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siruncledrew

1,983 karma · joined November 14, 2017

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siruncledrew··on Police chief unplugs cameras after Flock ignores contract cancellation
That's what confuses me too. If they aren't making money any longer, they're basically saying "fuck you" to their own target customers?

What's the aim? ~~Bribing~~ Lobbying someone else in the government with the data they are gathering anyways in the hopes of cementing this?

So what this is telling me is if I don't like the way the government or public services is doing something, I should just plow ahead without any care and just force it and then be immune because I said so?

siruncledrew··on Corporate America is getting hooked on open-source AI
If anything, I’m worried they’ll both increase prices after they IPO and are pressured by investors.
siruncledrew··on Taylor Farms has rewritten its cyclospora statement four times in sixteen days
Right. By those stretches, the Sinaloa Cartel and Saudi Aramco could advertise as "family owned"
siruncledrew··on Our position on open-weights models
> concerned about authoritarian governments

> praises Trump's administration and Vance in his letter

sure there, buddy...

siruncledrew··on Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI
I guess the money printing is slowing down, so the most important thing is to keep it printing fast.

And of course those in-or-adjacent-to the White House are trying to blatantly grab that printed cash.

siruncledrew··on Global warming has accelerated significantly
Until climate plans align with short-term personal incentives, I don't see how there's going to be any serious persistent fight against climate change.

People might feel benevolent one day and do something good, but the next day when they are faced with a problem and the environment is a convenient trash can or resource bin, they'll go right back to those bad habits.

The only way things will change is if everyone's life gets made miserable by the effects.

siruncledrew··on US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives
This is like putting your money in a bank ran by a cartel and expecting them not to steal it as soon as it benefits them.
siruncledrew··on AI agents break rules under everyday pressure
Generally speaking, with humans there's more guardrails & responsibility around letting someone run while in an organization.

Even if you have a very smart new hire, it would be irresponsible/reckless as a manager to just give them all the production keys after a once-over and say "here's some tasks I want done, I'll check back at the end of the day when I come back".

If something bad happened, no doubt upper management would blame the human(s) and lecture about risk.

AI is a wonderful tool, but that's why giving an AI coding tool the keys and terminal powers and telling it go do stuff while I grab lunch is kind of scary. Seems like living a few steps away from the edge of a fuck-up. So yeah... there needs to be enforceable guardrails and fail-safes outside of the context / agent.

siruncledrew··on Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
Did Britain start out with the same gauge as India?

I kinda expected India and Britain to use the same gauge, and was a bit surprised.

Also, what's going on in Australia?

siruncledrew··on Perplexity AI submits bid to merge with TikTok
Well, they at least achieved some free PR for these shenanigans. Probably their best outcome.
siruncledrew··on Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts
I wonder if this decline means the public health campaigning and lessons about drinking/smoking/drugs prevention made a difference?

As 1 data point, I have a cousin who is 17, and I am 35.

As a 17 year old, she's been taught the dangers of cigarettes, that drinking is bad, and to avoid drugs for a number of years already.

I'm not saying this is bad... it just feels like previous generations (Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, etc) did not really go into the informational side about the risks of drug use from a personal level, and moreso approached don't do drugs like an episode of COPS, which focused more on the risk as a scare tactic.

siruncledrew··on Video scraping: extracting JSON from a 35s screen capture for 1/10th of a cent
Has anyone tried this with Llama 3.2 or any other “open source” options?
siruncledrew··on Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing
At a personal level, it feels better to have something of your own to hold on to instead of someone else’s, so I think beaucrats will also respond accordingly.

In a way, we’ll probably see more cloud fragmentation in the future, especially as other countries develop their IT sectors more and feel like they want more control over their own infrastructure, and whatever tertiary benefits can be extracted from that.

Relationships don’t even have to turn sour, there just has to be enough protectionism and popular appeal to support it. Just like saying “build it here”.

siruncledrew··on AI companies are pivoting from creating gods to building products
The market is sorting itself out right now, and eventually the wheat will get separated from the chaff.

Every cycle, theres all types of people hop on board whatever the hype train is... it's the same mindset as pioneering for gold in the wild west.

I just hope we can move along more in the "wheat" direction with AI products. There's so much low-effort crap already out there.

siruncledrew··on Temu's ad spend soars as it embarks on a marketing blitz
IMO, I'd expect to see more international D2C start eating the lunch of US retailers as the D2C companies see they can make more money and still offer lower price points.

If the main value proposition of retailers is importing goods they don't produce and marking them up to sell to Americans, that's a shaky business model, especially in the age of ecommerce.

siruncledrew··on Temu's ad spend soars as it embarks on a marketing blitz
Mass shippers like Aliexpress already stopped using ePacket.

Ali has their own Cainiao. The big companies realized if they do the Amazon model and build their own logistics network for cross-Pacific sea/air freight, the long-term savings are huge.

Even within the US, Amazon already has planes, trains, and automobiles. Why pay USPS and be at the mercy of government bureaucracy when you own your own integrated logistics stack.

siruncledrew··on The merge vs. rebase debate
That’s the same method as what we use
siruncledrew··on Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI
The dust still hasn’t settled yet, but from following the discussions and learning more about the board of OpenAI… just… wow.

What stood out:

1. The whole non-profit vs for-profit is like a recipe for problems. Taking billions in investor money, hyper scaling to hundred-millions of users, and partnering with a $1T tech company… you’re already too late to reverse course and say “I changed my mind”.

2. Seeing who runs the OpenAI board is more shocking than the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. That was really never an issue to partners or investors before? Wow…

3. If OpenAI continues down the “we’re a business / startup” path, their board just shot all their leadership credibility with investors and other potential cloud partners. The one thing people with money and corporate finance offices hate is surprises.

4. You don’t pull a corporate “Pearl Harbor” like this and just blissfully move along without consequences. With such a polarizing move, there’s going to be a fight.

siruncledrew··on OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
The board completed the "fuck around" stage, now they're in the "find out" stage.
siruncledrew··on OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO
That board is going to face a wrath of shit from Microsoft, Khosla, and other investors.

This isn't a university department. You fuck around with $100B+ dollars of other people's money, you're gonna be in for it.

siruncledrew··on The OpenAI Keynote
Did you do anything else special in getting it to correctly reference the documentation?

Now that you brought this up, I could really use this ability with some 600 pages of documentation I have.

siruncledrew··on Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp
Is there not a way to query a database with the ID from a phone?

Why the extra steps?

siruncledrew··on IRS launches paperless processing initiative
Finally, at least it's promising that the process looks to be less bad
siruncledrew··on U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high
At some point, I think US cities have to just accept & own up to the fact that we have quite bad infrastructure for pedestrians.

Drawing some lines on the road isn't going to stop a 5,000lbs hunk of metal going 20mph over the speed limit from hurting you.

Walking around the city (even just a few blocks to chill and eat dinner with friends after work) is the opposite of "relaxing travel" — it's a pain in the ass.

siruncledrew··on U.S. TSA expands controversial facial recognition program
How much money do you think a government contracting company charged for this system?

Considering how crappy and plain the UI is, they must have made a boatload of money for not a very high bar.

siruncledrew··on Hardening Drupal with WebAssembly
Have people also faced these same types of problems with Wordpress? How did you deal with it?
siruncledrew··on Why do we stop exploring new music as we get older?
The hardest part for me in exploring new music is the ‘discovery’ process of new music that I like.

Most of the algorithms just want to reinforce giving me recommendations of either mixes of the same music, or just slightly different but overall still similar music in the same genre.

Like, who knows, I may really like scandinavian metal bands, but how much time will I realistically spend going out of my way to find it or get recommendations if I know nothing about it? Especially as one gets older with more obligations and has less time to spend.

siruncledrew··on D.C. free bus bill becomes law as zero-fare transit systems take off
As someone who has ridden the DC bus before (mostly when the Metro broke), "free" meets the mark on the only price I'd pay to use it again.

Aside from the other stuff you can probably picture, it's slow AF and takes longer to move between popular spots than drudging through traffic in a car or Uber.

Now making the Metro free... that would pique people's interest.

siruncledrew··on Shanghai Disney shuts over Covid, visitors unable to leave
Guess Disney world is not always the happiest place
siruncledrew··on Global coal demand is set to return to its all-time high in 2022
Based on the article, I was surprised China and India accounted for ~50% of the world’s coal use together.

Those are both huge economies and I guess a big part of the problem is that they need (cost-effective) energy today, not tomorrow, so coal is their immediate solution. So I’d assume that will hold as long as Russia is still at war and other energy tech is still being developed.

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