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mcphage

8,294 karma · joined March 2, 2012

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mcphage··on Google is dead. Where do we go now?
> the world is not ready for what advertising geniuses are cooking up as we speak.

Advertising directed towards AI models, at the very least. If you can get into ChatGPT's weights that McDonalds is the cheapest and tastiest hamburger, how many millions of people would ChatGPT tell that to?

mcphage··on John Simpson: 'I've reported on 40 wars but I've never seen a year like 2025'
I mean, fair. I just don't think the person I responded to actually thought that part through.
mcphage··on John Simpson: 'I've reported on 40 wars but I've never seen a year like 2025'
> Firstly why wouldn't one be scared of an opponent that can just steadily press against me, winning a war by attrition?

Because if they can barely succeed that way against an enemy 1/3 of their size, they wouldn't be able to succeed that way against an enemy larger than them. And that's not even accounting for the fact that, after fighting a war of attrition, those people, those resources are dead and gone. Even if Russia wins, they don't have the manpower to do this again.

mcphage··on John Simpson: 'I've reported on 40 wars but I've never seen a year like 2025'
Are you saying you want to put him back in charge?
mcphage··on John Simpson: 'I've reported on 40 wars but I've never seen a year like 2025'
> Those numbers come from hamas. Why is it a problem in Ukraine?

Because in the Russian occupied territories, Russia has no interest in reporting the number of civilian deaths.

mcphage··on 'PromptQuest' is the worst game of 2025 (trying to make chatbots work)
> someone who has no idea how to use LLMs yelling at clouds

How to use LLMs? There’s no “how to use LLMs”, you just tell them what you want, and they give it to you. Or they give you sometimes, and sometimes they give you something else. Or they’re telling you they’re giving you exactly what you want, but don’t. Or they seem like they’re giving you what you want, only it’s got a secret mistake somewhere inside, that you need to dig through and search for. Maybe there’s no mistake after all.

Yes, this is clearly a new wonder-technology, and all criticisms of it are just old people, back on their cloud-yelling bullshit.

mcphage··on Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert
> most inmates in inhumane prisons would love to have the life you describe if they could enjoy some degree of freedom as a result.

On the other hand, people (generally) get sent to prison for committing a crime, not for being incredibly smart or talented.

mcphage··on Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time
As the Bard said (paraphrased) “Some are born miserable, some achieve misery, and some have misery thrust upon them”.
mcphage··on Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time
> and brings nothing good to anyone, not a child, not a parent and not you wasting money on stupid shit

You really don’t understand people at all.

mcphage··on Calibre adds AI "discussion" feature
If they added a menu item “Kick a puppy”, and every time you clicked it, a puppy somewhere got kicked, would your response be “oh, well, I don’t like kicking puppies, so I just won’t click it, no big deal”?
mcphage··on Toys with the highest play-time and lowest clean-up-time
Don’t forget noisy. Have you considered an Otamatone?
mcphage··on Postponed '60 Minutes' segment on Salvadoran prison is streamed by Canadian news
> You conveniently cut off the first part of that sentence where I said she resigned.

I left it off because "she resigned" is definitely not the same thing as "I was fired".

mcphage··on Postponed '60 Minutes' segment on Salvadoran prison is streamed by Canadian news
> but if you look at what happened, like her co-workers openly insulting her in the company chat, it doesn't look good

I'm not sure "my coworkers don't respect me" is the same thing as "I got fired".

mcphage··on A school locked down after AI flagged a gun. It was a clarinet
A bit more. But not much.
mcphage··on School security AI flagged clarinet as a gun. Exec says it wasn't an error
Sir, please drop that bag of Flamin Hot Cool Ranch chips and place your hands where I can see them
mcphage··on School security AI flagged clarinet as a gun. Exec says it wasn't an error
So I guess the Cardboard Tube Samurai was a prophesy?
mcphage··on Why do commercial spaces sit vacant?
Well, fundamentally no, I don’t think it reflects the will of the general population, since I don’t think they’re aware that this is how it works. At least, I wasn’t before reading this.

And beyond that: people’s assets are mostly residential real estate, not commercial real estate. So I don’t know that people will get that worked up about commercial real estate devaluing.

mcphage··on The most banned books in U.S. schools
Is it currently there now?
mcphage··on A school locked down after AI flagged a gun. It was a clarinet
> The student was intentionally mimicking a weapon with a long, tubular object.

That's... pretty much every student with any long, tubular object. Of which there are many.

mcphage··on Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles
The Puzzle Boy / Kwirk series of games is Sokoban-based, but has 3 different mechanics on top of that: turnstiles, pits (that can be filled by blocks), and blocks larger than 1x1. One of the things I love about it is that, each mechanic is interesting on its own, and each combination of mechanics results in levels with very different feels. Lots of puzzles with a bunch of mechanics try to throw tons of them into each level, and each level ends up feeling very samey. But judicious use of combinations can lead to a lot of interesting variety.
mcphage··on Venezuela's Navy Begins Escorting Ships as U.S. Threatens Blockade
> If you think the immigration laws are not right, change them, but don't sit on and praise a system perpetuated by illegality.

If they want to change the immigration laws, they first need to convince people that immigrants currently in the country illegally aren't monsters.

mcphage··on Why do commercial spaces sit vacant?
> Everything is priced that way, basically. In the world of finance, everything is priced according to the future income it can generate -- not just real estate, but stocks, bonds, etc. There's nothing insane about it. To the contrary, it's the only rational way of doing things.

The only rational way of doing things is to turn every part of our economy into a bubble? Well, that at least explains why it’s all collapsing.

mcphage··on Why do commercial spaces sit vacant?
> Rented unit? Can't be rented to imaginary rich/stupid people.

No, but you can raise the rents. Best case scenario, they pay the higher price. Worse case scenario they leave—which leaves you exactly where you were before, with some extra money in your pocket.

mcphage··on Why do commercial spaces sit vacant?
> who is incentivized to push for a correction in this case?

Well, the government at the very least. From the article:

> Banks are highly regulated, so they can’t just loan whatever they want. The government insists that banks keep high margins of safety in their portfolio, and commercial loans are risky, so the terms they can offer are designed to limit risk. […] Second, the bank must keep a strict loan-to-value (LTV) ratio — so they won’t lend more than 80% of the value of the building (and often less than that).

The government says banks can’t loan more than 80% of the value of the building because it’s too risky. But what banks have done is instead maintained an inflated value of the property so they can loan out a higher percentage, which has led to the country being full of empty, overvalued property. Ie, a high risk of collapse—which is just what the regulation was intending to prevent. Lying about the value of an object to get around regulations is often considered fraud.

mcphage··on Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'
> Trump has a very distinctive set of beliefs underlying his policies

Trump has things that he says—many things that he says. How many of them are beliefs, and how many of them are his normal verbal diarrhea, and how many of them are just the words of the last person who spoke to him?

mcphage··on Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'
> started trying to convince voters on their own merit, instead of simply trash-talking their opponents

That’s hard to claim to make right after a Trump victory—trashing their opponents has been the Republicans playbook my entire life, and it’s currently working quite well for them.

mcphage··on Claude Code's DX is too good. And that's a problem
> What if I no good in English?

It would still sound more human coming from you.

mcphage··on Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles
> The rules of abelian groups guarantee that these identity sandpiles must exist, but they tell us nothing about how beautiful they are.

This has causality backwards—being a group requires an identity element. You can't show something is a group without knowing that the identity element exists in the first place.

In fact, a good chunk of how this article talks about the math is just... slightly off.

mcphage··on How does a "you interview for US company, we do the work" scam work?
> It's remarkably hard to fire a U.S. employee without risks of lawsuits.

That’s… not really true.

mcphage··on The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora
That’s what they just gave OpenAI the license to do.
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