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fl4regun

313 karma · joined December 24, 2025

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fl4regun··on OpenAI releases GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.5 Pro in the API
what is that task doing???
fl4regun··on Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs
maybe they could produce something useful with that self-determination? or are you being sarcastic?
fl4regun··on If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
how would you measure "happiness" if you were tasked to do so for a study?
fl4regun··on If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
Some universities also have this type of culture (I know of 1 in particular near me which is like this), mine was quite the opposite, lots of collaboration between students. I liked that aspect of it as well.
fl4regun··on If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
I'll throw my hat in the ring as to what might be causing this. I am turning 30 years old this year, and in my experience, I was probably happier prior to graduation from university. I think there is something deeply unsatisfying about the structure of modern adult life - mostly how and where we engage with work.

See, in university we were in close contact to many people, in our age range, with our interests, in both academic and recreational contexts. In work, we are strictly there in professional contexts. That's not to say you can't make friends from work, I do have several people I consider friends that I met like that, but none of them live near, so spending time with them is not going to happen on a regular basis.

The main way I see people involve themselves with others seems to be through what I'd describe as "activity groups", could be the gym you go to, could be a structured class like dancing or tennis clubs, whatever. But these things are usually at most, a few times a week, for about an hour or two at a time. Nothing compared to what being at university with your peers for multiple hours every day was. I think that physical presence near other people is a hugely important driver of establishment of friendships and social groups.

Plus pretty much all of these things require you to invest additional money towards (usually in the form of a monthly bill), just to access. I didn't have to pay anything additional to join a club at university (of which I was involved with probably close to half a dozen, even if I didn't stick with all of them for all 4 years of my time there).

I probably would feel less isolated if I lived closer to my existing friends, but everyone has spread out a lot and there's not much I can do about that. The new friends I've met are usually not that (geographically) close to me either. Everyone is a 30min drive or farther away now it seems.

fl4regun··on If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
I'm sorry a million dollars is still a huge amount of money for normal people, whether it comes from their home or otherwise.
fl4regun··on If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
It's worth noting that while the curve flattens above a threshold, it doesn't level off completely at that threshold, there is still a positive correlation, just a smaller one.
fl4regun··on If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
there's over 20 million millionaires in the USA, that's like, what, 1 in 20?
fl4regun··on All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027
how so? I genuinely don't understand, as someone who has a phone with the lightning connector and other devices with USB C
fl4regun··on All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027
I don't understand your issue with USB C. Mini and micro USB connectors routinely got loose and fell out of multiple devices I owned, USB C is everywhere now and I have not encountered such issues.
fl4regun··on The RAM shortage could last years
this card is 4 years old, it's not on store shelves anymore.
fl4regun··on College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work
at my university in math exams we were only allowed to use 1 specific model of calculator, and most of the exams were answered symbolically anyways, so the calculator usually was not helpful anyways.
fl4regun··on College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work
I think the oral exam is probably a great way to ascertain a student's ability, but let's be real, undergraduate class sizes numbers in the hundreds, for almost every first year class. I don't think it's possible to administer that. I think I would have loved to see that in my later years at university though, we still just did things by written exam + course work.
fl4regun··on NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
very interesting, its quite striking, now I'm even more curious how this compares with the lasers.
fl4regun··on Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
if your car doesn' turn left when you turn the steering wheel left, the problem is that the car is broken, if an LLM does something unexpected after you gave it instructions, that's possible when the LLM is functioning entirely correctly.
fl4regun··on Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
magicians can probably make you change your mind on the former
fl4regun··on Isaac Asimov: The Last Question (1956)
yeah that distinction is pretty important, and in general that guy I believe IS making the point - if you can not control it with guaranteed outcomes - you cannot control it.
fl4regun··on Japan implements language proficiency requirements for certain visa applicants
There's probably not much value in JLPT adding a writing component, however, I do believe that the lack of a speaking component is really disappointing. Being able to consume a language is one thing, being able to produce in it, is another, and vital for someone who will be working and living there.
fl4regun··on Claude Opus 4.7
wait till you hear about how we standardized RF bands. We have gems such as "High frequency", "Very High Frequency", "Ultra High Frequency", "Super High Frequency", and the cherry on top, "Extremely High Frequency". Then they went with the boring" Teraherz Frequency", truly a disappointment.

These are all mirrored on the low side btw, so we also have "Extremely Low Frequency", and all the others.

fl4regun··on PCI Express over Fiber [video]
Cool project! PCIe itself I think is likely to end up doing something similar soon, there are provisions in the spec now for optical retimers.
fl4regun··on AI-assisted cognition endangers human development?
I don't know, I am not an AI researcher, but if it is done that way, it seems very short sighted (given the things AI is advertised to be able to do)
fl4regun··on Japan implements language proficiency requirements for certain visa applicants
It should be noted that JLPT is not a direct equivalent to CEFR. CEFR requires you to pass speaking and writing, JLPT does not demand you to be able to write, or speak, at all. IT only tests listening and reading. This ironically means that while yeah, you will be able to read a LOT of kanji with JLPT N2, you might not be anywhere near B2 level at speaking and conversation, and probably not at all when it comes to writing (writing Kanji is a whole other thing beyond being able to read, it requires dedicated practice, but anyways a lot of people now don't need to since you can type it out on your phone or computer, and just copy that onto the form or whatever you are writing on)
fl4regun··on The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?
That's not proof that it will ever do those things in the future either, however.
fl4regun··on AI-Assisted Cognition Endangers Human Development
I agree with you, this is a huge concern, and we are still in an age where most content on the internet isn't ai generated yet. What about 10 years from now? We have many instances of people writing posts on reddit or uploading videos and blogs using AI generated text. What happens when that is a significant percentage of content?

I recently saw a video discussing a researcher who published a fake scientific article about a fictitious disease, with bogus author names, even a warning IN the article itself that stated "This is not a real disease, this article is not real" (paraphrasing) but still AI ended up picking up this article and serving information from it as if it was a real disease.

It even got cited in papers (which were later redacted of course), but the fact those papers got published in the first place is a serious issue.

fl4regun··on Top laptops to use with FreeBSD
I use arch, but I don't see the distro as mattering that much. For the most part it just feels like picking your poison on which init system, what package manager you want to use, etc, but the end experience isn't too different once everything is set up. I can run steam on each one, they all have gcc, they all have support for the same set of desktop environments, they all have chrome/ff/whatever browser you want. At this point I'm just using what I have set up because the setup is what takes most of the effort, once that's done, it's smooth sailing.
fl4regun··on Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?
For real, the tools at my workplace either all work on linux already, or we just do most of our work on AWS linux VMs over VNC anyways, but our laptops are all windows. I'd rather have debian or fedora or whatever on my laptop but IT doesn't care, and they already have everything set up on windows. My laptop doesn't even matter, it basically only needs access to a web browser and it would be fine.

The gaming moat is ever shrinking, at this point it's really only for games that explicitly choose not to support linux (very few in number), or have decided that kernel based anti cheat is the ONLY one worth using (few in number but some can be quite popular). Single player games have been working great for me for many years now, but I don't play stuff like apex legends, league, valorant etc.

fl4regun··on Top laptops to use with FreeBSD
So can anyone give me a short explanation on why someone would use freeBSD over linux? I do run it technically, on my router (OPNSense), but that's not a personal computer, like a desktop or laptop. What are the advantages to running FreeBSD?
fl4regun··on The Importance of Being Idle
it seems like you are interpreting this as an argument for "not doing work" - but it's not the case. It is more so saying that rest is important too. You ever have the experience that you are bashing your head against something, take a break to stop working on it, and come back refreshed and solve it quickly? Just because something is important, doesn't mean you should do that thing, single-mindedly, at the expense of other things.
fl4regun··on The Importance of Being Idle
lol it's the same here in Canada, I'm guessing the US too is not too different
fl4regun··on The Importance of Being Idle
Why are you arguing for EU member states to become US territories instead of EU states just federalizing?
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