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topkai22

3,315 karma · joined March 28, 2014

You know, I should write something here.
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topkai22··on California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops
There is a good annual survey on substance use that essentially confirms your observations- the monitoring the future survey (https://monitoringthefuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/m...)
topkai22··on The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings
Now I’m genuinely wondering if the in game deaths per minute are higher in a GTA game or a lemmings game…
topkai22··on Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft
Not due to them being electric. It's possible that being this small they could use FBO rules more like private jet/charter operators, but even then I doubt that would be the normal case. These seem to make the most sense as a last mile connector to regional airports, in which you'd want them inside the security boundary when making your connection.

It would really suck to have to go through security after your first flight whenever you are connecting.

topkai22··on Why Vancouver is always a stand-in for San Francisco in movies and TV shows (2021)
Psych (the TV show) was set in Santa Barbara but filmed in Vancouver. They then did an episode where the plot was that characters all took a trip to British Columbia, which I recall being amusingly meta.
topkai22··on Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed
Rome, multiple times before the western empire actually fell. I’m not an expert, but roughly there was a major civil war about once a century (or more), a transition from a republic to an empire, the experiment with the tetrarchy, and a major change in state religion.

They didn’t entirely “reverse course”, the society changed and evolved at each point, but it remained recognizably Roman. And that’s just the western empire.

topkai22··on Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute
I feel there is a strong argument that if we described the capabilities of agentic systems today to someone from 2002, they’d say we’ve achieved AGI. It’s just not as impressive as we thought it would be.

At least not yet.

topkai22··on Alphabet announces $80B equity capital raise to expand AI infra and compute
Which will take up fab capacity all the same. All the chips come out of the same TSMC (or possibly Intel) fabs
topkai22··on Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)
I think the term is persistence hunting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting). There was an intriguing blog post years ago (which sadly I can’t find) about how terrifying a fictional portrayal of persistence hunting would be- grinding down prey through exhaustion, thinking you’ve escaped but being slowly tracked down.
topkai22··on Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control
Largely agree with this, though I'll throw in that the OS should provide a signal as well. I know for sure that iOS and Windows both have family modes that work pretty well, I suspect Android does as well.

If my kid takes their tablet to grandma and grandpas I want the preferences and signals to carry forward, even when connected to a network at household that is nominally only adults.

These technologies don't need to be bullet proof to be effective and they don't need to send more information than "treat all requests from device as being from under 8/13/18." The ills these age verification efforts are trying to address (and they are real problems) are from excessive, not casual or incidental use. Yes, there will be many kids that get around any reasonable control, but just making it less convenient will reduce harm.

I have various content controls on at my house. I'm the admin, I can turn them off whenever I want to. I almost never do, because 1) the block reminds me I should probably shouldn't be going to whatever site I'm going to and 2) for the most part, my experience is better with the "restricted" search engines/youtube/social media.

topkai22··on What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
Investigating a cryptographic key found near a major military installation during war time doesn’t strike me as a waste of money. We have the full information about the outcome, but the San Diego FBI field office did not.

I think that’s what makes this story so funny- the FBI was acting appropriately and rationally, but ended up with a relatively absurd result.

topkai22··on EFF launches Age Verification Hub
Age verification is absolutely about kids. It’s also being used (or hijacked into) a vehicle for people who want increased surveillance.

There is a ton of evidence that there are harms to unrestricted online access for kids and teens (the book The Anxious Generation is cultural touchstone for this topic at this point). There is a real, well reasoned, and valid movement to do something about this problem.

The solutions proposed aren’t always well targeted and are often hijacked by the pro-surveillance movement, but it’s important to call out that these solutions aren’t well targeted instead of declaring the age verification push isn’t addressing a real problem and constituency.

topkai22··on The Banished Bottom of the Housing Market
I looked at the rules for dissolving an HOA in lived in. There were a couple of procedural barriers, but the biggest one was that it required 75% of homeowners to sign a petition within a 3 month period. That’s a pretty high bar and lets a minority perpetuate the HOA.
topkai22··on Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?
I’m 20 years in. I don’t publish that much code because I’ve traditionally been in roles that discourage open source, but after 20 years in I’ve accrued a portfolio on GitHub of personal projects. No one has ever commented on any of it.

On internal projects it’s different- my code is the teams code. It’s never actually been mine. My colleagues comment on it, provide feedback and help me improve. After all, we are all supporting it. I’ve had almost exclusively positive experiences doing this, even if sometimes I had to change some of my priorities or opinions on things.

At this point I have a fancy enough title that, in the rare cases I get to write code or docs, people lower in level are willing to give me feedback and everyone higher in level is too busy. I miss it- it’s hard to improve without feedback and genuine collaboration is fun.

So I say publish it. Most likely no one will say anything. Maybe you’ll get some feedback and you’ll normalize managing it. Maybe you’ll find a collaborator. Maybe you’ll get flamed by a troll and you’ll learn there are idiots on the Internet. But most likely a few people will just look and say nothing.

An aside, this assumes you are not in some toxic subculture. Your mention other students- if you are in some form of university environment where there is a culture of belittling others you might want to wait. I promise that’s abnormal.

topkai22··on Meta projected 10% of 2024 revenue came from scams
Just checked my ad history (https://www.clrn.org/how-to-see-recently-viewed-ads-on-youtu...);

Google YouTube TV for NFL Sunday ticket Robinhood Some dog tracker thing Detergent Peloton Liberty mutual Some truck brand Foam insulation

Other than how to buy gold ads and sandy hook promise, my ads are very mild. YMMV

topkai22··on Ghostly swamp will-O'-the-wisps may be explained by science
Can we reflect on that this article starts with an Italian researcher named Luigi wearing a vacuum to try to suck in ghosts/will-o-the-wisps.
topkai22··on Do not accept terms and conditions
For mandatory T&Cs I'll put in the signature box "Decline", including updating the HTML page to say "decline" instead of "OK" and screenshotting it or modifying the HTTP response sent back to include riders.

I know it probably won't matter, but it's kind of fun for me.

topkai22··on United MAX Hit by Falling Object at 36,000 Feet
That might be technically true, but the F35 and F16 are both single engine aircraft and IIRC constitute the bulk of at least the US air force’s combat aircraft.
topkai22··on Greenland is a beautiful nightmare
I flew over Greenland coming back from Europe recently. From the air, the fjords and glacial snowscapes there and in northern Canada are profoundly beautiful and completely devoid of signs of humans in a way you don’t see even in some of the remotest parts of the US.

Definitely worth opening the shade for if you have the opportunity

topkai22··on Death rates rose in hospital ERs after private equity firms took over
Since the government (federal or state/local) authorizes those organizations to certify physicians and restricts medical care to only those who have been certified, it is.
topkai22··on How did sports betting become legal in the US?
I don’t like gambling, but I love sports. I will very occasionally engage in “emotional hedging”, where I bet AGAINST the team I want to win.

If my beloved team wins, I’m ecstatic and don’t really care I lost $50. If they lose, well, at least I have $50.

topkai22··on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
The current rule only applies to children under 14 years of age. They don't have to ask for teenagers.
topkai22··on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
You can still do this for infants on some long haul flights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8fphE1v66M&msockid=42557114...
topkai22··on Trump to impose $100k fee for H-1B worker visas, White House says
If they are using the program as intended they would. They are supposed to be looking for skills that are impossible to find in the US. If they are offering a good deal to the employee then the employee should stay, just like someone with full work authorization would.

If they are just using the program to pay less than they otherwise would for labor that does exist in the us, well, then we have another issue.

I would modify the proposal to include a larger annual fee rather than an application fee, so that the initially sponsoring company isn’t solely bearing the cost. There should also be a floor pay rate for the visa holder, something the 75th or 80th percentile of both the company and of income in the MSA the visa holder is located in.

topkai22··on The staff ate it later
You are thinking of Milo and Otis, which incidentally was filmed in Japan.

AFAIK nothing was proven, but it got a reputation.

topkai22··on Are people's bosses making them use AI tools?
The answer, well documented in the article, is yes.

While the article presents cases that appear the be problematic in the particulars, I think coming to the conclusion that bosses/managers shouldn't be pushing or mandating the use of AI tools in general is incorrect.

It's quite possible that any one new AI tool is wrong, but it is unlikely all of them are. A great historical analogies are the adoption of PCs in the 80s and the adoption of the internet/web in the 90s. Not everything we tried back then was an improvement on existing technologies or processes but in general if you weren't experimenting across a broad swath of your business you were going to get left behind.

It's easy to defend the utility of these tools so long as you caveat them. For example, I've had a lot of success in AI driven code generation for utility scripts, but it is less useful for full fledged feature development in our main code base. AI driven code summarization and its ability to do coding standards enforcement on PRs is a huge help.

Finally, I find the worries in the article about using these tools on sensitive data or scenarios such as ideation to be rather overdrawn. They are just SaaS services. You shouldn't use the free version of most tools for business purposes due to often problematic licensing, but purchasing and legal should be able help find an appropriate service. After all, if you are using google docs or Microsoft 365 to create and store your documents why would (at least with some due diligence that they don't retain or train on your input) you treat Gemini or Copilot (or their other LLM options) as presenting higher legal peril?

topkai22··on Houston, you've got a space shuttle only NASA won't say which one
I will give a little laugh if Houston ends up with a space shuttle Columbia memorial.
topkai22··on Why are there no good dinosaur films?
I have a simpler answer- the bad ones make money. All of the Jurassic World movies have topped $1B. Rebirth has been out 5 days and is already at $300M, twice its budget.

While movies are art, they are primarily an entertainment product, especially when they cost $65-200M to make. Jurassic World is selling really well, so they aren’t going to change the product to produce “better” art.

It is interesting that Jurassic Park are the only (non animated) dinosaur movies to get much traction while JW is taking in so much money. But it’s got to be tough to come up with a dinosaur movie concept that doesn’t sound like a JP knockoff and doesn’t confuse viewers.

Maybe Marvel will make a Savage Lands movie. But I don’t think this what the author wants.

topkai22··on Stalking the Statistically Improbable Restaurant with Data
I suspect they are a bit high, but not insanely so. The author is using city limits rather than metro area it appears, so there is going to be some draw in from the suburbs.

100k/305 residents= 325 people/restaurant. Average per capita spending on food away from home is $4500. That means that each restaurant has $1,475,000 of addressable market on average, which seems totally viable? (https://www.michiganfarmnews.com/boom-in-spending-at-restaur...)

topkai22··on Ship Carrying EVs Abandoned in Pacific After Catching Fire
From the MSN article linked below: “ UK-based shipowner Zodiac Maritime has since confirmed that the fire originated in the section of the vessel carrying electric vehicles.”
topkai22··on I'd rather read the prompt
Many of the things we teach in school aren’t just for the direct knowledge or skill. We largely don’t need to do arithmetic any more, but gaining the skill at doing it really improves our ability to deal with symbolic manipulation and abstraction.

I remember another parent ranting about their 3rd grade kids “stupid homework” since it had kids learning different ways of summing numbers. I took a look at the homework and replied “wow, the basics out set theory are in here!” We then had a productive discussion of how that arithmetic exercise led to higher math and ways of framing problems.

Similarly, writing produces a different form of thought than oral communication does.

History is a bit different, but a goal of history and literature is (or it least should be) to socialize students and give them a common frame of reference in society.

Finally there is the “you don’t know when you’ll need it defense.” I have a friend who spent most of the last 20 years as a roofer, but his body is starting to hurt. He’s pivoting to CAD drafting and he’s brushing off a some of those math skills he hated learning in school. And now arguing with his son about why it’s important.

Those are the fundamental defenses- that we are seeking not skills but ways of viewing the world + you don’t know what you’ll need. There are obviously limits and tradeoffs to be made, but to some degree yes, we should be forcing students (who are generally children or at least inexperienced in a domain) to things they don’t like now for benefits later.

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