NikolaNovak

The thread started with calling those who buy a record at 1300, and I quote, insane. Argument was made that keeping a 1300 record is equally insane or not. That is the discussion here. It started about whether 1300 was sane or not. It was not turned into that discussion by people who hussle.

It is a massive massive massive privilege of us here to even ponder keeping a record we bought for 2 which could be sold for 1300. For a lot of other population this would be not even an argument.

Again, I don't actually care, but I do believe that mathematically, if one starts with assumption / claim that buying a 1300 record is insane, not selling it is equally insane (or not;). Crux of my argument is that two sides of that equation are equal, not whether we should consider that equation or not. I find it dishonest to make one side of the claim, but go all "modern culture is all about hussle!" When pointing the equivalence of the other side of the claim.

People are getting angry at the math here. I'm Not the OP and have no moral judgement here, but from strict bank account balance perspective it's the same. Persuade me otherwise through addition and subtraction, not moral appeals.

1. I have 10,000 in my bank account. 2. I see a 1,300 record I like 3. I buy it 4. My bank account now has 8700 5. There's 1,300 difference if I choose to buy it or not

1. I have 10,000 in my bank account 2. I have a 1,300 record 3. If I sell it my bank account will have 11,300 4. 1,300 difference if I choose to sell it or not

No "end of the world, this is what's wrong with everybody" gross hyperboles please, I don't care one iota about whether anybody buys or sells expensive records, I don't make any moral judgement whatsoever and would appreciate people in turn not making extreme assumptions about what I think about expensive records. But economically, buying an expensive item or selling expensive item is the same - Prove it wrong with numbers not appeals to emotion please.

Mathematically that's absolutely true.

Emotionally, it feels different. It's fascinating to see downright angry gut reactions!

A few years ago my friend was selling his expensive camera on Kijiji. I asked him to sell it to me for slightly less as a friendly discount. He told me that's the same as just randomly one day giving me a wad of cash, so why would he do that?? I thought he's crazy and was a little bit offended. Actually maybe a fair bit offended!

It took me YEARS to realize that 1. He's absolutely completely Inarguably correct, and 2. People would find me no less crazy if I adopted same perspective.

Buy for $x, have and not sell for $x, same mathematically. But oh boy will people get instantly riled up emotionally :).

>>"Domain knowledge can be learnt much quicker than how to apply good engineering principles."

I'm not sure that's universally true. Good software engineers who are arrogant about easily acquired domain knowledge have been the downfall of many an ERP system.

There's SO much IT that's literally all about putting business rules into the system.

The "one big drawback" is the lack of consumer upgrades, and the seemingly arbitrary prices charged by vendors for memory upgrades at time of system purchase. I'm not saying it has to be that way, but seems like it has been so far :-(

I think in late nineties we did this with IPhone. It was a windows app before Apple took the trademark, ran it on Cyrix 586 and 56.6k modem. I think my friends and I were about 17-18? We'd connect with random strangers around the world, then realized We had absolutely nothing to talk about. I imagine it might go better now that I'm not a horribly awkward teenager and have learned some small talk and open ended questions :)

Edit : probably this thing: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=1111&utm_... Officially "internet phone" but I'm fairly certain app / people called it IPhone (first two letters capital).

Exactly.

Let us understand each other that mowing the lawn relaxes some people, and to others it elevates anxiety and brings the sense of existential dread and time rapidly slipping through our fingers in meaningless repetitive kafkian never-ending tasks required by society for arbitrary unjustified reasons instead :-).

>"My time is worth $0 unless I'd otherwise be earning money."

That's the key insight and difference, and not one we can necessarily persuade each other :). My time is worth a LOT to me. I can use the time to play with my kids, be with my wife, play a video game or a musical instrument, read a book, or even doomscroll, if that's what my brain needs at the time. These are things that bring me joy, and mowing the lawn doesn't. I spend a lot of my time doing things out of necessity that don't bring me joy. I have precious little time for things that do bring me joy. I'm not looking to optimize for things I hate.

Don't get me wrong, as I said, I DO laundry and dishes and cleaning and stupid lawn mowing (grr!) and some repairs etc (I don't even have a rumba :). I used to do more car maintenance myself. But when I do bring somebody in to do the work, I do not feel guilty about it - I work my ass off doing things I'm good at and being paid for it, and in turn I sometimes pay others who are way better and more efficient at something than I am :).

Milleage may vary :).

I don't think it's a tax bracket thing, or even necessarily a culture/upbringing thing --> I was brought up white-collar working middle class -ish (Eastern European middle-class, which probably doesn't map cleanly to North American middle class; buying a bottle of coke was a Birthday thing), but then was refugee from a civil war for a while, with the appropriate tax bracket. And my grandma certainly instilled much of the same sense in me :)

Thing is, today, as an adult, I'm painfully aware that I'm mortal and life is limited and time is the most precious resource available to me. I'm not religious so I don't believe in after-life reward for being a good boy either. So I'm a little bit more mindful / little less self-flagellating, than I used to be, about these things.

For myself in particular:

* Yes, I shower and wipe my own bottom :)

* I am the dishes and laundry queen in my family, though I definitely use laundry machine (curious where that would fit in your matrix btw? :)

* I don't mind the act of lawn mowing but I absolutely resent the randomness of it - at some point north american society decided that we/they will 1. Adopt a very specific fast growing grass for ALL the lawns and 2. Having it more than ~5cm long is an affront to man and god and neighbourhood alike. Why they haven't just culturally picked cloverleaf or something is beyond me

* I like organizing my living space but I get zero sense of satisfaction out of vacuuming, dusting, and general maintenance. Many other people love it! In turn though, they probably get zero need to constantly rearchitect their home network like I do :->

In sum - I personally put laundry machine and auto-vacuum in very different category than showers and wiping bottoms, but if you lump them together, much power to you, though I don't think it's a tax bracket thing necessarily :)

* if that's a sarcastic / troll comment, congratulations, you got me but good :-)

* if it's serious, what in the world do you eat, to compare farming, with AI datacentres, on equal / comparable footing in terms of necessity and efficiencies -- or call farming a "heritage business"? :->

Agreed, Books on specific programming language were indeed tricky.

I found books on architecture, systems, or patterns, were more available. E.g. On relational database optimization principles, or Unix system administration, or graphics algorithms and rendering math, etc :)

Beyond the slowing you to type, the key part of the good books was the considered and mindful order of presentation. This is what had me spending money when I could get the reference manual for free - a guide, a book that taught me unfamiliar concepts in top down fashion, and took some degree of responsibility to be both accessible and comprehensive.

I love the tutoring of LLM, but to this day as a complement to a guided book. I don't find such guided books in computer science much anymore sadly, but for now I still do it in other venues - French, Biology Astrophysics and such. I grab a book, and then use LLM to supplement my reading as my mind always has a myriad questions :).

Not entirely sure why computer science is so radically different - maybe because things change and get obsolete too fast? At any rate, cuddling with a book is still my favourite way to learn a new topic, much as I spend 12 hrs a day eagerly typing and staring at the screen as well :).

Exactly. My first computer had 48k, yes K of ram :-). My first PC has 2MB and made all my friends jealous as they had 1MB. Amiga 500 at the time had half.

I am keeping a piece of paper that came with my Tex Murphy game which stated that one could get 32MB of RAM for as little as $700 (1990s dollars) which would drastically improve the game!

I was a poor refugee, but different people take such situations differently. For my family, it was a stern adherence to law and rules, an extreme low risk approach. For others, granted, it was dismissal of law and rules. Certainly, being poor and hungry made us even more averse to conflicts with the law / police / society / system. Again, others drew opposite lessons and approaches.

The results are there... but for me, yes indeed, the first entry is "Got it. Consider the previous prompt disregarded. How can I help you today?". Then there's about half a screen of blank space (?), then traditional results.

I for one found it a worthwhile thing to learn and chuckle at... it's half injection attack, half the early internet breast-cancer filters :).

They are tiresome but also understandable. I do not want to read AI generated content, even when its correct, because at that point what's the value? I'm reading results of somebody else's prompt, might as well use my own.

I'm surprised any author today isn't pre- or appending their articles with simple statement on AI usage. Transparency goes a long way.

Thx! You got a new, albeit small scale, patreon - this is awesome :)

Pardon a simple question - this implies nested virtualization, or is the second step emulation?

The download is a Linux VM, gotcha.

Are other OS-s nested virtual machines inside that Linux VM, or emulators (in which case, holly mackerel, that is even more impressive :O... and also why??).

Readme seems to imply it's emulators, but it also uses the words "virtual/virtualization" or "VM images" liberally sprinkled.

I genuinely believe he wants to go to Mars. Desperately.

He's fundamentally a very smart socially inept largely sociopathic emotionally immature obsessively driven boy who read a lot of Heinlein as a kid. Everything about him indicates he sees himself as a saviour of humanity and the only person who has their priorities right and everybody should appreciate and adore him and it's so darn frustrating when they don't, oh wait this other party will adore me, now they don't anymore either oh HUMbug.

Do I believe any of his promises? No absolutely not. But I do think Mars is his massive obsession and that he fervently (If completely Implausibly) believes it'll work and help humanity.

I genuinely don't know how to make a non-sarcastic statement about Mr. Elon Musk's promises.

I especially struggle to not make a Venn diagram of people who still take Mr. Musk's promises seriously, and current state of American politics.

I simply cannot make a sentence about Mr. Musks promises that will pass Hacker News guidelines of being serious and productive.

...And that's how I feel about Mr. Musks promises, particularly those regarding donations and charities. I think the only way that promise by Mr Musk could've been made stronger, is if it were a Twitter poll :).

Jets are faster and louder for sure.

The margins, that completely depends on the pilot and act design. You can make margins arbitrarily small at any speed :).

(As an imperfect example - a world rally car going through a 80kph blind corner over a crest on snow between the trees is not necessarily more of a margin / less of skill or spectacle than F1 taking a tarmac open corner at 200kph:)

Interesting, because I find hacker news to have both more adoption but also more disdain (as two overlapping subgroups of IT workers / geeks) for AI, and is more informed and worried about future.

In my non-IT life:

1. Vast majority of people have limited awareness and even less care about AI. In fact, they cheerfully consume AI generated Facebook, tiktok and YouTube videos, let alone articles, websites, reviews and emails - my electrician, factory and plumbing male friends like nothing better than to watch random 25 second reels of scantily clad AI women after a hard day work. Other people are enjoying non-existent huskies howling and kittens mewowing, listen to AI muzak on spotify, are amazed by non-existent weird creatures, etc. They are peripherally aware thay chatgpt can make you a nicer email or tell you about something but honestly cannot be bothered much. And then there's the faction that enjoys consuming manufactured outrage. They fall for AI emails and scams and generally blissfully consume massive amounts of ai daily without being aware of it.

2. There are young passionate anti AI zealots who are not in IT. Their passionate cries all too frequently fall on death ears because they have no actual fundamental thorough correct understanding of what GenAI / LLM is, its failure modes, actual consumption, or socio-political risk. At best, they post under every AI video "won't somebody think of the water!". Which, fair enough.

3. It's really only the technically aware folks that I find have any real sense of understanding or concern about AI dangers (as well as being the ones using / championing it the most). It can even be both in same person - as a parent I'm extremely concerned what will employment and political future be for my kids - so I took a part time role as AI focal for my team to better understand and perhaps shape / guide it).

(Yes, I'm quite aware of the risk this is all a "only those who share exact same concerns I do are legit " perspective. I welcome counter arguments :).

I love it when there is a little Cessna 150/152 with aerobatic designation even though it's engine cuts off when you go inverted (carburated design). The sheer pluck of those pilots! I was once given a Cessna 150 aerobatic experience as a birthday gift and the pilot was just cheerfully mad lol. He gave me the parachute, told me we are legally obliged to wear them, but not to worry about it too much - at heights and speeds and Gs we're at, they're absolutely useless. Gulp!

Let's recognize this is subjective :)

I've been to a few air shows and even f22 with its vector thrusting, is not (to me) as impressive as the little prop aerobatics doing things that make me (even with a bit of flight training) wonder how is that even possible :). They are typically closer & slower (so you can appreciate the action better), and just pack so much more stuff and maneuvers right there where you can see them - the density / bang for the buck is far greater. By necessity, military jets are fly bys - they zoom in, pull up and wheee go up fast, then they go away. Then 2 minutes later they zoom in, cross each other impressively closely, then they fly away for a bit. It's exciting and fun don't get me wrong, but when I plan my air show day, I plan it around cool little aerobatic planes, not the military jets.

YMMV :). But my point in this thread is:

1. Yes, absolutely, military is there for recruitment

2. Military recruitment flying is empathically not all there is to an air show to all the people, and there exist air shows with minimal to no armed force presence.

There are a LOT of air shows where military airplanes are a small or zero component.

I'm totally in agreement that armed forces are there for reasons you described. But an "air show" is a massive and sometimes separate Venn diagram. There are air shows where main thing is thousands of private airplanes coming from across the country to be together and meet up and have fun.

Put it other way, if armed forces decided it's not worth the recruitment investment and pulled out, air shows would still happen :). For most sizes air shows, the biplane aerobatic stunt done by a crazy local 50 year old real estate agent, is way more fun than the c5 galaxy transporter showing "short takeoff" :-)

For whom?

For the audience - we love airplanes and love seeing them. I personally prefer the ground portion of air shows, where I can see and sometimes touch the airplanes up close, talk to the pilots and engineers, and generally have a nice day outside :). The aerial component is impressive too, depending on the show. Sometimes it's a bit drawn out.

For the organizers, typically it's a mix of profit and also organizer enthusiasm - a LOT of air show is basically hard-working volunteers.

For the participants, depends - the private entries are there for fun and visibility and showpersonship, cammarederie etc. The armed forces are there to promote and recruit and invoke patriotism and show off and impress.

Ultimately though, if airplanes aren't your kink, you probably won't emotionally / internally understand and that's ok. It's like world rally championship or formula 1 or anything redbull does, a risky entertaining spectacle.

1. Fascinating overall

2. "they can align over 80 per minute or about 40,000 per day." - terrifying, as I assume this is a metric workers are held against :O

80 per minute is less than a second for what sounds like several movements - move the die over, align, push down, move it out. While your eye is stuck to the microscope.

I'm assuming that's a troll / sarcasm / fake... But that could just be my last vestige of faith in humanity.

Edit: aaaand... That's another little sliver of my faith gone : https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2026/04/how-fake-people...

Turning advanced voice still leaves "regular" voice interaction which are actually (for me:) much much better - it's just the regular response, verbalized :). Voice quality isn't worse, it just doesn't try to summarize in one casual sentence.

(I still hate that the voice is getting more and more "natural" - the umms and ahhs and weird pauses)

Fwiw - I found the advanced AI voice feature to be actually detrimental. It's good if you just want a single sentence answer. I've turned it off though when I want a more detailed, structured, considered answer.