CoolestBeans

Those don't sound like friends.

I'm sort of in the same boat but I'm finding every day more and more people I trust gleefully use these tools. I still don't really get it. I get suggestions of things I should try, techniques I should try, how to prompt, how to harness, which models to use. I just find the output off and end up going in and just going over the work again.

The conclusion I've come to is that good taste has been replaced with "works; good enough". Maybe that's the end state. Maybe the end is just a bland mass of tangled code that's junky but it works. Speed over quality has always been a currency in this industry and maybe this is just the purest expression of it.

But at the end, it leaves me with my preferences and tastes and what I think is right and I feel more and more isolated. I don't think the people who are happily using AI tools are incompetent. I know they're not. I think they just are a little more in tune with how the winds are changing.

In the long run, I'm not sure how this ends. Programming is a lifelong pursuit of endless learning. When you use tools like this, your learning becomes stunted. But maybe I'm wrong. Nobody knows.

One thing I miss about the iPod era is that Apple knew they were selling a device to play pirated music. It doesn't take much look at how much music an iPod could store, how much music cost, and how much people had in disposable income to spend on music to realize that music had to come from other means. The iPod and P2P file sharing were incredibly synergistic in a way that makes me giggle. The iTunes store is just as much about getting the record companies on board as it is about running a legitimate music store. I don't know I guess it reminds me of a time when tech disruption was in the consumer's favor and it was frustrating exploitive companies.

We probably need more time to say for sure, but it might be David Chase. The Sopranos is partly an extended character study of someone who strives to fill American values as we imagine ourselves but also embodies American values as they actually exist.

Because the defaults aren't just for convenience, the API designer is also making the parameters they think should be used the most have the least resistance. Good example is runtime parameters like in the JVM. You shouldn't start with having to tune your JVM, you probably want a middle of the road place to start with even if you know you're going to tune it.

Its simple. Nobody is posting because nobody is going to read your posts. The intense dive into algorithmic feeds over chronological ones sourced from your friends means that nobody is going to see your posts. Nobody is going to comment on them. Nobody is going to acknowledge they even exist. Everyone understands this, at least subconsciously, so nobody's gonna post. Besides, all that stuff moved into group chats anyways.

The problem is that "AI: The Product" and "AI: The Company" have two different marketing needs that undercut each other.

AI companies need to come off as these big scary world transforming entities because they need concessions from politicians and they need their perceived value to go up for their shareholders.

But AI products need to come off as benign but useful things you would use in your every day.

When the White House puts a temporary hold order on frontier models, its incredible marketing for the company. It makes what they're doing seem really important, like an economic nuclear weapon. But for the product it's horrible! It is literally the government stepping in to say you cannot improve your product.

Maybe LLMs are legitimately useful products that will have value in most people's everyday lives, but most people will have their expectations completely off. And their intuition isn't wrong that AI companies are here to make their lives worse.

The current thinking is automated agents is what turns this from an industry in the tens of billions to a multi trillion dollar one. So yes you are right on the money, agents stimulate demand for this thing they've built.

Just to clarify because it seems like most of the comments aren't understanding. Berkshire sold the Amazon stock in the fourth quarter of last year meaning it is likely the last large move Warren Buffett is going to make as head of Berkshire as he stepped down on December 31 of 2025. That's why the article is titled that way and partly why its significant. Warren Buffett has traditionally been averse to tech stocks but picked up a slug of Amazon in 2019.

Its probably not very likely that if a large buyer pulled out, NVIDIA could just sell to other customers. If a large buyer pulls out, that's a massive signal to everyone else to begin cutting costs as well. The large buyer either knows something everyone else doesn't, or knows something that everyone else has already figured out. Either way, the large buyer pulling out signals "I don't think the overall market is large enough to support this amount of compute at these prices at current interest rates" and everybody is doing the same math too.

I personally don't find using LLMs "fun" but I do like this article for one simple reason. It points out that most contemporary frameworks for web are forms of slop and I don't think you should feel bad using an LLM to generate slop code and config to deal with it.

I learned an instrument (guitar), then I learned another instrument (bass guitar). I caught up with my family, I got to spend a lot more time with my nephews and nieces. I got to spend a lot of time with my dad. I picked back up circuit design and made an overdrive guitar pedal from scratch and learned KiCad in the process. I caught up with old friends but lost touch with other ones. I probably acted like an ass to a lot of people. I finally came to understand why people like watching sports. I learned how to write in cursive. I walked a lot. I listened to a lot of music. I listened to some podcasts.

I dunno, it sucks and its painful. You're constantly worried and people who at first try to support you then get pissed off at you for something you can't really control. I hope you can find your way through it.

I'd caveat everything in this article with the backdrop of film and TV being in a down cycle. So of course everyone is trying to cut costs. If and when studios figure out how to profit in the streaming era (or the distribution method changes) then I would be more confident that production has truly left LA.

Of course, everything in California is too damn expensive and that can't be ignored. You can put up all the tax credits you want, the overall price level is a tough headwind for production in LA.

They're never going to boot any of us up. They're just going to use the brain data set to optimize ads another 2%.

Money should be no object, I just worry that this is the result of a generation coming of age in the tightest labor market in a half century and they're all in for an extremely rude awakening over the next couple years.

Even Chromium started with WebKit which itself was a fork. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be interested in browser dev but you also don't have to do a totally clean sheet implementation.

I agree but it's more important that we share a common system and it's incredibly expensive to switch (not just monetarily). For better or worse, if there's gonna be one system it will be decimal. Take heart that decimal time didn't catch on.

My parents love watching those videos so I know what you're talking about. There's four factors I think.

One, the quality of the saffron makes a big difference in price. Longer deeper red strands are much more expensive than shorter and more yellow strands. I suspect they are not using the most expensive saffron in their teas.

Two, there's a lot of markup purchasing saffron from most retailers, especially here in the US. You can get that amount of saffron for far less than $10,000 if you know someone who has a connect.

Three, as you said the majority of saffron production is from Iran. Some friends I know are getting their saffron from the UAE but I'm pretty sure its being re-exported from Iran.

Four, those videos are ultimately productions. If you compare the earlier videos to the later videos on some of that channel you can tell they've upgraded their digs. They might just be exaggerating for the camera.

Part of me agrees that pop is ripe for that sort of upheavel but my arguments that it won't happen are:

1. Angst will probably always be the teenage condition but I don't think the distance between what's being recorded and what teens and young adults are feeling is as great as it was in the 90s.

2. Music listening is so much more fragmented now that even if some artist hooks into some underserved emotional need, it might just grab its group of followers and then sorta descend into its own little subculture, safely away from the mainstream. The third and fourth lines on any contemporary festival act list has a lot of acts that fall into this category.

3. Kurt Cobain was this unusual combination of wanting to be anti-authority, anti-establishment, alternative on one hand, but then very ambitious and seeking fame and record deals on the other. It's paradoxical but he was that and that combination of attributes is really good for changing the mainstream music scene but I don't think most people can live in that contradiction for that long and therefore people like that are rare.

In my view, we're in a sort of repeat of 00s R&B. Lot of substanceless tunes with honestly seriously vulgar lyrics but immensely catchy and fun. The main difference is this version is less danceable (but also more subject to dance routines on TikTok!). And I don't mean it in a pejorative way, not every good song need to be meaningful.

How can we say "consumers will pay a bit more and shareholders will see lower returns"? We just went through an episode of tight labor and it resulted in high inflation in the US and companies recorded blockbuster profits by pursuing a price over volume strategy.

Of course, it also coincided with a supply chain shock but we ought to be honest that we cannot guarantee a tight labor market will result in Americans being materially better off.

You really put into words something I've experienced but couldn't articulate. Every time I've used a headset I've gotten not fatigued but just a general feeling of malaise and had to put it down and take a break. I would imagine with repetition you get used to it but yeah its definitely a factor.

Although I think part of the bleh feeling is just having to subconsciously adapt to the imperfections of a headset. For example, you can't just glance at anything and expect to see it, you have to shift your head for some things. Or like the headset itself moving ever so slightly on the face and your eye moving out of the way of the center of the lens. It gets exhausting and you don't know you're doing it unless you're actively paying attention.

I will say most of the advertising shows people interacting with 2D interfaces in 3D space so maybe this is how they're getting around it combined with just better build quality, better thought out straps, etc.

Depends on who is the current owner of the unsold, rented out units. If it's the developer, the bids were probably far lower than expected but they expect the prices to rebound. In general, developers are really not in the business of rentals. They don't have the financing for it or the capacity for it and they needed to sell to free up financing for the next project. They're not set up to be holding on to assets like rental properties, and so if it's happening either suggests some sort of integration with a property manager or that something has gone wrong.

I don't think Meta will intentionally try to snuff out Mastodon but I don't think Threads breaking from Mastodon will have it just return to its pre Threads momentum.

Look it just makes sense to start out connecting Threads users to a pretty active user base which creates content for Threads users. Then as Threads grows, maintaining federation with Pubiverse will have a high marginal cost relative to the shrinking piece of pie users outside of Threads is. Compatibility will get worse and worse as the Threads devs allow their federation code to rot until eventually they make a clean break to focus their resources elsewhere.

Meanwhile if you happen to be a poster on the Mastodon side of the fence, you're going to have to get on Threads and start posting there to keep up with the audience you've gathered, it just makes sense. That network effect of posters needing to follow their audiences would hollow out a post-break Mastodon.

All this being said, I don't think Mastodon instances should resist a Threads federation. Focus on a superior user experience by really trying to empathize with the average user. Don't let yourself be relegated to power users or enthusiasts because, Threads federation or not, when push comes to shove people want to talk to people and they will go where people are.

Smoking reduces quality years of life and puts a burden on a nation's health system. The drastic decrease in productivity in a nation from those two things has got to be far more than any increase from any cognitive benefits.

But more importantly, it's morally wrong to suggest we shorten and make our lives worse for some short term stimulant spike.

Despite the hope for a more democratic China in the 80s being mostly dead, contemporary China must still reckon with the immediate economic disaster being an military agressor and being sharply cut off from American trade would entail. By slowly decoupling US-China trade, we remove that economic risk for Chinese strategists, making agression more viable.

Electronic self-tuning machines are still a thing, its just returned to totally aftermarket. Its just too niche and really mostly useful if you use a lot of alternate tunings in a set and can't bring multiple guitars.

Man there are digital pianos that have an entire keyboard and hammer assembly right out of a acoustic piano but the hammers strike a force sensor instead of strings. Definitely more on the ridiculous side of things but the fact there's a market for it means people do really care for the authentic tactile feeling of a piano especially if that's what they've trained on for decades.

Because Japan's population problem isn't a wealthy nation problem it's a population collapse problem. It's not just that birth rates have gone down because the average Japanese person has become wealthier or more educated. It's also that the lost decades made raising more kids unfeasible for a generation and because of that there's now a large elder population that must be taken care of by a smaler population. Immigration at least ameliorates some of that problem, plus the economy is doing better which means people will have more time and wealth to raise kids.

Even if you can't reverse the population decline you can at least not make it a dramatic collapse and go through all the human suffering that entails.

Cars is often hated because kids absolutely adored it, Disney is wringing as much profit out of that IP as possible, and I think the part of that movie that is for adults is not as upfront and center as it is for Pixar's previous work.

The obvious message of the movie "winning isn't everything" seems like childish moral pablum. But like many Pixar films of that era, the principal message is a more adult idea: that satisfaction in life is not attained by traditional metrics of success. Competition has its place but the rich experiences in life are not necessarily where the spotlight is. Maybe that too seems like a "well duh" lesson for kids but man there's a lot of adults who don't get that out there.

Is absolute pitch actually a desirable skill? I'm a total amateur but from my perspective once your instrument is tuned up and you have some sort of reference point it makes more sense to think about things in relative terms. Like I don't really care what the actual chord I'm playing is, I just care that about what the root note is relative to the last chord I played, what quality the chord is (major, minor, any additional colorful interval added), and the maybe if it's inverted.

Like if I learn a song and then for whatever reason I have to change what key it's in, all I gotta do is start playing a couple steps higher and lower and then I'm good. But if I had thought in absolute terms, I would be screwed.

Am I off base here? I just play for fun I don't know.