sometimes_all

The more open-source code the LLM has read (ie is in its training data), the better it will be. Rust is not a very popular language compared to others, so Claude might not be able to perform as well as it does with, say, Python or Javascript. Also, the more recent models might be better than the older ones.

I've been having fun with Claude Code and VSCode's agent. Any reasonably experienced engineer should be able to use it for a subset of languages without too many issues, but they definitely need to hydrate the context (eg. using Claude.md) and have a sensible set of system prompts set up. Good, well-written and broken-down-into-steps user prompts are non-negotiable.

Somewhere in the mid-2010s, The Economist lost my trust when I noticed that they did not have a way to cancel their subscription directly, you had to call a number (I was not intending to cancel, but someone pointed that out to me). I called that number on the very same day and cancelled.

Any company which makes entry easy and exit difficult will not have my money. The more difficult the exit, the harder I will try to escape, even if I like their product/service.

At every point, during a knowledge/data search for reaching a particular goal, the onus is _always_ on the person searching to do their best to ensure that the sources they use are accurate, and they do the effort required to ensure that they translate that properly to fit that goal.

The education system I grew up in was not perfect. Teachers were not experts in their field, but would state factual inaccuracies - as you say LLMs do - with authority. Libraries didn't have good books; the ones they had were too old, or too propaganda-driven, or too basic. The students were not too interested in learning, so they rote-learned, copied answers off each other and focussed on results than the learning process. If I had today's LLMs then, I'd have been a lot better off, and would've been able to learn a lot more (assuming that I went through the effort to go through all the sources the LLM cited).

The older you grow, you know that there is no arbiter of T-Truth; you can make someone/something that for yourself, but times change, "actual, factual history" could get proven incorrect, and you will need to update your knowledge stores and beliefs along with it, all the while being ready to be proved incorrect again. This has always been the case, and will continue to be, even with LLMs.

I keep seeing "Failed to generate content. Please try again.".

It's a bit difficult for me to know what sort of questions I can ask this assistant. Maybe a few examples might help?

When I was young, unsure about myself, and frequently derided when I stated my preference for quiet evenings instead of going out and meeting people, I grasped at the notion of "introversion" the moment I found it. It made my feelings and preferences legitimate during a time when I perceived that people were telling me that I was wrong for being that way.

Now, more than two decades later, after a bit more life experience, I cringe when someone labels me as an introvert - they aren't wrong per se, but they also unload a bunch of assumptions attached to that label on to me, 90% of which are inaccurate/unrelated/tangential.

A good friend of mine told me that labels are useful, but warned me to not make them my entire identity. He turned out to be right.

In India, the some of the largest "sludge" providers were telecom companies before the advent of Jio. After Jio, the largest sludge providers are still a couple of telecom companies, but at least the regulatory body is now taking more action that it used to.

Before Jio, telecoms felt free to rip customers off on anything and everything. Charges for caller tunes the customer didn't set or ask for. Unknown charges in bills galore. Large areas in metro cities without coverage. Customer service agents who refused to help, and in many cases, tried to gaslight the customer. Trying to stop the service and move somewhere else was almost impossible, they tried every sneaky trick in the book to get you to stay and keep paying absurd amounts of money for very little service.

Jio changed all that; most of the bad ones either dropped dead or merged, primarily because they couldn't deal with an operator which was, aside from the clearly aggressive business practices, actually competent, plus priced itself aggressively and actually gave customers a lot, and handled customer service more effectively than the rest. Airtel upped its game and survived, Vodafone-Idea is on life support, and the rest are dead.

Now it's a different problem altogether - cheap data and free calls led to unabashed spread of spam and scam calls. Until very recently when TRAI actually started threatening telecom providers, it was almost transparent that the latter were just allowing large-scale spam and scam perpetrators to thrive. Then upper government levels noticed the fiascos during COVID after a few very public and egregious cases, and proper action started happening. This has led to more awareness and fewer unsolicited communication, and a surge of complaints causing punishment-by-network-effect to perpetrators.

Until recently, spam was a nuisance which people would grudgingly try and ignore. Now more people are actively complaining, and things are looking better. The article is very right about companies trying to make customers feel powerless; since COVID, when people had some free time on their hands, they started using some of it to fight against the "sludge" and hold companies accountable.

Yes this is a well-known trope in HN about promotion-oriented launches, but this is just pure lack of proper messaging. I had a chat with one of Google's representatives, and they keep on saying "they do not have any information on this as of now".

This is less about internal systems and more about either incompetence or active sabotage.

It depends on the country and the company. For example, here in India:

- if you're negotiating with a US tech giant (FAANG, etc) from a position of strength (more than one offer, very good interview and past credentials), you can get away with almost anything, since they want great developers, and they don't mind paying above market. If you barely passed the interview, or you don't have a strong position, they'll just say take the offer or we won't go ahead.

- If you're negotiating with US-based startups or EU companies, then they might not want / be able to go very far with respect to salary (equity is doubly risky for the candidate if they aren't in the US), you can negotiate for great health insurance, more time off, fewer working hours, other benefits.

- If you're negotiating with Indian companies, they'll just hop on to the next candidate who passed the interview and is more desperate than you are. Most Indian companies tend to believe neither in fair wage, nor work life balance, so they won't negotiate properly on either. An employee is not just a replaceable cog, she cannot be allowed to exercise any sort of negotiation lest their current employees start getting ideas.

Too true. See also the movie Conspiracy.

> Between having your face and fingerprints scanned

I'll assume you aren't familiar with a US visa consular appointment.

'Even the very wise cannot see all ends.' - J. R. R. Tolkien

The Ninja/Shinobi fight is burned into my mind. It's been so long, yet it's the best animation sequence I've ever seen. The art in Samurai Jack was truly next level.

> ... I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else...

As an Indian, this makes me a bit sad. Less about the fact that iPhone manufacturing in India is threatened, and more about the fact that my loophole of getting cheaper iPhones (via a US relative/friend) is now closed...

One of my favorites of all time! I always name this book when someone asks me for sci-fi recommendations. Had a big influence on me when I was young.

How do we know that it's these types of managers who will be replaced, instead of the ones doing the actual work?

> It demos incredibly well. And there's very little to do with it.

Reminds me of the VR storyline in HBO's Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, here in India, where there absolutely are valid questions over the behavior of general public as a whole, particularly over freeloading, crowding, decorum and cleanliness issues: I don't think there are many tweaking, curse words or death threat complaints going around in public transit.

I find the US really weird sometimes.

Isn't this fairly common for Indian companies? I expect that's because the domestic market is large enough to not want to try expanding internationally?

I rather enjoyed the article "Vocational Awe and Librarianship" which was embedded in this one. It's kind of a formal explanation of what Mike Judge was trying to say in Office Space via the travails of Jeniffer Aniston's character (pieces of flair) and what David Simon hinted at with "the job will not save you" line in The Wire.

I wish twenty-year old me would've read that article, would've stopped me from a lot of fake pressure and heartburn.

Hi Henri, the game was a lot of fun! There were multiple surprises for me along the way, definitely gave me enough to think about.

A couple minor nits (after playing on mobile):

1. After hitting 40 correct answers, the right/wrong emojis weren't showing up next to the options after selecting one of them as they used to from Q1 to Q40. The only way for me to find out whether I was correct was to see whether the right answer count went up or not.

2. Apologies I don't have an example, but for a couple of questions, it felt that both options described a successful startup; while the startup listed in the explanation might have failed, there was at least one other startup with the same/similar description which had succeeded. Might want to look a bit more into that.

Otherwise good game and great book recommendations!

IFB is the best, we rarely look at any other brand for cleaning appliances. Our washing machine has lasted decades. Those who've bought at least one IFB product generally swear by it.

Also, the latest appliances are fine; the UX is good enough. You don't need fancy stuff for the products in such a market; fancier UX might appeal to first-time buyers, but they get tired of all that soon and look forward towards saner options the next time.

How does something like this ever get into production, especially at a place like Google, unless being hostile to new apps and developers is the plan? Or do they want to push potential developers into Google's double-dipping: pay them money to get on to the Play Store + pay a lot more money to get eyeballs on your app and thus more users.

I also enjoyed Too Big to Fail, which was the perspective from the Fed and the big bank CEOs point of view.

Good game! Wish the default timer was a bit higher though.

Any reason why the title is "Crazy Room Decoration"? Also, a way to mute the sound/music would've been great

Spam and scam calls are an absolute menace in India, to the point that the prime minister went on record warning citizens about some of them (there was a wave of "digital arrest" scams recently). The authorities are generally trying to crack down, but it's a case of too little too late; they should've started at least a decade and a half ago when things were just starting to pick up, but corruption and lack of technical proficiency in most government departments meant that it all just grew unchecked.

There are tools though: Google is generally good at identifying most spam, there's also Truecaller (filled with ads and a privacy nightmare). You also have avenues for sending complaints (most providers have do-not-disturb complaint forms right within their apps, and there's a system called Chakshu which the government has introduced). But it'll be a very long time till domestic scam calls get reined in, and unless there is significant internal and international pressure, outgoing scam calls to other nations will still keep going on.

I'm not sure what the reporter means by "original". Does "original" now just mean something which isn't "sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations of comic books and toys" (reporter's words)? Or does original mean fresh concepts, new ideas, a different way of looking at things? I haven't watched the movies he has mentioned, only looked at the wikis, but the examples the reporter gives sure don't seem original, they seem to be running on the standard tropes found in most movies, or even worse, something an algorithm would think that people will like.

And anyway, does the reporter expect that just because something isn't a Marvel movie, people will come, watch, and like it? What gave him that impression?

I rarely go to the movies any more. Ticket prices are high even after discounts, it's basically robbery for stale popcorn, and for what? Content that is already neutered by producers, censored by the government du jour and over/underacted by actors which got there only due to nepotism? There used to be a time when I would go to watch an interesting movie alone. That time has long gone now because there's nothing interesting in the cinema - primarily because movie halls know they are dying, are too risk-averse, and in many cases are arm-twisted by distributors to show only the big-budget movies. I'd rather while away a weekend reading a good book or watching a movie or series on a streaming platform. There are plenty of those with original ideas which can be easily found.

While it touches on a lot of political topics, the essay felt more about economics to me than anything else.

It depends. If I were a young person from a third world country, with no responsibilities / monetary responsibility that can be solved by a year or two of 30% of FAANG salary, then absolutely, I'd move. That amount of money early in life compounds, and can give me a lot of benefits when I'm older, even if it is for just a few years.

If I were a middle-aged/older person, or someone with social/familial responsibility, then very likely not. If I were someone already living in a first-world country with a good life, then absolutely not.

If I were a risk-taker and enjoy a good unpredictable scenario and can navigate myself well around it, the US likely needs me more than I need them. Regardless of president, the country seems to be a place which respects and rewards this trait more than most other countries.

Can we please have one post regarding a payment system (which works well by most accounts) not be taken over by crypto shills and skeptics whatabouting everything? I've had enough in the past 5 years and I hope it stops soon.

Most people are simple, they want to pay, and get paid, in their local currency. There's a homegrown software which enables them to easily do just that. That's a great technological and social achievement, it would be great if we could discuss that, and not crypto, which is not the main subject here.

Kinda-sorta agree with your point, it's the HN headline that has been editorialized. The actual article mentions services as a whole, not big tech specifically, which makes it seem that the GP focused more on the headline, but even their comment is talking about services as a whole.

In terms of your comment, they didn't say Starlink is big tech. The paragraph in question separates them with the word "another example":

> A fightback could include restrictions on the intellectual property of Big Tech companies. Another example would be banning Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network from winning government contracts.

As for big tech examples examples, the article did mention revoking of patents, or obstructing revenues on software updates and streaming. But yeah, the article is otherwise thin on details wrt big tech, primarily because it's not focusing on that topic specifically.