Omer Preminger
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omer.land
Omer Preminger
@omer.land
140 followers 220 following 100 posts
Van Buren Boys treasurer emeritus, aspiring aedile of Morbovia.

Was a linguist for a while, now back to telling computers what to do.

Holder of a PhD and very often a coffee mug.
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omer.land
lmao, just got a notification from Google Scholar that it was "time to update my profile"... sure, sure. But curiosity got the better of me and I clicked through; turns out 2024 was my best year ever in terms of citations bwahahaha
January 25, 2025 at 5:34 PM
omer.land
AGI is right around the corner everyone

(credit: yuechenzhao on LinkedIn)
ChatGPT o1-preview Q: I have a bucket that can hold 7L of water. However, it's missing the bottom and the top is welded and sealed shut. How much water can this bucket hold? <Thought for 8 seconds> A: Since the bucket is missing the bottom and the top is sealed shut, it has no enclosed space to hold water. Any water poured into it would simply flow out through the open bottom. Therefore, the bucket cannot hold any water in its current condition.
September 21, 2024 at 2:39 PM
omer.land
This remains the most accurate analysis of LLMs-as-models-of-cognition:
A tweet from user @aedison that says: "I wrote 'I am alive' on a piece of paper, and placed it into a photocopier. What I saw next has shocking implications"
September 15, 2024 at 3:47 PM
omer.land
You've heard of "the Year of Linux on the Desktop".

But what about "the Year of Linux on the Palmtop"?
Photo of a GPD 10" mini-laptop in someone's hand, with the Ubuntu 24.04 desktop visible on the screen.
September 9, 2024 at 9:20 PM
omer.land
homespun low-fi server status snapshot 🤓
A screenshot of an iTerm2 window with multiple tabs open in tmux integration mode, on a host named "octavia". The tab that's in the foreground is displaying the status of various system services: systemd services, snap services, podman containers, and docker containers, showing whether they are up (they all are) and how long they've been up for.
August 31, 2024 at 2:39 PM
omer.land
short-legged dog hanging out in the grass and playing with a red fish-shaped dog toy short-legged dog hanging out in the grass and playing with a red fish-shaped dog toy short-legged dog hanging out in the grass and playing with a red fish-shaped dog toy short-legged dog hanging out in the grass and playing with a red fish-shaped dog toy
August 21, 2024 at 2:56 AM
omer.land
it's like tabitis but for apps

(yes I'm well aware of RAM, swap, and virtual memory constraints; don't worry, my machine is a goddamn horse)
a screenshot of a macOS dock with a gazillion apps open at once
August 15, 2024 at 1:14 AM
omer.land
POV: you have his attention
A close-up of a dog looking up at the camera, with its nose prominently in the foreground. A blue dog pool and another dog are visible in the background.
July 24, 2024 at 8:57 AM
omer.land
we've reached the "household UPS unit" stage of tech nerdiness
picture of a desktop UPS power supply, next to various other electronics, showing a reading of 52W of current being drawn
June 9, 2024 at 5:27 PM
omer.land
Brain Before Sleep meme: "ARE YOU GOING TO SLEEP?" "YES I AM NOW SHUT UP" "YOUR *RIGHT* THUMB IS ON THE *LEFT* SIDE OF ITS HAND"
March 21, 2024 at 3:33 AM
omer.land
same vibes
a photo of a bunch of dogs in which one dog is jumping up at the photographer so its face is closer to the camera than the other dogs' faces are the Ellen Degeneres / Bradley Cooper Oscars selfie
March 20, 2024 at 11:37 PM
omer.land
what if build entire house out of keyboard?? 🤔
a computer desk including an external monitor, a StreamDeck, and a KINESIS Advantage360 keyboard with its two halves straddling a small Apple bluetooth keyboard. the Apple keyboard's keys are covered in a blue keyboard-skin.
February 11, 2024 at 1:35 AM
omer.land
This is great even by Cory Doctorow's standards - and that's saying something: pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/g...

(You don't have to watch the video; the transcript is provided right below it on the page.)
"But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that's piracy. Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they'll say you violated US laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EUCD. Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple's media stores and they'd bomb you until the rubble bounced."
February 2, 2024 at 5:32 AM
omer.land
There's two kinds of people: those who think this is beautiful, and those whose blood pressure rises when they see this 🤓
a Cable Matters KVM switch with 5 USB-A cables and 3 HDMI cables plugged into it, next to two 4-way USB-A hubs, each with 3 of their 4 ports used, by a total of 5 USB-A cables and one RF dongle
January 31, 2024 at 7:46 PM
omer.land
Arc Browser easels + Grafana 🥰
a screenshot of a window showing live snippets of Grafana charts & dials interspersed with live snippets from other websites (like the green indicators from the Mullvad VPN "check my connection" site)
January 28, 2024 at 3:43 PM
omer.land
Perplexity AI, ladies and gentlemen!
a search result from Perplexity AI, saying: "Omer Preminger works as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland. He is not the same person as the software engineer with the same name."
January 27, 2024 at 10:21 PM
omer.land
when you're underlyingly a cow
sleeping dog with the bottom of his right front paw facing the camera, and it's splotchy pink-and-black colored
January 21, 2024 at 1:04 AM
omer.land
linguistics
text of a footnote (note number 7), which says: "The timestamps are recorded in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which for most practical purposes is the same as Greenwich Mean Time. But why call it UTC? From the NIST Time and Frequency FAQ: Q: Why is UTC used as the acronym for Coordinated Universal Time instead of CUT? A: In 1970 the Coordinated Universal Time system was devised by an international advisory group of technical experts within the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU felt it was best to designate a single abbreviation for use in all languages in order to minimize confusion. Since unanimous agreement could not be achieved on using either the English word order, CUT, or the French word order, TUC, the acronym UTC was chosen as a compromise."
December 21, 2023 at 12:36 AM
omer.land
the boys absolutely riveted by NFL redzone
two hound dogs sleeping facing opposite directions with the older dog's head resting atop the younger one's head
September 24, 2023 at 6:44 PM
omer.land
Forget just *thinking* about the Roman Empire every day. I get to *look* at it!
framed poster showing the roads of the Roman Empire in the style of a modern public-transit map
September 23, 2023 at 4:19 PM
omer.land
screenshot of a Mastodon post from user "Missing The Point" (@MissingThePt@mastodon.social), that says: "Why doesn’t Elon charge people who don’t use Twitter, it’s a faster-growing market segment."
September 19, 2023 at 2:47 PM
omer.land
we should make HoundSky a thing
brown hound with his head tilted up more than 90 degrees looking at the face of a person who is mostly out of frame (only the person's jeans and shirt sleeve are visible)
July 6, 2023 at 3:59 AM
omer.land
Try not to melt. I dare you.
brown hound with his head tilted up more than 90 degrees looking at the face of a person who is mostly out of frame (only the person's jeans and shirt sleeve are visible)
July 6, 2023 at 2:10 AM
omer.land
google maps screenshot of an intersection with a Tim Hortons on one corner and a Dunkin on the other Bugs Bunny holding a carrot, saying: "Of course you realize, this means war"
July 4, 2023 at 5:25 AM
omer.land
they say this kind of stuff makes for good intro posts so
two hounds (one brown & one brown-ish white) snuggling snouts on a yellow duvet
July 3, 2023 at 11:02 PM