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1,000 karma · joined January 21, 2014

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panopticon··on Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over
While I believe you're ultimately correct and it's important to recognize that at the macro level, that type of thinking is incredibly caustic and defeatist at the individual level.

We should take every opportunity to make life as fulfilling as possible, even if we don't always succeed due to things outside of our control. (Note: this is an abstract claim for what you want, I'm not saying being extroverted is more fulfilling than being an introvert.)

panopticon··on XCancel service is suspended until further notice
The mountain passes near me have government-run twitter accounts, and it's usually the fastest way to get rich information on their status during storms.

There is a state government website with some of the same information, but it's usually more coarse (sometimes just the open/close status) and updated less frequently.

panopticon··on AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)
Is this in one of the skills or CLAUDE.md? This was happening in our codebase, but turned out it was interpreting an instruction to not add "what" comments as license to strip out comments.

Sometimes I have luck interrogating Claude on why it did something. It'll either point to a skill or agent file with the culprit, or it'll respond with some vapid nonsense and apologize.

panopticon··on What happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers
At least protesting is doing something. What's far worse is the people getting emotionally invested and then just arguing on Facebook or going to bed sad. That'll just make you depressed and does literally nothing.
panopticon··on SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites – for 100x the bandwidth
I love being off-grid with just my slow inReach Mini 1. I can communicate in case of an emergency, but otherwise it's a great forcing function to not be hyper connected. I worry if I brought the portable Starlink with I'd connect much more than necessary.
panopticon··on Amazon without the knockoffs
I get so many ads on Instagram for things that are available alibaba but with fancy packaging and a huge markup. This seems like an evolution of the drop shipping hustle.
panopticon··on Hetzner Price Adjustment
I have a hard time finding quality stuff, even when I want to pony up for it. Do you have a good resource?

It's hard to know whether moving up in pricing just buys unnecessary features in a checklist, higher quality veneer, brand name, or actual quality.

panopticon··on Confidential submission of draft S-1 to the SEC
Afaik SpaceX is only putting 5% of its shares up on the public market when it IPOs (newly minted shares, diluting the existing private shareholders).

So the markets only "need to absorb" $75B when SpaceX IPOs, not its whole $1.7T valuation. At least until the lockup period expires.

panopticon··on xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
> I don't see Alphabet share price changing much just because of SpaceX being valued 2T instead of lets say 1T

Half of Alphabet's revenue increase last quarter came from marking up unrealized gains in their Anthropic investments.

I'm not saying Alphabet is doing this to juice the share price, but I want to point out that they don't have to sell shares to post banner earnings results and see a 10% jump in share price overnight.

panopticon··on Googlebook
The timestamped part of the video shows an iPhone 15 and 17, both on iOS 26.3. 45% on the iPhone 17 and 25% on the iPhone 15.

Only the iPhone XR in that test is on iOS 18. It scored behind all of the models on iOS 26.3 except for the iPhone SE. But that's not a useful comparison because who knows what condition the XR's battery is in at this point, and nothing else ran on a comparable iOS version.

Not sure what point you were trying to make with that video, but it doesn't really demonstrate cross-version battery performance.

panopticon··on Self Driving Car Insurance
It's not edging; it enters the street going a consistent speed (usually >10mph) from my driveway. The area is heavily wooded, and I don't think it "sees" the cross direction until it's already in the road. Or perhaps the lack of signage or curb make it think it has the right of way.

My neighbor joked that I should install a stop sign at the end of my driveway to make it safer.

panopticon··on Self Driving Car Insurance
HW3, unfortunately. Missed the HW4 refresh by a couple of months.
panopticon··on Self Driving Car Insurance
Where I live isn't particularly challenging to drive (rural Washington), but I'm constantly disengaging FSD for doing silly and dangerous things.

Most notably my driveway meets the road at a blind y intersection, and my Model 3 just blasts out into the road even though you cannot see cross traffic.

FSD stresses me out. It's like I'm monitoring a teenager with their learners permit. I can probably count the number trips where I haven't had to take over on one hand.

panopticon··on Tesla ending Models S and X production
Rivian isn't exactly selling well either.

Perhaps more interesting is the F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck in 2025 and Ford still canceled it as a failure.

panopticon··on AI is a horse (2024)
I'm curious what your personal experience is.

My eMTBs are just as capable as my manual bikes (similar geometry, suspension, etc). In fact, they make smashing tech trails easier because there's more weight near the bottom bracket which adds a lot of stability.

The ride feel is totally different though. I tend to gap more sections on my manual bike whereas I end up plowing through stuff on the hefty eeb.

panopticon··on Our approach to age prediction
> I hope there's some layer between Apple and Gemini

In the press release Apple said they will be running this on their own hardware (both on-device and private cloud). They're not going to be directly routing requests to Gemini hosted by Google.

This obviously doesn't preclude some kind of data sharing arrangement, but there is at least some indirection between the two.

panopticon··on The next two years of software engineering
Definitely. Our hiring pipeline seized up in 2022 and we've been disproportionately hiring senior+ roles since, and many teams are senior heavy.

I think AI is a convenient scapegoat for other macro trends.

panopticon··on GPT Image 1.5
That argument is easy to politicize and selectively ignore. See: renewables and EVs.
panopticon··on Ford kills the All-Electric F-150
No. The ICE isn't connected to the drivetrain in an EREV; it's only used to provide power to the EV drive system.

The Pacifica is what you'd call a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) because the ICE is still connected to the drivetrain.

panopticon··on Grok Code Fast 1
Agreed. Convenience, maintenance, and operating costs were all top of mind when we bought an EV. Environmentalism was hardly a consideration.
panopticon··on AMD CEO sees chips from TSMC's US plant costing 5%-20% more
The cracks in the media were already visible 30 years ago. Conservative talk radio was taking off, people were beginning to call CNN "Clinton News Network", and Fox News was right around the corner. There was clearly an appetite—and a market—for partisan news. This was further fueled by the growth of national radio and TV networks that were less beholden to capturing local audiences.

I think the internet just supercharged a change that was already well underway.

panopticon··on The Game Genie Generation
I memorized the invisibility sequence. Grabbing Oddjob and smashing in that invis cheat was a sure way to make everyone hate you at a party. Oddjob was a good pairing because you weren't completely invisible, so his short stature/hitbox made the effect more scummy.
panopticon··on Jellyfin as a Spotify alternative
I embarked on a similar journey last year after YouTube Music took down some albums I listened to religiously.

I settled on Plex + Plexamp instead. I'm mostly satisfied, but there are some rough edges like Chromecast and web playback.

panopticon··on Starlink is now cheaper than leading internet provider in some African countries
My situation is slightly different but also in semi-rural WA. I'm on Verizon Home 5g and it's way faster and more stable than Starlink.

I'm always surprised when I talk to people that use Starlink who haven't considered cellular.

panopticon··on COBOL has been “dead” for so long, my grandpa wrote about it
Eh, I think the tech stack is less important than the legal and regulatory structure.

Most fintechs aren't banks and partner with a Real Bank™ to provide the actual bank accounts. Fintechs are under much less regulatory scrutiny (for now—that may be changing with recent, high-profile screwups) and can move with much more freedom regardless of the tech stack they've chosen.

panopticon··on Why Not Comments
Yup. Our operating principle was that if a question was asked in a code review, someone will likely have the same question when reading the code weeks/months/years from now and there should be a comment.
panopticon··on TinyPod – Apple Watch case with scroll wheel
My hope was that the mini would be a success and they'd eventually had a Pro Mini line, but sadly the mini form-factor hasn't sold well. I would buy a Pro Mini in a heartbeat.
panopticon··on The sun's magnetic field is about to flip
An ad hominem doesn't have to be irrelevant; it just means that the argument is about the person rather than the position. Attempting to dismiss an argument due to the person's credentials instead of their position is 100% an ad hominem.

But like contravariant said, that doesn't mean the argument is wrong—just that it's a weak argument.

panopticon··on Silicon Valley's best kept secret: Founder liquidity
> non-public information that gives you a structural edge in assessing the stock

This can also cut the other direction too. I had a slightly negative sentiment about Google during my tenure there due to the organization I was in. When earnings call season rolled around it didn't matter since the ads revenue line always dominated everything else.

panopticon··on Psychological tricks rich people use to look generous without spending more
Yeah, when I imagine excess I'm picturing a ridiculously lifted F-250 or 350 juxtaposed with low profile tires.
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