VikingCoder

> If someone doesn't understand the fundamental concepts being discussed then why should anyone give credence to their opinion?

Because we're a democracy, we vote, and we might vote for foolish policies unless you take the time to explain to us, in language we can understand, why they're a bad idea.

It sucks that the burden is on you. I don't deny that. But the burden is on me to explain why electronic voting (without a paper trail) is bad, that climate change is real, that vaccines are essentially miraculous, and wearing a mask during a deadly global pandemic is a good thing.

And there's certainly a lot of people willing to use fancy terms to defend cryptocurrencies, but honestly, that doesn't mean they're right.

We all have to do labor to keep the electorate informed.

> It isn't done because it has overt pathological economic characteristics.

A secondary home over $1 million in value also has overt pathological economic characteristics. Especially if the taxes paid on it are tragically low.

> This forces the owner to write a long-term call option on a non-commodity asset without even collecting the offsetting risk premium expected for such a call option.

Eminent domain already exists.

> without even collecting the offsetting risk premium

You get to have a second home, in New York, with a value of over $1 million.

Yes, I'm proposing taxation and regulation on top of that.

But, knowing this law exists, everyone gets to make the choice whether they want it or not.

We also have the legal mandate to institute taxes in the first place. You also did not collect an offsetting risk premium for that, and had no right to expect one.

> This puts the asset permanently underwater by construction

Eminent domain already did that. And you're saying "permanently," but I think you could fairly easily steel-man my proposal to say that the government has a certain number of days after property taxes are paid to declare their intention to collect. That's different from "permanently."

I'm not an expert, by any means.

But you also just described what buying a house in an HOA is like. You have no idea what future fees will be like. And you have very little control. And many HOAs can foreclose on your house, if you don't pay their fees. John Oliver did a whole segment on it. And something like 80% of new home construction is under an HOA.

So, why should I have an over-abundance of sympathy for people, with a secondary home, in NY City, worth over $1 million?

Maybe the whole concept of a secondary home over $1 million in value, in New York city, should just not exist?

Or, maybe it should exist, but the taxes should be pretty damn high, and they should be based off of a pretty damn fair assessment of value. I'm all open to counter-proposals of how to get a more equitable assessment of value.

I wasn't explicit, but I was proposing this for the same non-primary residences that the NY law is talking about.

Now that I've explained that, do you still think this would "dramatically cut housing security"?

If you still feel this would make housing "insecure", because someone's secondary home, if it has a value over $1 million, is subject to this system I propose, then you and I have a fundamentally different idea of what "housing security" is.

Sorry all, I wasn't explicit, but I was proposing that this would be on non-primary residences.

Huh, the LLM deleted itself.

I guess that is a valid solution to that prompt.

Yes, I want to build a clone for the SAAS product my company uses.

And if someone has gone to the bother to make a prompt that helps my LLM build one, and it either already doesn't have the features I don't need, or I can have my LLM start by trimming the features I don't need before it builds it...

Then I think you're saying the same thing I'm saying.

Dumb question - what about corporations (or charities?) that own homes? Are they automatically "second homes", since a corporation has no primary residence?

Are we going to see things classified as not-residences, but then people can vacation there anyway, much like Mar-a-Lago supposedly cannot be a residence, but apparently President Trump lives there and votes there, anyway?

> While the tax seems large, experts say the city’s antiquated assessment and valuation system dramatically undervalues properties, reducing the burden. City valuations can often be 10% or less of the true market value, they said.

I heard about a system for this that struck me as brilliant. Make someone declare the value of their property. Then the government has the choice of taxing them at the scheduled rate, or buying the property from them, for that cost.

TADA.

And if someone wants to artificially inflate the value of their home, to reflect the difficulty of moving out, finding a new secondary residence, etc, then that's their business. No worries. We'll tax that additional value, no problem.

I think this system goes back thousands of years. Why not use it?

At some point, some people will just publish open source single-shot LLM prompts that define a clean-room spec for every over-priced product.

Why not make an open source alternative to the product?

Because everyone's needs are just a little different, and collaborating takes maintenance. Forks are free, merges are expensive.

I'm at the point where if there's a computer display, or 3D model, or any asset in a movie, I want there to be a Kickstarter to pay the producers to open source the original assets. Even if it's a super restrictive license.

I want all of the War Games original graphics. I know people have come a long way. But I want all of them.

The "Hackers" movie. "Sneakers". "The Matrix". These individual assets deserve to be preserved! They're iconic. They're art, in their own rights!

Anyone taking bets on how that ban will last?

For some reason, I want to see this cartridge stuffed into one of those FPGA-based NES emulators (one that takes cartridges.)

You may enjoy this Tom7 video about doing that with the NES:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0

$0.35 per 1,000 outbound emails. Unlimited inbound emails.

How's that compare?

The "S" in "LLM" is for "Security".

Is it on ShaderToy yet? :D

Also reminds me of Bob Dylan's "How Does It Feel" website:

https://video.bobdylan.com/

Which has folks from The History channel, Pawn Stars, etc

Now make it a Roku app!!! :D

Well said.

I have a normal PC...

I'd love some kind of external tape drive that I can connect with USB-C, or USB-3...

But everything is SAS? And no way to convert SAS to SATA?

Recommendations?

It'll be nice to see how quickly I burn through this free money with auto-reload off.

Unless they somehow say, "You owe us $181,902, bucko! Turning off auto-reload just meant 'Don't add more money to pay off your debt!' It didn't mean, 'Don't incur more debt!' SUCKER!"

The World Factbook wasn't prone to hallucinations, intentional omissions, the whims of billionaires, or the unstated goals of astroturfing groups.

If the government has somewhere to tell you what it thinks is true, you can use that to double-check another part of the government that's misleading you on that same data. You can also double-check it against other sources of truth to gain insight about potential manipulation in one or more of the systems.

Here's one hot take:

https://tcf.org/content/commentary/a-well-informed-electorat...

I suck at electronics, so -

Could you possibly make a modern cell phone that runs off of rechargeable AA batteries?

How many would it take to have roughly the same amount of screen time?

ChatGPT says it's a bad idea, but roughly I'd need 10 AA batteries and a boost converter.

I made an Actually Portable Executable web server out of this. You download one file, and it can run on many different systems.

https://github.com/MattCruikshank/emu_ape

I'm trying to set it up so you can add roms to a folder, and it'll use them. (Remember Actually Portable Executables are ZIP files, too!)

I've got it working. Used Mongoose. Unfortunately Actually Portable Executables seem to not play well with WSL, and the suggested fixes didn't work. I'm able to play with it in a VM. Not as portable as I'd hoped, but I'll see how it goes.

I desperately want to write C/C++ code that has a web server and can talk websockets, and that I can compile with Cosmopolitan.

I don't want Lua. Using Lua is crazy clever, but it's not what I want.

I should just vibe code the dang thing.

If I'm not mistaken, there was not supposed to be a standing army.

If you have a standing army, that creates a whole rats nest of problems.

And ps, I've talked to people who think we shouldn't have a standing army, and I frankly think they're insane.

I'd like to start with something that works, and then make it affordable.

Rather than start with something free, that demonstrably doesn't work where it needs to.

Please, sell me a USB-C device that gives me mesh networking on my phone.

I'd like a Small, Medium, and Large option. Ideally, each would have a passthrough charger, so I can charge my phone even with the device plugged in to my phone.

The Small is just the device, and I guess it would drain my phone's battery. The Large would have a 25,000mAh and be just small enough to legally take on an airplane in the United Stated. The Medium has a smallish battery, maybe?

Give me what you can. Wifi. FRS. CB. LoRa. The ability to switch between those? The ability to broadcast across all of those in some spread-spectrum broadcast?

Make me use your special App that I have to install on my phone.

Make the device also act like a storage device. The Small has usb storage big enough to store the APK for the app for me to side-load.

The Large has enough usb storage for, I dunno, all of Wikipedia and medical texts, and open maps, and a few other things, and the Kiwix app to side-load.

Make the Medium and the Large also be able to be a hotspot, for other people nearby to be able to connect to, so they can download the app and browse Kiwix, and send messages through my phone? Or just let my phone be that hotspot, I guess?

And most importantly, give me messaging. Secure point-to-point, exchanging keys by touching our phones together, or using QR codes, or something.

Or broadcast messaging. With configurable repeating.

And then make the Base Station version of this, which has solar panels, and a battery, and it's just a repeater. You install and forget.

If you're only going to build one thing, build the Small version I described. Next, I guess, would be the Base Station. Next would be the Large.

Where is the Kickstarter? I'll back it right now. I'll buy 2 Large, 6 Small, and 4 Base Stations. Right now.

Fuck cancer.