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jpcfl

312 karma · joined February 12, 2021

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jpcfl··on America.gov
Yes. That is why I called ABC.

If you're really curious, I want to get a Type-86 tasting license for my store. The ABC site[1] says my kind of store (<5000sqft) is "generally" not qualified, which makes it sound like there are exceptions (spoiler: there are).

The first agent told me that the license is not an add-on, meaning I'd have to complete a very long and expensive process to obtain the license with the risk of getting denied. This was wrong. It's an add-on.

The second agent told me that I was not eligible because I have less than 5000sqft of space. Not true (see below).

The third told my wife that 75% of the items in our store need to be alcoholic beverages to qualify. Wrong again.

I finally asked my legal LLM, which pointed me to the statute, which says, "Type-86 ... can be issued to businesses which also hold off-sale retail licenses [that] earn at least 75 percent of their total gross sales from the sale of alcoholic beverages." Ultimately, it comes down to how ABC interprets and enforces this law, so I really expected to get some clarity from them rather than complete falsities.

[1]: https://www.abc.ca.gov/instructional-tasting-license-for-off...

jpcfl··on America.gov
> how do you resolve the problem that people will take the output of the chatbot as authoritative even when it could possibly have errors or miss important nuance?

Compare this with the benchmark.

Earlier this year I called ABC with a question about my liquor license and spoke to three different agents. Each one gave me a different answer. All of them were wrong.

jpcfl··on Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives
There is a moral hazard with ADAS + human drivers:

> Once drivers move from the novelty phase to the post-novelty operational phase, behavioral adaptation may begin to occur and overreliance and over-trust in the automation features potentially develop, including a greater willingness to look away from the forward road (as shown in the VCC data set). [1]

I'm not sure if this is more dangerous than strictly human-operated vehicles, but I would wager that it is more dangerous than strictly autonomous vehicles.

1. https://aaafoundation.org/research/understanding-the-impact-...

jpcfl··on U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
If you don’t know how to prompt an AI to obtain facts, then that is a skill issue.
jpcfl··on U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
Skill issue
jpcfl··on U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
I would suggest prompting your favorite LLM about Antifa, anti-fascism and anti-capitalism, rather than advertising your naivety here.

Opposition to fascism isn't centrism when fascism is broadly defined to include centrist ideas and the opposition is expressed as firebombing Tesla dealerships.

jpcfl··on U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
Antifa is not centrist
jpcfl··on U.S. sanctions against the A/I Collective
It is intentionally vague. From the State Dept:

> The A/I Collective exclusively offers its tools and services to radical left-wing actors and manually vets all potential users for ideological affinity before granting them access to its infrastructure.

jpcfl··on US Supreme Court drug users cannot be prohibited from firearms [pdf]
"Well regulated" refers to their ability to shoot straight, and a militia is a civilian force. This language is about civilians being capable of handling weapons.
jpcfl··on Love systemd timers
> Prime Time for a Timer Primer

It's pronounced, "primmer."

jpcfl··on Elevated errors on Claude.ai, API, Claude Code
> claude: "API Error: 500... check status.claude.com"

> status.claude.com: "All Systems Operational"

jpcfl··on The C23 edition of Modern C
> It should be ++C because with C++ the value you get from the expression is the old one.

You get it!

jpcfl··on The C23 edition of Modern C
Or

    xxd --include <file>
:)
jpcfl··on The C23 edition of Modern C
Bjarne should have called it ++C.
jpcfl··on Apple has reached its first-ever union contract with store employees in Maryland
> sometimes negatively impacting business is very good

This is an oxymoron.

jpcfl··on Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
Anyone who calls this election fair is not impartial. The scale of the fraud is enormous and undeniable.

Tell me, how many Venezuelans abroad were able to vote? How many were kept out of the country because the borders were closed? How many were threatened or intimidated into voting for Maduro? How many votes were cast using false ID? How many were confused by the ballot which had 13 options to vote for Maduro? How many polling stations were closed at the last minute?

jpcfl··on Apple has reached its first-ever union contract with store employees in Maryland
And my point is that a store deciding to unionize could negatively impact the business. Calling for the death of the company, and inciting images of child slaves in chains is not an argument against that. It's an appeal to emotion.
jpcfl··on Apple has reached its first-ever union contract with store employees in Maryland
When Apple chains children up in sweatshops, please let me know.
jpcfl··on Apple has reached its first-ever union contract with store employees in Maryland
Is it not possible that employees forming a union could be bad for business?
jpcfl··on Apple has reached its first-ever union contract with store employees in Maryland
> At this size

Size has nothing to do with it. Just because a company is large doesn't mean it needs to start making poor business decisions.

> corporate death penalty

That's a bit extreme. If you want to be seen as objective, this kind of inflammatory rhetoric will only work against you.

jpcfl··on Panic at the Job Market
There is if your goal is to attract a wider audience. Call me old fashioned, but if you can't even be bothered to capitalize the first letter of each sentence in your publication, I'm probably not going to read it.
jpcfl··on Microsoft cutting crucial link to Gaza, Palestinians say
It is incredibly frustrating to realize that a lot of companies are within their right to deny you service as soon as you even _appear_ to pose a risk to them.

Geico recently denied my renewal of insurance because they said their underwriters received notification that I use my vehicle for business. (I don't.) I have spent hours trying to explain to them that this is a mistake, but they have zero interest in providing me with insurance. I've heard this is common for people in CA.

I'm not sure what legal recourse the people in this story have. Hopefully they have a legal right to at least download an archive of their data so they can recover old emails, attachments, photos, etc.

jpcfl··on Elon Musk confirms reallocating thousands of Nvidia AI chips from Tesla
Actual headline: "Elon Musk confirms reallocating thousands of Nvidia AI chips from Tesla"
jpcfl··on Tesla Settles Fatal Crash Suit Ahead of California Trial
Or, that his commitment is at odds with his fiduciary duty.
jpcfl··on Pluckable Strings
Interesting. I actually like this behavior and wish more applications would use it!
jpcfl··on Pluckable Strings
You need to take your phone off silent.
jpcfl··on World Wide Web (1991)
Sad. Here's a simulator: http://line-mode.cern.ch/www/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
jpcfl··on Bitcoin Block 840000
> There is no 1:1 relationship between mining cost and reward on a single block

Ah, I see what you mean.

I think I've been mixing up my costs. When I wrote the original comment, I was thinking about the total energy cost for mining this block, i.e., the energy cost of all the nodes that worked on it. But the truth is, I have no idea about the economics of BTC mining. I was just being facetious :)

jpcfl··on Bitcoin Block 840000
That wasn't my point. My point was that they could stay in business.

My original point was that it was in the ballpark of $2M. Could be more, could be less, all depending on a number of variables--I believe one of those variable just doubled.

I'm not sure what the cost is now, but back in 2012-ish when I briefly looked into mining, it cost about $1 in energy to mine $1 worth of BTC. I used your logic and decided it didn't make sense to invest in mining, so I didn't. I wish I had, or at least purchased some BTC, but I was a broke college student just looking to capitalize on the hardware I already owned, and I didn't really know a thing about investing (other than investing in a 6 pack of beer to meet girls at parties--my ROI was not great, BTW, so I don't recommend this strategy).

jpcfl··on Bitcoin Block 840000
If I spend $2M to mine $2M of gold, and the value of that gold increases by 2x over the next 10 years, then I think I could stay in business. That would actually be a pretty solid business.

The value of BTC has increased nearly ~200x in the last 10 years. I don't anticipate it will do this again, but I'm sure some of these miners think it will continue to grow at some rate (plus, they have already capitalized on the last 10yrs of growth).

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