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cma256

260 karma · joined September 20, 2023

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cma256··on Trade (and Tariffs)
This is hilarious and I agree.

I think an under-appreciated aspect of all this is the complete schadenfreude from everyone. The story goes tariffs only hurt yourself but then we see retaliatory tariffs in response. "Oh yeah I'm going to cut off my leg to show you whose boss!" Very funny.

And then you have people predisposed to higher-taxes who are contorting themselves over the economic cost of this tax while supporting significantly more economically destructive tax policies. Very funny.

And, of course, the opposite. Republicans in my state are campaigning on lowering taxes and inflation while also defending tariffs! Very funny.

cma256··on Being ambitious and being a dad
Are you American? The US has community and equitable distribution schemes. 50% of all assets is the default under both schemes with alimony regularly awarded to women to make up for lack of income.

Changing divorce laws to be less equitable, as far as I know, has never been a major platform of either party in the South. I'm not aware of any politician that advocates for it. I'm sure it exists but it must be an incredibly marginal view.

cma256··on Why Do Fewer Renters Expect to Move?
This is false. Can you cite a source for the idea that the 30-year mortgage was "founded" on the idea of appreciation? The thirty year mortgage was introduced to reduce the housing appreciation requirement the old balloon loan system relied on.
cma256··on Em dashes are fucking amazing
I did not know option + shift + hyphen produced an em dash. I've always used a double hyphen as a stand in -- as I did just now. LLMs don't do it and I haven't been accused yet. Though, more likely, I'm not popular enough for people to notice!

The overemphasis by critics on punctuation and "this not that" is tiring. I don't really know how to describe LLM writing but it has the same qualities as flat soda. Some authors you feel as though you fall through their work with little effort; unable to stop until gravity slams you into their conclusion. LLM writing can feel like an uphill hike to a sewage treatment plant. That is, its easy to convince yourself to stop at any time. There's a positive quality to that. I hope AI labs don't find a way to remove it.

cma256··on That post never existed. Stop listening to that thing
True but I would also caveat that it may have been an open economic question back then (I don't know the state of the debate) and the personal-economics of slavery are unmistakable for the "lucky" few.
cma256··on AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion
In moments like these I'm reminded of all the people who have committed suicide due to billing errors. This is completely unacceptable. These sorts of errors must _never_ happen.
cma256··on GPT-5.6
Is the direction of the pelicans encoded in your prompt? Curious why they are all left to right with the exception of terra xhigh.
cma256··on Ray Tracer in SQL
Very cool project. Next they should create a database with SQL. Querying my database's database with my database's SQL's SQL would be trippy.
cma256··on U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6
Uh, they spent hundreds of billions to get their flag ship products blocked by a democratic body with no possibility of recovering their capital except by concession of the people's representative?
cma256··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
I love the "year of the linux desktop" meme but even so I feel compelled to say it. Year of the Linux desktop?? You don't need a new machine if your new OS uses 1/4 of the resources.
cma256··on Never Give Them Your Face
They've got mine... Fly to Canada and your face gets scanned. I forgot this event and was surprised, walking through an American airport flying to another domestic location, that my picture and name appeared on an airline's screen without input. Not a government screen, mind you. I forget the exact context but the feeling persists. Very unnerving.
cma256··on Rayforce
> Rayforce is a library you link, not a server you deploy. The C API is small enough to wrap from any language with an FFI.

I'm familiar with large-scale, commercial, client-server use cases for columnar analytics and graph traversal but what is the use case for an embedded server like this?

cma256··on MiMo-v2.5-Pro-UltraSpeed: 1T model with 1000 tokens per second
You can test this. All of them identify slavery as the root cause. Gemini says:

> The U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) was fought primarily over the institution of slavery, specifically whether it would be allowed to expand into newly acquired western territories.

> While you might hear people point to "states' rights" or economic differences as the causes, these issues were inextricably linked to slavery. The southern states wanted the "right" to maintain and expand slavery, while the northern states increasingly opposed its expansion.

cma256··on The 15-minute city is a dead end
> The rise of autonomous vehicles and technologies like hyperloop may make a major difference to the way we travel around cities.

Harvard University Professor of Economics everyone. When discussing new modes of transport the _hyperloop_ is the exemplar. A technology that does not work, can not work, and will never work.

And, of course, no mention of e-bikes which are cheap, proven, and have seen large adoption in my neighborhood at the least. But of course that might have undermined his point.

cma256··on About LLMs at Zig Days
This should be read sarcastically. Its an idiom in the US. You state something you view as obviously true while qualifying it with "maybe - just maybe". Its commonly said in a comedic tone.
cma256··on The Ask
I assume based on the content of these comics you'd like to punish him. You don't have to carry this weight. Let it go. It's been 25 years.
cma256··on Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion
These sorts of articles have no value. The author is a "media entrepreneur". Being forced to read his opinion intermixed with out of context pull-quotes is not a good use of anyone's time. If Dawkins gave his opinion at length it might be worth reading but only if your goal is to understand something about Dawkins not about AI.

I would be interested to see a scientific discussion on what consciousness is biologically and if AI can fit that definition. But it would require someone with more credentials than a _media entrepreneur_ to pull off.

cma256··on What async promised and what it delivered
That is an unfair characterization of Zig. The OP correctly points out:

> Function signatures don’t change based on how they’re scheduled, and async/await become library functions rather than language keywords.

The functions have the same calling conventions regardless of IO implementation. Functions return data and not promises, callbacks, or futures. Dependency injection is not function coloring.

cma256··on Show HN: Sycamore – next gen Rust web UI library using fine-grained reactivity
I agree. For my blog I don't apply CSS and prefer to let the browser's reader mode perform the styling for me.

But there are categories of application where that is not acceptable. The presentation is a tightly controlled aspect of the application's functionality. If you're designing an application with leptos or sycamore my suspicion is you would fall into the latter category rather than the former.

cma256··on Show HN: Sycamore – next gen Rust web UI library using fine-grained reactivity
If your only target is web then there is no benefit other than a reduction in complexity.

For example, a "row" is not just a "<div>" tag. Its a div which horizontally fills its container. Centering contents with a "center" style attribute abstracts flex-box, browser compatibility, version compatibility, and the cascading behavior of CSS.

You move the incidental complexity of the web platform into the compiler which will always do the right thing. And in exchange you get the option to compile to a native or mobile app for "free".

cma256··on Show HN: Sycamore – next gen Rust web UI library using fine-grained reactivity
Are there native frameworks which use XHTML? Regardless, a document language being used to construct complex, interactive GUIs is incidental complexity. XHTML can be a compilation target but it does not need to be a development target.
cma256··on Show HN: Sycamore – next gen Rust web UI library using fine-grained reactivity
I really like these projects but missing from them is genericity. If you're taking the time to build a WASM app in Rust it would be nice if that app could compile to something other than WASM. For example, looking at the sycamore website's source I see p, h1, div, etc. What I'd rather see is "row", "column", "text". In their source I see tailwind what I'd rather see is "center", "align right", etc.

In other words, elm-ui but for these WASM Rust apps. Building a mobile app, a desktop app, and a web app, in my mind, should be accomplish-able given the right primitives (without requiring a JavaScript runtime be bundled). Rust's multi-crate workspaces make it a really great candidate for solving these cross-platform problems. IMO of course.

cma256··on WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate
I'm talking specifically about this phenomena[1]. I wasn't agreeing with the GP that these policies are "oppressive". I'm only informing you that these states are not experiencing "explosive growth" and the downstream effects of that fact.

1. https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-apportionment-for...

cma256··on WA income tax clears House after 24-hour debate
Both California and New York have shrinking populations according to Wikipedia. And even if the estimates are wrong and they do have growing populations you still need to consider the fact that the Southern states are growing much faster.

Federal power is shifting south. If you like the politics of New York and California that's a long-term problem that needs to be resolved.

cma256··on Agentic Engineering Patterns
> There may be an argument for leaning less on code review. When code is expensive to produce and is likely to stay in production for many years it's obviously important to review it very carefully. If code is cheap and can be inexpensively replaced maybe we can lower our review standards?

Agree with everything else you said except this. In my opinion, this assumes code becomes more like a consumable as code-production costs reduce. But I don't think that's the case. Incorrect, but not visibly incorrect, code will sit in place for years.

cma256··on Toyotas and Terrorists: "Why are ISIS's trucks better than ours?" (2023)
Fair enough!
cma256··on Toyotas and Terrorists: "Why are ISIS's trucks better than ours?" (2023)
I can tell you precisely why foreign Toyotas (especially certain models) are more reliable that whats typically sold in the US. No electronics and parts which operate based on physics (pressure, gravity, etc). Both of these decisions lend themselves to a simple engine compartment and repairability.

In the US, you can buy a five-speed 4runner which is about the simplest engine available on the market. Has all the benefits enumerated above and its trivially repairable by DIYers. However, even the 4runner has annoying garbage which can fail.

Compare the newest 70 series Land Crusier in Japan to the US Land Cruiser (Prado). Difference is a v8 with no electronics and a 4 cylinder hybrid filled with electronics and a rats nest of tubes running across the top of the engine. Try working on that... Of course its get +20mpg compared to the Japanese version. I'm pretty sure the 70 series is 4 wheel drive always whereas the prado runs in 2 wheel drive but has a 4 wheel switch (more complexity -- better gas mileage).

Anyway, intangibles such as availability of parts and lower pricing makes scavenging more economical and increases life span.

Also, stability of the platform means there's lots of expertise that has developed over the past +30 years. Same design, same repairs, same parts. Makes things easy.

cma256··on Zig Libc
He doesn't have to, he _gets_ to! Its knowledge exchange. Take it as a gift and not self-promotion. There's no money in this game so don't treat it like guerilla marketing. Treat it like excited people pushing the limits of technology.
cma256··on ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data
Thanks. I understand now.
cma256··on ICE using Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid data
I thought GP was arguing they were trying to find non-citizens on the voter rolls to intimidate them (which may be a misreading).
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