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R_D_Olivaw

83 karma · joined August 5, 2025

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R_D_Olivaw··on There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy
For me it's either a craving for lime/citrus or strawberries. When I crave strawberries, I know somethings up.
R_D_Olivaw··on College Is Coming Apart After Successive, Overlapping Crises
Most of ANY discussion with US Americans is at most 2 skips from : "yeah, but who's going to pay for it/ yeah, but how much money is that going to make you".

We're a lost bunch.

R_D_Olivaw··on Ogre Battle 64 Recompiled Project at 99.05%
Thanks for this. Had never heard of it. Unfortunately, no PC port :(

But yeah, OB64 sits stop a pedestal in its own gallery for me.

R_D_Olivaw··on Astra replicates Adobe Lightroom
I love that some of the replies are verbatim copy paste Claude. Much wow.
R_D_Olivaw··on PISA 2025 Students' reading and mathematics performance declined across the OECD
As you say, like most of any of our current issues, it's not the act of doing something that is the issue, it's the lack of remuneration for doing that thing. Any region would gain an immense amount of more "smart point metrics" (what I choose to refer these scores as) if students had their own personal tutors that helped them along. But that doesn't fit our "profit or perish" economic models.
R_D_Olivaw··on Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive
Ahh I see. Any spots for philosopher / educators?
R_D_Olivaw··on Initial effects of AI technology on employment look positive
This is indeed HN, so comments are of course skewed to a particular upper echelon of knowledge work, but I'll ask anyways:

When you say (and perhaps you might speculate across other businesses) "hiring extra people... To handle AI initiatives" does that mean you're hiring Very niche and specialized AI people to handle these initiatives? I'm curious because I have seen some versions of this sentiment on HN and it sort of feels like reading "at my company we're hiring more quantum physicists because of these initiatives".

Basically, how much of the general populace is actually going to have a shot at nabbing a slice of this meager pie?

R_D_Olivaw··on Fable 5.1 World Modeling
Here, have another, Thank you!
R_D_Olivaw··on ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style
This is really neat, but if you'll notice, it just kept the same words and rewrote it a few different ways. I guess what I'm actually thinking of it's when the model temperatures weren't quite dialed in and you would get some wonky stuff that was genuinely useful for character exposition and giving a particular character a "voice".
R_D_Olivaw··on ChatGPT starts blocking direct requests to copy an author's style
Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to get these models back? I really like the older ones for NPC dialogue for TTRPG campaigns and the like.

I just looked into it and I think I can still find GPT 3.5, but wonder if it too has been trained out of usefulness.

The characters a styles were quirky and not always perfect, but added a lot more flavor and character nuance that could be corrected with editing.

R_D_Olivaw··on Qwen-Image-3.0: Rich Content, Authentic Details, Deep Knowledge
This is the way.

There's definitely more dogfooding that needs to be done. And id argue that if your purpose is truly to learn or to teach, the process of describing that image will do wonders for retention.

R_D_Olivaw··on The Current Crisis: What's Happening to Science in America
Hear hear! Well put.

Ostriches with their heads in the sand not wanting to state at the doom. Upset at someone that made them look up, not at the doom itself.

R_D_Olivaw··on US Department of Justice has officially reclassified cannabis as less dangerous
I think a significant portion of this has to do with the absolute insane levels of THC that is being circulated these days. ~20% minimums of THC is bonkers
R_D_Olivaw··on The effects of caffeine consumption do not decay with a ~5 hour half-life
Smoking in general? Tobacco specifically?
R_D_Olivaw··on Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers
Uhhh, I guess the map is a little hard to use and you seemed too have taken a wrong turn. This is an ebook thread, not the LOTR map thread.
R_D_Olivaw··on Colorado House passes bill to limit surveillance pricing and wage setting
It's so damn dystopian that we're even toying with such things.

But have me an idea: for whatever reason, a person consistently gets lower prices, and offers to be your shopper. You end up paying less for groceries than you would if you went, but you have to pay your shopper. So pretty much same outcome, BUT, you didn't have to do the shopping

R_D_Olivaw··on Last gasps of the rent seeking class?
I really liked this.

And you made me think of this current market trend where we can effectively beg for tips and donations from a small, roofed, and electrified domicile and you might even become famous, but if you do it out on the street, it's frowned upon and people are less willing to give.

R_D_Olivaw··on Show HN: Twitch Roulette – Find live streamers who need views the most
Next up: HackernewsRoulette
R_D_Olivaw··on Earthquake scientists reveal how overplowing weakens soil at experimental farm
Agreed. This hardly seems like novel information. The method at which he arrived at it is neat though, fwiw.

At the very least it adds a new vector to the position. I was also unaware of how receptive to disruption fiber optic cables were. So, at least I learned that.

R_D_Olivaw··on Our commitment to Windows quality
Ive found it useful to regard MBAs and the entire pipeline from education to managing companies for MBAs akin to a clergy class.

They spend so much time and effort learning the scripture and then are praised as having some sort of intimate knowledge of business practices and working towards the ever growing prophet (read: profit).

Their forecasts akin to divination (but with charts and graphs, oh my!)

In this context, it's helped me understand, or at least create a useful caricature of what must be going on in those spaces where everyone drinks the kool aid of "there is only the next quarter".

R_D_Olivaw··on Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer's proteins from brain cells (2016)
So, I sort of get these from time to time, but I notice that it hits the worst when :

1. I've eaten like crap. Things too heavy I'm grease, processed food, and red meats. When I'm rating cleaner, I don't feel as panicky

2. If I feel the panic coming on, I HAVE to do some sort of aerobic exercise in that first 15 minute "induction" phase of smoking. Otherwise I'll carry the panic along through the entire session.

FWIW, YMMV

R_D_Olivaw··on Canada's bill C-22 mandates mass metadata surveillance
While this might be true and we'll and good (for now) isn't it still a worry and a threat that the law is written as such?

That is to say, though the "vibe" may be as you say, the law now permits, if not now, at some future instance people with different perspectives or vibes can use the law as written, to other ends.

In short, yeah it may not be Texas now, but a "Texas-like" vibe could germinate and use the laws in the books later.

R_D_Olivaw··on CNN Explainer – Learn Convolutional Neural Network in Your Browser (2020)
Second this request.

Maybe a thread of these would do us some good?

R_D_Olivaw··on Suburban school district uses license plate readers to verify student residency
What?! An honest solution that Doesn't impede on our privacy rights.

Straight to jail with you.

R_D_Olivaw··on Tell HN: I cut Claude API costs from $70/month to pennies
Thanks for the reply!

Bullet journaling is neat, but I'm far too whacky with my notes to stick to that kind of structure.

I have various other structures I implement, but they're just hodge podges of things.

R_D_Olivaw··on My Mom and Dr. DeepSeek (2025)
Ding ding ding!

It hard to make money off of "stop eating all that trash and exercise more".

Just look at all the GLP 1 craze going on. We can never seem to even imagine fixing things by "less", and always need something "more" to fix things.

R_D_Olivaw··on Tell HN: I cut Claude API costs from $70/month to pennies
Following.
R_D_Olivaw··on Are we all plagiarists now?
And yet STILL the human being that did the work has value beyond any conceivable and ludicrous attempt by an other to measure it against.
R_D_Olivaw··on Are we all plagiarists now?
I sit along this fence and the only real "wrong" I can garner from it is that the economic model simply hasn't updated to reflect this shift.

I think the "wrongness" would go away, for me anyways, if we found a way that everyone was still remunerated in some way when this sharing occurred.

A lá, the vision of what crypto ought to have been: Every single thing created and shared has a .000xx cent value and as it makes it's way around being used/shared/iterated upon just sends those royalty checks to the "creator" always, forever.

R_D_Olivaw··on Raccoons break into liquor stores, scale skyscrapers and pick locks
All I think about when I hear and see these stories of raccoons being so slick:

1: I completely understand the trope of the burger/heist person looking like a raccoon and

2. I can't help but to think how useful they might be in search and rescue type scenarios. Or even just the terrain mapping aspect of it.

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