RobotOverlord525's recent activity
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Comment on Medicare for all would save 68,000 US lives per year and reduce costs by $450 billion in ~health
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Comment on Observations on DM styles in ~games.tabletop
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentSorry, I forgot you said you were a player. D'oh! This is what I get for writing responses on my phone just before going to bed. I can imagine where your group ran into trouble. It's a notoriously...Sorry, I forgot you said you were a player. D'oh! This is what I get for writing responses on my phone just before going to bed.
I can imagine where your group ran into trouble. It's a notoriously difficult encounter in the original Lost Mines of Phandelver module and the Shattered Obelisk version is, strangely, even harder. Part of the problem is that the early levels of 5e are often deadly. I really wish Wizards of the Coast had frontloaded a little more survivability into PCs' stats. If this was a deliberate design decision, it's a bit of a confusing one. You would think things would start easier and get harder as they progress. If we were to give them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps this was an attempt to help players really feel their power levels increase as they level up?
Are you running 2014 rules or 2024? At level 3, I switched our group over to the 2024 rules. We've got a monk and a barbarian (my daughter) in our group, and I know they benefit a lot from the 2024 changes.
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Comment on Observations on DM styles in ~games.tabletop
RobotOverlord525 (edited )LinkI'm running Shattered Obelisk myself. It's my first time DMing but not my first time playing D&D. My wife ran one short throwaway campaign to try it out (a setting she called Dumbshire) and then...I'm running Shattered Obelisk myself. It's my first time DMing but not my first time playing D&D. My wife ran one short throwaway campaign to try it out (a setting she called Dumbshire) and then Curse of Strahd.
I like to get into the RP and so does my wife and her sister but not all our players are equally into that. Including our now-15 year old daughter and her best friend. My daughter has said it's hard to get into character, and I'm sure having a table of adults doesn't help.
I like to do voices (I always have, since I was young), though it's debatable how good some of them are.
My wife is a published author of short fiction and has written but not published a ton of books over the years. I used to write a lot but mostly gave it up when it became increasingly obvious my writing wasn't up my standards. The point is, we both come at it from a writer's perspective. D&D is certainly an opportunity to indulge my creative instincts in a way that I have often neglected to in my adult life.
To some extent, as far as our styles go, my wife and I diverge less in terms of our priorities and more in terms of how much we let players get away with. I'm a stickler for rules and verisimilitude. She's looser with that. Does our table have a preference between us? I have no idea and I don't think there would be any way to find out anyway even if we were interested.
I'm still enough of a novice that I'm over-prepping like crazy. A lot of it with the help of ChatGPT. I certainly can't bounce story ideas off my wife!
As far as Critical Role goes, four of the seven people at the table are fans, including my wife and me. Only one of us, my wife's sister, has TTRPG experience that predates watching Critical Role. So how does that affect our games? I'm not sure. I certainly wish I had Matt Mercer's faculty with switching between voices!
As someone more experienced, what do you think of Shattered Obelisk? I know Justin Alexander thought it was terrible but I'm trying to make it work.
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Comment on Inside the war against excessive headlight brightness in ~transport
RobotOverlord525 LinkImagine my surprise seeing that article mention the Carmudgeon Show podcast and Jason Cammisa. I'm a fan but didn't expect that reference! Anyway, yeah, it's a super annoying problem. I'm hopeful...Imagine my surprise seeing that article mention the Carmudgeon Show podcast and Jason Cammisa. I'm a fan but didn't expect that reference!
Anyway, yeah, it's a super annoying problem. I'm hopeful adaptive headlight technology can help, but I also hear those matrix modules are obscenely expensive to replace. (Which makes sense, I suppose.) Even a fender bender can get costly if you or the other car have them.
One criticism the article mentions that I agree with:
Headlight alignment is certainly Stern’s primary foe—and he is not a fan of the likes of Baker and Morgan, either, whom he described in an email as having a fervor that “greatly outstrips their topical expertise and understanding, and likely qualifies them for IRS classification as religious entities.”
I didn't think their thoughts added much real substance to the article. That both seemed much better than Paul Gatto, though. (And maybe the quote was supposed to reference Gatto and Morgan not Baker and Morgan.) Being a complaint-subreddit's mod isn't exactly a major qualification for expertise.
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Comment on Routine dental X-rays are not backed by evidence—experts want it to stop in ~health
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentInterestingly, the article definitely doesn't even support the six month interval:Interestingly, the article definitely doesn't even support the six month interval:
The problem has bubbled up again in a series of commentary pieces published in JAMA Internal Medicine today. The pieces were all sparked by a viewpoint that Ars reported on in May, in which three dental and health experts highlighted that many routine aspects of dentistry, including biannual cleanings, are not evidence-based and that the industry is rife with overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
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Comment on US Department of Justice indicates it’s considering Google breakup following monopoly ruling in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentYeah, there would certainly be a lot of problems with browsers as a paid service. But the fact that three of the four biggest browsers (i.e., Chrome, Edge, and Safari) are "side projects" to their...Yeah, there would certainly be a lot of problems with browsers as a paid service.
But the fact that three of the four biggest browsers (i.e., Chrome, Edge, and Safari) are "side projects" to their developers is telling. If we want to disentangle browsers from surveillance capitalism or just monopolistic business practices, though, we've got to do something.
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Comment on The bill finally comes due for Elon Musk in ~transport
RobotOverlord525 LinkWhat reputation? The one where it's obvious that he's almost as bad a liar as the presidential candidate that he's stumping for now? I don't think it's possible for him to take any reputation hits...If Musk fails to deliver or shows off some obvious vaporware, his reputation — and Tesla’s stock price — could take a real hit.
What reputation? The one where it's obvious that he's almost as bad a liar as the presidential candidate that he's stumping for now? I don't think it's possible for him to take any reputation hits at this point. For anyone who has been paying attention to Musk at all over the years, you either already know that he is constantly full of shit or no amount of evidence could ever convince you otherwise.
Tesla’s approach to the hardware of driverless vehicles also diverges from the rest of the industry. Musk infamously relies on a camera-only approach, in contrast to the widely used practice of relying on a “fusion” of different sensors, including radar, ultrasonic, and lidar, to power autonomous driving. Musk calls lidar, in particular, a “crutch” and claims any company that relies on the laser sensor is “doomed.” Waymo’s robotaxis are adorned with large, obvious sensors, a style expressly at odds with the sleekness of Musk’s vehicles.
I remember reading an article some years back, I'm not entirely certain where. (Probably Car and Driver, but maybe not.) It was talking about the removal of radar from Teslas. Elon Musk was convinced that, because humans could drive entirely with vision alone, Tesla's cars should be able to, too. He wanted to, he said, "go back to first principles" on self driving cars. Now, of course, this couldn't possibly have anything to do with wanting to cut costs by removing sensors and just hoping that software could make up the gap. But even if you take Musk at face value (and I don't know why anyone would), isn't the goal for self driving cars to be able to drive better than humans? Particularly in situations where we don't drive terribly well? If so, it's obvious that giving self driving vehicles the ability to see better than us would be an obvious benefit, particularly while it's a nascent technology.
Sadly, despite what this article's title suggests, it seems like the bill never comes due for this blowhard.
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Comment on OpenAI is a bad business in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentThere are subtle differences that are apparent to people that use the three major LLMs (i.e., ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini). Claude is broadly understood to be the most "literary" of the three. And...The problem with all of these ai companies is that they really have no differentiators.
There are subtle differences that are apparent to people that use the three major LLMs (i.e., ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini). Claude is broadly understood to be the most "literary" of the three. And when I had access to both ChatGPT and a Gemini Pro trial, I could tell the difference between the output of the two. (ChatGPT-4o was better nine times out of 10.)
while I won't say the barrier to entry is low, I will say that it's trivial for any company with the resources to do it at this point.
Evidently those resources are huge, though. To the point where I wouldn't downplay them. Part of the reason why OpenAI is burning through cash so quickly is because building/training and operating these LLMs is outrageously expensive. The small/open source LLMs are apparently not comparable to the big three in large part because of their hardware limitations. It's why Sam Altman was looking for trillions of dollars in investments to build out chip manufacturing, for example. Granted, yeah, some of that is forward-looking as part of his quest to build AGI, but there's no denying that, in looking at their financials, their operating costs are huge.
Most importantly, people are starting to realize that this stuff isn't actually all that useful.
I find ChatGPT handy. Not indispensable, mind you, but handy. I use it for D&D prep, as a novice DM. And my D&D group uses it to make art for various moments in our campaigns. Yeah, most of that art is crap, but every once in a while it produces something great. At work, I've used it to help me with code for the system I'm an administrator of (I'm not a developer, so my code writing capabilities are pretty limited).
That said, I saw a recent thread on Reddit where people talk about what they use ChatGPT for (There are a million of these threads on /r/ChatGPT), and I found some of it a little disturbing. I don't trust anything ChatGPT ever says if it's supposed to be something factual. Yeah, it's fine for D&D prep, because, as a DM, anything I want to be canon in my version of the Forgotten Realms is; there's no cost to getting things "wrong." (There's also no expectation of originality when it comes to DMing, so if it produces suggestions that are highly derivative, it doesn't matter because my whole group has only been playing D&D for a year and a half anyway.) But as a replacement for Google? LLMs still hallucinate too much. (Arguably, 100% of their output is a hallucination, but that's a whole separate topic.)
And that's to say nothing of the people who are using it as a therapist or a friend or what have you. But I suppose that's the future: all of us siloed into our own private worlds, afraid of real life.
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Comment on US Department of Justice indicates it’s considering Google breakup following monopoly ruling in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 (edited )Link ParentYou're completely right. And realistically, here in the 2020s, that would make browsers SaaS. And maybe that business model makes the most sense. It would just suck to have one more subscription...You're completely right. And realistically, here in the 2020s, that would make browsers SaaS. And maybe that business model makes the most sense. It would just suck to have one more subscription service to pay for. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, no matter how much it feels like we've been getting away with it for decades.
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Comment on As the Taliban starts restricting men, too, some regret not speaking up sooner in ~humanities
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentIf you're curious about that topic, I found How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney to be a fascinating exploration on the topic. He interviews...Maybe learning what is effective in popping the bubble is the key to undoing some of this stuff.
If you're curious about that topic, I found How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney to be a fascinating exploration on the topic. He interviews both psychologists as well as people who have escaped cults or conspiracy theory groups. Your personal experience sounds a lot like what he describes in the book—a sort of epiphany that leads you to wonder how you ever through otherwise.
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Comment on The US government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentThe fact that this wasn't already a law is baffling. It's not like it's a new problem that a lot of services are much easier to sign up for them to cancel. But this is America so why would we care...The fact that this wasn't already a law is baffling. It's not like it's a new problem that a lot of services are much easier to sign up for them to cancel.
But this is America so why would we care about things that only meaningfully hurt lower- and middle-class people if they help giant corporations make money?
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Comment on The US government wants to make it easier for you to click the 'unsubscribe' button in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentThat's what I do to access the New York Times at home. I have to renew it every three days, but I don't really mind.That's what I do to access the New York Times at home. I have to renew it every three days, but I don't really mind.
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Comment on Ukraine war latest: Moscow claims clashes with Ukrainian troops on Russian soil in ~news
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentUnfortunately, the New York Times has been reporting that this probably won't do much to improve their prospects. That was two days ago. More recent reporting is very slightly less pessimistic...Unfortunately, the New York Times has been reporting that this probably won't do much to improve their prospects.
Military analysts said the attack could be an attempt to divert Russian units from the front lines, thus relieving the pressure on Ukrainian troops struggling to contain Russian advances. But they added that the Russian Army had ample reserves of troops to commit to the fight and that the attack risked further stretching Ukraine’s already outnumbered forces.
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On both occasions, the attacks were seen as an attempt to unnerve the Russian public and undermine Mr. Putin’s efforts to insulate them from the war.
But Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote on social media that those attacks “had little effect on the fighting” in Ukraine and “did not have serious domestic political ramifications for Putin.”
He and other military experts said that if the aim of this week’s attack was to draw Russian troops away from other parts of the front, it had little chance of succeeding.
“Russia already has greater forces/conventional capabilities in the area, better command and control, and it has conscript units that can be deployed, which are not used in Ukraine,” Mr. Lee said. “It is unlikely this operation will force Russia to pull significant forces from Ukraine.”
That was two days ago. More recent reporting is very slightly less pessimistic about it, though.
Military analysts say they are skeptical that Russia, which has a vastly larger army and arsenal of weapons than Ukraine, would be forced to divert forces from the fighting inside Ukraine to defend its border. Russia has reserves of conscript soldiers it is prohibited by its policies from deploying into Ukraine, but could on Russian soil.
It's a shame. If there were any justice in the world, this disgusting, pointless invasion would result in Putin being overthrown.
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Comment on Saluting the Chromecast, one of the great HDMI dongles in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentI have an original type of Chromecast on my Samsung TV. 99% of the time, it's just a Google-driven background generator for the TV between the time when we turn it on and when we open one of its...I have an original type of Chromecast on my Samsung TV. 99% of the time, it's just a Google-driven background generator for the TV between the time when we turn it on and when we open one of its native apps.
But every once in a great while, I come across a service that has an android app that I can cast from my phone but doesn't have a native Samsung app. (F1-TV comes to mind.) It's handy for that. My only disappointment is that it's only 1080 – it would be nice if it supported 4K.
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Comment on Google violated antitrust laws in online search, US judge rules in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 (edited )Link ParentThat certainly would have been ideal. I would like to see a lot of these giant tech companies broken up. Particularly Amazon-the-retailer, Amazon-the-third-party-marketplace, Amazon Basics, Prime...Microsoft should have been properly sliced up in the 90s, and it would have prevented this nasty Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Apple/Oracle/Facebook problem quite nicely. Rather than trying to constantly gobble up all of all tech sectors, businesses would have been much more likely to remain profitable within their niche.
That certainly would have been ideal. I would like to see a lot of these giant tech companies broken up. Particularly Amazon-the-retailer, Amazon-the-third-party-marketplace, Amazon Basics, Prime Video, Amazon-the-delivery-service, AWS, etc. But Google would be another good one — their smart home services have degraded over time as Google seems to have lost interest in it, to use one example.
That said, this is America, and I don't think we break up giant companies anymore.
But perhaps there is some hesitation around this now from Big Tech. Microsoft recently pulled a stunt where they de facto acquired a company (Inflection AI) without literally acquiring them.
Microsoft has agreed to pay AI startup Inflection about $650 million in cash in an unusual deal that would allow Microsoft to use Inflection's models and hire most of the startup's staff including its co-founders, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
I don't think they would do this unless they suspected they might get in trouble for just buying the company outright, the way they once might have.
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Comment on JD Vance’s wife: My husband only meant to insult people who actively choose not to have kids, not people who are trying but are unsuccessful in ~society
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentThis is kind of my sister. Ever since our mom died when we were in our early twenties, she has been trying to find the "perfect" diet that is going to protect her from aging and disease. For a...For example, I know quite a lot of people who have become vegans: some of them changed their diet and their purchasing habits to avoid animal products, and others made veganism the whole of their identity and seemingly shoveled every other aspect of their personality. The former are all still vegan to a T, but none of the latter are — they have scattered to other extreme diets, like keto and zero-carb.
This is kind of my sister. Ever since our mom died when we were in our early twenties, she has been trying to find the "perfect" diet that is going to protect her from aging and disease. For a long time she was vegan, and now she's almost a carnivore. She is a sucker for every wellness influencer on Instagram. It's sad.
On the Vance thing, I thought this New York Times article (that I believe I found here, actually) had another interesting, rather similar take.
Vance’s yearning for a father is a constant theme in the book, as is his willingness to rationalize the flaws of the men he looks up to.
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“Devoted convert” may be the role he inhabits most naturally. In 2016 Vance speculated that Donald Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” Now he’s his running mate. A lot has been written trying to understand Vance’s ideological journey, but at least part of the story seems to be hiding in plain sight in his book. In attaching himself to the most bellicose patriarch he can find, he’s re-enacting a childhood pattern.
In both cases, there is a sort of identity disturbance going on. And it sounds like that could be used to describe the inconsistent people you've encountered as well.
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Comment on Reddit CEO says Microsoft needs to pay to search the site in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentYeah, this came up on the NYT Hard Fork podcast (YouTube mirror here) a while back and I can't help but be concerned about it. In particular, the hosts (Kevin Roose and Casey Newton) were...Yeah, this came up on the NYT Hard Fork podcast (YouTube mirror here) a while back and I can't help but be concerned about it.
In particular, the hosts (Kevin Roose and Casey Newton) were enormously concerned about Google's then-forthcoming AI Overviews. AI Overviews are a feature that will generate AI summaries at the top of search results pages. (Like an AI-powered version of Featured Snippets, but without drawing from a specific site or directly quoting anything.) This change could significantly impact web traffic, as users might get the information they need directly from these summaries and not click on individual links as much. This reduction in traffic could hurt digital publications that rely heavily on Google searches for ad revenue and audience growth.
They noted that while Google claims these AI Overviews lead to "more valuable traffic" (Perplexity's CEO used the same stupid term), publishers remain skeptical. The potential drop in traffic, which analysts predict could be as much as 20% to 40%, could be devastating for many digital media businesses.
Unlike other AI tools where publishers can opt out, they have no such option with Google's AI Overviews. This means they can't exclude their content from being used in these summaries, leaving them with little control over how their information is used.
Roose and Newton also discussed the broader implications for the internet. If many websites close due to decreased traffic, the quality and quantity of information available online could decline. This could ultimately affect Google's AI, which relies on high-quality information to generate summaries. So, in other words, the doomsday scenario for this is that it creates a feedback loop that annihilates the profitability/sustainability of tons of websites and then also, ironically, kills off the source of very training data that the AI needs.
Of course, as journalists, they are especially sensitive to this, but the feedback loop they are describing certainly sounds plausible. Featured Snippets already obviated clicking on search results to some extent — this just makes it worse.
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Comment on YouTube without a working ad blocker in ~tech
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentSurely you didn't expect them to operate YouTube at a loss indefinitely on principle. If it wasn't paying for itself, I would be (more) concerned at how Alphabet was feeling like they were getting...Surely you didn't expect them to operate YouTube at a loss indefinitely on principle.
If it wasn't paying for itself, I would be (more) concerned at how Alphabet was feeling like they were getting their money's worth out of it.
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Comment on JD Vance’s wife: My husband only meant to insult people who actively choose not to have kids, not people who are trying but are unsuccessful in ~society
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentI thought Ezra Klein had a great take on this (YouTube mirror here). It reflects both what he wrote in Why We're Polarized as well as a lot of the ideas in How Minds Change: The Surprising Science...I thought Ezra Klein had a great take on this (YouTube mirror here). It reflects both what he wrote in Why We're Polarized as well as a lot of the ideas in How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion by David McRaney.
Basically, Ezra Klein argues that Vance's transformation should not be seen as purely opportunistic but rather as a sincere, albeit troubling, ideological shift. Klein describes Vance's change from a civility-driven individual to someone marked by antagonism and contempt, attributing this shift to Vance's alignment with the pro-Trump base and a reaction against Trump’s critics. Klein notes that Vance's conversion likely began with a hatred of Trump's enemies, not an initial support for Trump. He compares this to the phenomenon of "the zeal of the convert," where individuals who undergo ideological shifts often become more extreme in their new beliefs. Klein acknowledges the opportunistic elements of Vance's transformation, given his political ambitions, but emphasizes the sincerity of his conversion. He criticizes the cultural and temperamental changes in Vance, highlighting the loss of political virtue and the adoption of a contemptuous attitude towards opponents.
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Comment on Atheists of Tildes, what alive religions do you find fascinating, excluding Abrahamic ones and Buddhism? in ~talk
RobotOverlord525 Link ParentYeah, it's certainly not my area of expertise. Most of my study of history was Modern Europe, with a bit about Ancient Greece and Rome. Well after college, I did a lot of reading about the Roman...Yeah, it's certainly not my area of expertise. Most of my study of history was Modern Europe, with a bit about Ancient Greece and Rome. Well after college, I did a lot of reading about the Roman Empire in late antiquity after visiting the city on my wife and I's tenth anniversary.
But I have a love of Ancient Egyptian mythology going back to middle school at least. I just never got to study it seriously.
I agree. For profit health insurance is, without a doubt, a massively negative aspect of American society. The fact that this has been obvious for decades and we've done very little to actually deal with it is incredibly depressing. Hell, half the country apparently thinks the ACA went too far in trying to fix our healthcare system!
I suspect your last sentence reflects the fact that you know this, but it might be worth stating explicitly: fee-for-service has a lot of misaligned incentives as far as the good of society goes. Healthcare in the United States is exorbitantly expensive and some of that blame rests on the shoulders of for-profit health insurance. But not all of it.
Medicare for All would go a long way towards improving healthcare in America, but it wouldn't be a panacea. It would be incredibly disappointing if we finally managed to revolutionize health insurance in the United States but didn't address fee-for-service, drug prices, provider fragmentation, for-profit hospitalization, etc. to boot.
But it's all moot anyway. I've lost any faith whatsoever that we will enact any real reform of healthcare in the United States. The lunacy of wanting to repeal (rather than improve) the ACA tells me all I need to know about our appetite for meaningful reform in this country.