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enopod_

417 karma · joined July 20, 2023

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enopod_··on LinkedIn Larpmaxxing
Corporate christmas parties are the 2nd circle of hell
enopod_··on Watch Los Angeles get built, one building at a time (1880–2026)
Interesting, I did not know that. Sure helped create the massive urban sprawl that LA is today, I mean it's basically one city all the way to San Bernardino, almost 100 km to the east.
enopod_··on Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_abductions_in_the_Russo-...
enopod_··on Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars?
Ask Ukrainians what they think about that. Putin made it more than clear that he wants to erase the Ukrainian identity. [1] In this case, the political entity of Ukraine represents the Ukrainian population, which wants to be free, democratic, Europe-oriented, and last but not least, never ever be under Russian dictatorship again.

Russias attitude towards Ukraine has turned borderline genocidal since the start of this war.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...

enopod_··on Why is it so hard for the U.S. to win wars?
For Ukraine it's very much an existential war. If they lose, Ukraine will cease to exist. The only way of winning is, well, winning this war. It is also very much a real war, with hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides, a true massacre not seen in Europe since WW2.

Trumps stupid war on Iran on the other hand is really just some air strikes, and Iran can win by just not losing, which is easy, because the US will not invade.

enopod_··on SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status
This bit is not about the stock, it‘s about bonds. They made about $70B (?) in the IPO and now issued bonds for about $25B. This debt is rated at junk level now.
enopod_··on Mag 7 starting to underperform [pdf]
True. This slide also struck me the most, but for the data it shows. Free cash flow for all the hyperscalers basically evaporated in the last couple of months, with Oracle in the minus. What does this mean?
enopod_··on Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?
I just had this thought: This is the story of the Great Western Desert eXploration Railway Company. Let's call it WestX for simplicity. They are building a 2000 miles railway line from the east coast into the great western desert. There is nothing there in this desert, but its a great place to set up antennas. The place is called Sunshine Plateau. Unfortunately, there is also absolutely nothing on the entire 2000 miles going there, no water, no coal, no midwest, no great planes, no gold, just empty, barren desert. So every train going out there has to haul all the coal and water it needs for the 2000 miles trip along with it. It needs about 200 wagons of water and coal to pull one wagon of antenna stuff out into the desert, but in the future, they'll build an engine so powerful, it can haul 2000 wagons of coal and water into the desert along with 10 wagons of antennas. Its a big leap forward. In the future, this super steam engine will also be able to roll back to the east coast all on its own, because its all downhill from Sunshine Plateau. The antennas need replacement every couple of years, but there is enough demand for antenna signal to run the train operation at a small profit. Also, the government likes to place some spy stuff there every once in a while, also some science stuff, and every now and then a tourist takes the journey because the view from Sunshine Plateau is really great. But thats not all! In the future, once the super engine works perfectly as promised, they will not roll all of them back down to the east coast, but they will keep an entire train at Sunshine Plateau. Then they will haul a looot of trains with a looot of coal and water into the desert to refill this one single trains 2000 fuel wagons, so it can haul 10 wagons of stuff even further out into the desert. 10 wagons! Sadly, there is no California after the desert, just another desert named Moon Hole and then behind that another desert, named Mars Basin, but thats okay because there may be gold there to exploit. WestX just has to find a way to produce coal and water out in the desert to haul that potential gold back to the east coast. But thats still not all! WestX operates a newspaper where every jerk is allowed to publish racist stuff. It runs at a loss but that doesnt matter, because trains and newspapers go well together. There is also a new hype at the east coast, named thinking machines. They're amazing and are almost always right in their answers. Other companies are at the forefront with those thinking machines, but WestX also has a little sidehustle in this business, even though their thinking machines suck. BUT! They could install those thinking machines up on Sunshine Plateau! Takes only 2000 wagons of coal to put 10 wagons of thinking machines 2000 miles out there into the void, but there is a lot of sunshine up on the plateau. The competitors just install their superior thinking machines back at the east coast, where there is also sunshine, but also cheap coal and lots of other energy resources. Anyhow, thinking machines! The Great Western Desert eXploration Railway Company will soon open up to investors at the good old Wall Street and they value themselves at $15'000'000'000'000 to $20'000'000'000'000. Some grumpy naysayers say thats quite a lot of money for a railway company that doesn't make any profit, but if all their plans work out exactly as promised, you may even not make a loss! The founder, Elon Rockefeller, who is mostly busy publishing racist articles in his newspaper every single day, and also runs a horse carriage business, has a great track record of delivering on promises, and is a well respected man.
enopod_··on Security researcher says Microsoft built a Bitlocker backdoor, releases exploit
Micro$lop it is from now on :)
enopod_··on Two Months After I Gave an AI $100 and No Instructions
I do this way too often :)
enopod_··on Two Months After I Gave an AI $100 and No Instructions
"It thought about its money. It reflected on its own purpose. It questioned what it even means to be an autonomous agent."

I don't think it did any of that.

enopod_··on Book review: There Is No Antimemetics Division
What article?
enopod_··on SpaceX files to go public
Best comment I read on SpaceX in a long time
enopod_··on Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine
Can it run Linux?
enopod_··on OpenAI is walking away from expanding its Stargate data center with Oracle
> The problem appears to be that Oracle is building today's DCs... Tomorrow.

By the time Vera Rubins will be available on scale, will they immediately be put into DCs, or will tomorrows chips be running.. the day after tomorrow?

enopod_··on The engine of Germany's wealth is blocking its future
This. VW actually invested a lot into EVs and now they’re outselling every other EV maker in the European market. Mercedes and BMW also invested a lot. All of them have brand new and pretty competitive EV platforms. Heck, even Peugeot make decent EVs. The only manufacturers lagging behind at this point are the Americans. Tesla basically stopped investing into EVs and their tech is outdated, in Europe they get absolutely butchered by VW and in China they‘re only able to keep sales level because the market is growing so fast. But soon Tesla will get annihilated in China too. Other US car makers that build EVs on scale are nowhere to be seen, besides maybe Rivian.
enopod_··on I gave Claude access to my pen plotter
What bugs me the most about this post is the anthropomorphizing of the machine. The author asks Claude "what [do] you feel", and the bot answers things like "What do I feel? Something like pull — toward clarity, toward elegance, ...", "I'm genuinely pleased...", "What I like...", "it feels right", "I enjoyed it", etc.

Come on, it's a computer, it doesn't have feelings! Stop it!

enopod_··on Show HN: Algorithmically finding the longest line of sight on Earth
Such a great project! I remember an older image of the french alps taken from the pyrenees, at over 400 km. Found it again here:

https://beyondrange.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/pic-de-finestre...

enopod_··on The next steps for Airbus' big bet on open rotor engines
Sounds like a helicopter is not very efficient?
enopod_··on Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
Ah the good old days. Investing an entire weekend to make your pci soundblaster card work. Nowadays you just install an iso from a thumb drive, it takes 30 mins and everything works out of the box. So boring!
enopod_··on Software Pump and Dump
TIL about all that stuff, Moltbook, Openclaw, Gas Town, and I don't get it anymore. It's too much. Forums for chatbots with their own religion but its actually a crypto scam and vibecoded hypesoftware to scam people with sh*tcoins because yolo and whatnot. I'm out.
enopod_··on Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee
this is hilarious :)
enopod_··on European Alternatives
Wow, nice! Great resource, thanks a lot!
enopod_··on Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%
VW, Mercedes, BMW, Peugeot, Polestar all make great EVs and they absolutely dominate the European market. They built manufacturing capacity in EU first for the domestic market, but are not competitive on the US market because of Trumps tariffs. China produces very cheap, they‘re still competitive even with tariffs. European car companies either have to build EV manufacturing capacity in the US first, or hope for the next administration.
enopod_··on Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%
Volkswagen EV sales go brrr in Europe, while Tesla is in free fall.
enopod_··on 4 billion if statements (2023)
This is the way.
enopod_··on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off
That's exactly the thing. It's only about bookkeeping.

The big AI corps keep pushing depreciation for GPUs into the future, no matter how long the hardware is actually useful. Some of them are now at 6 years. But GPUs are advancing fast, and new hardware brings more flops per watt, so there's a strong incentive to switch to the latest chips. Also, they run 24/7 at 100% capacity, so after only 1.5 years, a fair share of the chips is already toast. How much hardware do they have in their books that's actually not useful anymore? Noone knows! Slower depreciation means more profit right now (for those companies that actually make profit, like MS or Meta), but it's just kicking the can down the road. Eventually, all these investments have to get out of the books, and that's where it will eat their profits. In 2024, the big AI corps invested about $1 trillion in AI hardware, next year is expected to be $2 trillion. Only the interest payments for that are crazy. And all of this comes on top of the fact that none of the these companies actually make any profit at all with AI. (Except Nvidia of course) There's just no way this will pan out.

enopod_··on The Mack Super Pumper was a locomotive engined fire fighter (2018)
Two of the three crankshafts rotate in the same direction, whereas the third one moves the other way around!
enopod_··on Why does Swiss cheese have holes?
Emmentaler and Gruyère close in texture and flavour and interchangeable? Oh boy, if you ever travel to Switzerland, I recommend you to keep your opinions on cheese to yourself. ;) Emmentaler has holes, is low in salt and has a taste which is on the bland side (I personally don't like it), whereas Gruyère has no holes, is saltier and has a much richer and "rounder" flavour. It comes in different stages of ripening, from young, which is soft in texture and mild, to old, which is hard and has a much stronger flavour. I personally like Gruyère mi-salé a lot, the semi-ripened one. It's close to a perfect cheese if you ask me.
enopod_··on Why does Swiss cheese have holes?
As a Swiss, I can assure you that this is false. Most cheese varieties have very strict quality requirements, if they're not met, the cheese may only end up as no-name ground cheese for pizza or something like that. But an Emmentaler, Gruyere, or Sbrinz always has the same quality, no matter if it's exported or for domestic consumption.
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