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Yeah, what's the deal with this error message?

snikerison Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

The two issues I have with relying on the cloud for intelligence is:

- I don't trust them with my data

- I don't trust the data they send back to me

The first is about my privacy, the second is about not being manipulated by what is considered the politically correct answer to my questions.

snikerison Doctors are finally learning to manage antidepressant withdrawal

Whether a medication leads to dependence and withdrawal should be given greater weight than it gets in the regulatory process. There needs to be a greater counterweight to the obvious conflict of interest in selling a medication that makes you ill when you stop taking it. Doctors should hold themselves to a higher standard than the chronic disease paradigm.

snikerison The Harness Is the Thing

On the flip side, a lot of the reasoning and decision making might have happened in the conversation which is more ephemeral than a comment. A future LLM-age source code repository would store the conversation along with the commit, for future reference by humans or LLMs.

snikerison Rhombus 1.1 is now available

What properties make a language more LLM-friendly? I've found Claude will readily make use of a REPL when available.

snikerison Does anybody like React?

I use it through reagent and re-frame. I don't have any complaints.

snikerison Use Boring Languages with LLMs

I was a little surprised to find when I gave an LLM REPL access to the running program, it readily started using it during development and debugging.

snikerison Magnifica Humanitas

Yeah they probably wouldn't show up to a political rally because of this:

> Separation from Evil

> The community of Christians shall have no association with those who remain in disobedience and a spirit of rebellion against God. There can be no fellowship with the wickedness of this earthly world; therefore there can be no participation in the organizations, works, church services, meetings or civil affairs of those who live in contradiction to the commands of God (this may include Catholics and Protestants as well as other religions and pagans). All evil must be put away, including using weapons of force such as the sword and armor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleitheim_Confession

snikerison Magnifica Humanitas

> I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology)

I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago.

snikerison Magic the Gathering format: Fun 40

This is my favorite alternative form of Magic:

https://articles.starcitygames.com/articles/the-danger-room/

"I have a feeling that roughly 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too few lands, 25% of games are decided by a player drawing too many lands, 25% of games are decided by a player having a legitimate bomb not get answered immediately, and the last 25% of games are the ones that everybody hopes for where there is a ton of back-and-forth on both sides. I wanted to create a format that eliminated those unpleasant 75% of games that are unfulfilling and foster a format where ALL of the games were as interactive as possible."

snikerison If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?

I know that it is now commonly defined that way, so I explicitly called out that I was referring back to an the older definition:

> usury (loans made for unproductive purposes)

snikerison If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?

Yeah it was redefined to that at some point. See Belloc’s essay on usury if you’re interested.

snikerison If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?

It’s not about the interest rate. It’s the availability of loans for unproductive purposes on a societal level. It raises the price even if you choose not to partake in said loans.

When the money being lended is digital and not backed by anything it’s even worse.

snikerison If America's so rich, how'd it get so sad?

Houses got expensive because of usury (loans made for unproductive purposes). It destroys civilizations over time. That is why it was encoded into ancient religious traditions.

Housing, education, and cars, all typically financed via loans, all exorbitantly expensive.

snikerison Show HN: I rebuilt a 2000s browser strategy game on Cloudflare's edge

All good, I'm in!

snikerison Show HN: I rebuilt a 2000s browser strategy game on Cloudflare's edge

After I log in, but before I confirm my email address I'm taken to a page in German. I'm guessing it is telling me that my email is not yet confirmed.

snikerison France pulls last gold held in US for $15B gain

https://www.helleniscope.com/2025/07/31/august-1971-the-day-...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/august-15-1971_b_4284327

snikerison The bridge to wealth is being pulled up with AI

You don't have to read the whole thing to upvote it.

snikerison Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

Taking the time to craft a well-formed message requires a degree of empathy. The golden rule suggests that we write messages in a way that dignifies the recipient. The Global Elite may lack these traits and sensibilities.

snikerison Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge

Science and engineering didn't begin with the Industrial Revolution. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

snikerison ShannonMax: A Library to Optimize Emacs Keybindings with Information Theory

This is cool.

While we're discussing optimizing emacs keybindings...I've found it key to have my bindings set up such that my thumbs operate the control modifier key.

snikerison Privilege is bad grammar

This is a good point. Perhaps the poor attempt at grammar indicates a lack of empathy, which is a trait the Epstein-adjacent share.

snikerison The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

It's a tale as old as life itself. Some organisms succeed in coping with the environment they find themselves in. The genes and culture of these organisms gets passed on to the next generation.

snikerison The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline

If you planted an apple tree and it never produced apples, you might start to wonder what's wrong with the tree. Maybe there's something wrong with the soil?

How do you know if an organism is thriving in its environment? You count the offspring over generations.

snikerison De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)

Joe Biden.

snikerison The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

Nearly 2 in 5 Americans are covered by Medicare or Medicaid. TANSTAAFL. The other 3 bear the burden. At some point Atlas shrugs and decides welfare is a better deal.

snikerison Editing Code in Emacs

I've found it crucial to have Control mapped to the keys immediately next to and on both sides of the spacebar. Thumbs are stronger than pinkies for modifying keypresses.

snikerison You are how you act

"It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright."

- Benjamin Franklin

snikerison Reality has a surprising amount of detail (2017)

> If you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived

This may seem like impractical advice. How does one increase the scope of perception? Personally, I’ve found that a meditation practice leads to this.

snikerison Baffled by generational garbage collection – wingolog

I think the idea is to reduce the set of memory that needs to be frequently collected. Long lived objects age to the old generation which can be large and infrequently collected. I've used this kind of collector in the past for applications which held a large and mostly static dataset in memory.