stu2b50's recent activity
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Comment on What private companies are you happy doing business with? in ~talk
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Comment on What private companies are you happy doing business with? in ~talk
stu2b50 Link ParentThat's not really how it works. You, as in the company, don't really "make money" by selling shares. Because of dilution, the change in net value for the shareholders - which is, in essence, the...That's not really how it works. You, as in the company, don't really "make money" by selling shares. Because of dilution, the change in net value for the shareholders - which is, in essence, the company, for public and private companies - is 0.
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Comment on What private companies are you happy doing business with? in ~talk
stu2b50 Link ParentShareholder primacy is never enforced after that case. There are numerous examples in modern times. What happened when Zuck decided to spend the GDP of a small country on the metaverse? Nothing....Shareholder primacy is never enforced after that case. There are numerous examples in modern times.
What happened when Zuck decided to spend the GDP of a small country on the metaverse? Nothing. He’s still doing it, buoyed by Meta’s other revenue generating businesses.
The rule of wealth maximization for shareholders is virtually impossible to enforce as a practical matter. The rule is aspirational, except in odd cases. As long as corporate directors and CEOs claim to be maximizing profits for shareholders, they will be taken at their word, because it is impossible to refute these corporate officials' self-serving assertions about their motives.
Nor is it unique to public companies. Private companies have shareholders as well.
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Comment on What private companies are you happy doing business with? in ~talk
stu2b50 LinkIn the end, the main thing that being a public company actually entails is that you need a robust accounting and reporting system such that you can meet the government-mandated reporting...In the end, the main thing that being a public company actually entails is that you need a robust accounting and reporting system such that you can meet the government-mandated reporting requirements that a public company must satisfy. It's fundamentally about about able to meet transparency goals.
What that lets you do is sell your stock on public stock markets. It doesn't mean you have to let "shareholders" control the company any more than you want to, nor that you are somehow obligated to maximize profit (this is usually confused with fiduciary duty).
There is a matter of correlation there - the usual reason people want to go public is that your stocks being able to be traded by anyone will allow you to raise much more money for capital than a private company would. The fact that it is publicly traded not only means that the pool of investing money is much larger, but also that your equity is very liquid, which makes potential investors less scared about putting money in.
If you don't care, and just want to run your company as a boutique, then going public is a lot of accounting work for not a lot of gain.
So the population of public companies has more companies where the founders have the goal of growing very large, which is what you are likely observing when you say that they have "lower quality services".
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Comment on What’s a point that you think many people missed? in ~talk
stu2b50 Link ParentThat’s a very salt-of-the-earth depression era kind of saying, but in the modern era, I’d include something that may be controversial: smartphones. They are the boot to the earth that is the...invest good money in things that are between you and the ground - shoes, chair and bed
That’s a very salt-of-the-earth depression era kind of saying, but in the modern era, I’d include something that may be controversial: smartphones. They are the boot to the earth that is the internet, something that we all have to interface with these days.
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Comment on US withdraws from sixty-six international organisations in ~society
stu2b50 Link ParentUh, I don't see how a wiki is going to help. The fundamental issue is that the entire voting populace of the US is going to have VERY different, irreconcilable, ideas for what they want this new...It seems to me that any serious effort to draft a new constitution would require the absolute transparency and democratic collaboration that only an open-source wiki-like platform can provide. I think it’s totally possible in the internet age for a constitution to actually be written by “we the people” rather than a group of elite founding fathers in a way that could never have been dreamed of centuries ago.
Uh, I don't see how a wiki is going to help. The fundamental issue is that the entire voting populace of the US is going to have VERY different, irreconcilable, ideas for what they want this new constitution to have.
I don't think you could get the userbase of Tildes to agree on a constitution, let alone everyone in the US.
And, to add, Trump won the popular vote last election; a plurality of the voting populace thought Donald Trump 2 electric boogaloo was the best way forward for America. And this is the group that's going to write a new constitution?
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Comment on The city where free buses changed everything in ~transport
stu2b50 LinkThey kinda glossed over it, but they also revamped the bus network significantly? It seems difficult to discern to what extent the increase in bus ridership was due to not having fares and which...They kinda glossed over it, but they also revamped the bus network significantly?
In Dunkirk, it took four years — from 2014 to 2018 — for efforts to hit the road. First, authorities publicized the program in the media and on the streets, carried out surveys with residents, simplified and reworked timetables, improved the quality of vehicles, repositioned bus stops and increased the size of the fleet. In 2015, they launched free travel on weekends as a testing period, before rolling out the service seven days a week in September 2018.
“You can’t just make buses free from one day to the next,” says Montagne. “If the service is underused, timetables not well understood, if buses are always late, and you don’t change people’s views of public transit, then it won’t work.”
It seems difficult to discern to what extent the increase in bus ridership was due to not having fares and which was due to the improvements made to the system. The article doesn't really have any evidence one way or the other.
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Comment on Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI in ~life
stu2b50 Link ParentThat feels like a bit of a overreaction to a whopping 0.5 years lol. The experience requirements aren't that strict. Generally, <1 is where you're only qualified for newgrad / entry level roles....I will admit, I’ve felt a lot better at my job over the past year or so than the first couple of years, but I think just looking at new jobs and everything says 5-7 years required for any higher level positions which probably batters my self-confidence a bit.
That feels like a bit of a overreaction to a whopping 0.5 years lol. The experience requirements aren't that strict. Generally, <1 is where you're only qualified for newgrad / entry level roles. 1-3 is junior engineers. 3-5+ is where you can qualify for terminal position roles (equivalent to an L6 at google). Senior can be something like 6-7 YoE, but often it's more about the quality and level that you're executing moreso than YoE at that point.
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Comment on Feeling weird about my career with respect to AI in ~life
stu2b50 (edited )Link4.5 is a fair amount for software engineering - you're certainly not entry level anymore. Personally, I don't think it changes all that much. I already didn't do that much actual coding anymore....4.5 is a fair amount for software engineering - you're certainly not entry level anymore.
Personally, I don't think it changes all that much. I already didn't do that much actual coding anymore. The more you go up in level, the more your responsibilities shift from writing code to executing projects holistically. It's a common joke that you go from writing code in an IDE to writing code in google docs as you develop as an engineer - that is to say, you spend more time defining objectives, scoping projects, and aligning other people on what you're going to build than actually heads down, code writing.
In that respect, tools like claude code just reduce that ever smaller sliver more. Which doesn't change all that much. In the back drop of "I'm measured by the amount of impactful work I can execute", I don't particularly mind using any tools that speed things up.
I guess all that is to say, you were going to eventually move away from doing all that much hands on coding regardless, if you were to progress your career.
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Comment on You are a better writer than AI (yes, YOU!) in ~creative
stu2b50 LinkIdk, these always feel like... cope, to me. In this video and in many cases, the argument proceeds by first redefining "good writing" into something such that only humans can be good, or even...Idk, these always feel like... cope, to me. In this video and in many cases, the argument proceeds by first redefining "good writing" into something such that only humans can be good, or even applicable, in the new definition, and then arguing how that is the case.
But the danger there is, is that the definition other people use? Is it the definition that matters to you? Like it or not, the reality is that most writers desire for other people to like and enjoy their writing. Does it matter if AI text is always inferior when defined about the amount of intention a sentient human is trying to transmit, if in practice AI produced text is perfectly attractive to human readers who then proceed to spend their time reading the AI text instead of yours?
I feel like it sets people up with unrealistic expectations of the future.
The overall concept also gets to things like death of the author. If writing is about the transmission of ideas, what if you gain meaning from a piece of writing that the author didn't intend at all?
Or to go to art, is a painting of a landscape superior to viewing it yourself, since the latter is the creation of inhuman natural forces with no concern for design or aesthetic principle?
IMO, regardless of the capability of our current systems to do, it is fundamentally possible for machines to create text that is
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Appealing to humans
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Meaningful to humans
if nothing else in a monkey-typewriter-shakespeare way. And that may still be inferior if we value the "soul" of the writing imbued by the writer, but also, does that matter?
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Comment on Deleting topics in ~tildes
stu2b50 LinkHonestly I just don't think it matters that much. In the end, online forums are for recreation. No more, no less. You're never going to change the world arguing something on a niche forum. If a...- Exemplary
Honestly I just don't think it matters that much. In the end, online forums are for recreation. No more, no less. You're never going to change the world arguing something on a niche forum. If a post gets locked, just shrug and move on with your day. It's like if I was going to play a game on my phone and the servers were down. Is what it is.
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Comment on Mystery trader garners $400,000-plus windfall on Nicolas Maduro's capture in ~society
stu2b50 Link ParentNo, polymarket is a betting exchange. For every bet you make, there’s another user on the other side. In contrast, with a bookmaker, each player is betting against the bookmaker, who is trying to...No, polymarket is a betting exchange. For every bet you make, there’s another user on the other side. In contrast, with a bookmaker, each player is betting against the bookmaker, who is trying to craft odds such that they profit.
In that respect, polymarket doesn’t really care if some users are better than others. They take a percentage cut from the transactions. The $400,000 the guy in the story won came from other betters, not polymarket.
As a casino analogy, casinos care if people playing blackjack are too good at counting cards, because they’re playing against the casino. The casino does not care if poker players are “too good”, since they just take a fixed rake from each table, and the players wins and losses come from each other.
On a more philosophical level, the point of a prediction market is to have accurate probabilistic modeling via exchange betting. The more information, the more accurate the markets results are.
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Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
stu2b50 Link ParentThe idea is that white people have systematic advantage in the system - they have the political power in the country. While that doesn’t mean that there won’t be poor white people, systematically...The idea is that white people have systematic advantage in the system - they have the political power in the country. While that doesn’t mean that there won’t be poor white people, systematically the mechanisms of the country do not disadvantage white people.
Does that apply to Asians? This is the same country that worked Chinese railroad laborers to death in California, passed a law called the “Chinese Exclusion Act”, put Japanese Americans in internment camps, and literally owned the Philippines as a colony for half a century.
Do Asians do well because the system favors them (with almost zero members of the political class being any Asian ethnicity, from congress to presidential to the Supreme Court), or despite the system?
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Comment on Mystery trader garners $400,000-plus windfall on Nicolas Maduro's capture in ~society
stu2b50 Link ParentI mean, it's not a stock market. Polymarket wants insiders to bet. The point is to have a probability as close to the "true" ground truth probability of an event as possible. The more information...I mean, it's not a stock market. Polymarket wants insiders to bet. The point is to have a probability as close to the "true" ground truth probability of an event as possible. The more information is sloshing around in the market, the better. Insiders are, in a way, the most valuable betters for a prediction market.
If Donald Trump himself was betting on national affairs, that would be optimal.
Ultimately it's as dishonorable as the game is setup to be. I don't think anyone should expect insiders not to bet on polymarket - it's more of a game of who is more of an insider. Insider info is a spectrum, after all.
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Comment on Moving out soon. Think out loud with me regarding saving money vs. quality of life. in ~life
stu2b50 Link ParentThere's always be potential roommates. Maybe you make a new friend, or hear of another friend who's looking for one? 1 housemate in a flat is also different than 3. And, if, in the end, nothing...There's always be potential roommates. Maybe you make a new friend, or hear of another friend who's looking for one? 1 housemate in a flat is also different than 3.
And, if, in the end, nothing can be ratcheted down, is what it is. You'd get here one way or another, but if you cheap out it'll be a year of misery.
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Comment on Mac advice for a long time Windows user in ~tech
stu2b50 LinkFor the shortcuts, learn to love it. As a developer, IMO it's way better situation. CMD is all the UI shortcuts now - copy, paste, and so forth. CTRL is almost exclusively for terminal shortcuts....For the shortcuts, learn to love it. As a developer, IMO it's way better situation. CMD is all the UI shortcuts now - copy, paste, and so forth. CTRL is almost exclusively for terminal shortcuts.
That means that you'll never accidentally kill something in the CLI while trying to copy something. Also, I just think command is a nicer key for such common shortcuts - I can hit command with my thumb, which is much stronger than my pinkie.
In the interm, you can consider using something like rectangle for window management, and something like alt+tab (https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/) for command-tab behavior. But I would recommend trying out the "spatial finder" way - that is, just don't snap your windows. Let your windows be strewn across the screen - macOS does a great job at keeping things where you left them. You'd be surprised how you can intuitively remember where you left a window - it's like how your desk can be messy, but you still know where everything is.
Every native macOS text window has emacs keybindings. They're very powerful, and even if you just remember a few, they can make everyday text input much more convenient.
In terms of going from Linux to Mac, just remember that technically Linux isn't actually POSIX compliant, whereas macOS is. This means that some of the core CLI programs do not work the same - find, for example, behaves fairly differently, because the GNU ones have diverged from the POSIX standards. Just keep this in mind, because it can be frustrating.
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Comment on The 2025 Steam Awards in ~games
stu2b50 Link ParentSteam Awards are quite literally infamous. No one treats them seriously, because as a popular vote, they naturally fall victim to being popularity driven. That's not even a fault of anyone...So... TGA is trash and Steam is great? We've all known that forever.
Steam Awards are quite literally infamous. No one treats them seriously, because as a popular vote, they naturally fall victim to being popularity driven. That's not even a fault of anyone participating, it's just a fact that, if there are 5 nominations for an award, and you played 1 of them, you're going to vote for the 1 that you played. Multiply that by the number of people with Steam Accounts, and you get the most popular games winning.
That's how Starfield, which, I don't even think is a bad game but is none-the-less about as Bethedsa as a game can be, winning "Most Innovative Game" in '23.
That's fine, you don't have to take them seriously, they can and do just exist as a fun thing, but even with as little legitimacy TGA has, it's still much higher than the Steam Awards.
I'd also add that this is a seriously mischaracterization of gaming journalists that mostly came from cherry-picked examples during the height of the gamergate drama, with all the political infusement that came with that. Gaming journalists, by and large, are quite good at the game's they are given to review, and almost always at least beat the game.
Certainly they all would have managed to beat E33, which is not a long game by any means.
I won't delve too much into your subjective reading of the E33 plot, which is inherently subjective and therefore pointless to discuss, but the tie-in with "gaming journalistic practices" is really unfounded and unshackled to reality.
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Comment on Moving out soon. Think out loud with me regarding saving money vs. quality of life. in ~life
stu2b50 LinkPersonally, I would go for the more expensive option and ratchet down from there (e.g, the next year once the lease expires). Often, moving comes with transitions in life, and with other stuff...Personally, I would go for the more expensive option and ratchet down from there (e.g, the next year once the lease expires). Often, moving comes with transitions in life, and with other stuff going on, eliminating a huge potential source of stress is a big deal.
Are you getting a new job? Entering school? Those are rhetorical, but if your living situation is stressing you the hell out, you may perform poorly on said job, or academics, or whatever, and that'll also have a compounding effect on your finances anyway.
Once you're settled you can slowly ratchet down your living standards once you know what you're dealing with.
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Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
stu2b50 Link ParentI don't think the latter is necessarily something everyone believes in. Personally, I agree with the idea that the police do a bad job in the US, but I think we should fund them more. How many...I think most people would agree that the police have gone too far and we've provided them with too much funding
I don't think the latter is necessarily something everyone believes in. Personally, I agree with the idea that the police do a bad job in the US, but I think we should fund them more. How many government agencies operate better once you cut their budget?
If you look at police officers per capita, the US is not particularly high amongst developed countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers
Germany has 1.5x as many police officers per capita as we do. South korea nearly has 3x as many police officers per capita.
One common complaint is that police officers are too quick to use deadly force in the US. That is true, and I think more police officers would help. In many cases, the times where deadly force was used was a single police officer who felt threatened. If it were instead, say, 2-4 police officers in that situation, deadly force may never have been used simply because of the numbers advantage. In the UK, police officers are trained to get backup before engaging in a situation for this reason.
Police officers in the US should be a professional force - they should be highly paid, but also kept to high standards, with higher pay as the carrot to get high quality employees. That, too, comes with higher budgets. We should heavily train our police officers as well. That, too, comes with higher budgets.
The problem is that many police officers compensate their pay with the sadistic ability to bully the populace. That shouldn't happen; we should pay enough to get people of integrity to join the force, and we unceremoniously fire those without integrity.
Another problem is that they're poorly trained. Too many times law enforcement reaches for deadly force too early, or infamously reacts to social problems completely inappropriately.
I have a really hard time believing the police would get better in the ways we want them to if we reduce the amount of money they have further. It'll only exacerbate the problem.
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Comment on The year of the 3D printed miniature (and other lies we tell ourselves) in ~hobbies
stu2b50 Link ParentThey definitely didn’t spend $5k on equipment. Resin printers are generally cheaper than FDM printers, even. Essentially there’s just two components: a UV display, and a platform that can move up...Not to nitpick an obviously rhetorical line, but no, they fabricated $3k worth of hard-to-get miniatures out of $5k of equipment and supplies
They definitely didn’t spend $5k on equipment. Resin printers are generally cheaper than FDM printers, even. Essentially there’s just two components: a UV display, and a platform that can move up very carefully. Way less complicated than a FDM printer with a print head that needs to move precisely in 3 axis. You have one moving component, and it moves in 1 axis.
You can get a very high quality resin printer for like $300. Not even entry level - that’s like mid-level.
The effort is certainly true. But the cost is negligible.
The value is in liquidity - the time value of money. It's the same reason why it can be logical to take on debt, even though in a pure +- calculation, you have less money than when you started when you take a loan (the principle minus interest paid).
It's not pointless, but if you just sell equity the only way for that to be "profitable" is for it to be a ponzi scheme, and overall the company is not gaining value in a ponzi scheme.
The backbone of the company's value is always its actual revenue and potential future revenue.