]

@vboykis Zero-based indexing was invented _after_ one-based indexing. So it was a deliberate choice someone made. In 2013 a blogger found the guy who originally made that choice & asked why he did it. Turns out it was protection against an arsehole with a yacht. https://t.co/2rvPoPTVEq

[thaddeus e. grugq @thegrugq]

I’m really curious about these devices being sold from the kgb museum.

[David Goddard @cognoid]

I have some mixed feeling about this

[Rendle Has Left The Dumpster Fire @markrendle]

RT if you were part of that tiny 1993 bar.

[David Goddard @cognoid]

@larapicc Even if Excel was the *only* tool available, I’m not sure how you would design something that could exceed 16k columns and think this was in any way reasonable. I’m thinking 4 or maybe 5 columns would do the job, but I’m no Excel guru...

[David Goddard @cognoid]

🤐🙄

[Max Roser @MaxCRoser]

In the UK the number of cases rose rapidly.
But the public – and authorities – are only learning this now because these cases were only published now as a backlog.

The reason was apparently that the database is managed in Excel and the number of columns had reached the maximum.