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cgriswald

6,874 karma · joined October 24, 2013

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cgriswald··on There are no "rogue" AI agents
To me, going rogue requires agency. Do you disagree or do you think LLMs have agency? Either way, why?
cgriswald··on The mystery animal on an ancient god's head
That’s clearly a Groening rabbit.
cgriswald··on DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why
> Cheaper than if we ate in the restaurant and were expected to give a 15-20% tip.

You should run that experiment. Get two identical meals, one via delivery the other at the restaurant. Pay close attention to menu prices.

cgriswald··on Claude Code reads AGENTS.md only when telemetry is on [fixed]
This conversation comes down to people saying “Why don’t you just…” to Anthropic. Anthropic has the most information and made the choice they made. That choice may have been over-engineering, an appropriate choice or both. Discussing that choice could be interesting and it could especially be informative to people without much experience. Speculating on that could lead to an interesting conversation—especially WRT how people are actually using the current status quo—but imagination seems to be lacking here.

Instead we get the implicated assertion that users’ existing workflows shouldn’t matter to Anthropic and accusations that someone you don’t agree with is a shill. When called on that you avoided the question.

To answer your question, although it wasn’t directed at me: YES. I want people to be able to discuss that exact issue even if it isn’t personally interesting to me.

cgriswald··on Claude Opus 5.5
The word can also mean to “keep up with” or “lead” so a downward direction isn’t the only way to go even in an “as fast as possible” scenario. If the frontier is outpacing them, they could be saying they’re going to go faster. They could also be sharing the intention to go faster in order to lead.
cgriswald··on You can defeat the Dream Devourer from Chrono Trigger using an int overflow
I can’t speak for the poster and I haven’t played that game, but I’ve played other JRPGs.

Here’s a list of some of the things I can enjoy in a game, JRPG or otherwise, that aren’t necessarily story or character related: technical details/neat hacks, novelty, atmosphere, gameplay/battle/magic/weaponsystems, exploration, finding secrets/special items, level design, enemy and boss design and fights, cinematography (framing, contrast, …), immersion, design elements, collecting things, trying to break the game, talking about the game with others, connection and comparison with other games and media, translation, acting, my mental reaction (turning my brain off/lighting it up) …

cgriswald··on You can defeat the Dream Devourer from Chrono Trigger using an int overflow
There is more than one thing to enjoy about anything and yes, someone may enjoy aspects you aren’t even aware of even if they don’t enjoy the aspect you think of as the core aspect.

You brought up the subject of food, but not everyone even agrees that taste is the most important element. For some it’s the social aspect of the meal. For some it’s the nutritional value. Some may only tolerate the taste of something but enjoy the texture or the warm feeling in their belly. People can also eat things they don’t enjoy but be glad they did for the experience of just trying that thing.

It isn’t outrageous that you don’t understand it. It does imply that you’re blind to all the other aspects of games that bring people enjoyment. You personally would probably be better off not trying to defend this and instead trying to understand the views others have. You could just ask the poster what he does care about in games.

cgriswald··on How to Write with an LLM
Using LLMs is like managing people. It’s difficult in some ways and easier in others. You should trust them to a degree but also know what is going on and if you’re “trusting” them out of laziness you’re doing it wrong.
cgriswald··on Minimal Phone 2
Those people don’t actually want a dumb phone. They just don’t want to be spied on. That’s not actually that complicated it just makes other people less rich.
cgriswald··on We built our house for LAN parties (2024)
For a decade I hosted numerous large parties with food and alcohol. With a good core group and “selective pruning” (mostly of creeps) we never had any problems. My kids were always at my ex’s house though.
cgriswald··on Earth's organisms developed via evolution. What if the cosmos did, too?
Where does the distinction lie between infinite parallel universes and infinite universes in a cycle? Does time pass through the cycle unbroken? Wouldn’t it also require a “superuniverse” with its own laws such that any universe it contains must be constructed so that a big crunch has to happen?
cgriswald··on Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation
If you haven't read it, you might enjoy Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series. It's fiction which explores different intelligences, with the second novel[0] dealing specifically with octopuses.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Ruin

cgriswald··on Memory prices climb 500% in 12 months
Those questions can’t get to the root of how the GGP is using the word for two reasons: 1. Companies, not being alive, can’t possibly need in this sense without analogy. 2. The poster included electricity as something everybody needs but there are people surviving without it.
cgriswald··on Show HN: iPhone app takes simultaneous images from 2 lenses, fuses into 1 photo
I shouldn’t pay because I’ve already paid. Price updates for the same major version in. Let new sales be your incentive to keep it up-to-date. Let a new version I actually want be my incentive to spend more money.

Subscriptions for software that don’t offer an external service put all the incentives backwards strictly to the benefit of the developer and expense of the user.

There’s no question why it’s a great deal for the developer. But nothing you’ve said explains why any user should buy into this at all.

cgriswald··on The UK's war on anonymity has come to America
I think if you spoke to the people actually making the claim they’d define it a little better to include only cases where adults are being asked to give up rights, freedoms, or privileges. But you can ask them.

I didn’t take a position on the argument. I pointed out a distinction.

cgriswald··on The UK's war on anonymity has come to America
“For the kids” arguments are distinct from arguments worrying about future generations in that they are almost entirely focused (ostensibly) on preventing harm to children while they are children rather than “all our descendants including the adults”.
cgriswald··on Saying No
We have only one side of the story and he didn’t give us any details of what the manager actually said. He also mentions the manager said something about “costs”. The author’s wants are reasonable but that doesn’t mean the manager’s wants aren’t also reasonable.
cgriswald··on Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
The services aren’t really that great IMO. They don’t always get you the quality you pay for. They hide their libraries either to keep you engaged with their app or to convince you it’s larger than it is. Most of them charge you even when you don’t use the service that month. But they’re doling out seasons an episode or three at a time to make sure you don’t unsubscribe during any given month. Some have renegged on their previous statements regarding password sharing. You pay for “screens” but those screens have to be for your household only. Their UIs and apps are often broken and are inconsistent between devices. Even when you pay for ad free sometimes there are ads “due to licensing issues” and almost all of them advertise their own shows or apps or podcasts before the content you want to watch.
cgriswald··on Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise
But in Australia, he would have just been drinking it normally.

...I'm fired, aren't I? I'll see myself out.

cgriswald··on The difference between "today's task" and "accretive work"
Though I walk through the valley of technical debt I shall fear no eval
cgriswald··on Costco is the anti-Amazon
This must vary by region. We get paper bags with a reflective liner. They’re re-usable if the super adhesive they use for the label stickers doesn’t require ripping the bag apart to open it, but they’re definitely intended to be disposable. Sometimes they just use regular paper bags and let our stuff get warm. It seems random whether they stuff the bags to the gills or have a single item per bag. This happens with both Fresh and Whole Foods.
cgriswald··on Building Pi with Pi
I don’t have to imagine the offense of others to take offense to slurs intended to denigrate them. If I tell you not to use the n-word in my presence I’m not doing it for black people. I’m doing it for me. I don’t want to hear that shit because it offends me. The entire mindset that would think it is okay offends me.

A slur applied to anthropomorphic programs is the same mindset to someone who really believes the programs are experiencing, quite different from “rust bucket” being applied to a car they know doesn’t think and feel. While I can’t quite get offended about it, it does make me wonder if they’re not using other slurs because of the socially unacceptable nature of those slurs rather than because they’re not awful people.

cgriswald··on Time to talk about my writerdeck
Slow down. I’m still deciding on what size of notebook and whether I go dotted or blank.
cgriswald··on Time to talk about my writerdeck
For my two main uses pen and paper has two opposite effects. For creative writing it is freeing because it isn’t the last stop but I don’t have to worry about format or placement or anything. I can just go. Typing has a sort of “technical” feel for me, probably due to code, email, and to some degree comments.

For notes during study pen and paper are constraining and force me to organize the thoughts in my mind first and then commit them. Mistakes needing to be corrected here is good: It reminds me what I misunderstood.

But, like the sibling poster, the writing goes onto the computer for later editing.

cgriswald··on Time to talk about my writerdeck
I went with paper and pen precisely because there was always more I wanted to do with my computer work flow.
cgriswald··on Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit
I don’t see how the death penalty adds anything here. There are already significant consequences. People who commit such crimes either do not expect to face the consequences or don’t consider the consequences at all.
cgriswald··on Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit
I am opposed to the death penalty in all cases, for a variety of reasons.

However, currently the court has to at least find that a murder has occurred or in some cases child rape (sometimes with conditions like a second offense). These are categorically different offenses that are unlikely to occur during the normal course of a public servants job, except perhaps if police kill someone there may be a question whether it was murder.

If “violation of trust” is given the death penalty than any normal act in the course of a public servant’s service history could potentially be used to hang him by questioning the legitimacy of the act.

cgriswald··on Tennessee man jailed 37 days for Trump meme wins settlement after lawsuit
You want to give the government the legal ability to threaten the life of the entire civil service, judiciary, and all elected representatives.

I’m sure that would never be abused.

cgriswald··on As researchers age, they produce less disruptive work
I think that if the pattern exists, it is strongly muted for GenX because everything we are seeing (and more) was virtually promised to be here “any day now” during the hay day of science fiction media. If anything, 2026 in the real world isn’t futuristic enough compared to what was “supposed” to have happened by now.
cgriswald··on The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
There absolutely is gaslighting here. I think now that some time has passed you should probably go back and re-read this thread. I can't be clearer about the fact that I accessed these things young without trying and continued to have access if I had wanted it. My comment about looking back as an adult was about even more access that could have been available to me if I had gone looking.

So even if you don't believe I have the capacity to understand that a teenager I know (who was also a child) who was doing drugs, smoking, etc., would absolutely have gotten me what I wanted; it doesn't follow that I didn't have the access I actually had. "We'll never know" is false. I know, because I was there.

As far as minimum age laws not having their intended effect, again, it's easy when you're the one saying what all the arguments are...

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