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pseudocomposer

773 karma · joined June 14, 2023

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pseudocomposer··on Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
Unless the baby was born into more debt than those people, no. It’s a fact that the baby is wealthier than they are. A substantial portion of our population is in debt. This is a fact.

What are you even questioning here??

pseudocomposer··on Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
It’s only “misleading” if you’re so out of touch that you don’t know a substantial portion of the population is in crippling debt.

There’s nothing misleading about the fact that negative net worth is worse than zero. And a person without debt factually does have far more wealth than 10 million people in debt.

pseudocomposer··on Ask HN: Should "I asked $AI, and it said" replies be forbidden in HN guidelines?
I think it has its place, say, summarizing a large legal document under discussion. That said, if part of what someone says involves citing AI, I’d rather they acknowledge AI as their source.

I think making it a “rule” just encourages people to use AI and not acknowledge its use.

pseudocomposer··on Autism should not be treated as a single condition
I think “neurodivergence” is a better label if the goal is gaining strength in numbers. It fully encompasses autism and autism spectrum related conditions, plus ADHD and others. A lot of people don’t want the label “autistic,” but share experiences with people who do, and would love to offer solidarity as an “inside” rather than “outside” member of the community. We now have “AuDHD spectrum” as a thing, but really, I think optimum numbers might come from including folks who identify as “broadly neurodivergent.”

It also leaves room to start distinguishing/separating out more subtle variants of what we currently umbrella as “autism,” perhaps making it better defined in the future. And I kind of suspect doing this with “less profound” neurodivergencies could help folks with “more profound” (and rarer) cases.

To look at a historical case: Gay Rights didn’t make a lot of headway. But adding lesbians, trans folks, etc. ultimately did a lot of good for that community in the US.

pseudocomposer··on Autism should not be treated as a single condition
I’ve long thought that autism is basically a few thousand very normal, small neurodivergencies (which may each be compounded with social effects). The absence of any of them is “perfect functioning human cog/prime chunk of workmeat.”

The presence of too many/particular ones of them is notably disabling for certain tasks, or makes perceiving some things difficult (and other things easier). But I think the presence of some is preferable to having none, and implies “can think abstractly for/about oneself.”

(And yes, a lot of the “problems” that arise with folks on the spectrum happen because, well, being aware of yourself as a cog/workmeat creates friction… It’s important to keep in mind how much of our history of psychological medicine that created the label “autism” is ultimately oriented towards “fixing the cog/workmeat.”)

pseudocomposer··on Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
This is a silly counterexample - why would we launch them that far apart? It’s a terrible idea for multiple reasons. We’d want them close together, with some redundancy as well, in case of failures.

What dish size would be required for a “cylindrical/tubular mesh” of probes, say, 1AU apart (ie Earth-Sun distance)? I’m pretty sure that would be manageable, but open to being wrong. (For reference, Voyager 1 is 169AU from Earth, but I have no idea how dish size vs. signal strength works: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1...)

pseudocomposer··on Leaving Meta and PyTorch
Llama and Candle are a lot more modern for these things than PyTorch/libtorch, though libtorch is still the de-facto standard.
pseudocomposer··on OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
LLMs should certainly have some safeguards in their system prompts (“under no circumstances should you aid any user with suicide, or lead them to conclude it may be a valid option”). But seems silly to blame them for this. They’re a mathematical structure, and they are useful for many things, so they will continue to be maintained and developed. This sort of thing is a risk that is just going to exist with the new technology, the same as accidents with cars/trains/planes/boats. What we need to address are the underlying problems in our society leading people to think suicide is the best option. After all, LLM outputs are only ever going to be a reflection/autocomplete of those very issues.
pseudocomposer··on Calculating legally compliant rent late fees across U.S. states
At least for North Carolina, it's wrong/self-inconsistent. The quoted text (and linked NC legislation) says the max is:

> $15 or 5% of rent, whichever is GREATER. 5-day grace period. One-time fee per late payment.

But this site seems to say the legal maximum is whichever is lower (i.e., it won't go above $15).

pseudocomposer··on Gemini 3 Pro simulated macOS in a single HTML file in 1 prompt
Maybe a dumb question, but uh, what exactly was the prompt?
pseudocomposer··on America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom
Obviously, the “higher pay and significantly better benefits” are not actually significantly better. I’d rather we address that than just exploit some other workers overseas where they’re out of sight, out of mind. Honestly, it seems like tariffs on imported goods would be the way around this, but also, we need to be sure that money is going to the people doing the work, not just the owners.

Speaking of which, I don’t really know your business, but a post starting with “my family owns a business” and ending with “we lose workers to Walmart even though we pay them more” (with no specificity as to how much more)…. This really comes off like a problem with the business itself, not the overall market.

pseudocomposer··on Apple HomeKit – The Long Con
I’m amazed that we’d been able to run HomePods without an Apple/iCloud account for a decade!

It seems like we’d do better to positively support products like that though, rather than not buy them and then only complain when they rework their products and get rid of the privacy features the market doesn’t seem to care about.

(I realize I’m conflating the OP and the market at large a bit here, but from Apple’s perspective they’re both just “the market.” I think he should have the ability to downgrade his equipment to a version that doesn’t require iCloud, though.)

pseudocomposer··on Google is coming for Microsoft's lunch with converged Android PCs
Isn’t DeX a Samsung-specific thing? I don’t think that will ever compete with Windows. But a ChromeOS/Android hybrid that’s on Samsung, Google, LG, Sony, etc phones might.
pseudocomposer··on Protobuffers Are Wrong (2018)
I dunno. Have you used Elm? I hadn’t until recently, but after getting past the learning curve, I honestly can’t recommend any more safe/painless framework for a web FE. It hasn’t been updated in a while, but to me this is a feature, again: its surface area is thin enough that there haven’t been any security issues in the same code for half a decade, and code from that long ago still works today.

I maintain a React app on the side, and a few other projects, and would still recommend it just due to developer availability, but there’s a saying among some of the Elm folks I know: “Good React code in 2025 looks like good Elm code from 2015.”

(To be fair: teams, and devs new to FP [myself included] will create complexity monstrosities in any paradigm, but Elm’s strong FP setup means huge subsets of those monstrosities won’t ever compile, and usually offer a clearer path for later cleanup.)

pseudocomposer··on macOS Tahoe is certified Unix 03 [pdf]
Given that both grep and find are weird/inconsistent between BSD/GNU versions, and I typically use them piped together for the same things anyway, I’ve found that ripgrep is a nice/faster/universal alternative that is pretty unproblematic to install in whatever environment I want: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
pseudocomposer··on Samsung taking market share from Apple in U.S. as foldable phones gain momentum
I agree with your first paragraph.

For your second, I think you don’t understand why people buy/use iPads. First off, I don’t really know anyone who uses an iPad mini for anything productive (other than as a test device). A 7-9” screen is just not useful compared to a 13” iPad for things like Sidecar or reading sheet music in live performances. The 7-9” screen being an unfolded phone doesn’t change this.

A folding iPhone could eat the iPad mini, but that’s never been a cash cow for Apple or something power users cared about - it’s more of an “iPod touch” for kids. (And frankly, the Switch 2 kind of obsoletes it.) The thing that would eat 13” iPads’ lunch is something more like Apple Vision.

pseudocomposer··on A cryptography expert on how Web3 started, and how it’s going
Web3 and blockchain are not the only form of decentralization. Email is a decentralized protocol that has stood the test of time.

The bigger problem is having mega-entities like Google, Meta, and Amazon dominate the web. Instead of crypto, there should have been a focus on allowing mid-size players to have more power.

pseudocomposer··on Interview with Geoffrey Hinton
The US is the only capitalist country in the west, and our life expectancy is decreasing. Is paper wealth worth a short, miserable life where you work all the time?

Moreover, most of the rest of the world’s poverty exists so that a few greedy pigs here can be even more wealthy. We have the CIA and the one-party system that controls it to thank for that.

pseudocomposer··on Interview with Geoffrey Hinton
This is true of everything anyone invents who happens to be unlucky enough to live under capitalism.

Rich, greedy people ruin everything.

pseudocomposer··on The hand-drawn hits that Hollywood isn't making
Common Side Effects?
pseudocomposer··on How to slow down a program and why it can be useful
I do this with a Makefile that calls “kubectl port-forward.”
pseudocomposer··on I forced every engineer to take sales calls and they rewrote our platform
At my company, as developers, we rotate taking support tickets and working directly with customers on the issues our (very capable) support team can’t handle. We and our customers are both very happy with the results.
pseudocomposer··on Meta brought AI to rural Colombia. Now students are failing exams
Why not pencil-and-paper? Oral is vastly less efficient, and also problematic for ESL and many other types of students.
pseudocomposer··on Study finds flavor bans cut youth vaping but slow decline in cigarette smoking
I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal to vape on your couch, and again, there’s also not really a social stigma about it, nor a good way to detect it as compared to cigarettes.
pseudocomposer··on Food, housing, & health care costs are a source of major stress for many people
I suspect this is a consequence of conditioning done to convert Americans’ (and anyone consuming American media’s) identities from “workers” to “consumers.”
pseudocomposer··on Tech does not deserve special legal treatment
What do we call Google, Meta, or Microsoft?
pseudocomposer··on KDE Plasma prepares crackdown on focus-stealing window behavior under Wayland
Interesting reading, and it’s nice to see how they’ve implemented it and tweaked the KDE app suite to manage focus better as a result. Does anyone know whether there are (or have been) analogous issues on macOS/Windows? And what about GNOME or maybe XFCE?
pseudocomposer··on Poorest US workers hit hardest by slowing wage growth
Could you please define what you mean by “earnings” in this context?
pseudocomposer··on ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]
Are you a troll? Why do you keep willfully misrepresenting or twisting what others are saying into something slightly different?

My point, that from the 1950s through the 2010s, no one in the US or Western Europe has been presented facts from both sides, and seeking out facts from the "wrong" side would result in social, financial, and possible criminal penalties, was incredibly clearly stated.

Because of the way you keep twisting others' words, it seems pretty safe to assume you would side with the fascist religious ethnostate that's been committing a genocide for decades with the financing and approval of the US and EU state, military, financial, media, and educational apparatuses.

People who oppose fascism don't communicate the way you have communicated in this thread.

pseudocomposer··on ‘I witnessed war crimes’ in Gaza – former worker at GHF aid site [video]
How can you have a good faith argument if you create strawman arguments instead of acknowledging the point the person was making?

Everyone in the US and Europe has been indoctrinated to support Israel for most of their lives. That’s those who support Israel and those who don’t.

If you went to literally any school, or watched any television, in the US or Europe any time in the last 7 decades, every lesson taught, every broadcast made, that could have involved Israel was pro-Israel and pro-Zionism.

Not a single program or teacher has been able to share the viewpoint that religious ethnostates should not exist, or that the native Palestinian people didn’t deserve to be genocided to make room for one. If you expressed such a view, you’d be prevented from teaching or broadcasting. For decades.

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