imperfect_blue

Joined 6 years ago

Karma
143
Submissions
62
Member since
Jun 28
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Recent submissions

Comment · 5 months ago
Lazy is not bad, and bad writing doesn't mean it's not valuable or insightful.
Comment · 5 months ago
Using LLM as a writing assistant to properly format your ideas, while lazy, is not the same thing as a slop bomb. They're highly rated because the original ideas are good, even if the writing quality is sloppish, and it genuinely contains human input that you can't get simply by asking LLMs a question.
Comment · 5 months ago
The problem, in my experience, is that most PMs don't add anything when it comes to drawing up the acceptance criteria.

In your example of an order placement - the PM has no special knowledge of what is a good customer order flow. Developers are usually way better at coming up with those by the dint of experience and technical knowledge of the current codebase and make the appropriate speed/polish trade-off.

PMs acts as an imperfect proxy for what the customer wants, making judgements off nothing more than their own taste. And though there are many great PMs, the taste of a PM is usually worse than that of developers and designers on average.

IMO the main business reason they exist is for organization accountability and ownership, despite the often negative value they bring.

Comment · 8 months ago
There's no way to perfectly forecast demand; all things equal I'd prefer that companies overproduce and we live in an age of plenty with a bit of waste (which companies are already incentivized to avoid), rather than face shortages in goods.
Comment · 8 months ago
It's a terrible idea because approximately 90% of the cost of clothing is not in producing it, but in the supply chain - keeping it in stock, transporting it to and from warehouses, the manpower needed to organize and sorting and inspect it.

So by saving the 10% of the cost of the clothing, you end up wasting way more in labor and transport and inventory costs. All of which ends up way worse for the environment than had you just shredded it and treated it as compost.

Comment · 10 months ago
If you are actually asking a serious question: while a patron is primarily motivated by whatever catches his interest, a corporate conglomerate funding the same investments is motivated by profit. They would have more of a motive to select the kind of investments that will succeed and pay for themselves, allowing for a more economically efficient allocation of resources.

Of course, the kind of investments that might succeed and pay for themselves may not necessarily be the kind that is most beneficial to the public at large - but the same applies to the patron.

Comment · 11 months ago
Imagine you're asked with building, say, a train network within your country. Domestic regulations demand that, because other countries are not certified up to your country's safety standards, you're not allowed to import any foreign technology from outside your country.

So - in order for you to build that train - you'd need to wait for industries to set up to build every single component up to local standards. And if nobody sets these industries up to manufacture the components you need, you'll have to build it yourself, somehow.

You'd rightfully call this out as protectionism. And the worst part is not even the protectionism - the worst part is that you'll likely get no trains, because in practice nobody except a huge incumbent company can build all the components they need themselves, and huge incumbent companies often have no incentive or no agility to do so.

Comment · 1 year ago
US healthcare costs are nothing to do with socialism or capitalism.

The reason is two-fold: US is subsidizing the rest of the world's medical research, and US healthcare bureaucracy is among the worst in the world.

Comment · 1 year ago
Economic growth is a measure of how much goods and services are available to everyone. If that isn't improving, that means your quality of life is lower, ceteris paribus. It means you don't produce enough energy on your own are dependent on Russian gas. It means you don't have enough surplus to sustain a military.
Comment · 1 year ago
They can but they shouldn't.

Replace phone ownership with race or social-economic status and it should be obvious why profiling shouldn't be done.

Comment · 1 year ago
You're hurting yourself when you tip.

You have, objectively, less money than before. Ergo, tipping is self-harm.

Comment · 1 year ago
>> It's that they believe they have a religious duty to destroy the state of Israel.

> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.

How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.

> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?

Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?

Comment · 1 year ago
As an amateur home-cook, I find current LLMs incredibly useful as a sounding board for the on-the-fly recipe modifications - for allergies and food sensitivities, adapting preparation methods to available equipment, or substituting produce not available in season. It may not be able to taste the final product, but its reasoning on what's likely to work (and what isn't) has not led me wrong so far.
Comment · 1 year ago
Windows actually has a built-in remote assistance tool now called Quick Assist. It provides a simple way to remotely control another Windows machine with user consent, without requiring third-party software. It's preinstalled on Windows 10 and 11—just launch 'Quick Assist' from the Start menu, generate a session code, and connect. While it's not as feature-rich as a full remote desktop solution, it's more than enough for parental IT support.
Comment · 1 year ago
I'm not American and haven't done the calculus here. I'm just pointing out that from an outside perspective, what the American right is doing here is +EV in terms of American lives from their point of view, so it's perfectly rational.

If nothing else, the opportunity cost of a few hundred billion saved eventually, even if it's just a small fraction of US total government spending, can be used to save or improve many many many lives.

Hyperbole like "yeah murder more people its good because I can't tell what is good or bad" doesn't help.

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