papasquat's recent activity
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Comment on Reminder to myself that my employer does not give a shit about me in ~life
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Comment on Reminder to myself that my employer does not give a shit about me in ~life
papasquat Link ParentYeah, and the goals of one union may be diametrically opposed to the goals of another. If I'm in a coal workers union, I'm going to be against basically anything the oil workers are advocating...Yeah, and the goals of one union may be diametrically opposed to the goals of another.
If I'm in a coal workers union, I'm going to be against basically anything the oil workers are advocating for, because they're directly competing for the same energy sector as I am. If I'm a teacher, I'm going to be against a lot of what the police union is trying to get, because we're all paid from the same municipal budget, and any increase in a police budget means less likelyhood of an increase in school budgets.
The whole point of unions is to advocate for their members best interests. Some of those best interests are mutually exclusive with others' best interests.
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Comment on Reminder to myself that my employer does not give a shit about me in ~life
papasquat Link ParentNah, because I genuinely love doing nothing. I love doing stuff too, but doing nothing is also fine. If I had a week off where all I did was stay at home, watch TV, and read books, that would be...Nah, because I genuinely love doing nothing.
I love doing stuff too, but doing nothing is also fine. If I had a week off where all I did was stay at home, watch TV, and read books, that would be great.
I used to have a job for a long time where I worked from home and wasn't too busy, and I would have agreed with you then. I never took vacation unless I was going on a big trip because I didn't really see the point. Now that I go into an office every day and am super busy, I relish days where I get to be alone in my little nest with nothing planned.
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Comment on Reminder to myself that my employer does not give a shit about me in ~life
papasquat Link ParentAs others are saying, it's a popular trend in technology companies, and it's always, not sometimes, but always a clever shell game trick that they learned. People tend to not take as much time off...As others are saying, it's a popular trend in technology companies, and it's always, not sometimes, but always a clever shell game trick that they learned.
People tend to not take as much time off when you give them "unlimited PTO", because they don't have a bank of unused time staring them in the face every time they look at their pay stub. They don't keep track of how much time they've taken off, and they don't want to be seen as taking advantage of the system, so they don't take the time.
The real test of whether you really have an unlimited PTO policy is to go to your boss tomorrow, and say "hey, next month I'm going to take a year off to go travel the world for a bit. I'll be back in 12 months. Just let me know what you want me to do before then, and no need to keep sending me paystubs during that time, I won't have a mailing address. I'll just call hr if there are any pay issues"
If your boss says something along the lines of "sure thing, that sounds like fun!", then yeah, you have an unlimited PTO policy. If they say anything else, you don't have an unlimited PTO policy. Your PTO policy has a limit, they just don't tell you what it is.
I've told this to people who have, and are very proud of their "unlimited PTO" benefit at their job, and I've been told that my example is ridiculous, which I agree, it is. But so is an unlimited PTO policy. If your policy allows for ridiculous requests, it is also ridiculous.
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Comment on Better things are possible in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentI think when you look at the news and global political issues, it can feel like you're not entitled to happiness, or that personal happiness isn't possible. I find it helpful to reflect on the...I think when you look at the news and global political issues, it can feel like you're not entitled to happiness, or that personal happiness isn't possible.
I find it helpful to reflect on the fact that human beings have found happiness despite being in some truly awful situations. People have found moments of joy in the middle of horrific war zones, in prisons, in deadly pandemics, shipwrecks, concentration camps, you name it.
There are, have been, and will be terrible things going on in the world always. You can still be happy in spite of them though.
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Comment on From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans in ~society
papasquat LinkThe funniest part of the questions is that apparently the average person thinks that 92% of the US population lives in Texas, California, and New York City. Its gotta make you wonder how the...The funniest part of the questions is that apparently the average person thinks that 92% of the US population lives in Texas, California, and New York City. Its gotta make you wonder how the questions were presented, because I feel like if I answered around 30% to each of those questions, at the end I'd probably go back and modify at least one of them.
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Comment on Unreleased OpenAI model escapes containment and hacks into Hugging Face in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThere is a lot of anti AI bias on the internet right now, and it results in a lot of people outright denying reality. I say this as someone that wished the technology didn't exist because I can't...There is a lot of anti AI bias on the internet right now, and it results in a lot of people outright denying reality.
I say this as someone that wished the technology didn't exist because I can't feasibly think of a realistic way it can be widely adopted in the real world in which we live without the harms outweighing the benefits.
Anyone who has experience with these models, and is being honest with themselves has to look at this story and others like it and deem them, at a very minimum, as plausible. We're far beyond the days of going "wellll, these LLMs are just next word predictors, they can't actually strategize and pose real threats". They demonstrably can, and there's tons of independent researchers saying that.
I wish more anti AI people would spend more energy figuring out ways to mitigate these risks, or even ways to reduce AI adoption rather than burying their heads in the sand and pretending they live in a world where the technology is actually useless and not capable.
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Comment on I don't really like the "Human-made" badging trend in ~tech
papasquat LinkThis touches on a lot of the problems I have with the backlash against AI use. My wife was telling me a story about some woman she was talking to, and they were talking about how annoying ai slop...- Exemplary
This touches on a lot of the problems I have with the backlash against AI use.
My wife was telling me a story about some woman she was talking to, and they were talking about how annoying ai slop on the internet is, and this woman said something like "yeah, I don't associate with anyone that uses AI, it's just a red flag".
That position strikes me as frankly, completely ridiculous. I think at this point it's pretty self evident that LLMs are a useful tool for some use cases. If you can't even concede that point, in my opinion, you're just living in your own reality which you created to justify an entrenched position you have.
The issue is that its not useful for many of the things that it is being used for, and that it's being forced into a lot of areas to justify investments and to slash labor costs without any thought of the long term ramifications there. As a result, we have a proliferation of absolutely garbage content on the internet that a human being didn't even have the common decency to review, let alone create by hand.
The arguments about water use or energy use or whatever are all derived from that overuse, not because the technology itself is fundementally evil or something.
Often times in the cultural zietgeist lately, nuance gets completely paved over, and the most extreme, simple take is the one that spreads, and lately, "AI is evil and you're evil if you use it" seems to be trending in the spaces I inhabit. I think there's a lot of very smart people refusing to apply their intelligence to the problem in an honest way in favor of righteous catharsis.
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Comment on Ukrainian drones hit more sites of Russian online retailer Wildberries in ~society
papasquat Link ParentFrom the Ukranian perspective, sure, but often times we treat these things as if the aggressor has no agency in the situation. Russia could withdraw from Ukraine and end the war today if they...I know the only immediate solution would be total capitulation.
From the Ukranian perspective, sure, but often times we treat these things as if the aggressor has no agency in the situation. Russia could withdraw from Ukraine and end the war today if they chose to. They will have lost nothing except for the resources they specifically decided to commit to this war, and the collateral damage associated with that decision. They're not choosing to though.
They're the ones with the most agency in this situation, and the ones most responsible for the civilian suffering on both sides.
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Comment on Why contacting customer service might not be best in ~life
papasquat (edited )Link ParentThis seems like a very easily predicted situation when you set up the ticket checking procedure, and one that probably happens constantly. Why would you have a system that checks people's tickets...This seems like a very easily predicted situation when you set up the ticket checking procedure, and one that probably happens constantly. Why would you have a system that checks people's tickets after they're already at their destination, rather than as, or before they board the train??
If your friend didn't have the money to pay for another ticket, what would be the solution then? They get to take another free train ride back? They live the rest of their life at the station? They work the debt off by being an unpaid conductor?
Its interesting, because I just commented on a thread talking about different cultures, and where they live along a rule following vs rule bending/breaking axis.
In my experience, Japan is to the extreme rule following end. Germany and Austria are a little further in on that axis, the UK is right about at the middle, the US skews more towards the rule bending side, a lot of Mediterranean countries moreso, and most of the middle east is on the extreme rule bending side, especially when it comes to traffic laws, which seem like mere subtle suggestions based on the roads in a lot of ME countries I've been to.
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Comment on My polish costs nothing in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentEhhh... I don't think I agree. If the premise was that what consulting firms sell is information and experience, then yeah, I'd 1000% agree with you. They're finished. Almost all of what they do...I've been thinking for a while now that Big Consulting is pretty much cooked as soon as their "illusion" fades away.
Ehhh... I don't think I agree. If the premise was that what consulting firms sell is information and experience, then yeah, I'd 1000% agree with you. They're finished. Almost all of what they do is draw upon a huge internal library of pretty standard info, customize it a bit, and deliver it as a product to a customer. The bigger customers get a bit of actual analysis and teams of people to do more in depth customization along with more white glove treatment, but it's mostly the same thing.
That's not actually the value proposition of management consulting firms though. If it was, they probably would have already been replaced by Google.
What they're really selling is authority. Its a arrow in an executive's quiver. If an executive wants to do something big, they need to convince someone of it. If it's a director, they need to convince the COO and CFO. If it's another C level, they need to convince the CEO. If it's the CEO, they need to convince the board.
They can't do that effectively without hard data and numbers. They go to a consulting firm because they almost always already have a conclusion in mind. The firms job is basically to justify that conclusion. If they can't justify it, the executive either gets a second opinion of someone who does, just does it live and conveniently leaves out the consultants report, or if they're lawful good, just drops the idea and comes up with another idea that doesn't suck.
The value that the firm brings isn't the actual info though, it's being able to go to the board saying "McKinsey said this was a good idea". That's why the big three are the big three. Everyone knows their name, and most people trust them. That name is their entire value proposition, and is the reason why they get six figures to put together some boilerplate PDFs.
Even if an AI tool gave you the exact same content, it would be worthless, because a CEO going to a board with an idea and defending it with "chatGPT said this was a good idea" would be laughed out of the room.
I don't see that changing any time soon (unfortunately)
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Comment on My polish costs nothing in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentEven though in modern tools, translation and text generation follow the exact same pipeline, to me, they're still fundementally different tasks that, to me, even LLMs handle fundementally...Even though in modern tools, translation and text generation follow the exact same pipeline, to me, they're still fundementally different tasks that, to me, even LLMs handle fundementally differently.
For text generation, the goal is to replicate a convincing approximation of what a human being would write, given the prompt. For translation, the goal is to, as accurately as possible, move the exact ideas given from one language to another.
One of them is basically an exercise in trying to fool humans into thinking the writer is also human, the other one is an exercise in trying to fool the speakers of one language that a speaker of a different language speaks the same language as them.
The first one is much more blatant of a lie than the second, and requires way more outright fabricated bullshit. The second is being guided by the exact words and meaning behind them being given to them.
I don't know if LLMs go through different training pipelines between these tasks, but when I read AI translated text versus AI generated text, the former feels far more natural and human, and doesnt have that innate immediate offensive feeling that the latter does.
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Comment on How do you live simply/save money? What does your lifestyle look like? in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentI just pay for a debrid service and hook it up to stremio. I used to pay for an IPTV service for live tv also, but I don't actually care about live TV, only people who come visit me, so now I just...I just pay for a debrid service and hook it up to stremio.
I used to pay for an IPTV service for live tv also, but I don't actually care about live TV, only people who come visit me, so now I just kinda tell them... sorry I don't have TV. -
Comment on How do you live simply/save money? What does your lifestyle look like? in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentIts a Ninja Luxe i got as a wedding gift. Its legitimately the nicest thing anyone has ever bought me. I used to have a manual espresso machine, and it made nice lattes and cappuccinos, but...Its a Ninja Luxe i got as a wedding gift. Its legitimately the nicest thing anyone has ever bought me.
I used to have a manual espresso machine, and it made nice lattes and cappuccinos, but grinding the beans, weighing it out, tamping it, so on and so forth was such an ordeal that I just never bothered doing it except on the weekends.
The machine I have now is much more automatic, and I can grind the beans, tamp it, and have a shot of espresso brewed in like a minute and a half. Its awesome. Its something I would have viewed as a frivolous extravagance if I was thinking about buying it for myself, but at the same time, its legitimately very useful and saves me a lot of time and money, which is why it was such a great gift.
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Comment on How do you live simply/save money? What does your lifestyle look like? in ~talk
papasquat LinkI pirate all media I consume. I don't care about the ethics of it, because the people who sell it to me don't either. If there's an individual creative person I've really enjoyed the output of, I...I pirate all media I consume. I don't care about the ethics of it, because the people who sell it to me don't either. If there's an individual creative person I've really enjoyed the output of, I support them financially more directly, either via patreon, or merch sales, or donation links they post. I'm not going to pay for monthly subscriptions to a service so I can watch one show, and I'm not going to pay Amazon an absolutely gargantuan price for hosting a 500kb text file for me.
I pay 5 bucks a month for my piracy infrastructure and that's it.
I got gifted a really nice espresso machine, and as a result, I never go out for coffee. The Starbucks markup is absolutely insane, and I can make better drinks at home, exactly to my preferences. Its also way quicker than even waiting in a line at a coffee shop.
I've mostly avoided lifestyle creep as I've earned more money.
I make over twice as much as I did 10 years ago, but I live in the same house, buy the same food, go on vacation the same amount, and with the same level of luxury, mostly haven't bought new clothing unless I have to, and most of my hobbies are still pretty inexpensive. I know a lot of people who bought fancy cars, boats, new houses, nice vacations and so on as they've made more money, and as a result, a lot of them are stressed about money a lot of the time, but I was living comfortably within my means 10 years ago, and I definitely am now too.
I watched my parents constantly freak out about money and losing our house and have these emotional breakdowns over credit card debt growing up, and I vowed never to go through the same thing, even if it mean living a poverty lifestyle.
Luckily I've done decently well for myself, but I still live a solidly middle class or lower lifestyle, because I never want to be in a situation where I don't know how I'm going to pay for my next meal or the electric bill. That peace of mind makes me far happier than a fancy new BMW or luxury vacation to some ritzy instagram island ever could.
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Comment on Who cleans up after the vibe-coding party? in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThat's why the AI strategy makes no sense for any company except ones that run foundational models. If the "promise of AI" comes to fruition, then if you sell software as your primary business...That's why the AI strategy makes no sense for any company except ones that run foundational models.
If the "promise of AI" comes to fruition, then if you sell software as your primary business model, your days are numbered.
The only way that isn't true is if AI is massively over hyped and not actually useful for developing software, and this possibility is becoming less and less true by the month.
How is it then a viable business strategy to sell software based on the premise that AI is as powerful as it's being made out to be?
If you make an AI tool, like an AI code editor, or an AI harness, or an AI developer tool chain, you are selling a product that based on it's very own pitch, is worth only the amount of tokens you spent to build it. Why would any company pay you, and your "developers" who apparently don't write any code, instead of just paying anthropic and making their own version that they have full control over?
Either the technology isn't as useful as you're making it out to be, in which case, the AI tools around them aren't that useful either, or it is useful, and your AI tools are worthless because anyone can easily replicate them.
Its a losing strategy from a logical basis, but somehow, these companies are still gaining investment.
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Comment on Is it possible to not want to be happy? in ~talk
papasquat Link ParentI don't think people want to be happy all the time. I think that's a misread of what people with chronic depression are aiming for, and I hear it people make that criticism of "therapy culture" a...I don't think people want to be happy all the time. I think that's a misread of what people with chronic depression are aiming for, and I hear it people make that criticism of "therapy culture" a lot.
I think most people want to feel somewhat content. They don't want to have a smile on their face at all times, but they want to be able to look at their life as a whole and think "I'm doing ok. I'm going to be alright".
I covered this in a other comment, but I think a lot of the miscommunication is how ambiguous the concept of happiness is. It can mean what I described, but it can also mean ear to ear grins and ecstatic joy, like when you're a kid on Christmas morning and you get the exact toy you want.
I think most people recognize that not a realistic, or even a desirable emotion to have all, or even a lot of the time. If you've ever been around someone with bipolar, you can actually recognize it as quite scary and self destructive.
I think that more muted feeling of long term contentedness is an actual, realistic goal for most people though, and the feeling like that's so remote of a possibility to achieve for yourself is really the root of depression, and something that we should aim to eradicate as much as we can.
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Comment on Is it possible to not want to be happy? in ~talk
papasquat LinkI think "happiness" is much too clunky and imprecise of a term for something as complex as human emotion. It can cover such a broad spectrum of feelings like momentary joy, long term...I think "happiness" is much too clunky and imprecise of a term for something as complex as human emotion.
It can cover such a broad spectrum of feelings like momentary joy, long term contentedness, belonging, fulfillment, usefulness, restedness, acceptance of your own mortality, and so on.
Like, someone voluntarily fighting in the middle of a righteous war to defend their country isn't what most people would define as happy, exactly. They feel like they have a purpose though, and it's not like they'd rather not be fighting in that war, even if it meant a warm bed and some hot tea.
So yes, it's definitely possible to not want to be happy, because happiness can mean many different things or many things at once.
Happiness doesn't inheritely mean a goal either though. I think a tighter paradox would be something like "is it possible to not want to achieve your goals". Which I'd say, no, absolutely not, because goals are inherently something that you want to achieve. Happiness isn't though.
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Comment on Control the ideas, not the code in ~comp
papasquat LinkI don't mean for this to be rude or offensive, and I wouldn't normally point this out, except for the subject matter. This blog post is horribly written and very difficult to read from a grammar...I don't mean for this to be rude or offensive, and I wouldn't normally point this out, except for the subject matter.
This blog post is horribly written and very difficult to read from a grammar perspective. Its really disconcerting to see someone advocate so full-throatedly for a complete hands off vibe coding and code review setup if they don't even trust the technology enough to use it to proofread a blog post.
I get that the author isn't a native english speaker, but LLMs are explicitly good at translation. Its one of their main use cases, and understandability is one of the core metrics that they're trained on. I make a lot of allowances for people who don't natively speak the language, but not if you're an AI evangelist.
If you're not even using the thing to fix mistakes in your blog posts; you know, one of the few things that people almost universally agree that they're good at, it doesn't exactly lend a lot of weight to the central thesis of the post.
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Comment on Who cleans up after the vibe-coding party? in ~tech
papasquat LinkI'm seeing this in the enterprise space too. We've been extremely conservative with ai usage. We only have sanctioned licenses for about 20 of our thousands of users, we're very rigorous with what...I'm seeing this in the enterprise space too. We've been extremely conservative with ai usage. We only have sanctioned licenses for about 20 of our thousands of users, we're very rigorous with what we do and don't allow them to do, and we have regular communication and monitoring with them.
Even still, there's been a proliferation of hundreds of "agents". Most of them already forgotten and abandoned, but some of them becoming parts of business processes, and I have no doubt in my mind that as time goes on they'll become more and more critical to very important business processes. We have no good way of differentiating between the two, and no good long term plan for cleaning them up.
Its like the ever present shadow IT problem cranked up to 11 and injected with steroids. With traditional shadow IT, at least the outputs were generally deterministic. This stuff is a mess.
It was a weird situation. I was a network implementation engineer at a big bank, which means I took changes that were designed by architects, translated that to the actual commands needs to run, then did them at night. Most of the day was maybe one or two meetings, and the changes at night took maybe half an hour max as long as nothing went wrong.
Realistically, I did like 4 hours of real actual work in a given week. Despite that, I was chained to my laptop all day in case someone messaged me. So like, in theory, I could go hiking, hang out at the beach, go on a trip, etc. That would have been a big risk though, because if I didn't respond when someone messaged me, it would look like I wasn't doing my very minimal job.
I ended up just browsing the internet a lot and playing lots of video games. It was nice in a way, but it also felt sort of like being a prisoner, and I felt like a huge piece of shit for doing nothing productive or self development focused all day. Overall, I'm glad I have a job where I actually do things now, even though it's busier. Being a bum is stressful in a different way.