lysace

$20 Pro plans are still BS starter plans anyway, right? I blew through that in an hour when I first tested out Claude Code.

I was confused about this a few hours ago. Why did I still have Fable 5 on my Max plan today? Am I getting billed per token, eek? (No.)

This is the message in in the claude [code] cli:

   Fable 5 is now a standard part of your Max plan
   You can use up to 50% of your weekly usage limit on Fable 5. If you hit your limit, you can continue on Fable 5 with usage credits. Fable 5 draws down usage faster than Opus 4.8. Run /model and select Fable to use it. Learn more: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15424964-claude-fable-5-promotional-access

They just want to get rich.

The failed rebellion against Sam Altman at OpenAI pretty much proved that.

No, this is engagement-maxxing style journalism. Complete with the clickbait headline. It also spends almost no time on why the cheaper-but-dumber options win.

(Everything is relative. I expect more from IEEE than the NYP or the Daily Mail, as extreme examples.)

I think this was about two separate events in 1994:

Among the allegations: that the NSA fed information to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas enabling the companies to beat out European Airbus Industrie for a $ 6 billion contract; and that Raytheon received information that helped it win a $ 1.3 billion contract to provide radar to Brazil, edging out the French company Thomson-CSF. These claims follow previous allegations that the NSA supplied U.S. automakers with information that helped improve their competitiveness with the Japanese (see "Company Spies," May/June 1994).

https://irp.fas.org/program/process/991101-echelon-mj.htm

The writing style frustrated me immensely.

tl;dr: Cheap cool-white LEDs cut energy but worsened light pollution; warmer, dynamically dimmable LED fixtures/infra fix it but lower costs tend to win.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB95326824311657269 (https://archive.is/N46di)

Why We Spy on Our Allies

March 17, 2000 11:56 am ET

By R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former director of central intelligence.

We'll begin with some candor from the American side. Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it's true that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for?

tl;dr: "You bribe, so we spy"

To clarify: not MD5 itself. It was created in 1991 by Ron Rivest. (It is my experience that knowledge of these things isn't as widely distributed as one might hope.)

I first came across it in 1995/1996: Wow, what a magical tool for backend web stuff! I used it for everything.

In Swedish news reports they were careful to specify that it was the "English mile" (sic, ish?).

For clarity, the one that is used in UK, US and Liberia. It is exactly 1609.344 meters.

Disambiguation (not readily available in non-simple English wikipedia): https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile

This 1980 style was also lovely. I rebuilt this model a few years ago - these instructions strike the balance just right. They make you think.

https://lego.brickinstructions.com/lego_instructions/set/886...

It probably eventually wasn't deemed important enough for that phase. In 1999 when Comic Chat ended they pivoted to their completely proprietary MSN Messenger service instead, with a stronger focus on individual-to-individual. This came after ICQ (1996) and AIM (1997).

First of all: I wrote that I welcome the open sourcing of this code. It was literally the first sentence. I wrote it specifically for reactions like that.

They embraced the Internet; in this case IRC. This followed Bill Gates' well-publicised memo "The Internet Tidal Wave" a year earlier (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/18_06_08_internet...). It didn't happen because "someone at MS made a fun IRC client".

They extended the open IRC protocol with proprietary extensions hidden inside CTCP (Client-to-Client Protocol) messages to support "the fun stuff": https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Amicrosoft%2Fcomic-chat%20... (you need to be logged in to Microsoft's Github for code search to work nowadays.)

The outcome of this effort: Comic Chat was interoperable with regular IRC clients, but when two Comic Chat users connected, they could see richer interactions.

Open sourcing code is always welcome.

However it's kind of weird that you choose this very explicit 1996 Embrace, extend, and extinguish piece of software to showcase. In this case it was IRC. In other cases it was Java, the web, etc.

Embrace, extend, and extinguish

Opus works, Fable doesn't.

And going back to Opus: I kind of prefer it.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/jul/14/university...

Thousands of university job cuts in humanities and social sciences are creating widespread cold spots for languages, classics and theology degrees, the British Academy has warned.

[...]

The subjects with the biggest staff cuts were social work (-9%), English and classics (both -8%), anthropology (-7%) and linguistics (-6%).

This feature has a long and storied history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key

"Mobile" was the little leagues before Apple/iPhone in terms of corporate/product competency.

A few days after iPhone was launched in June 2007 I heard an exec of a technical team defending the by then fairly obvious "ownage" by claiming that Apple had "cheated" by putting 1 GB of RAM into the device (which would be insanely expensive). Of course it was 128 MB. Nokia-adjacent company. He had misunderstood 1 Gbit from some teardown. That was the level of competency.

The software sophistication just really wasn't there at that level. (It was there at an IC/architect level though.) Apple raised the bar quite considerably.

Not them, but: It's a cozy/calm kind of movie. The cinematography is excellent.

Repeatedly being TV broadcast on jan 1st for many years turned it into a tradition for something to watch while being hung over.

It's also actually surprisingly good, as a whole.

It was great fun to see him interact with viewers regarding this every/many Jan 1. He kind of embodied that global village spirit.

E.g.

https://x.com/TwoPaddocks/status/1212188526348890112 (2020)

I am relaxed, fit , and ready to fight the dreary Ivanhoe once more.

https://x.com/TwoPaddocks/status/1080048522492145664 (2019)

SWEDEN ! I have strapped on my body armor, renewed my courage, got my evils back, and am braced once again to Sweden's MOST HATED. And this year I WILL WIN . #HappyNewYear2019 #Ivanhoe

https://x.com/TwoPaddocks/status/947971082018889728 (2018)

Yes, my annual disemboweling seems to please Swedes every year. #Ivanhoe

Etc, going back to 2015.

Relevant news from the past week:

"A joint investigation by The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde":

https://theins.press/en/inv/294635

Basically Russia and China are collaborating in taking down Starlink. Leaked documents showing the plans.

They don't mention social media opinion shaping, but then again the leaked documents are from 2023.

https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2010/05/14/facebook-foun...

Loveable Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called his first few thousand users "dumb fucks" for trusting him with their data, published IM transcripts show. Facebook hasn't disputed the authenticity of the transcript.

High testo, huh.

Again though: please don't be an asshole. You're doing a disservice to Lisp.

iLemming: creating a new user just to say that seems a bit over the top.

Please be less of an asshole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380

You are shifting the goalposts. You first said "at least they try to appear anti-corruption".

This thing about not caring about appearances is new. (And also the only thing I commented about.)

Flag rope knots are low key stressful. You only need to do them once every 5-10 years or so, so you don't really develop any expertise through practice. If you do it wrong, you probably have to pay or arrange for a team of two people to lower the flagpole.

The flag rope for our 12 meter flagpole broke. I seriously debated getting a drone to replace it in situ. Then I realized hauling just a few hundred grams of rope needs a fairly serious drone.

Don't confuse "the west" with the US. The US is less than half of "the west".