I like it. Screensavers but for printers. After all, the original purpose of a screensaver is to preserve the output device's health when the system is idle.
If it were built-in, you could even minimize the wasted ink and paper. Just print a single line every few days or something and keep the same sheet of paper in place for weeks or months and add to it instead of using a new sheet of paper. The ink has plenty of time to dry, so you can probably print over the same areas repeatedly.
Alternatively, you could implement it in the driver, but there's more opportunity for things to go wrong if you restart the computer, lose the connection, or have multiple computers sharing a printer.
I skimmed the paper, and it seems to be saying something different.
Basically, there are often different ways of putting a particular idea into words. Sometimes the longer way might be clearer, and the shorter way might be more confusing. If you care about being understood, sometimes you will use the wordy option. This is what humans usually do.
However, LLMs have context windows. All else being equal, verbosity eats up more context. If the LLM is trained (with reinforcement learning) to reason most effectively, it can do that by using terse phrasing. Especially on certain tasks that really need a large context window. Why? Because being terse is like getting a larger context window for free.
But in another sense, it's not really free. You're trading off clarity for context window. Sometimes you have to choose between verbose+clear and terse+unclear. If you're biased toward terse, that will also shift you toward unclear.
I do agree that LLMs are verbose sometimes, though. I think they are also trained to please the user, and they see sharing extra knowledge and insights as a way to do that. I don't think this idea is in conflict with what the paper says. If an LLM's training rewards both spitting out neat bonus info and doing reasoning that requires making the most of its limited context window, then that LLM may generate a large quantity of text which is written in a slightly terse and confusing style.
> the original claim that lack of sanitization "required"* "vibe-coded" functionality*
That claim was ever made. The comment was about actual pieces of software that exist in the real world, not about all possible software that could exist in theory.
In real-world usage, for a user to be exposed, a necessary ingredient was to use a particular piece of software that actually exists and that happens to be vibe coded.
That does not preclude the possibility that a non-vibe-coded piece of software could have been vulnerable. It's just that such a piece of software did not happen to exist.
So why even mention vibe coding? Presumably it's relevant for some other reason. Perhaps the implication is this vibe-coded software is not an established piece of software with lots of users. (Since vibe-coded software is easier to create, maintainers may be less invested in it or committed to maintaining it. Vibe coding changes the economics and opens up the possibility of creating throwaway software.) Or perhaps the implication is that users should be more careful about using vibe-coded software.
I don't like it either, but they are in the fashion industry.
Why did the label on my Fig Newtons get redesigned? It's not because it lacked in usability. It's because the company knows that customers respond to visual updates. If something looks the same year after year, lots of people will see it as old and tired. A redesign makes it feel modern and fresh. At least to enough people that it matters.
I had the same experience on a recent trip to The UPS Store. The color scheme was all different from the previous time I shipped a package. I commented to the clerk that they'd redecorated. He said they do it pretty often.
Software has a visual aspect to it, and the same forces are in effect. Part of a UI designer's job is to be on that treadmill. That's probably not what the job should be, but the people who pay their salary want it to be.
At least on the brick and mortar side of things it’s not so bad since the refresh also allows a maintenance cycle while the store is temporarily closed. And I can think of many examples (KMart especially) where the lack of store refreshes/deferred maintenance torpedoed the entire chain (Walmart and Target were not afraid to teardown or abandon outmoded locations).
Well stated, but I will say, it is not impossible to do both.
Tantacrul is my favourite (and, actually, only) example of this. His work with MuseScore, with Audacity, his videos about them, and his takedowns of Sybellius etc. all opened my eyes to the world of designers who do things with hard-nosed analytical thinking, user studies, good principles, and make something useful. Even his little digressions about Paint3D and Ubuntu's Mobile OS are illustrative.
Sure, Fig Newtons got redesigned because after seeing something over and over again it kinda blends, and design refresh and suddenly it catches your eye again.
No idea why UPS keeps redesigning other than signal "we still up to date with trends", its not like its rebranding going to make me want to ship anything that I don't already need to (and will ship with USPS unless its overnight in which case I will go with FedEx).
Interfaces get redesigned, in opinion, either because: a) just because (bad) b) certain things worked the way it worked only because it had to fit existing design and eventually old design just couldn't fit new feature(s) (can be good or bad, depending on execution)
When I got to where they explained the benefits of having the engine at the very back and the instability of having the back part push the front, I tried to guess how they solved it. I guessed a fancy drive shaft with universal joints so the engine in the back half could drive wheels in the front half.
I guessed wrong. I still like my idea, but their solution is simpler and probably more efficient and more durable too.
The goal of public transportation is to move people fast around the city. Not to have the driver sell the tickets, that’s what the ticket machine is for (both on stations and on board). Anybody using public transportation daily probably has a monthly ticket anyway. And not to provide tourist information.
People want to get to work on time after all. Entering and leaving the tram or bus through all door is a simple way to improve public transports reliability.
Double deckers I’ve seen have just one narrow staircase. You can’t have people go up and down at the same time. Through a door you can move some people in and out at the same time, however it’s rude, but since it’s a door and not a lengthy corridor, you can easily have a group of people go out, let new passengers in, and get in again.
can't they just widen the staricase to match the space in the aisle.
Aisles in city buses tend to be very narrow too making ppl bunch up near the driver if one person is standing in aisle in a awkward way. Ppl also bunch up near the driver because if someone has stop coming up they dont want to traverse all the way to the back and then travese out to the door. Some ppl are also anxious about get 'stuck' in middle and missing their stop.
If it were built-in, you could even minimize the wasted ink and paper. Just print a single line every few days or something and keep the same sheet of paper in place for weeks or months and add to it instead of using a new sheet of paper. The ink has plenty of time to dry, so you can probably print over the same areas repeatedly.
Alternatively, you could implement it in the driver, but there's more opportunity for things to go wrong if you restart the computer, lose the connection, or have multiple computers sharing a printer.
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