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wilg

6,266 karma · joined April 25, 2011

https://wilgieseler.com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/wilg; my proof: https://keybase.io/wilg/sigs/6niylU3e1S4HaPxU0MqrYxtQxGSySje9VhAPtq0OEzU ]

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wilg··on The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying
LLMs are pretty cool technology and are useful for programming.
wilg··on Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presiden...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Democratic_Party_presiden...

Skill issue. Run your candidate. Convince people to vote for them.

> How much has the current administration asked the public about going to war with Iran?

THE ELECTIONS are how the public weighs in.

wilg··on uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts
If that's all of Google's contribution then creators should have no problem hosting the data themselves and keeping the difference for themselves.
wilg··on Use protocols, not services
atproto has a very elegant decentralized identity solution imho https://atproto.com/guides/identity
wilg··on Privilege is bad grammar
I think its probably just having to respond to lots of messages from your phone in the middle of meetings is the job, and you'll quickly decide that getting the point across is the most important thing.
wilg··on I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?
Presumably the OP scare quoted "opinion" precisely to avoid having to get into this tedious discussion.
wilg··on uBlock filter list to hide all YouTube Shorts
Not financially, since creators get 55% of YouTube premium fees.
wilg··on Rivian R2: Electric Mid-Size SUV
A BYD Shark 6 is not an EV?
wilg··on The Singularity will occur on a Tuesday
> The labor market isn't adjusting. It's snapping. In 2025, 1.1 million layoffs were announced. Only the sixth time that threshold has been breached since 1993.

Bad analysis! Layoffs are flat as a board.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSLDL

wilg··on Testing Ads in ChatGPT
I mean thats the problem, right? Nobody has a better idea. If you do, then use it and win the AI war.
wilg··on Testing Ads in ChatGPT
Advertisers will pay MORE per user than users will. That is why they are so valuable to companies offering freemium services!
wilg··on Testing Ads in ChatGPT
Why does it have to be "manipulation"? If you don't know about something that you might want to buy, learning about it isn't being manipulated.

Also, the lifespan thing is crazy - what if you learned about something that improved your health, like an exercise machine or something? You can't just ignore the upsides. What if you bought something that saved you money in the long run, like a quality tool?

wilg··on Testing Ads in ChatGPT
Ben Thompson has long been insistent that ChatGPT and other AI tools basically have to have ads and it's been a big mistake they didn't have them sooner. It's an interesting take:

> What I think is clear is they have to build an advertising product, and the reason they have to build an advertising product is any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because it’s such a beneficial model to everyone involved, and the reason it’s so beneficial is you get to indefinitely and infinitely increase average revenue per user without any worries about price elasticity, because the entire increase in average revenue per user is borne by the advertisers who are paying it willingly because they’re getting a positive return on their investment, and everyone’s using it for free so you can reach the whole world. Then what happens with that is once you get that model going, you have a massive R&D advantage, because you have so much more money coming in than anyone who doesn’t have that cycle or who has to charge users for it.

https://stratechery.com/2026/ads-in-chatgpt-why-openai-needs...

> This point, more than anything else, explains why the company so desperately needs an advertising model. Advertising is the only potential business model that can meaningfully bend the revenue curve such that the company can not just fund its compute but gain leverage on it, for all of the reasons I laid out before: first, advertising increases the breadth of the business, in that you can offer a better product to more people, increasing usage and expanding inventory. Second, advertising increases the depth of the business, in that there is infinite upside in terms of average revenue per user: more usage means more inventory on one hand, and building out the capability for effective targeting and high conversion rates increases the amount that advertisers are willing to pay — even as the cost to the user remains the same (ideally free).

It's valuable to remember that advertisers will pay more per user than users will, and that's hard to beat in a competitive market.

Also, it's fascinating how much people _like_ ads when done properly. Ask normal people about Instagram ads, for example. They find them useful!

wilg··on GPT-5.3-Codex
I always use 5.2-Codex-High or 5.2-Codex-Extra High (in Cursor). The regular version is probably too dumb.
wilg··on GPT-5.3-Codex
In my personal experience the GPT models have always been significantly better than the Claude models for agentic coding, I’m baffled why people think Claude has the edge on programming.
wilg··on Claude is a space to think
Ben Thompson has long been insistent that ChatGPT and other AI tools basically have to have ads and it's been a big mistake they didn't have them sooner. It's an interesting take:

> What I think is clear is they have to build an advertising product, and the reason they have to build an advertising product is any consumer Internet product has to be advertising, because it’s such a beneficial model to everyone involved, and the reason it’s so beneficial is you get to indefinitely and infinitely increase average revenue per user without any worries about price elasticity, because the entire increase in average revenue per user is borne by the advertisers who are paying it willingly because they’re getting a positive return on their investment, and everyone’s using it for free so you can reach the whole world. Then what happens with that is once you get that model going, you have a massive R&D advantage, because you have so much more money coming in than anyone who doesn’t have that cycle or who has to charge users for it.

https://stratechery.com/2026/ads-in-chatgpt-why-openai-needs...

> This point, more than anything else, explains why the company so desperately needs an advertising model. Advertising is the only potential business model that can meaningfully bend the revenue curve such that the company can not just fund its compute but gain leverage on it, for all of the reasons I laid out before: first, advertising increases the breadth of the business, in that you can offer a better product to more people, increasing usage and expanding inventory. Second, advertising increases the depth of the business, in that there is infinite upside in terms of average revenue per user: more usage means more inventory on one hand, and building out the capability for effective targeting and high conversion rates increases the amount that advertisers are willing to pay — even as the cost to the user remains the same (ideally free).

It's valuable to remember that advertisers will pay more per user than users will, and that's hard to beat in a competitive market.

wilg··on The Codex App
Unpopular opinion: why would you want a "native app"? On macOS, basically every app Apple makes themselves is worse in terms of design, usability, and performance than a popular Electron-based alternative.

For example, I tried opening a 200MB log file in Apple's Console.app and it hung. Opened right up in VS Code.

wilg··on Tesla is committing automotive suicide
Apple did an even worse job than you think: they didn't even LLM Siri so I guess it just broke.
wilg··on Tesla ending Models S and X production
No there aren't actually. Seems like they did it once or twice with a chase vehicle. https://electrek.co/2026/01/28/teslas-unsupervised-robotaxis...
wilg··on Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot
I agree you had a reason for what you said about the "E", I'm taking issue with what you said.

No, speaking on someone else's behalf, as lawyers are obligate to do is not lying. They are representing their client's position.

You also cannot "lie" about an opinion about what might confuse other people.

wilg··on Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot
Arguing the "E" in the "Eggo" trademark and the "E" on the egg roll truck are so distinct that anyone arguing it must be lying is not a reasonable position.
wilg··on Prism
I followed the Snowden stuff fairly closely and forgot, so I bet they didn't think about it at all and if they did they didn't care and that was surely the right call.
wilg··on Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
Hybrids don't solve the main problem which is global warming, which demands zero carbon, not 50MPG gas cars.
wilg··on Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
OK but we already know that EVs don't just move pollution around.
wilg··on Porsche sold more electrified cars in Europe in 2025 than pure gas-powered cars
Net zero is what I'm talking about.

Your Corolla is worse than a BEV because it puts way more GHG in the atmosphere, making net zero harder. Your opinion that the Corolla emits less GHG than a BEV is not borne out by the data. Most of the pollution of your car is from using it, not building it. EVs flip that and only are only slightly worse to produce. And we have to replace pretty much every road vehicle with a zero emission one, and sooner is better.

Buying the new EV, selling your old car, and helping push ICE vehicles off the roads is better than not replacing it in any reasonable environmental accounting.

Also, 15% is... a very significant percentage. You have to do lots of efficiency improvements across every part of the world to make net zero happen. Not to mention that slice of the pie would grow to 30-40% if electricity goes zero-carbon.

And we simply have the technology to zero it out. But, like you, most people want to invent a reason the green technology is actually bad.

wilg··on Porsche sold more electrified cars in Europe in 2025 than pure gas-powered cars
This is a car that is more expensive than a Tesla Model 3 in the Chinese market, with more or less the same features.
wilg··on Porsche sold more electrified cars in Europe in 2025 than pure gas-powered cars
Well, a hybrid doesn't solve the problem. We don't need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we need to zero them out. You can't do that if you sometimes burn gas.
wilg··on When hardware goes end-of-life, companies need to open-source the software
I think you should be allowed to stop supporting a hardware device without open sourcing the software, full stop. I just think that's the least bad option.

I'd be fine if manufacturers had to have some kind of standard "nutrition facts" label of what will happen to its functionality if support is ended.

wilg··on Apple Creator Studio
I think it's okay, or even better probably, if they move to subscription only. All Apple's paid apps have languished for years and if its actually a revenue stream for them maybe they'll actually make them industry-leading again.
wilg··on AI generated music barred from Bandcamp
Couldn't you just as well say it's a human taking inspiration from other humans through a machine?
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