TonesTones's recent activity
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Comment on How Sam Altman is profiting off of AI's problems in ~tech
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Comment on How Sam Altman is profiting off of AI's problems in ~tech
TonesTones LinkI’ve been an AI and a genAI hater since day one, and I don’t have anything positive to say about the values or morals of these tech moguls. Still, this doesn’t feel like high quality journalism to...I’ve been an AI and a genAI hater since day one, and I don’t have anything positive to say about the values or morals of these tech moguls.
Still, this doesn’t feel like high quality journalism to me. The speaker spends the first few minutes of the video describing Loopt as a failed product with no users and implies that Altman lied to get his product sold. Loopt’s product or users weren’t the important part; it was sold primarily for its patent on interactive location maps, which Apple still likely pays a licensing fee for to this day for Find My (unless the patent lawyers have finagled something). I found that with just a few minutes of searching.
Oversights like that make it feel like this is a person with a political agenda rather than a journalist reporting on a story. Maybe that’s alright, but honestly, I think there’s enough to criticize about AI financing and social harm without misleading like this. Just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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Comment on Hobson v. Hansen and the decline of DC schools in ~humanities.history
TonesTones (edited )LinkI got some very strange vibes from this piece. I try to be someone who takes in all perspectives and appreciates what I read. I hate to use my instinctual emotional responses as evidence, but the...I got some very strange vibes from this piece. I try to be someone who takes in all perspectives and appreciates what I read. I hate to use my instinctual emotional responses as evidence, but the piece felt to me like it gave a veneer of academic analysis without being substantive.
Notably, the piece begins by touting Hansen as a lifelong proponent of integration, and that he needed to justify it to segregationists and was defending it.
Then
Judge Wright concludes that while Hansen was “motivated by a desire to respond - according to his own philosophy - to an educational crisis in the District school system” rather than intended racial discrimination, the district’s ability grouping served as “a denial of equal educational opportunity to the poor and a majority of the Negroes attending school in the nation’s capital.”
What? I got so much whiplash from reading this paragraph that I had to reread the entire piece to make sure I wasn’t grossly misinterpreting it.
I then realized why I was confused. The author spends paragraph after paragraph emphasizing Hansen’s policies as hallmarks of integration, without ever actually providing evidence for if the schools were integrated except by taking school-wide population counts. The author never provides context for the racial impact of the track system. He sure implies that it was nondiscriminatory, but still has to confront the reality of the ruling.
I agree with Judge Wright that it was regrettable for him to act in an area so alien to his expertise. In the years since his ruling, scholars have raised serious critiques of his use of social science.
The one time the author takes a personal stance is to use the judge’s own words against him to critique the ruling. To be fair, he then cites several prominent legal scholars at the time, but this ruling was controversial for a reason. Why act like it’s so one-sided?
Ugh, I sometimes get so frustrated reading social science papers because it’s so hard to distinguish between the evidence and opinion. They get comingled in the language and I end up buying what the author writes at face value.
Until they leave a subtle hole in their paper. At first, I think it’s a typo between “desegregation” and “segregation”. Then, I think I misread the piece because of its length and complicated prose. Then, I understand that the author refuses to even ask the central question of the titular case Hobson vs. Hansen, which is “Did the track system discriminate?”.
I still think this was an interesting subject to learn about. I might read the case ruling myself over the rest of my Christmas vacation. But this feels misleading as hell.
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Comment on How sewage can be used to heat and cool buildings in ~enviro
TonesTones Link ParentLocal regulation can subsidize this kind of development by providing tax benefits to properties that develop it, funded by increasing condominium property taxes more generally. Capitalism is...Local regulation can subsidize this kind of development by providing tax benefits to properties that develop it, funded by increasing condominium property taxes more generally. Capitalism is really just a combination of an economic culture (social expectations) and an economic system structured by strong property ownership laws. Is your concern that this particular endeavor is money-losing or that the margins are too tight? Since these regulations often fail when they make new development too risky, but otherwise they can pay off.
I want to be a bit more optimistic. While I appreciate and sometimes endorse critiques of those strong property ownership laws, I think people in the modern day forget that capitalism can still benefit the average person when the government acts as a firm guiding hand towards social good.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
TonesTones LinkEver since switching to Helix from Jetbrains IDEs as my editor/s of choice earlier this year, I've been obsessed with going CLI-first as much as possible for my personal projects. I'm now working...Ever since switching to Helix from Jetbrains IDEs as my editor/s of choice earlier this year, I've been obsessed with going CLI-first as much as possible for my personal projects. I'm now working on moving my finances to text with
beancount.The biggest challenge for me with this project was actually deciding whether to go with
beancountor withhledger. I do not feel qualified to write about the tradeoff, except that I prefer the syntax ofhledgerand I prefer some of the clear decisions thebeancountauthor made in this post. That post is a bit outdated, though, and I have not spent enough time comparing the two pieces of software to say if my opinion is "right" (I may switch!).I made the call that I did because
beancountis clearly much more opinionated thanhledger, which tends to work better for me from a meta-perspective. If a piece of software gives me too much freedom, I tend to spend time messing with it to get it to behave in a certain way. A piece of software designed to force me to do things a specific way tends to push me to get the actual project at hand done. I also suppose that I can transition between the two without too much difficulty.Also, I'm not sure what the best way to store this plain text file securely is. Naturally, it's got a decent amount of sensitive data on here that I try to lock behind some kind of authentication. I am not a security engineer; I just know how to code. I could encrypt it, decrypt it, and re-encrypt it every time I was to use or update it, but if anyone here has better suggestions, I would love to hear them.
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Comment on How Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan in ~tech
TonesTones LinkGreat piece of writing. One cannot simply trust the words of Wall Street analysts and financiers. They have too many financial incentives to advocate for specific messaging to ever have public...Great piece of writing.
One cannot simply trust the words of Wall Street analysts and financiers. They have too many financial incentives to advocate for specific messaging to ever have public takes that are at all based in truth. In some sense, I think that even critiquing their “opinions” is not very helpful because of how shallow and fake those opinions obviously are to any informed person.
Even if the piece does feel like preaching to the choir, Matt does a great job breaking down how American capitalists will choose to compromise American interests if they will get these capitalists greater returns. While I’m not sure that the national security concerns are legitimate, the consequences are still clearly a result of Wall Street favoring profits over stability and expecting government support.
I paraphrase the argument because I’ve heard some concerns from people in the AI space about the extraordinary investment in companies causing perverse incentives; investors expect enormous returns on their enormous investment, and so companies may be pushed to make otherwise bad decisions in pursuit of these profits. I agree with the take, but these incentives really aren’t anything new, and would not disappear absent the AI investment numbers. This piece is a good reminder that those incentives will always exist in a financialized capitalist economy.
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Comment on Other people might just not have your problems in ~life
TonesTones LinkI wish there was a word for a lesson that is obvious, but when you realize it in its totality, then the lesson becomes incredibly profound. I think “people have different strengths” is a pretty...I wish there was a word for a lesson that is obvious, but when you realize it in its totality, then the lesson becomes incredibly profound.
I think “people have different strengths” is a pretty obvious thing to recognize in one’s life, and this is one flavor of that. The top comment even points out that this is basically just learning to do things you like and don’t like.
Yet there’s something deeper here that might be ineffable, since I cannot really describe it better than the author’s post. I simply truly recognize that truth or apply it to my own life until my mid-twenties and I think it has been incredibly liberating since realizing it. Perhaps the author has had the same kind of realization, and that’s why they felt this piece was worth writing.
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Comment on JustHTML is a fascinating example of vibe engineering in action in ~comp
TonesTones LinkI think it’s notable that there was a preexisting comprehensive test suite. Both that and the coverage tests served as extremely effective feedback loops for the coding agents. This doesn’t really...I think it’s notable that there was a preexisting comprehensive test suite. Both that and the coverage tests served as extremely effective feedback loops for the coding agents. This doesn’t really change my priors about the strengths of LLM-assisted coding. Though it’s still quite cool to read about how much the agent is capable of iterating wholly on its own. I suspect we’ll see improvements in the generation of test suites, since it appears that correct and intelligent test suites combined with a strong architecture are sufficient for agents to arrive at efficient solutions.
I’m curious to hear whether people think this will make software engineering less interesting. Back when I was studying computer science, the tests were always my least favorite part; they were such a slog. Developing interesting and efficient algorithms is always what appealed to me, but it seems like that part may get outsourced to the machine now. It does not affect me, since coding is just a hobby or something I use to supplement my actual work, and I do not need to use LLMs if I don’t want to. I still wonder if I wouldn’t like what software engineering will turn into post-LLMs.
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Comment on Firewood banks aren’t inspiring. They’re a sign of collapse. in ~finance
TonesTones Link ParentI think the article is about people needing to get firewood for free from these banks instead of about the firewood market. Though I still agree with your overall point. At one point when I was...I think the article is about people needing to get firewood for free from these banks instead of about the firewood market.
Though I still agree with your overall point. At one point when I was pretty young, I lived in a community with easy access to firewood due to regular tree service, and the community would chop up the wood and distribute it for free. Everyone would save at their house until wintertime.
I do not believe everyone should have to be a market. I’m suspicious that this article just relies on these wood banks simply being more formal than they have been in the past. There was no formal organization when I experienced this, just small-town community awareness.
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Comment on The realities of being a pop star in ~music
TonesTones Link ParentI totally understand what you are saying here. Yeah, this could be an artistic piece and intentionally focuses on evoking what my response was. There will always be a weird boundary between the...I totally understand what you are saying here.
Maybe I'm giving charli too much benefit of the doubt here, but I didn't read the "never really understood" that literally here. I think she means exactly what you write.
Yeah, this could be an artistic piece and intentionally focuses on evoking what my response was. There will always be a weird boundary between the privileged vapid memories and the intense reality of being a famous person that the writing does an excellent job of capturing.
I didn’t talk about the possibility of intentionality much originally because my post was long enough. But for an artist like charli I can definitely see it. I occasionally write like this, portraying my perspective to evoke a specific reaction in the reader. I think my response still stands, just as a response to “charli the author-character” instead of “charli the author-person”.
Regardless, the writing does a great job of capturing the dissonance between an artist’s own experience and their interaction with the wider world because of their fame. Thank you for posting it!
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Comment on Living wage calculator in ~finance
TonesTones LinkNote that the housing numbers are for a “household”, i.e., how many people living under one roof. The numbers appeared significantly inflated to me for the single person with no children, until I...Note that the housing numbers are for a “household”, i.e., how many people living under one roof. The numbers appeared significantly inflated to me for the single person with no children, until I realized that the methodology assumes that the person is living without roommates. The cost breakdown is consistent, with the housing numbers being sometimes double what I would expect (since I live with roommates).
Of course, no roommates is much more likely for a parent or couple with children, and for those examples the numbers seem more consistent with my expectations. This is a super cool project!
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Comment on The realities of being a pop star in ~music
TonesTones LinkI really appreciated this post. Quality writing evokes emotion, and the varied responses already written here show that Charli is an excellent writer. I felt some sense of disdain reading this;...I really appreciated this post. Quality writing evokes emotion, and the varied responses already written here show that Charli is an excellent writer.
I felt some sense of disdain reading this; despite the grounded and self-reflective nature of the piece, I’d argue Charli still seems out of touch. There’s this hard-to-describe disconnect between the description of the lifestyle and what the implications of that lifestyle actually are compared to how other people live, and it left me with a sense of vapidness despite the critical self-reflection. To be frank, it was a really odd sensation to leave with. I’ll try to pick out a couple of quotes that did this for me.
You get to enter restaurants through the back entrance and give a half smile to the head chef (who probably hates you) and the waiters (who probably hate you too) as they sweat away doing an actual real service industry job while you strut through the kitchen with your 4 best friends who are tagging along for the ride. You get to feel special, but you also have to at points feel embarrassed by how stupid the whole thing is.
Charli frames her relationships with the world via people’s perceptions of her. She relies on assumptions and evidence of how people perceive to actually inform her conception of the world; at least that’s how the piece reads. Is she special? Is the whole situation stupid?
When he finally pressed send his message said that he thought I had not changed from the person he knew when we were younger and that he didn’t think I would in the future but also that I definitely do have ‘yes people’ around me that blow smoke up my ass. I said I could see the truth in that but luckily he went on to say that generally speaking I’m too British and self deprecating to actually believe any of the wild compliments the ‘yes people’ might pay me so I was probably safe.
Again, Charli herself does not actually reflect on if she has changed, but relies on some external perception to validate this. She does not actually grapple with the question from her own view, and therefore refuses to actually reveal herself to the reader. The title “The realities of being a pop star” offers some sense of transparency, but I did not learn anything new.
My final thought on being a pop star is that there is a level of expectation for you to be entirely truthful all the time. Over recent years some people seem to have developed a connection between fame and moral responsibility that I’ve never really understood.
I’m not sure how to feel about the relationship between fame and moral responsibility, but to claim you have “never really understood” it is a strong choice of words. I think society’s perception of a famous person lends them inherent power and influence, and then assigning responsibility to the famous person is obvious. I think it’s fair to criticize this relationship, to question it, or to subvert it. Not to understand it reinforces that she never tries to grapple with what being a “pop star” means to her or to the world, except for the lifestyle benefits and the occasional interactions with the average person that she has. Everything else is locked in a bubble of ‘this is the way I am perceived’.
I believe that’s where my disdain comes from; I feel that this perspective is vain even if it tries not to be. Yet, as I sat for a few moments to reflect on my emotions after reading, my disdain turned into sadness.
How can one expect such a famous person to actually grapple with the world outside of their own reflection in it? I try to humble myself and ground my perspective by spending time with people who do not really care about me. Interactions with strangers where my history, job, education, etc. don’t actually matter help me distinguish between what I think is important and what is actually important.
Pop stars simply cannot ever experience that. Their fame means that they are constantly surrounded by people who care who they are. If they ever try to interact with the general public, they are immediately reminded about who they are and how the world perceives them, usually with some profound negative feedback. Of course they feel like these opulent lifestyles are normal, as they are the only place where they can find some sense of normalcy.
I hope this is insightful; it was helpful for me to write. I still think this is an excelllent piece of writing. It made me think about things quite a bit and informed my perspective of the world.
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
TonesTones Link ParentI concur that the probability to output text that displays human emotions is always part of the distribution that arises from training. However, a lot of work goes into system prompting and...I concur that the probability to output text that displays human emotions is always part of the distribution that arises from training.
However, a lot of work goes into system prompting and fine-tuning the user-facing chatbots to behave in a certain way. We saw with ChatGPT’s endeavor into and departure from sycophancy that OpenAI has the ability to intentionally change the manner in which their models respond.
While I agree the capability is there by default, I do not think it’s fair to claim that the display of human emotions is “part of the package”. It’s clear that the companies building the products are making choices about model behavior with intention, and they have concluded that making the chatbots more human serves their ends.
I don’t work at an AI company, but I’d hazard they like to maximize user retention like every other tech company, and they have concluded that having the chatbots respond with faux emotions makes them more relatable and, therefore, more economically valuable. I use Kimi K2 because this assistant is very to-the-point and professional, with minimal to no unnecessary language to deliver a response; it is possible.
Companies choose not to mask the emotions for a reason. Such is the nature of product development, but it’s still important to ascribe purpose and intention where it exists.
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
TonesTones Link ParentI see the post-mortem impact, but doesn’t the bubble, while active, stimulate high job growth and high stock growth? People both lost and made retirements depending on if they (or their financial...People lost their retirements, and were laid off at the same time.
I see the post-mortem impact, but doesn’t the bubble, while active, stimulate high job growth and high stock growth? People both lost and made retirements depending on if they (or their financial managers) made winning or losing bets. That’s just playing the stock market. People lost jobs they may never have gotten without the bubble. In the modern U.S., AI is pretty much the only short-term bulwark against a total recession considering the recent economic impacts of tariffs, deportations, gov. shutdown, etc. We should be doing worse, but the bubble just delays the consequences for a bit longer. I understand those consequences are real, but I think the economic picture is more nuanced.
AI is driving a lot of our economy in the short-term. I personally believe the long-term impacts of the technology on human beings (education, socialization, creativity, etc.) will be worse, but I wouldn’t consider those economic impacts (not directly).
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Comment on Core Devices keeps stealing our (Rebble) work in ~tech
TonesTones Link ParentI think it is an open source thing because these kinds of disputes are precisely what non-permissive licenses are built to avoid. Each party is accusing the other of trying to hoard something...Maybe it's not fair to say that it's an open source thing, but it just seems to happen to stuff like this.
I think it is an open source thing because these kinds of disputes are precisely what non-permissive licenses are built to avoid.
Each party is accusing the other of trying to hoard something (data, an app store, code, etc.) for themselves. In any other business setting, the parties would get to do what they want with what they own. If there’s an ownership dispute, then it would be settled in court or maybe one party would buy the other out.
Instead, they feud publicly and say “no, I’m the one who can really be trusted by the community to maintain this software!” and various accusations get tossed around. It’s precisely because open source blurs the lines of ownership that this kind of dispute is even able to occur.
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Comment on A Cloudflare outage is taking down large parts of the internet - X, ChatGPT and more affected in ~tech
TonesTones Link ParentI think being down at the same time as everything else is a positive from the business perspective. Imagine your service goes down. Would you rather your consumer think “Dang, this service might...When a service has downtime it sucks. When everything is down simultaneously it is worthy of some questions as to whether or not this is a good idea.
I think being down at the same time as everything else is a positive from the business perspective. Imagine your service goes down. Would you rather your consumer think “Dang, this service might be unreliable?” or “Oh, X and ChatGPT are down today; guess it’s just a bad day.”? Non-technical users aren’t going to see this as a shared point of failure, but rather business as usual.
It’s also not a bad thing from an employee POV. If a quarter of the Internet isn’t doing business, it’s a lot easier to take a few hours or a day off than if the one service you need has downtime and everything else is working.
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Comment on That new hit song on Spotify? It was made by AI. in ~music
TonesTones Link ParentI’ve heard an interesting take on this. F.D. Signifier, in one of his videos analyzing rap (I apologize for not having the source), argues that record labels were actually helpful in how good...Now compare that to how they made music in the 70s, 80s, 90s. A lot of this can be blamed on the record labels I think.
I’ve heard an interesting take on this. F.D. Signifier, in one of his videos analyzing rap (I apologize for not having the source), argues that record labels were actually helpful in how good music was back then.
His argument goes as follows: because production and distribution was gatekept, artists needed to impress those with control over the production in order to have a shot at stardom. Now, artists and labels must compete with everyone in their bedroom making music. Production has been democratized. If one assumes that record executives have better taste than your average consumer, one can conclude that the democratization of production has actually decreased quality by virtue of competition. If they don’t make music that appeals to the lowest common denominator of the masses, someone else will, and they will win on the Spotify charts. F.D. Signifier argues that this is true of rap.
I just listened to Taylor Swift's latest album: overproduced, sterile, boring, unoriginal. Yet part of my friend group think it's great.
I’m not sure it’d be that hard to convince you that assumption is true.
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Comment on Posts vs. comments. Where do you fall and why? in ~tech
TonesTones LinkAs a prelude, I think your choice of words is unfamiliar to me. I’ve understood posts to be all of the items I scroll through on the Tildes home page, but those aren’t responding to anything as...As a prelude, I think your choice of words is unfamiliar to me. I’ve understood posts to be all of the items I scroll through on the Tildes home page, but those aren’t responding to anything as far as I see. I think you are making a distinction between top-level comments/posts and replies to those comments, so that’s what I’ll assume, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Overall, I think similar platforms with topic-comment-reply also have a substantial majority of top-level comments. I would not claim that Tildes is unique except insofar as there are fewer users in general, and so fewer replies in general.
Personally, I prefer making top-level comments because I often come off as critiquing or adversarial in my responses. I still need to develop my ability to think of and ask genuine questions about someone else’s opinions instead of immediately developing my own opinions as a default response. Therefore, if I have a thought, I often consciously choose to write it as a top-level so as to keep it independent and not feel like I’m trying to tell someone else they’re wrong even when we do disagree.
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Comment on Denmark is facing one of the largest legal bills in English legal history, running into hundreds of millions of pounds, after the country lost a high-stakes tax fraud case in London in ~finance
TonesTones LinkGood thing I have today off work here in the States; this article sent me down a rabbit hole to understand how these traders were able to finagle this legal case. In the quotes, SKAT is the Danish...- Exemplary
Good thing I have today off work here in the States; this article sent me down a rabbit hole to understand how these traders were able to finagle this legal case. In the quotes, SKAT is the Danish tax agency and Sanjay Shah is the head of the arbitrage scheme.
The conclusion is not that SKAT should have identified that is was being misled — it is not a defence to a fraud claim to argue that the alleged victim should have spotted the fraud. The conclusion is that SKAT was not being misled by any of the misrepresentations it claimed were being made to it, which for the most part the judgment finds were not being made to it anyway.
The crux seems to be SKAT claims specific areas where it was being misled, and the court found that none of those claims held up. This is despite Sanjay and co. knowing that their refund claims were invalid, and submitting them anyway.
The judgment finds that none of the 4,000+ tax refund claims examined at trial was a valid claim under Danish tax law, which means that SKAT would have been entitled not to pay any of them.
The court does not accept claims made by Sanjay Shah and some others that they had a reasonable belief that their cum-ex trading models generated valid tax refund claims under Danish tax law[.]
This raises the question of what the actual arbitrage scheme was, since the court agrees that Sanjay knew the claims were invalid, yet submitting them anyway supposedly did not constitute misrepresentation to SKAT. I’ve spent about an hour and a half digging through the judgment. Naturally, I originally thought it was much more complicated but the scheme is simple.
“Explanation of dividend comepensation payments
Short sellers who sell shares cum-div and settle ex-div are liable to pay a dividend compensation payment from their custodians. …
Long buyers who buy shares cum-div and settle ex-div must receive a dividend compensation payment from their custodians. Such payments are documented as dividend credit advice notices..”
Here, cum-div means before a dividend payment and ex-div means after a dividend payment.
The judgment takes nine and a half pages (21-30) to explain the scheme, but while the technical details are difficult, I think the basis is simple.
Through some financialization or asset construction, a vendor V and a buyer B are able to gain short and long exposure, respectively, to a Danish company D. This is equivalent to the buyer B loaning shares to the vendor V except that neither of them actually own a share of D.
I believe that it is possible this financialization is done with multiple options, but the judgment doesn’t make any reference to them, so I won’t say for sure.
Simultaneously, a lender L borrows this asset representing a share of D from V and then sells it to B, and suddenly the credits/debits of all three companies are net-zero, though no debts have been settled.
Now, depending on the timing of these transactions, there may be a dividend payment owed from one of these lenders to another. This typically manifested during what the judgment calls the “unwind phase”. Essentially, they have to settle like the Three Stooges.
the stock loan recall and reverse equity trade would be internally settled at C4 by another balanced, share-less settlement loop, with a complex wrinkle on the ‘cash’ side of things.
Notably, whoever is owed this money receives it in cash, records it as a dividend payment of D, and submits it to SKAT. They then received the refund despite no shares of D having ever been owned by B, V, or L, so no dividend was ever paid by D (and therefore no tax was collected).
I have no clue why this is not considered fraud by the court. It’s manufactured in a bunch of legalese, but nobody seems to deny that the defendants purported to hold shares of D when they did not.
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Comment on Who can name the bigger number? in ~science
TonesTones LinkThis Numberphile video about subcubic graphic numbers gets to big numbers using (in my opinion) a much more interesting method than just continuing to recursively repeat operations. I like the...This Numberphile video about subcubic graphic numbers gets to big numbers using (in my opinion) a much more interesting method than just continuing to recursively repeat operations.
I like the notion of ideas that we can define yet also defy the scale of numbers we can write down.
Yeah, what you’re saying makes a lot of sense. I’m being a bit too harsh.
To answer your question, I got that information from Green Dot’s publication about the acquisiton. In particular, the Green Dot CEO cited “innovative mobile technology, market leading mobile programming capabilities and compelling intellectual property” as the reasons for the sale, all of which are related to tech assets and not product. They also cite expenses associated with the “wind-down [] of current Loopt services” as part of their forecast, implying they don’t intend to keep the actual Loopt app around (and therefore don’t care about the user numbers). I linked the patent directly since it was the only patent I saw that I could immediately tell was useful, and I wanted to keep my comment succinct.
Still, you are right that the story and the Reuters article do demonstrate a history of Altman lying, since he definitely lied in his statement to the press about user numbers. In the context of the larger story, my criticism probably isn’t that important.