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MattGrommes

1,890 karma · joined September 25, 2008

https://mattorama.net https://grommesmade.com @mattgrommes
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MattGrommes··on The Legend of von Neumann (1973) [pdf]
It's less of a strict biography and more of a fictionalized story involving Von Neumann and his wife. As far as I can recall from my reading it was pretty historically accurate though.
MattGrommes··on The AI Race Just Got Awkward
Also they just want to be seen as the top of a technological / scientific field. There's a lot of prestige and soft power there that Xi Jinping wants.
MattGrommes··on I don't want the details
Exactly. The point of the article is that the boss just needs to know that you have a real plan, not 3 Hopes in a trench coat.
MattGrommes··on OpenAI's Misalignment Framework: A Tactical Bid to Preempt Global AI Governance
Admittedly I haven't thought this through incredibly deeply but what if "nationalize" just means the US government owns half of the company? Then we get profits as recompense for building the company on our shared culture but there's still a profit motive for employees and a check on the direction of the company in the same way VCs have. But without necessarily turning the company into some red-tape bound bureaucracy.
MattGrommes··on Nebula Sans
I would absolutely love to subscribe to Nebula but they don't have an Xbox app which is where I watch almost all my TV/Youtube/streaming. I hope they have the resources to do it at some point.
MattGrommes··on Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown
Beyond the fact that there's absolutely no reason for you to post this, I'm not sure what you're looking at. I'm not a pro but I've been building sheds and things for decades and based on the pictures here I don't see low quality. Maybe I'd put more joists in the roof but Portland doesn't get a ton of snow so I'm sure it's fine. $2k is a fine price for that slab, especially compared to the pain of lifting 80lb bags of concrete yourself all day. People shouldn't be afraid of spending the money on a pro if they've got the money to spend.

Maybe he could have saved a few thousand with different subs (maybe) but your comments are nonsensical. I see tons of janky builds people post on Reddit and this is not one of them. You should spend your commenting time over there.

MattGrommes··on AliExpress runs silent WebAudio fingerprinting that breaks Bluetooth multipoint
Something in my work's SSO / auth mechanism does this and if you click No it silently screws up the internal website you're visiting. It doesn't block you from logging in, just parts of the site don't load/work. I haven't been able to get a good answer on what the heck is going on but it's extremely annoying.
MattGrommes··on AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
I've definitely seen this. One of my least favorite parts of developing with AI is when I add print statements or small changes and the LLM removes them in the process of doing the next thing. I want to work _with_ the AI, not have it stomp all over my code.
MattGrommes··on Exploiting Volvo/Eicher's fleet platform to gain control over all users/vehicles
They send over-the-air updates all the time. If they project that it'll be profitable, they'll switch everybody over as soon as you can say the words.
MattGrommes··on AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt
When you're headed into retirement, one possibility is to shift to saving more in cash-like options instead of a 401k (or whatever). It's should just be part of your retirement plan to account for possibilities like this.
MattGrommes··on AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt
One of the big issues with this is sequence of returns risk. If you retire and rely on your portfolio but the market dives for a year or two right after you leave the workforce, your total portfolio value is screwed because you were selling at a low point.
MattGrommes··on Which streaming service was that on again?
Justwatch for me is just showing "Stream this or pirate it?"
MattGrommes··on Three ways people respond to a problem (other than solving it)
I'm genuinely curious about even a hypothetical more detailed example of how some group would go about preserving a problem like homelessness, even unintentionally. I can't wrap my mind about how it would actually happen beyond simplistic sayings.

I live in Portland, OR where we have a large homeless problem and I continually hear that the groups being given money to help are incentivized to keep homelessness high for their own purposes. Like, obviously people who are paid like to keep getting paid but how would they go about making this happen when their job is the opposite?

MattGrommes··on Matt's Script Archive: The Scripts That Reshaped the Web
This is the big thing for me as well. Just having a source for code to show me how to do certain things was absolutely huge. I don't think I even used his code as-is hardly at all. It was part of the View Source way a lot of us learned to code.
MattGrommes··on Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
> It's so weird. I don't know what it is about AI that causes people to throw all thought and caution to the wind and charge forward blind.

My favorite theory about this is that we're all used to "speech == intelligence" and now that we have something that can produce coherent speech, it seems like it must be intelligent to people who don't know how it works. Even people who know how it works still anthropomorphize it to a weird degree. So a business person sees this thing that's both intelligent (to them) and superhumanly fast and it seems like the ultimate silver bullet.

MattGrommes··on Vibe coding my way to a healthy family: Introducing Gamow Labs
The real difficulty is deciding what caring means. Some people decide caring means getting onto your adult child's job interview call because you think they need help. For others, caring means giving them a safety net but letting them learn and possibly fail on their own.
MattGrommes··on French-Iranian author Marjane Satrapi, author of 'Persepolis', dies at 56
That's always a possibility but I've seen my Grandpa die of a broken heart after my Grandma died. The night of her funeral he asked his children if they thought someone could die of a broken heart and after that it took him less than a year to go himself. I'd never considered that saying to be true until then but I watched it happen.
MattGrommes··on Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM
I've always thought we should get rid of grades altogether. There should be curricula that builds upward but if a kid masters 4th grade math, they should move on up right then, not wait for half a year to join 5th grade or have to retake 4th grade. Obviously there are operational challenges with this but it's got to be better than having bored advanced kids, the shame of being "left behind", etc. The kid with dyscalculia should be able to move at their own pace.
MattGrommes··on The worst job interview I ever had
> Ha, I don't think anyone who asks these questions expects that you'll respond in a fully unfiltered way.

Cut to the interviewer telling his friends about the weirdest interview he ever conducted, with a guy who unloaded all his life issues on him instead of focusing on work. :)

MattGrommes··on Colombia hosts talks on exiting fossil fuels as global energy crisis deepens
The point of that comment is not that the talking is happening, it's that the hope of action isn't going to be blocked by industry-captured and plain moronic countries like Saudia Arabia and US, respectively.

Even if these countries are a smaller part of the climate affecting processes, any forward motion is good at this point. They can also help build economies of scale, and take advantage of the myriad economic benefits of renewables that other countries are leaving on the table.

MattGrommes··on If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?
The specific decline in happiness in English speaking countries is very interesting. My first guess is that non-English speakers have to use their own news sources and don't fall prey to the same doom and gloom, everything is terrible, "news" sources on cable and the internet.

Seems like there might be a good lesson in there.

MattGrommes··on Teardown of unreleased LG Rollable shows why rollable phones aren't a thing
I've been waiting for a Global from Earth Final Conflict for nearly 2 decades.

https://community.ultimaker.com/topic/15743-global-link-prop...

MattGrommes··on Sam Altman may control our future – can he be trusted?
Why would you think Occam's Razor would not determine that racism is the reason? It's just as simple of an explanation as anxiety.

I'm not sure some people understand how "normal" racism is.

MattGrommes··on Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection
I've been increasingly confident in my thought that these VCs and tech leaders are basically people who used other people's money to pull the arm on a hundred slot machines.

After they win a few times they start to think they're experts at slot machines, not just lucky.

Over time, they start to think they're also experts at other things, and because they have money people start to listen to them.

Unfortunately they just keep proving me right on this.

MattGrommes··on Live: Artemis II Launch Day Updates
It's silly to say there's no innovation here. These aren't legos that you just snap together. I'm sure there are innovations up and down the whole thing, using the old technology they have easily available to them.

No, it's not the most modern Rocket Lab or SpaceX project but they have immense drag on their process that those companies don't have and they still got the dang thing up and headed toward the moon.

MattGrommes··on 'Five Nights at Epstein's' Game Goes Viral at US School Campuses
http://archive.today/CzUzB
MattGrommes··on Shell Tricks That Make Life Easier (and Save Your Sanity)
If only somebody had a lifehack for making me remember all these awesome commands.

If I do something the slow way it's usually because I don't do the operation enough to burn it into my memory, or I got burned by accidentally hitting something close but incorrect once and closed the tab or something.

MattGrommes··on What came after the 486?
I'll always have a fond spot in my heart for my cheap Cyrix CPU. Once I was near finishing an important project in the middle of the night and my CPU fan died. The cyrix chip would overheat in no time and shut down so I ended up filling a coffee mug with ice and jamming it up against the chip, giving me more precious minutes before it got hot enough to shut down again. I would swap out the ice in the mug and give it another go. I got that project done. :)
MattGrommes··on Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
In a world where copyright only lasts 10 years, what happens to the musician whose song from 20 years ago is used in a movie and becomes super popular? Do they get royalties or are there no royalties involved?

I want a system that doesn't syphon money to the corporations over the individual creator and the corporations can't tell me I can't use the song.

MattGrommes··on The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI
This isn't really on you but the problem I have with comments like this is that I think most people write poorly so I can't tell if those are LLM artifacts or LinkedIn-speak artifacts. I need better heuristics for these things.
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