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LargeWu

3,559 karma · joined March 26, 2009

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LargeWu··on Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain
We have a 2022 Leaf. Great city car; not so great out of town.

Just to be clear, that's an infrastructure problem, not a car problem. There aren't too many places you can drive in the US where you don't see a gas station at least every 50 miles, typically much more frequently. Charging stations are a completely different story.

LargeWu··on Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain
If you live in large parts of the USA, by which I mean pretty much anything that is not the eastern seaboard or California, and you need to go anywhere remotely rural, charging infrastructure is absolutely not reliable.

I have an EV, which is amazing in my metro area, but I regularly take trips where I would not feel comfortable finding a place to charge, despite what EV locator maps might tell you. If you show up and that charger is not working, which is not uncommon, you might be stranded.

LargeWu··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
He started SpaceX because he had a pipe dream of colonizing Mars, and too much money.
LargeWu··on Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously
There's massive negativity because our bullshit detectors are going off.

First of all, I don't think it can do what it claims to do.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I don't think it should.

LargeWu··on Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously
Downvote if you want, but this is a very relevant question. If their marketing is to be believed, they would be eating their own dog food.

This very analog to the Meta executives who won't let their own kids near social media.

LargeWu··on Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously
Does Pion run Andon Labs autonomously?
LargeWu··on Itadakimasu: A word you say to the food, not the cook
This is a really bizarre take. Praying to the small, local spirits, like the one of the animal you are about to eat, is noble and beautiful, but praying to a universal god is worthy of mockery? ("sky-daddy myth")

I don't really care what people believe, but if you can accept and respect traditions that believe in the supernatural, which includes any spirit, surely beliefs centered around creator gods are no less plausible.

LargeWu··on Google has abandoned Google News?
I don't expect them not to make big bets, but this was DOA from the start and everybody knew it.
LargeWu··on Google has abandoned Google News?
Because people like Zuck think that because they're unimaginably rich, they must have gotten that way because of their own good sense, instead of getting insanely lucky at just the right time when his original product was primed to be well received.
LargeWu··on Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'
Of course they're participating, even driving it. Notably there were large bets placed predicting imminent military actions in Iran and Venezuela. In at least one case it was verifiably placed by one of the individuals planning it. We've reached the point where our country's leaders can profit not by the outcome of the war, but even just by the very act of initiating it.
LargeWu··on AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt
Last week I was at the bank in my hometown, a small rural community. The teller took a phone call, and I overheard her say "You have $1.53 in your checking account, and $150 in savings".

Presumably this is their total net worth. I think this is way more common than people on this type of forum realize. Most will work until they literally can't anymore, then scrape by on social security until they die. I think it's important to keep that perspective.

LargeWu··on GitLost: We Tricked GitHub's AI Agent into Leaking Private Repos
SQL Injection isn't even a problem of SQL, it's a problem of the applications those databases are connected to.
LargeWu··on A deadly fungus that can infect cats and people is spreading
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
LargeWu··on Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics
Letting AI generate your image also dances around the issues of attribution and licensing, for better or worse.
LargeWu··on Confidential submission of draft S-1 to the SEC
These companies are never, ever going to make their money back off of retail customers. It's not even clear if those customers would be profitable at all, let alone enough to justify hundreds of billions in capital expenditures.
LargeWu··on Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
I want advice from the one questioning whether we should, not just whether we can.
LargeWu··on Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
Not only benefits from it, but the very one causing it to happen.
LargeWu··on An Apple (II) for Teacher
Didn't see it mentioned in the article, but Apple also had a program called "An Apple for a Teacher" which allowed teachers to purchase directly from Apple at a big discount for personal use. My dad secured a IIgs this way, which mostly found use as a gaming machine for myself. But it certainly helped to reinforce the Apple -> schools pipeline because teachers wanted to use what they knew.
LargeWu··on 'Point of no return': New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level
This is true. It is also true that waiting until things bottom out will make things even worse. It will be more expensive and options will be more limited.

There will need to be a federal bailout to relocate everyone who needs help. The government should also probably announce a policy that there will be no future disaster relief that involves rebuilding, only relocating.

New Orleans will be the first, but not the last American city to collapse. Miami is probably next. Salt Lake City could very well run out of water, nevermind the increasingly toxic lakebed. Phoenix too. In the next hundred years people are going to learn why environmentalists use the word "sustainability" so much.

LargeWu··on 'Point of no return': New Orleans relocation must start now due to sea level
The difference is that schools, crime, etc., are all what they are right now. It's there, it's verifiable. Anybody buying in has access to the full information. They can walk around the neighborhood and see for themselves.

The flooding and inevitable destruction of the city is decades away. It's still abstract. Some people might even think it is preventable.

I don't think it's unethical to sell. People have their own motivations. Maybe a buyer just wants it for 5 years, who knows. Probably the risk will get baked into market price. What does need to happen though is the federal government needs to step up, because they're the only ones who can, and guarantee they will buy it for a certain percentage of appraised market value. I would imagine that percentage will decline over time until they declare the city a total loss, after which your property is declared worthless. If they do this now, they can make it possible for people to leave with some semblance of dignity and mitigate hardships.

LargeWu··on Why Almost Everyone Loses–Except a Few Sharks–On Prediction Markets
"The solution is parlay style payouts"

I think you mean parimutuel payouts?

LargeWu··on GitHub's Fake Star Economy
They say Silicon Valley was more of a documentary than a comedy, and now we have one more way life imitates art: A growing army of Erlich Bachmann's.
LargeWu··on Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive
For those interested, Relisten is another repository of live concert recordings. It skews heavily towards improvisational music, ie jambands, but there's some indie rock on there as well.

https://relisten.net/

LargeWu··on Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal
Because the "it'll create X jobs" implies it's ongoing. It's a disingenuous attempt to oversell the benefits because they know if they're transparent about it, suddenly it doesn't seem like such a great deal.
LargeWu··on Missouri town fires half its city council over data center deal
"If they require the datacenter to be a closed water system and pay for their own electricity..."

This assertion is doing a LOT of heavy lifting, and when it isn't true, it can cause huge externalities not just for the local community but possibly an entire region. It also does not address the noise problem.

Additionally, your jobs estimates are likely high and include short-term construction jobs which may not even go to locals anyway.

LargeWu··on Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story
I think the differentiating feature is that capitalism used to be tethered to producing things that were useful. The current model of wealth acquisition, so called "late-stage" seems to have shifted more towards rent seeking and extraction.
LargeWu··on Entities enabling scientific fraud at scale (2025)
Is there a viable career path for researchers who choose to focus on replication instead of novel discoveries? I assume replications are perceived as less prestigious, but it's also important work.
LargeWu··on I baked a pie every day for a year
For one thing, yeast was in short supply, so if you wanted to bake regularly, sourdough was a good option if you could keep it going.
LargeWu··on How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post
Billionaires are allowed to have their cake and eat it too in the form of loans backed by their stock holdings. This is how they get to have $500MM yachts without having to actually sell their stock and lose control of their companies. It's how they pay themselves without having to pay taxes, because it's treated like debt and not income. Treating these like capital gains would be a start.
LargeWu··on Waymo seeking about $16B near $110B valuation
> LLM-based “chatty mode” where you can talk to the AI personality of your choice

I'm genuinely baffled that people would want to do this.

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