Grzmot's recent activity
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Comment on Why the US Navy won't open Hormuz in ~society
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Comment on Introducing EmDash — the spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentI think that happened because it made hosting a website approachable to non-technical users. That's what a lot of the web has been about, after all. I think for a good while, maybe even now,...I think that happened because it made hosting a website approachable to non-technical users. That's what a lot of the web has been about, after all. I think for a good while, maybe even now, wordpress permitted free hosting, which of course broke down the barrier towards aquiring new users to being non-existent.
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Comment on Backrooms | Official trailer in ~movies
Grzmot LinkAfter the teaser some time back, we get a glimpse at the plot and it looks interesting. I'll definitely check this out in theaters.After the teaser some time back, we get a glimpse at the plot and it looks interesting. I'll definitely check this out in theaters.
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Backrooms | Official trailer
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Comment on Israel passes death penalty [as default] law for Palestinians convincted [in military court] of lethal attacks in ~society
Grzmot Link ParentThank you for adding context to the title, I think that was very reasonable. However, I'm having trouble understanding the "default" wording. By default, does that mean that the court has no...Thank you for adding context to the title, I think that was very reasonable.
However, I'm having trouble understanding the "default" wording. By default, does that mean that the court has no flexibility to change the sentence even if it wanted to?
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Comment on Nvim 0.12 released in ~comp
Grzmot Link ParentBased off the 3 version numbers 0.12.0 it seems they use semantic versioning, which divides the 3 version numbers into MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. Major versions are supposed to be breaking changes, minor...Based off the 3 version numbers
0.12.0it seems they use semantic versioning, which divides the 3 version numbers into MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. Major versions are supposed to be breaking changes, minor upgrades that are backwards compatible and patches for bugfixes only.This versioning scheme makes the most sense for libraries, i.e. code that is meant to be used by other code, because you can tell at a glance if you as the user of such libraries need to change something. Minor and patch versions are drop in replacements, major require some changes on your end to get your code to work again.
This is really just the idea, and nothing says that you have to adhere to these rules. Sometimes software increments the major version if some new big feature is getting released.
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Comment on I think Tildes moderators and admins may need to make a decision regarding how to handle Harry Potter related posts in ~tildes
Grzmot Link Parentidk if you're aware but they casted a black man as Snape in the new HBO show and it was received predictably well by certain parts of the HP fandom. By predictably well I mean people were racist.idk if you're aware but they casted a black man as Snape in the new HBO show and it was received predictably well by certain parts of the HP fandom.
By predictably well I mean people were racist.
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Comment on Welcome to a multidimensional economic disaster - the AI boom wasn’t built for the polycrisis (gifted lnk) in ~tech
Grzmot LinkThe global economy has become dependent on the AI industry. Trillions of dollars are being invested into the technology and the infrastructure it relies on; in the final months of 2025, functionally all economic growth in the United States came from AI investments.
Perhaps the clearest examples are advanced memory and training chips, which are among the most important—and are by far the most expensive—components of training any AI model. Currently, most of them are produced by two companies in South Korea and one in Taiwan. These countries, in turn, get a large majority of their crude oil and much of their liquefied natural gas—which help fuel semiconductor manufacturing—from the Persian Gulf.
Meanwhile, Iran and Israel have begun bombing much of the fossil-fuel infrastructure in the region, which could take many years to replace.
The situation has grown so ungainly and untenable that, if Silicon Valley is merely forced to slow down, the viability of all this spending will likely be called into question in ways that could be devastating for many.
The [Hormuz] strait is “critical to basically every aspect of the global economy,” Sam Winter-Levy, a technology and national-security researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told us. “The AI supply chain is not insulated.”
“There’s a reason to think we’re seeing some of the same 2008 dynamics now,” Brad Lipton, a former senior adviser at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and now the director of corporate power and financial regulation at the Roosevelt Institute, told us. “Everyone’s getting tied up together. Banks are lending money to private credit, which in turn lends it elsewhere. That amps up the risk.”
OpenAI, Anthropic, and others charge users for using “tokens,” the components of words processed by their bots. This means that tokens are an industrial commodity akin to, say, crude oil or steel. But unlike other commodities, the cost of each token is rapidly decreasing owing to advancements in AI’s capabilities. Kedrosky called this “a death spiral to zero.”
At every step of the way, AI firms have appeared to prioritize speed above the physical security of data centers, supply-chain redundancy, energy efficiency and independence, political stability, even financial returns. And in that quest for unbridled growth, the AI industry has wrested ungodly amounts of capital from investors all looking for the next big thing, ensnaring the entire economy.
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Welcome to a multidimensional economic disaster - the AI boom wasn’t built for the polycrisis (gifted lnk)
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Comment on Kill chain - on the automated bureaucratic machinery that killed 175 children in ~society
Grzmot Link ParentOf course the most difficulty in interacting with a database lie with the edge cases. Any system is tested by those. But 90% of the actual interactions with a system are not the edge cases. Those...Of course the most difficulty in interacting with a database lie with the edge cases. Any system is tested by those. But 90% of the actual interactions with a system are not the edge cases. Those are called that for a reason.
The thing about going to the local office to get something done is that it's essentially still self-service. You're just talking to another human who than actually executes the self-service task in your name. What I mean that there is rarely a particular skill or knowledge involved that you do not have. In most of these tasks, there is little inherent knowledge required other than clicking the buttons that are labeled accordingly and filling out forms in some UI. It's not like going to the mechanic, or a doctor, where you are interacting with a human who has skills you do not posess.
Unless the processes are oblique and cumbersome by design, or because they've grown organically over the decades and are often redundant and overly complex, the clerk at the county office doesn't really do much else. Of course if you live in a system where you need to do something, but that requires filling out 15 different forms, then yeah, of course the assistance of someone who knows their shit is appreciated. But that's not what most people need. And even complex processes can be simplified. My country recently launched a pilot project where individuals can found companies through a simple web UI, which generates valid contracts and handles a lot of complicated nuances. There are limitations, it's meant for self-employed people, but it's still a welcome simplification that covers the needs of a lot of people.
Our arguments aren't at odds with each other, though. I think what you describe is real, and especially for folks who live in the US in the aftermath of DOGE, talking about efficiency gains is going to carry with it a foul taste.
I don't think that there's anything wrong with having a self-service app, UI, webpage whatever, that offers you list of actions that cover the needs of most people interacting with the system, and then a way to contact some help office that has people who are actually skilled and knowledgeable and can help you solve your case. But like you say, that requires that effiency gains aren't used to fire people, they're used to train them so they are at the citizen's disposal should they need to cover an edge case.
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Comment on The Treasury just declared the US insolvent. The media missed it. in ~society
Grzmot Link ParentProbably whenever the rest of the world decides to stop using the USD as the reserve currency, and additionally, it stops being the currency that's used for trading oil. This topic is not a new...One really does wonder if and when it all comes crashing down, US dollar and rest of the world included.
Probably whenever the rest of the world decides to stop using the USD as the reserve currency, and additionally, it stops being the currency that's used for trading oil.
This topic is not a new one. The French used the term exorbitant privilege to refer to the USA's unique ability to finance its deficit through the rest of the world. The simple fact of the matter is that for a very long time, everyone wanted American dollars. Conversely, American dollars are laughingly cheap to produce. A 100 dollar bill costs probably less than one dollar to make. But the US can sell it for 100 dollars to other nations, that want 100 dollars. And a lot of nations, certainly every nation that wants to purchase oil, wants dollars.
That's a damn good margin for the US.
It's a lot more complicated than that, but it's the gist of it. The US is also an economic powerhouse, but when it comes to debt management, it's really just that simple. Everyone wants dollars. So the American position is pretty unique internationally, and the reason the country's debt can be so damn high.
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Comment on Kill chain - on the automated bureaucratic machinery that killed 175 children in ~society
Grzmot Link ParentEfficiency and governmental murder are not related to each other. To pitch an inefficient beraucracy with its many frictional points as solution is the wrong approach. The (actual, WW2) Nazi...Efficiency and governmental murder are not related to each other. To pitch an inefficient beraucracy with its many frictional points as solution is the wrong approach. The (actual, WW2) Nazi beraucracy was horridly inefficient. It featured a staggering amount of parallel offices doing nearly the same thing, sometimes even identical, reporting to the same people, and that did not stop said empire from committing one of the worst atrocities seen in human history. In fact, there are arguments to be made that the parallel offices working in competition to each other created a fucked up free market type of competition where the goal was not to make the most money but kill the most "undesirables".
Beraucratic friction is only sensible when the human, frictional point actually has the power to increase the friction and force a discussion if what is being done makes any sort of sense. The friction by itself is not a saving grace that stops tragedies.
This might besides the point, because the essay in question specifically discusses beraucracy within a military kill chain, but your comment reads to me as a more general pondering. So please note that my following argument is general as well.
There are many tasks which are necessary within a beraucracy but, especially when it comes to how people interact with the state, are rooted in such frictions which do not serve any point. They once did, because the best way to serve a need was to put a clerk into an office and have them handle citizen requests. But essentially, this clerk was the human interface to a (once) analogue database, which today is digital. This is an inefficiency which can be removed without increasing human suffering. In fact I'd argue that it reduces it, because everyone I know hates having to interact with the local county office, and it's not a stereotypical job people find personal fulfillment in.
A lot of interactions with the government from the point of view of a private citizen are really just updating a database somewhere. It might be registering where you live (a European concept that has shocked many Americans I told this to), renewing some ID or license, or updating some other official record related to your person. A necessary task for any state. This is the typical case where the human doing this work behind a counter is really just receiving your orders and executing them by typing them into some UI, which then sends this request off to some central database. But you yourself could also do this. There is no inherent value to the friction of involving another instance, another human in this process.
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Comment on That one study that proves developers using AI are deluded in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentBecause it's exactly the sort of code that hides issues which are devious, frustrating and difficult to find. When it doesn't compile, the compiler tells you why, and where the issue is. An error...Heh, maybe I'm too meticulous, but I do not want to fix code that sometime almost work.
Because it's exactly the sort of code that hides issues which are devious, frustrating and difficult to find. When it doesn't compile, the compiler tells you why, and where the issue is. An error is similarly explicit. But code that mostly runs except when it hits some edge case is pure hell.
Mind you, I've used Claude Opus 4.6 (I don't bother with other models) successfully at work as a dev. But it's best used for general directions about a code base you have no idea about. It recently helped me analyze how a complex component in a front-end worked in which many systems interlocked: a way to filter data, syncing that filtering with the state and sending off database queries with it... I was a little lost, because the code base is vast and frankly speaking trash, and Claude helped there.
But the code with which it proposed to solve the problem I was facing was pretty bad.
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Comment on Why are we still doing this? in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentThere's no need to be sustainable when venture capitalism keeps giving you more than a hundred billion US dollars every funding round. The AI has its place. It can be, in specific applications,...There's no need to be sustainable when venture capitalism keeps giving you more than a hundred billion US dollars every funding round.
The AI has its place. It can be, in specific applications, the correct solution. But it really only helps when you know exactly what you need out of it and can also verify its output.
I just hope that the expected workload of developers won't rise, and in general, AI won't be used to automate tasks and turn people into rubber-stamping machines that just check its output, even when said output is way too large to be manually verified. Something that Cory Doctorow pointed out in his excellent essay.
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Comment on Why are we still doing this? in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentZitron also makes the argument that once AI companies have to raise prices to a sustainable level for them, no one will pay them. That's the core of what he's getting at. The simple subscription...Zitron also makes the argument that once AI companies have to raise prices to a sustainable level for them, no one will pay them. That's the core of what he's getting at. The simple subscription fee makes no sense for this business model, because the cost of every request cannot be anticipated, but the API usage based cost is exceedingly difficult to sell to customers, because if Claude charges you for every dead end it reaches because it can't actually think, using these models becomes a lot less quirky and a lot more "cancel right now".
Investors, in particular these large investment firms should be doing their due diligence for these investments, but a lot of it is obfuscated.
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Comment on Why are we still doing this? in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentI mean, they prefer it because they think that they'll be able to let go a lot of employees. But when AI actually gets both unpredictable but also more expensive than a programmer in silicon...But hey, if companies prefer that to a consistently paid employee, so be it.
I mean, they prefer it because they think that they'll be able to let go a lot of employees. But when AI actually gets both unpredictable but also more expensive than a programmer in silicon valley making >USD 100k then yeah, might be time to reconsider your strategy.
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Comment on Why are we still doing this? in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentIf you can avoid it becoming a crutch, then sure, go ahead. I mean, it'll also do decent damage to the world even while it's a honeypot, but that's outside of your personal responsibility because...If you can avoid it becoming a crutch, then sure, go ahead. I mean, it'll also do decent damage to the world even while it's a honeypot, but that's outside of your personal responsibility because all governments have gone mad with AI.
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Comment on Why are we still doing this? in ~tech
Grzmot LinkA fantastic, long essay on the financials of AI companies and the insanity we currently live in.In fact, let’s talk about that for a second. At the end of January, OpenAI CFO Sarah Firar said that “our ability to serve customers—as measured by revenue—directly tracks available compute,” messily suggesting that the more compute you have the more revenue you have.
This is, of course, a big bucket of bollocks. Did OpenAI scale its compute dramatically between hitting $20 billion in annualized revenue (to be clear, I have deep suspicions about these numbers and how OpenAI measures “annualized” revenue) in January 2026 and $25 billion in March 2026? I think that’s highly unlikely.
What about Uber? Uber is a completely different business to Anthropic and OpenAI or any other AI company. It lost about $30 billion in the last decade or so, and turned a weird kind of profitable through a combination of cutting multiple markets and business lines (EG: autonomous cars), all while gouging customers and paying drivers less.
The economics are also completely different. Uber does not pay for its drivers’ gas, nor their cars, nor does it own any vehicles. Its PP&E has been between $1.5 billion and $2.1 billion since it was founded. Uber’s revenue does not increase with acquisitions of PP&E, nor does its business become significantly more expensive based on how far a driver drives, how many passengers they might have in a day, or how many meals they might deliver. Uber is, effectively, a digital marketplace for getting stuff or people moved from one place to another [...].
In any case, there is no future for any AI company that uses a subscription-based approach, at least not one where they don’t directly pass on the cost of compute.
This is a huge problem for both Anthropic and OpenAI, as their scurrilous growth-lust means that they’ve done everything they can to get customers used to paying a single monthly cost that directly obfuscates the cost of doing business.
Let’s say that Anthropic and OpenAI immediately decide to switch everybody to the API. How would anybody actually budget? Is somebody that pays $200 a month for Claude Max going to be comfortable paying $1000 or $1500 or $2500 a month in costs, and have, at that point, really no firm understanding of the cost of a particular action?
First, there’s no way to anticipate how many tokens a prompt will actually burn, which makes any kind of budgeting a non-starter. It’s like going to the supermarket and committing to buy a gallon of milk, not knowing if it’ll cost you $5 or $50.
A fantastic, long essay on the financials of AI companies and the insanity we currently live in.
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Why are we still doing this?
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Comment on I before she — on the shift in narrative perspective in romance novels in ~books
Grzmot Link ParentI'm happy that we both took away something's positive. No harm done. ❤️I'm happy that we both took away something's positive.
No harm done. ❤️
The Hormuz strait isn't an area you can invest lives and materiel to take and then occupy. Being there exposes you to rockets and drones launched from Iran, from which you have to always defend yourself from. Even worse, you're very close to where the drones are getting manufactured. Iran would likely keep up the production and overwhelm enemy ships in the strait.
Given how invested China is in supporting Russia in Ukraine, I think they would absolutely dedicate resource production to help Iran keep up its drone and rocket production. The US would have to secure enough of the country that drones can't make it to the strait, which seems unfeasible to me.
Additionally, the strait is probably already mined and the US mothballed mine clearing ships a while back.
Of course if the US declared total war and dedicated its entire economy it's likely they would beat Iran. But that's not the option that's on the table, and it's very realistic that even with manpower and American deaths involved, you still would not secure the strait.