ibuprofen's recent activity
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
ibuprofen Link ParentI should have been more clear: a computer cannot decide what's important. That's what I meant by "you cannot solve for that." Is your proposal to keep a labor market and a purchasing market but...I should have been more clear: a computer cannot decide what's important. That's what I meant by "you cannot solve for that."
Is your proposal to keep a labor market and a purchasing market but centralize all the production for it?
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
ibuprofen Link ParentYes, computers make it much easier to plan an economy. What capitalism also does however is aggregate what people want the economy to produce for them. You can't solve for that. And that's before...Yes, computers make it much easier to plan an economy.
What capitalism also does however is aggregate what people want the economy to produce for them. You can't solve for that.
And that's before one gets onto the nitty gritty of "from each, to each..." As a "from" my community isn't the guy who's stuck working in an Amazon warehouse because he wanted to play video games instead of do his high school homework. The thing about investment is that it works on a personal level too, rewarding those who spent their time wisely and punishing those who didn't.
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
ibuprofen Link ParentYes, that was a good qualifier. I get where you're going with this, but my point is that when it comes to communist-like models the small examples are the easy ones. The work gets really hard...There is a reason I lead subthread with "this is too communist for most people"
Yes, that was a good qualifier.
I get where you're going with this, but my point is that when it comes to communist-like models the small examples are the easy ones. The work gets really hard really quickly after that, and the intuitive appeal of the simple cases breaks down quickly.
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
ibuprofen Link ParentUnless they've changed something in the past year or two, Google has always been super user friendly and straightforward with payments. With both GPM/YTM and later with Google 1 my experience has...Unless they've changed something in the past year or two, Google has always been super user friendly and straightforward with payments.
With both GPM/YTM and later with Google 1 my experience has been that you can roll back at any time for a prorated refund that gets applied to your new plan. It's fair and effortless.
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Comment on A new era of intelligence with Gemini 3 in ~tech
ibuprofen Link ParentAnd what happens when the 11th farmer needs a barn? Does he have to build his own? Do the other 10 farmers have to grow less in order to make room to give away space in the barn the new farmer...And what happens when the 11th farmer needs a barn? Does he have to build his own? Do the other 10 farmers have to grow less in order to make room to give away space in the barn the new farmer never built? What happens if 7 of the OG farmers want to go in on the new barn with the new farmer, do they suddenly owe something to the 3 farmers that didn't decide to grow their business?
The whole "ten people agree to build something" is the easy part. It's the rules about what happens next that immediately complicate things.
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Comment on The worlds on fire. So lets just make AI porn. in ~tech
ibuprofen (edited )LinkI haven't read the whole thing. I got up to where the author acknowledges that he's leaning into the whole "yelling at clouds" thing and decided he wasn't good enough at it to be worth my time....I haven't read the whole thing. I got up to where the author acknowledges that he's leaning into the whole "yelling at clouds" thing and decided he wasn't good enough at it to be worth my time.
Transformer models and machine learning system makes three dangerous assumptions: Valuable information outweighs bad data. The user is asking the right questions. People will not adapt to maximize their personal gain from the new system.
Okay, but there's danger in every single assumption. The question is whether it's avoidable danger and the costs and benefits of doing so.
If these three objections were applied universally nothing would get done. This is an argument for paralysis.
And it was also somehow the users fault for these errors emerging. For not “prompting” correctly. For not burning enough tokens. Not paying for the better model or hardware.
LLMs aren't user proof, and learning how to use them effectively is a massive new skillset. Yes, a lot of problems can be solved by users knowing how to use something effectively.
And there certainly are better models that cost more to run. Complaining that the beat up loaner you're using for free doesn't handle like a Mercedes is weird.
Then I checked back and openAI decided to do porn.
Not mental health guardrails. Not reliable hallucination detection and prevention. Not an SMME (small, medium, micro enterprises) toolkit with industry specific workflows and official plugins for common software. Not a clear Service Level Agreement for smaller users, setting Quality Assurance standards to work against or long term price assurances around which one can make strategic business decisions. Not any real value generator for their business or customers.
Porn.
This author just seems out of touch.
All of those other things sound great. You know what else they sound? Expensive.
OpenAI doesn't need to do anything for porn. The tech exists. There isn't anything special about generating a picture without clothes. All they need to do in order to launch this is tweak the safety protocols. Comparing a tweak to creating a massive new service level agreement that they'll have to meet is comparing apples to Impossible beef.
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Comment on A look at how opening grocery stores alone doesn’t solve food deserts in ~food
ibuprofen LinkGrocery is a volume business where you make money by selling higher margin store brands and add-ons. If you don't have the store brands, your customers can't afford the add-ons, and you don't have...Grocery is a volume business where you make money by selling higher margin store brands and add-ons. If you don't have the store brands, your customers can't afford the add-ons, and you don't have an established volume to draw on then you're screwed.
There's a Walmart 30 miles away. Obviously there's a significant distance for some people, but I doubt there's enough to suddenly make an independent grocery store break even.
Order it online. Take a bus, catch a ride, have your neighbor bring you back a few things, organize a weekly trip on a church or school bus... There are lots of ways to make it work on an individual level.
Projects like this one recognize real problems but seem to have blinders on for a particular sort of solution. Their funds and efforts would almost always be better spent elsewhere.
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Comment on Struggling in my relationship in ~life
ibuprofen LinkDoes she suffer from depression? What's she overspending on? If the house is just in her name then have you been paying into it? Or is it her asset that has a loan against it to pay for her...Does she suffer from depression?
What's she overspending on?
If the house is just in her name then have you been paying into it? Or is it her asset that has a loan against it to pay for her spending? That would be a lot cleaner, though obviously still undesirable.
This is contrasted by their complete inability to parent effectively. There's no consequences, no expectations, no boundaries, and it's infuriating. Initially it wasn't quite that bad, and I felt I had equal say in parenting. Over the years, that's eroded to my partner viewing me as authoritarian and domineering.
This is complicated because she has authority over all the kids and you don't. Even though you have equal parenting authority over your own kid in practice she's going to set the tone for the household. You can't win by fighting this, regardless of whether you're right.
So don't try. Instead of trying to shift her to being more authoritarian or authoritative, focus on shifting yourself to more of a "gentle parenting" style. Even if you think this is objectively a worse style of parenting, shifting allows you to influence her to be less permissive because it removes her built-up defence of dismissing your approach as authoritarian. Sometimes it's better to be effective than to be right.
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Comment on How industrial slaughter became the blueprint for modern capitalism in ~finance
ibuprofen LinkThis is an article that might seem insightful only if you already agree with all its conclusions. Obviously the white supremacist writings the author goes on to quote actually happened. But...This is an article that might seem insightful only if you already agree with all its conclusions.
Here’s something else you probably didn’t know: the modern obsession with eating massive amounts of meat isn’t “natural” or “traditional.” It comes from colonial propaganda designed to justify white supremacy.
Obviously the white supremacist writings the author goes on to quote actually happened. But arguing that something comes from propaganda designed to justify white supremacy is a very strong claim. Given the historical prominence of hunting, knights throwing banquets full of game, the celebrations of hunting prowess, etc. it seems highly plausible that a cultural aspiration to eat tons of meat existed long before 19th century colonialism and was simply appropriated by white supremacists to serve their propaganda.
Did you ever stop to wonder why, during the height of COVID, when even schools were shut down, Pres. Donald Trump declared slaughterhouses “essential to national security?” Even as these plants became disease superspreader sites—with management literally taking out bets on how many workers would get sick or die—the government understood the unspoken “deal” operating between the exploitation of workers and the exploitation of animals. Remember: making death for profit is the original goal of the system itself.
Sure, it definitely could be that there's an unspoken deal the government is sworn to uphold that workers are to be exploited to exploit animals above all else. That makes sense, if you really really want to write a provocative article with that as a premise.
But in reality the food supply is really, really important. And do you know what's even more important than the supply of a particular category of food we all could live without if we had to? Confidence in the food supply. That's non negotiable. People who were irrationally buying out the dried pasta aisle needed stability more than they needed chicken.
And that's where I noped out on this article. The leaps of logic for provocative effect are absurd.
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Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk
ibuprofen Link ParentIt's not that I don't get the rest of what you're saying, it's that it's irrelevant to my disagreement with this single point above: I think the fact that there is no national-level debate over...It's not that I don't get the rest of what you're saying, it's that it's irrelevant to my disagreement with this single point above:
I'd change that to 'the Japanese national government'.
I think the fact that there is no national-level debate over kicking the Americans out of the bases indicates a general national acceptance of the status quo that cannot be hand-waved to simply being a property of the Japanese federal government.
I don't disagree with any of the other points you've made. I just don't think they support the distinction you drew between the national government and the population at large.
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Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk
ibuprofen Link ParentI don't think those are comparisons that work in your favour: Americans have extremely contentious debates about healthcare and guns. The point isn't "If you don't like it vote differently and it...I don't think those are comparisons that work in your favour: Americans have extremely contentious debates about healthcare and guns.
The point isn't "If you don't like it vote differently and it will change" — it's that if enough people care about an issue this will be reflected in a democracy's national political discourse.
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Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk
ibuprofen (edited )Link ParentOkay, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record... They're a democracy. If they don't like it they should do something about it. The fact that there isn't a mainstream national political...Okay, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record... They're a democracy. If they don't like it they should do something about it.
The fact that there isn't a mainstream national political party which supports changing this indicates that the national population generally doesn't see this as something in need of changing. I don't think you can hand wave that away as being just due to the national government. It sounds like the national population is content with the local trade-offs.
EDIT: typo
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Comment on What is your 'Subway Take'? in ~talk
ibuprofen Link ParentWhen gardening you use a shovel to dig a hole. But you utilize a shovel to bang in a stake. Utilize is supposed to convey a novel, uncommon use.When gardening you use a shovel to dig a hole.
But you utilize a shovel to bang in a stake.
Utilize is supposed to convey a novel, uncommon use.
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Comment on Amazon's Prime Day deals could actually cost you more in ~tech
ibuprofen LinkThis is a pretty useless article. It talks about a bunch of items no one was claiming was on sale. It doesn't distinguish between items sold by Amazon versus those sold by third party sellers who...This is a pretty useless article.
It talks about a bunch of items no one was claiming was on sale.
It doesn't distinguish between items sold by Amazon versus those sold by third party sellers who set their own pricing.
And while it acknowledges that inflation and tariffs might play a role this is hand-waved away in service of publishing something anyway.
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Comment on Robin Williams' daughter pleads for people to stop sending her AI videos of her dad in ~tech
ibuprofen LinkThat's a pretty significant omission in the title.Zelda Williams, the daughter of Robin Williams, has asked people to stop sending her AI-generated videos of her father, the celebrated US actor and comic who died in 2014.
That's a pretty significant omission in the title.
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Comment on OpenAI’s H1 2025: $4.3b in income, $13.5b in loss in ~tech
ibuprofen Link ParentI strongly agree with that. You can see the same thing happening in Gemini. The 03-25 experimental model was vastly superior to everything they've come out with since. I think they released an...In the context of this post I wonder if the goal with gpt-5 is cost reduction rather than overal improvement.
I strongly agree with that.
You can see the same thing happening in Gemini. The 03-25 experimental model was vastly superior to everything they've come out with since. I think they released an extremely impressive experimental model, got the accolades, and have spent the last 6 months on efficiency.
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Connor McDavid puts his money where his mouth is with shockingly-low contract
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Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?
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Comment on Sisters share ten-dollar a week meal plans for families facing inflation in ~life
ibuprofen Link ParentI mean pretty much by definition your time is worth less when your income is lower. If society valued your time more then you'd be paid more for using it at work.I mean pretty much by definition your time is worth less when your income is lower. If society valued your time more then you'd be paid more for using it at work.
Okay but who weights the industries? Who decides whether cotton or polyester fabrics rank higher in the hierarchy of needs? Is there a Kickstarter for everything? Is it rule by subreddit votes?
Do people have to have funds to "back" the products they want? Because the minute you do that someone more communist than you is going to complain that the people with more funds are exercising more influence on society.
Do entrepreneurs actually get to own or benefit from the time and effort they put into new ideas? Or are they volunteers? Or is "entrepreneur" just a category of bureaucrat?
Who controls the central entity that gets to decide which jobs are available and for what pay? Who controls the hiring? You can't do this without massively bureaucratic systems.
And who gets to decide what we optimize for? If I want to optimize for casinos and cocaine or building a robot army then how exactly does that happen?