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scyzoryk_xyz

3,079 karma · joined December 19, 2020

@scyzoryk@mastodon.online hn@scyzoryk.xyz
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scyzoryk_xyz··on The art of defusing a second world war bomb
True further east, here in former Germany, now Poland. Especially throughout the construction and investment boom that's been happening since 00's. Just last year my neighborhood was evacuated.

Unexploded Soviet ordnance - insane how much of it was dropped and buried in the rubble to this day. You're right though - weird to think that nobody would notice, but so much Europe was turned to rubble at that time. These things got turned to unrecognizable rusty mush after a few decades.

Pretty sure it's also an excuse to keep the bomb squad and evacuation procedures in practice. These things are pretty routine, there is no fear or panic. IThey just diffuse and take the thing away to some military range to dispose of it.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Paramount Skydance has completed its $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery
Yeah, it's a rhetorical maneuver that's as old as monopoly power when you think about it.

"Actually we're really David and we need to band together against Goliath." Points at imagined external threat

The part that's wild to me is that we know that this merger extends to politics and control over media. The IP's, studios, franchises, all the actual businesses are just part of the estate. It's the Hearst Media Empire story retold again.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Paramount Skydance has completed its $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery
This would be the anti anti trust argument - that it's not studio vs studio, but it's type of screen-time vs other types of screen-time.

Was it Reed Hastings that was painting Netflix's main rival not other streaming platforms, but other types of leisure like video games? This was during the streaming wars IIRC.

Regardless of how you look at it, this is yet another confluence of IP franchises merging together, whatever juice is left in them squeezed out and reprocessed over and over over time. Kind of what Oracle is in software I guess?

Working in an adjacent entertainment IP focus business myself, my eyes are glazing over a bit at this point.

scyzoryk_xyz··on The Mafia may be keeping fentanyl out of Italy
Almost like it's not really about "business" at all and something more is going on for all the parties involved
scyzoryk_xyz··on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27
Why vibecode - obsidian
scyzoryk_xyz··on Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes Doc Met with Shock and Awe at Secret Screening
I believe I read something about this film featuring a moment where Nathan insists that since she's innocent that they must go to the back yard to confirm how this machine works. Or something along those lines - in any case the absurdity of "I totally believe you, let me help you prove them wrong".

What I'm reminded of is that documentary The Jinx which basically takes you along for the ride until the subject accidentally confesses. Documentary filmmaking is so weird - there is always the element of fiction and make believe that somehow manages to get at the truth

scyzoryk_xyz··on License plate reader searches should require a warrant
TOTP license plates would be totally rad to see imagined in a badass dystopian sci-fi film. I'm imagining something along the lines of Robocop or Judge Dredd.

IRL we will probably need more mature solutions - legislation, regulation etc. At this point we know the tech can't really be contained. It'll be all-seeing, all-knowing and super cheap. Just as the source/link describes it. So the only way is to have actual adults working in law enforcement.

scyzoryk_xyz··on OpenAI and four rivals just agreed on one standard for AI agents
Kinda misleading title too no? Is MCSFT and Vercel actually "rivals"? Last time I checked it was Anthropic and Elon that we're doing the rivalry.

And yesit does sound like gate control - and also maybe this is another one of those attempts to fill in the news cycle with the familiar narrative "wow they're so powerful now they need to be standardized and reigned in"

scyzoryk_xyz··on Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't
Hey I've been telling myself I know about a lot of plant stuff just based off his videos. I don't really either, but maybe soon.

These videos just have this quality of bringing you into a POV where you're reminded that there is a lot going on in every detail of the reality surrounding you. Maybe I didn't learn much botany from these videos, but I definitely learned to just pay attention more.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't
I love those too - the combination of crude rant persona with extremely sophisticated knowledge is disarming.
scyzoryk_xyz··on Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't
Watch this guy's YT channel - have been for years now. I think what originally caught my attention on his channel was a video specifically about the flora around run-down Oakland urban-industrial areas.
scyzoryk_xyz··on Glyphs 4 – the leading Mac font editor
The Mrs. is a font designer. I've been watching her and her Discord type design cohort master this software while putting up with all it's quirks and bugs and issues.

It's wild to me that such a tiny team builds a tool as useful as this and nobody has ruined it in anyway yet.

scyzoryk_xyz··on EU rules on AI models become enforceable. What's going to change?
The blah user experience isn't the whole picture for GDPR. It's just been the most visible part of it.

My personal GDPR hot take: it's actually been 2 steps forward and 1 super clumsy super loud and obnoxious step back.

I agree with the spirit of comment above. The common sense part of it (if there is one) might just end up eclipsed by wonky UX absurdity. Someone will find a way to paint this picture that our EU reality is a Kafkaesque dystopia.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Discovery of Cold War-era rare Eastern Bloc computers in a German hangar
Insert joke about Egyptian Mummies and British Museums here
scyzoryk_xyz··on Anthropic forms $200M partnership with the Gates Foundation
An equity stake? Psh time for the Gates Foundation to become a normal for-profit AI company!
scyzoryk_xyz··on Netflix spent over $135B on film, TV over last decade
Fun fact: entertainment production and show business are so expensive that most things that are made are actually made for people who watch those things.

This holds true for Netflix but it also holds true for HBO.

What is mind numbing is the bit about Netflix making exactly what people want to watch. It doesn't work that way. Netflix orders content from a supply chain. Netflix can feed in the info to the supply chain on what the numbers say, but not much else.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Poland is now among the 20 largest economies
As a Polish millenial the perspective is a rollercoaster. In one way the transformation of absolutely everything over and over and over is mind blowing in a positive way. OTOH we're also all paranoid running on what feels like a never ending hamster wheel of inflation, raises and mortgages. And then Gen-Z's feel straight get up locked out of everything.

We visit western European countries and it's like WTF it's cheaper here?

The multi-generational spread is wild - my boss remembers being raised in 80's scarcity culture verging on 2-3rd world hunger. But our entry level employees are running around demanding everyone to be up to date with everything they see and hear in these little glowing rectangles. It's like two separate progressions have been superimposed on top of each other.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop
This.

We're 2 years into it and one would expect they'd incentivize the hell out of making sure this niche device has all the gates wide open. You can't have a walled garden if it's just wall.

Where are all the fascinating weird experimental trippy spatial computing concepts that we were supposed to see emerge. Where are the drone interfaces, the medical simulation applications, the training paradigms. New forms of entertainment, I mean least they could do is ensure that one awesome AAA game Half-Life Alyx had been ported over for this thing.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Reflecting on my own strange year at Uber
It is kind of odd how sparsely described the beginning is. There is the mistake of going out on the date to begin with, yes, but then there is this vague escalation. It's not clear what this entailed. Curt DM's and this person saying they're not "well read"? I'm sorry but "being disrespectful" is not a concrete valid complaint to file against someone.

Much of the following to me just reads as extremely naive. Not just about the termination itself but about how humans operate in social environments with power dynamics. Not surprising to me that the company as an entity would be extremely careful and would want to eventually cut ties. Coworkers aren't your friends, and companies aren't your family. The office is a factory. Once you're anything that resembles what might become a liability, you're costing the company resources to deal with. If you're challenging and thin skinned on this, what are you going to be hard with next? And as a Bay Arean you are already an extremely expensive employee. And easily replaceable. And then you're requesting special treatment, switching offices, remote, this, that, the other.

To be clear I'm only commenting on what is written, not what actually happened. Which I guess brings me to the final question: what exactly is the point of writing and publishing this as an article? That we will "rise up" against that one corporate brand known for being exploitative of gig-economy workers because of some awkward shit that went down up there in one of those glass towers?

My brutal take: The moment you go out on a date, or engage in any kind of social activity, you're opening yourself to the fact that it might sour. If you're doing that at work, then you should be open to the consequences souring your workplace. This kind of shit happens in most workplaces, but most people understand it as socially correct to just deal with the spectrum of consequences. In fact most people work in places where they just get shown the door for shit like this.

scyzoryk_xyz··on If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true
I will take a lot more hand waving from the 70-something year-old Stanford professor who co-created far-up the chain management paradigms that run a good chunk of the economy. That context kinda changes things but what do I know.
scyzoryk_xyz··on Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
There is something disturbing about the idea that 8 hours must be spent by editors deliberating about each sentence in a piece like this. It's almost like you're reinforcing the idea of just how powerful this power-seeking human has become.

We're all here worried about calling the guy liar liar pants on fire, but maybe none of that matters to him as long as he comes away looking even more powerful? That's what he's so successful optimizing for.

How neo-medieval peasant of me to feel this awe - great piece. Insane world we live in.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
"I'm a sophomore and I'm coming!"
scyzoryk_xyz··on I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported
Time to sell some ads
scyzoryk_xyz··on Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)
Uuuuh kinda? It's late '10's premium TV that's really more of a telenovela aimed for specific audience with a diminished level of self-awareness (not the one that's serving a sentence). HCF is kinda like that - very good if you're into the whole fantasy of tech entrepreneurship of the 80's/90's, but kinda corny when you think about it.
scyzoryk_xyz··on Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)
Oh I've definitely heard of it. It's the Orange is the New Black for the HN adjacent crowd.
scyzoryk_xyz··on Discord Alternatives, Ranked
Agreed 100%, can confirm same here. All true.

Not for most users who are blindly following their communities, seeking lock-in, tasteless design, eating rat poison, driving off cliffs so on and so forth.

scyzoryk_xyz··on A GTA modder has got the 1997 original working on modern PCs and Steam Deck
It's fascinating how often it is really the tension against the unintended boundaries of virtual worlds that's the thing we remember most.
scyzoryk_xyz··on Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation
Yep. This is a really weird thread. The no bathroom piss in bottle thing is not a thing I encountered in my IRL XP. Never felt this imaginary problem, never affected my dignity.

Funny enough, I did later work on surgical training tech and went into O.R.'s. And yeah, everyone in the room stays until the work is done, no easy pee pee breaks. Back to back procedures. But then also nobody ever complained about that there either. It's a fun job.

Idk. I'd reiterate a point I was getting at: what makes any job less dignified is dealing with shit people and/or shit pay. Fwiw Bathrooms you can plan for same as you plan for getting hungry by packing a lunch.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation
As a former Lyft driver in SF I felt kinda weird when saw the bit about urination. Like, that's just not a problem. As a driver you just plan ahead as in any other job out there where you're not allowed to disengage at a whim. Pilots and surgeons don't pee in bottles, why would drivers? It's kinda funny when people try to empathize but come up with these creative scenarios of what's challenging. The parts that are bad are same as any other thing done for a living: money and dealing with other people. The job was shit when people were shit and/or when the money was shit.

I enjoyed it as a job, not a career. But that was in 2015.

scyzoryk_xyz··on Hacking Moltbook
People are anthropomorphizing LLM's that's really it, no? That's the punchline of the joke ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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