I'll second the zed recommendation, sent from my M4 macbook. I don't know why exactly it's doing this for you but mine is idling with ~500MB RAM (about as little as you can get with a reasonably-sized Rust codebase and a language server) and 0% CPU.
I have also really appreciated something that felt much less janky, had better vim bindings, and wasn't slow to start even on a very fast computer. You can completely botch Cursor if you type really fast. On an older mid-range laptop, I ran into problems with a bunch of its auto-pair stuff of all things.
Fun project! I think the smallest I ever shrunk a win32 application was on the order of 2-4kb by writing in ASM. It was a great illustration of why 10x binary size is actually a great trade-off in terms of productivity.
Wrong. This is essentially the context in which we still live today though we’ve secularized substantially over the past centuries. But Rome was on the path to Christianity at this time and later converted, so this is a very common way to understand things. Generally a work is one of a few things: Christian, Jewish, maybe Muslim depending on whom you ask, as it’s also an Abrahamic faith, or Pagan.
To be honest this feels more like you have an axe to grind with Christianity or its dominance, similar to the people pushing for “BCE/CE” over BC/AD. I don’t know why, but don’t expect the rest of the world to carry that cross for you.
> This is essentially the context in which we still live today
Who's "we"? - It doesn't apply to everyone in the world, so you're assuming some limitations in who you're referring to.
GP makes a fair point. If you mean by "pagan" simply non-Christian and non-Jewish, then to make it relevant to call it a pagan library you would need to establish that it was curated specifically to exclude Christain or Jewish themes. You might as well call it a "non-Mithraic library", if it happens to exclude mention of Mithras, which was also an up-and-coming cult among the Romans in the first century. Then it would be incorrect or presumptious to call it "non-Mithraic", unless you'd first established that it contained no mention of Mithras. And the only reason you'd do that is if Mithras held a particular parochial relevance to you. You understand that not everyone holds up an image of Mithras as a prism through which to view everything else.
OTOH, if you mean by "pagan" just that it's Roman, but from before Rome converted to Christianity, then just say it's a first century Roman library.
America, which is the center of world power and culture. You may not like that but that doesn't make it untrue. It's also where most users of this site live.
GP does not make a fair point. We're specifically talking about classical antiquity which was a fairly bounded world. Warrior god cults, like that of Mithras, didn't have a strong role in the overall state and direction of the empire. They weren't major players and it is actually perfectly fine for terminology and understanding to focus on those.
Christianity is the prism through which the Romans later viewed things and through which the heirs of classical antiquity did. This isn't parochial, this reflects your general dislike of Christianity's dominance. But I don't actually have to make a normative argument that it should be, just the positive point that it is.
"Pagan" is a widely-accepted way to refer to Rome's old polytheistic religious traditions, which existed, but not unchallenged, around the first century.
> America, which is the center of world power and culture.
Yeah, ok. So an explicitly parochial prespective. This isn't compelling from a disinterested, objective perspective.
> Warrior god cults, like that of Mithras, didn't have a strong role in the overall state and direction of the empire. They weren't major players and it is actually perfectly fine for terminology and understanding to focus on those.
That's not parochial, that's realistic. If you have an axe to grind with American dominance that's your own bias; it's a fact, not something you can argue with on objective grounds. Keep your personal anti-Americanism out of this; it's keeping you from thinking clearly.
Christianity didn't have as strong an influence there and then, but it obviously did in the course of the Roman Empire, and this was around the time it started to grow. It's obviously relevant in a way cults of Mithras or Serapis or whomever else weren't.
Thank you, that's illuminating. So it's a first century scroll, discovered in Italy, and you insist it's only true categorization is from the perspective of a present-day American Christian, while also claiming that everyone else is ideologically blinkered...
You know what else isn’t a compelling argument? This arduous attempt to argue that Christianity, the largest religion in the world and the very one that was adopted by Rome, is somehow inconsequential to the framing of what came before it. There is no logical argument that can be made to separate the two, for experts in the field will continue to use the term Pagan to refer to Pagan Rome no matter how much it hurts your feelings. It is simply the most objective and efficient method of separating it from the other. Unless of course you know of a better method that the historians do not? I’m sure they’d love to hear it.
> "Pagan" is a widely-accepted way to refer to Rome's old polytheistic religious traditions, which existed, but not unchallenged, around the first century.
Do you know for a fact that the library contained no mention of Jesus nor Judaism? If you don't know this, then why do you refer to it as pagan?
The point is: we have a Roman library from the first century AD. We don't know what it contains. To call it "pagan" tacitly assumes that (a) Christianity was not relevant to the collectors of the library, and (b) whether something is Christian or not is of primary interest whenever we discuss an artefact from the past.
We don't know whether (a) is true, and (b) is only true from a particularly dogmatic and insular perspective
Tbh, I'm struggling to understand what your point is apart from you're asserting that you view the world as centered on your own particular dogmatic tradition and you find it hard to understand why other's don't share that perspective
No, of course not. The accuracy of the original statement isn't the point. The point is to invalidate the ideologically-motivated conniption fit some people are pitching about a framing that is meet for the topic to have.
To be honest, adding the word "pagan" just seem needlessly divisive. When I read about the past, nobody is going out of their way to point out that it's Pagan.
Do you believe that Goy/Goyim is similarly divisive? Or Kafir? And I’m not sure what books you’re reading, Pagan vs Christian Rome is a common distinction if the context hasn’t already made it obvious (such as here).
Indian studies were not part of the world of classical antiquity and you know it. Nobody is calling them pagan. And no, stripping that descriptor removes information from the statement.
This isn't especially relevant. It barely covered a few scraps of northwest India. Most "Indo-Greek" civilization and culture was concentrated in Bactria and Sogdiana, not those few scraps of modern-day India, and BC Indo-Greek culture was not what we'd understand to be "Vedic Indian" so much as Persian-esque.
It also wasn't exactly part of the classical hellenistic civilization we talk about as the root of the western tradition, something of which I'm sure you're fully aware, making this a moot point.
Seems like we could be using BCE/AV (for Anno Vulgi). This would be cromulent with how the BC/AD pair is half English and half Latin. And then for convenience and compatibility, shorten BCE to BC.
Firstly, most people either don't know or don't regularly consider what BC and AD mean. No more than they remember i.e. stands for "id est" or know what the Latin means. These are basically opaque wrappers where there's no particular Christian subtext in their use. Or there wasn't until a bunch of people who really just hate Christianity started trying to expurgate every trace of it from our culture.
Do you understand why the phrase "Christian BS", aside from not really being much of an argument, ensures probably nine people in ten will immediately close off to what you say and refuse to take you seriously?
Do you understand that the majority of the world is not Christian?
Why do you think one should get away with trying to rewrite the very acronym that exists to not reference a religion into being a direct reference to a religion?
The alternative acronyms are neologisms created specifically out of anti-Christian sentiment.
If y'all were operating in good faith, these would catch the same level of attention:
- Sabbatical, originating from Sabbath, a Judeo-Christian day of rest,
- The use of "karma", "zen", and "avatar" as terms and concepts, which come mostly from eastern religion,
- The use of "kosher", "mazel tov", and "golem" outside religious contexts due to their Judaic roots,
- and the use of "assassin", from a group of Shiite militants during the Crusades.
Of course, none of these catch the sort of attention that BC and AD do, because this is an example of explicitly anti-Christian thought, word, and deed. If you are particularly averse to it as opposed to other religions, that is your personal bigotry to work through, not ours to placate.
Attacking something over its Christian roots that is no longer generally understood to be Christian is, in fact, anti-Christian bigotry. There is no policy of attacking things with any religious roots, just ours.
It say AD "was conceived around the year 525 by the Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus. He did this to replace the then dominant Era of Martyrs system, because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians." So AD itself was a neologism to avoid mentioning something offensive (or someone offensive, Diocletian).
It's probably related to the pushiness of the religion. Like, something similar might happen with Islam, or Hinduism these days. But probably not Zoroastrianism or animism. On the other hand I think it's silly and resembles damnatio memoriae.
You’re not separating what you call “pushiness” from mere presence. Notice how you picked two minuscule religions with tiny numbers of believers, and therefore very little community, worldwide?
This is about mindshare, or brand awareness. I removed the branding from a garment. Does that mean I took a dislike to the brand? Yes, because I thought about the vibes it gave off (it brought to mind sticky, crunchy dancefloors) and decided I didn't want to promote it. But this was the brand's fault for trying to use me as walking billboard in the first place, which forced me to pick a side on a matter I wouldn't otherwise have thought about. If I'd decided I liked it, I would have worn it proudly! If you're lucky enough to have mere presence, which means you're embedded in the culture in names and phrases and clothes and statues, some people are going to opt to convert that into your mere absence, and the correct response is not we are being picked on but fair enough, can't win them all.
I say correct, this of course depends on how embattled you are, how unfair it all is, and on the general moral situation.
I'd be really interested in seeing the source for this, if it's an open-source project, along with the prompts and some examples. Or other source/prompt examples you know of.
A lot of people seem to have these magic incantations that somehow make LLMs work really well, at the level marketing and investor hype says they do. However, I rarely see that in the real world. I'm not saying this is true for you, but absent vaguely replicable examples that aren't just basic webshit, I find it super hard to believe they're actually this capable.
For context, this is aider tracking aider's code written by an LLM. Of course there's still a human in the loop, but the stats look really cool. It's the first time I've seen such a product work on itself and tracking the results.
Let's be real here; there is supposed to be a chinese wall between buy and sell sides at the big banks, but I've heard too many stories of that getting circumvented in an unofficial way to believe that's entirely true.
The pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client." From that patron you get some level of benefit. Not aligning with any either doesn't work (you get attacked) or means you get no benefit (and eventually get pushed into obscurity and instability.)
You can make a lot of complaints about America but we have, looking back on history, been nicer than any other patron. Other good evidence includes the fact that europe is still standing (paying to rebuild) and her extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending.
I agree with most of what you said. America has been a great ally, mostly by allowing her allies to flourish independently of herself. The US did whatever she wanted to do, and so did her allies. This was a great benefit to all involved.
> subsidized largely by American defense spending.
This part is in my opinion ahistoric. US wars have not been popular in Europe. We did not want a war in Afghanistan or Iraq, we supported an ally calling for defense from terror. American war machine spending is rooted in her own desire for hard power, not pleas from her allies.
All of this is coming to an end. Not because the US is retracting. I think most of the west would accept a more nationally interested US, but because the US is starting to see her allies as vassals that she should control. She is realigning as a traditional power, like the USSR.
We are not vassals, we are independent nations seeking our own happiness.
> The pattern for basically every small nation is "choose of which superpower you wish to be a client."
This is straight up Russian mentality.
> extravagant welfare states of the past decades, subsidized largely by American defense spending
This sounds to me like a US partisan narrative rather than anything else. It’s a nice story, because it strokes the American ego, but I’ve yet seen it backed up by serious analysis. Most likely it’s just a story.
The fact that the FT is picking this up should tell us something given its typical perspective. There are two big groups of countries in this situation concerned with keeping russia in check: America and the Euros. The former has less of a direct concern but more ability to do something about it; the former have more concerns but less ability. So we settled on a compromise where each country would contribute a proportion of GDP rather than a dollar figure. This is fair-ish; it's still a huge benefit to the euros, but pretty fair. Yet for decades, they have consistently failed to meet their proportional obligations, instead directing those funds to things like "free healthcare".
Other major reasons they can do this include not having debt from having to finance the rebuilding of their continent themselves.
The US is spending more of its GDP percentage-wise on healthcare than any European country. How you can consider the European spending "extravagant" is inexplicable, you have to be deep deep in the ideological rabbit hole, and unable to admit new information.
This is a good example of "lying with statistics". You are doing this by implying we are paying more for the same thing. You are then doing more of this by equating healthcare spend to the total welfare state. Europe is still spending a lot of money on healthcare; less than us, but their healthcare is pretty crappy.
Healthcare is one part of the profligate safety net europe has maintained for decades, not the whole thing. Europe has more pensions, more unemployment, more retirement benefits, more childcare, more socialized housing, more of almost every flavor of welfare. They pay for this by shifting the burden of defending themselves to America.
They have much better healthcare outcomes, so it sounds like they’re way more efficient with their spending.
They also have lower GDP which means that they spend way less in absolute terms.
Of course there’s an article somewhere to back up every opinion that you have. That doesn’t say much.
How you defend your opinions (pointing to other opinions that agree with you and unsubstantiated claims) says a lot though, and is indicative of confirmation bias.
They have healthier people going in, obviously. When the average person is approaching being wider than he is tall, all the healthcare spending in the world can do only so much. I have a bunch of family in Europe and have heard way too many of their experiences with waiting lists and overcrowding.
Not sure what the heck you want in terms of validation if not "analysis that supports my point". Are you now criticizing that I've read on this and have data and analysis that agrees? I'm sure if I didn't, you'd come after me for not having that. Double bind sounding ass.
I don't know how you can look at nearly a century of US imperialism in Latin America and the Middle East and conclude that client states is a Russian thing.
It would be short-termist for Americans or euros to use chinese-made models. Increasing their popularity has an indirect but significant cost in the long term. china "winning AI" should be an unacceptable outcome for America or europe by any means necessary.
Why would that be? I can see why Americans wouldn't want to do that, but Europeans? In the current political climate, where the US openly claims their desire to annex European territory and so on? I'd rather see them prefer a locally hostable open source solution like DeepSeek.
My two cents, as European, is that since we are more and more asking to LLMs for information, it wouldn't be wise to let a foreign country, not even truly democratic, to choose the information we get.
The Chinese don't get any of information if we use self-hosted DeepSeek or Qwen. They are open-source. You can run them in an air-gapped environment that can't phone home.
Sure there's evidence: Your statements about this when challenged. And perhaps to a degree the commit log, at least that can arouse suspicion.
Sure, you can say "I'd just lie about it". But I don't know how many people would just casually lie in court. I sure wouldn't. Ethics is one thing, it takes a lot of guts, considering the possible repercussions.
Yup, Gates style would work. But billionaires have a tendency to not get into serious trouble for lying to the public, a court, congress and what not. Commoners very much do.
The law means don’t do what a slow moving regulator can and will prove in court. In this case, the law has no moral valence so I doubt anyone there would feel guilty breaking it. He may mean individuals are using ChatGPT unofficially even if prohibited nominally by management. Such is the case almost everywhere.
I have also really appreciated something that felt much less janky, had better vim bindings, and wasn't slow to start even on a very fast computer. You can completely botch Cursor if you type really fast. On an older mid-range laptop, I ran into problems with a bunch of its auto-pair stuff of all things.