Eji1700's recent activity

  1. Comment on Is there a reason that we aren't seeing pushback to US President Donald Trump's blitzkreig? in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    Competitions are not won on any merit other than what is allowed within the rules. If the rules say you win if you get the most votes, then your job if you want to win, is to get the most votes....

    Competitions are not won on any merit other than what is allowed within the rules.

    If the rules say you win if you get the most votes, then your job if you want to win, is to get the most votes.

    The democratic party, strategically speaking, is fucking incompetent.

    To put this a framework almost no one will understand, trump is spamming Dragon Punches.

    It's a dumb as shit strategy, that isn't supposed to work at all, that seems good to beginners.

    The dems, in their infinite wisdom, know that it's a really bad fucking strategy and know all the ins and outs of vortexs, mixups, and combos. Unfortunately they have 0 fundamentals and are getting blown the fuck up, repeatedly, by someone with one god damn stupid trick, all while saying "well that was just a fluke. I'm better than that. I know so much more. Clearly it won't happen next time".

    It is the classic losers mindset you see when someone who has some sort of academic understanding of the game but no practical one, and it has been happening to the dems since the Obama administration (hell maybe even arguably before).

    Pick whatever example you'd like that makes sense, but at the end of the day the party leadership is still making zillions on speaking engagements and fucking astonishing stock returns, while the rest of us get stuck with the consequences of their elitist non performance.

    9 votes
  2. Comment on The democratization of information production is killing US democracy in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    Media with bias and "shit I heard in the pub" (parts 2 and 3) have been political factors since history, certainly since print. This article feels like just about any other I've read in that it's...

    Media with bias and "shit I heard in the pub" (parts 2 and 3) have been political factors since history, certainly since print. This article feels like just about any other I've read in that it's not exactly wrong, but it sure is wearing blinders.

    For the NBC chart, the dems are notorious for doing well in the liberal elite circles (ergo, people still reading newspaper at this point), and also notorious for doing poorly among the apatheticly political (those who don't follow political news).

    Further I think, that like many of these articles going after modern media, they miss one of the biggest issues. That's people on your "side" looking like idiots.

    Not that many people I know watch Fox News. Nearly everyone I know is aware of some social media take from some extremist area that they don't agree with. Either because it's being signal boosted by fanatics, opponents, or just because they want to be the first to be right. For example the boatload of conspiracies following the DC plane crash, except which ones were "the ravings of conspiratorial lunatics" and "justified fear due to the political environment" depended heavily on the theory being proposed and beliefs of the one judging them.

    So yes, there's absolutely media bias, and I'm not trying to completely downplay these things, as they do affect the world more and in different ways than they used to, but the real change in my eyes is that before not everyone could get published. In print media, even biased print media, you have some self selection and gatekeeping.

    In social media, you have the moron "down the road" who swears everyone you know and love deserves to die for being a dirty commie hippy/fascists nazi pig and it makes people sick of listening to these children scream and threaten people. Nothing turns people away from politics faster than being told that because you're not a perfectly open minded individual in all facets currently championed by the party, you are horrible and should feel ashamed and deserve all the hatred and self loathing you feel.

    7 votes
  3. Comment on Easy come easy go in ~life

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    Sort of the irony of his position, and many like it, is that if you had the sense to do that, you probably would not have taken that position to begin with. Thus when you finally hit your...

    The real moral here is don't get greedy, and realize gains!

    Sort of the irony of his position, and many like it, is that if you had the sense to do that, you probably would not have taken that position to begin with. Thus when you finally hit your "jackpot" you don't realize it (because the idea it'll got to $1,000,000 is impossible from several directions), and then ride it out to 0.

    1 vote
  4. Comment on AI is creating a generation of illiterate programmers in ~tech

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    The counterpoint is, code has only been "good enough" since around C++. 99% of use cases and industries do not need tight, perfect, well reasoned, well maintained code. Much like "making a program...

    The counterpoint is, code has only been "good enough" since around C++.

    99% of use cases and industries do not need tight, perfect, well reasoned, well maintained code. Much like "making a program that always works" became "making a program that can quickly be killed and restarted to work" has become the new norm, I think coding is feeling the exact same pressure.

    I honestly wonder if at some point we're going to hit a wall where "fuck it, do it over" will be faster than "figure out what in the ever loving fuck anyone on this project ever thought", and that was BEFORE AI hit the scene.

    The simple fact is there's a very large need for coding, and there's always been a tremendous need for bridging the gap between coders and their tools. Most coding should be dead easy, and yet the ZILLIONS of API's, protocols, gotcha's, whoopsies, tech debt, new patterns, old patterns, styles, frameworks, gremlins, grey beard standards, hot new toys, I'll do it tomorrows, and god knows what else have made a mess.

    Something like "hey, you know how you click and drag to move a file, well here's how you can do that in code" is a shockingly large learning leap even for someone who's a tech enthusiast (think of every gamer out there who can build their own pc, hunt google searches for days for dead threads to test their GPU, but doesn't know how to maintain a basic script).

    AI, much like the GUI, is abstracting a lot of that out. I realize that for business level "no really this shit needs to work" code, that's going to be a fucking nightmare, and I'm in a roughly similar situation, but for so much more of it it's going to hit the same standards we've always had, which is "good enough".

    Coders especially seem to put themselves on this pedestal of artisanal problem solvers, but honestly the vast majority of coders I've met working at major companies are just bashing out garbage and calling it a day. The good ones spend more of their time documenting and STOPPING people from writing code than they ever do actually writing.

    16 votes
  5. Comment on What are everyone’s favourite pens and stationary items? in ~creative

    Eji1700
    Link
    My practical "i need a pen now" that's literally clipped on my wallet is a Bullet Space Pen, as I also have a tiny notebook in my wallet as well. For fountain pens, my handwriting is bad enough I...

    My practical "i need a pen now" that's literally clipped on my wallet is a Bullet Space Pen, as I also have a tiny notebook in my wallet as well.

    For fountain pens, my handwriting is bad enough I mostly just care about the aesthetics.

    I love the fireblue Kaweco Liliput, but that pen is actually not stellar as it doesn't always write when I need it to (nib seems eh). I have a few others already mentioned in this thread (safari and what not).

    I recently have been using the novium Hoverpen as someone got it for me as a gift since it looks good on my desk at work, and I can have it use the various inks i'm still working through (mostly noodler's).

    Think that's about it these days. I was very happy with my TWBSI ECO for quite some time until I lost/broke it, and i've got a zillion little pens on my keychain/in my bag at just about any moment. If I could find a small fountain pen that had the "speed" of something like the bullet I'd do that (pull off cap, writes when I need it to, no futzing around hoping the ink is flowing), and maybe i'll look into a rollerball for that one day since those also flow nicely, but yeah that's about it.

    Mostly I find the need for me to write something to be a "RIGHT NOW" thing and the last thing I want is to be screwing around with my writing instrument.

    Oh I forgot, I despise pencil generally but wanted one that could take the place of my bullet space pen so I got a Kaweco Special Mechanical Pencil which I use rarely (mostly when practicing sketching for art, which I am very very bad at).

    1 vote
  6. Comment on Mindwave (an upcoming Kickstarter title w/microgames) in ~games

    Eji1700
    Link
    The aesthetic is amazing and instantly drew my attention. Probably not going to kickstart even with a demo since game development is brutal but I hope to see more of this.

    The aesthetic is amazing and instantly drew my attention. Probably not going to kickstart even with a demo since game development is brutal but I hope to see more of this.

    6 votes
  7. Comment on A young man used AI to build a nuclear fusor and now I must weep in ~tech

    Eji1700
    Link
    An interesting story, but not a new one that required AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTBZ0VwIgs8 I suggest reading the top comments and noting that he never seemed to make the second video,...

    An interesting story, but not a new one that required AI:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTBZ0VwIgs8

    I suggest reading the top comments and noting that he never seemed to make the second video, so that's good.

    That being said, yeeaaah there's going to be all sorts of really awkward scenarios now when people realize that AI's, handled correctly, can give chemistry or physics information that can very quickly become extremely dangerous.

    Also I feel like the most interesting part of the article is somewhat hidden here:

    HudZah enjoys reading the old-fashioned way, but he now finds that he gets more out of the experience by reading alongside an AI. He puts PDFs of books into Claude or ChatGPT and then queries the books as he moves through the text. He uses Granola to listen in on meetings so that he can query an AI after the chats as well. His friend built Globe Explorer, which can instantly break down, say, the history of rockets, as if you had a professional researcher at your disposal. And, of course, HudZah has all manner of AI tools for coding and interacting with his computer via voice.

    It's not that I don’t use these things. I do. It’s more that I was watching HudZah navigate his laptop with an AI fluency that felt alarming to me. He was using his computer in a much, much different way than I’d seen someone use their computer before, and it made me feel old and alarmed by the number of new tools at our disposal and how HudZah intuitively knew how to tame them.

    This is something I've been thinking about a lot, especially when it comes to minor scripting tasks. Why am I clicking on several applications to run them, then manually moving the files when completed? Yeah i could write a script, but at this point, how hard is it to just tell an AI "when files in this folder finish downloading move them to x/y/z depending on a/b/c criteria"

    21 votes
  8. Comment on Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport closed after a military helicopter collides with a landing regional jet in ~transport

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    Yeah there's a couple of things I'm curious about but don't have enough knowledge to really judge. I suspect thinking about it more that it's just as unlikely for it to be on purpose, if just...

    Yeah there's a couple of things I'm curious about but don't have enough knowledge to really judge.

    I suspect thinking about it more that it's just as unlikely for it to be on purpose, if just because of how insanely hard it would actually be to hit an in the air plane with any sort of reliability.

    However on the other hand, this isn't like one of those horrible runway accidents where the tower fucked up, or at least I don't think? I'm assuming that helicopter airspace is just in a totally different area for all sorts of practical reasons?

    5 votes
  9. Comment on Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport closed after a military helicopter collides with a landing regional jet in ~transport

    Eji1700
    Link
    That’s pretty concerning no matter what kind of helicopter. It’s damn hard for something like that to be an accident

    That’s pretty concerning no matter what kind of helicopter. It’s damn hard for something like that to be an accident

    5 votes
  10. Comment on While signing Laken Riley Act, Trump says he’ll send ‘worst’ criminal migrants to Guantanamo in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    Yes how dare those who have survived or have had family members sent to death camps use the wrong terminology and muddy the waters…. The immediate association is death camp. To pretend otherwise...

    Yes how dare those who have survived or have had family members sent to death camps use the wrong terminology and muddy the waters….

    The immediate association is death camp. To pretend otherwise is to be foolish and to make it seem like crying wolf.

    This is already a fucking horrible thing. It’s a fucking torture site at minimum. Why die on this hill

    2 votes
  11. Comment on While signing Laken Riley Act, Trump says he’ll send ‘worst’ criminal migrants to Guantanamo in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    For what it’s worth I agree with your decision in this. People can come to their own conclusions. If OP thinks that AP news is trying to hide this then they can talk about that in a comment (as...

    For what it’s worth I agree with your decision in this.

    People can come to their own conclusions. If OP thinks that AP news is trying to hide this then they can talk about that in a comment (as they have, although needlessly confrontational in tone about it).

    Edit-

    I think what bothers me a lot in this specific case of headline editorializing is the poster is making an argument not directly stated in their link, by their own admission? I’m sure theres plenty of articles out there that have similar conclusions, so why not just link to one of them?

    8 votes
  12. Comment on Should leftists in the US be armed? in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    I've tried writing a response something like 4 or 5 times. I can't get over the gall of you implying that somehow the warsaw ghetto is comparable, and arguably I suppose, "shouldn't have bothered".
    • Exemplary

    I've tried writing a response something like 4 or 5 times. I can't get over the gall of you implying that somehow the warsaw ghetto is comparable, and arguably I suppose, "shouldn't have bothered".

    12 votes
  13. Comment on Should leftists in the US be armed? in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link
    I want to be clear that despite my posts in this topic arguing against what I think are poorly made arguments, I do not think with the information you've given, that you should buy a weapon. I do...

    I want to be clear that despite my posts in this topic arguing against what I think are poorly made arguments, I do not think with the information you've given, that you should buy a weapon.

    I do think that merely owning a weapon and being trained properly in how to respect and use it helps prevent the kind of things you're worried about, even if it's only ever kept in a safe and occasionally used at a range, but it is important to realize that it is a deadly tool, and unless you want to spend time getting yourself more comfortable with that it's more likely to harm your life than do any net good.

    9 votes
  14. Comment on Should leftists in the US be armed? in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    No, you are not. This is the kinda of weird "well i thought about it for 5 seconds" logic that gets thrown around a lot in these conversations. Tyranny doesn't happen overnight, tyranny isn't...

    In this scenario, you're living as an insurgent

    No, you are not. This is the kinda of weird "well i thought about it for 5 seconds" logic that gets thrown around a lot in these conversations.

    Tyranny doesn't happen overnight, tyranny isn't always just avoided by blood in the streets. Checks and balances exist in literally 1000's of ways, and "what % of my population could make my life hell tomorrow" is a very very real one. The difficulty with which a group can be oppressed is very much related to if they will be.

    8 votes
  15. Comment on Should leftists in the US be armed? in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    People in aggregate are far more important than individuals. This attitude is self defeatist and flies in the face of basically all known material on the subject. I'm not going to go into the...
    • Exemplary

    What exactly are you going to do, untrained, with a peashooter, against the US military, in this doomsday hypothetical?

    People in aggregate are far more important than individuals. This attitude is self defeatist and flies in the face of basically all known material on the subject. I'm not going to go into the usual circles on this and just say that armed groups have ALWAYS been treated differently than unarmed ones.

    I don't know what riots the rest of the world watched, but the people who showed up armed and organized weren't beaten mercilessly by police. Yes, it vastly increases your chances of being a victim of gun violence, almost certainly of your own doing. But this "well what are you going to do" rhetoric just shows a total ignorance of conflict and the balance of power throughout history with regards to the populace.

    This goes doubly in a country with so many guns (were this one where they weren't easy to acquire it might be different, but it's not).

    18 votes
  16. Comment on Star Trek: Section 31 | re:View in ~movies

    Eji1700
    Link
    I don't know why anyone was optimistic for this. Even from a sci fi action movie perspective, totally ignoring trek, it looked like an awful pile, and surprise, it was. It just reeked of trend...

    I don't know why anyone was optimistic for this. Even from a sci fi action movie perspective, totally ignoring trek, it looked like an awful pile, and surprise, it was.

    It just reeked of trend chasing nonsense (look it's star trek suicide squad!) and it's not even good at it.

    10 votes
  17. Comment on What is China’s DeepSeek and why is it freaking out the AI world? in ~tech

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    This has basically nothing to do with the cost gamers currently, and will continue, to pay for GPU's. There's a lot going on right now, but GPU's for gamers is an "oh yeah that" line item for...

    as a gamer I really hope so.

    This has basically nothing to do with the cost gamers currently, and will continue, to pay for GPU's.

    There's a lot going on right now, but GPU's for gamers is an "oh yeah that" line item for NVIDIA at this point, and seeing as how they've got almost no competition (ESPECIALLY when it comes to drivers, and have strong network effects when it comes to development) it's not about to change anytime soon.

    The age of getting last years top of the line for half off is over. The good news is that you probably won't need top of the line anymore either. There's an interesting plateau that's being hit in several areas, and chasing the hardware isn't worth it.

    1 vote
  18. Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of January 27 in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    Yeah this is just dumb political theater and honestly helps no one. It's fucking stupid when texas politicians trot this shit out, and it's just as dumb now. Ignoring the fact that it's simply...

    Yeah this is just dumb political theater and honestly helps no one. It's fucking stupid when texas politicians trot this shit out, and it's just as dumb now. Ignoring the fact that it's simply just not legal it's just another step towards actual violence. There's so many fucking problems if something like this actually "passes".

    19 votes
  19. Comment on To those who have been trying out Kagi: what do you think of it? in ~tech

    Eji1700
    Link
    I'm happy with it. I've blacklisted some sites, use the "forum" button frequently, prefer the layout as it doesn't try to hide useful filters like time (which is vital when looking into code bugs...

    I'm happy with it. I've blacklisted some sites, use the "forum" button frequently, prefer the layout as it doesn't try to hide useful filters like time (which is vital when looking into code bugs and the like), and so on.

    I still think the average user would be fine with something like ublock origin which helps clean up sites like google a lot, but I feel like kagi's incentives mean it's slightly more likely to last as something that isn't just a mess of ads in 2 years.

    19 votes
  20. Comment on US President Donald Trump and the attention economy in ~society

    Eji1700
    Link Parent
    That's my point though. Breaking news/early reports used to be treated as such. Instead you've got reddit/twitter/even some traditional media outlets weighing on if trump "won" or "lost" the fight...

    That's my point though. Breaking news/early reports used to be treated as such. Instead you've got reddit/twitter/even some traditional media outlets weighing on if trump "won" or "lost" the fight when it is still developing.

    13 votes