winterbourne

This is true, but when we compare them to OpenAI's repeated feints at altruism and nonprofit structure, the irony is plentiful.

This was interesting; thank you. He admits that he can't really answer this question. His point about technology seeming obvious in retrospect is similar to the Egg of Columbus idiom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus

The video hints at the notion that they may just have not figured it out. Certainly working iron and steel would have been extremely useful, but they never developed that ability either, even after thousands of years of civilization. The interplay of a wheel and an axle may not be as intuitive as it seems to us in modern times.

One of the more esoteric explanations that I have heard is that there was a religious taboo around easing manual labor. And that the wheeled (and axled) figurines that we have found were not children's toys, but religious objects.

I use my wheelbarrow to do work around my mountain property all the time. We have a 4-wheel utility cart that sees a lot of service too. Their utility lies in doing work over short distances.

I still can't reconcile how they didn't use the wheel for transportation. The explanations of lack of draft animals and unsuitable terrain aren't great. Not even a wheelbarrow?

Thanks, that means a lot. I've found that browsing through a few dozen build threads is the perfect cure for the AI blues.

Thanks; much appreciated. I picked up an endless list of new build interests in starting the site and exploring different niche forums. Turns out I really like wooden boat builds, cyclekarts, intricate custom knives, handmade violins, the list goes on...

You're right that getting a car custom-built is where the costs add up quickly; easily north of $50K. Most of the cost is labor, which is $0 if you do it yourself. Some of the projects are much easier than others. If you want to fall down a rabbit hole, look in the kit car and hot rod categories; lots of affordable and small builds in there. The Buick Riviera in La La Land is more of a resto-mod cruiser project, but the small/retro itch is exactly what the kit car category scratches. The first step is to find a forum where people are building the car you like, and start following related build threads. That's the majority of my social media intake these days.

https://buildthreads.com/

Aggregator for new posts in build threads from 277 old-school DIY forums.

Build threads of people building cars, 4x4s, motorcycles, boats, airplanes, hot rods, musical instruments, etc.

Everyone scrambling to max their usage before the deadline may have given Anthropic some valuable data on exactly how much compute they can handle. The extension could also be a play to minimize the effect of OpenAI's next move.

Even if they grant a reset, the ball is now in OpenAI's court.

Nice! This is just what I'm looking for. An old Roomba 880 served us well until it could no longer charge its battery, even a new one.

The AI slop on the site is not appealing, but it could also mean that the project will be parallelized successfully.

I run an active forum in the DIY space, and another site that aggregates new build threads from hundreds of niche forums. Forums for people building cars, motorcycles, boats, airplanes, cabins, musical instruments, etc.

The classic forum format and tight-knit communities are ideal for what are called "communities of practice": like-minded people who get together to help each other build/create/make/do something. A well-moderated build thread is best suited to a classic linear non-threaded posting format, and that's why thousands of niche DIY forums still exist.

Pining for the forum heyday is common on social media now, but for niche DIYers, that participation is still a daily ritual.

This is the truth. For DIY pursuits, niche forums are far superior to reddit, twitter, facebook, instagram, or any other social media.

This gives permission for all other providers to do the same.

It would be more difficult to make an open model illegal. Where is the centralized kill switch like what Anthropic used today?

Huge PR win for Anthropic if they can restore access within a week or so.

Will be interesting to see OpenAI's next move.

Just turned off for me on Claude Code. Good while it lasted.

Homeschooled kids can socialize outside of homeschool and be perfectly well-adjusted. There's something to be said for avoiding the hierarchical social structure present in schools.

that implies a certain amount of time and cognitive investment on my part

Yes, this is the takeaway for me. A PR can no longer be a reasonable proof of work.

Agreed. Professional sports are the closest institution that society has to a meritocracy. Highly competitive, public, obsessively measured and analyzed. A tenth of a second faster sprint time might be more valuable than even a top-tier socioeconomic background.

The IQ loss from neurological damage caused by COVID wasn't helpful either. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2311330

Interesting to search this page for "4.5".

I'm happy to move to a superior model, but I'm not really hearing enough about significant improvements, and the obvious pressure to release the latest and greatest model makes me hesitant to upgrade. I've been satisfied with the results I get using 4.5 with an "ask ChatGPT" skill that runs the code by ChatGPT 5.4.

It's a modern version of: "we're firing you, but your last task will be to train your lower-cost replacement".

Your comment made me look up "shower phone holder" on Amazon, and I regretted it.

Possibly related to "showerthoughts", in that removal of stimuli allows for latent realizations to surface.

The article doesn't address branding very much, but one of the theories for why laser-focused American brands (like Starbucks, KFC, or McDonald's) do so well in Japan is that Japanese mega-companies are too brand-diluted to compete with them.

That's true, those numbers don't work out for Google. But they have essentially unlimited resources to discover the exact threshold at which that person is just barely incentivized to keep their site active. $100K/year, reduced 80% to $20K/year? Still enough for them to keep their site up part-time? Etc.

The bulk of the traffic they're referring is essentially residual profitless goodwill left over from their "don't be evil" days.

AI verbosity is similar to AI sycophancy: a dark pattern, disguised as earnest assistance.

If Google cuts that out completely, what incentive do websites have to not block the Google crawlers?

Completely, yes, that destroys the incentive. But they can reduce it 80% or 90% or so, to the point that it's just barely worthwhile to allow their crawlers.