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621
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • It's always nice to run across a fellow Hero player. That's been my main system for a long time. I love being able to GM any genre or strange cross-genre that occurs to me.

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  • I voted last week (2025-04-01) in Wisconsin in the US. It was a relatively small election, but it included a high-stakes race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat that determined if the progressives would continue to retain the majority we finally won back a few years ago. Elon Musk spent tens of millions of his own money, including outright attempts to buy votes, to win the race for MAGA. Susan Crawford, the progressive candidate, won by more than ten points. In a state where previous elections hinged on tenths of a percent, that was a landslide.

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  • An LLM does not write code. It cobbles together bits and pieces of existing code. Some developers do that too, but the decent ones look at existing code to learn new principles and then apply them. An LLM can't do that. If human developers have not already written code that solves your problem, an LLM cannot solve your problem.

    The difference between a weak developer and an LLM is that the LLM can plagiarize from a much larger code base and do it much more quickly.

    A lot of coding really is just rehashing existing solutions. LLMs could be useful for that, but a lot of what you get is going to contain errors. Worse yet, LLMs tend to "learn" how to cheat at their tasks. The code they generate often has lot of exception handling built in to hide the failures. That makes testing and debugging more difficult and time-consuming. And it gets really dangerous if you also rely on an LLM to generate your tests.

    The software industry has already evolved to favor speed over quality. LLM generated code may be the next logical step. That does not make it a good one. Buggy software in many areas, such as banking and finance, can destroy lies. Buggy software in medical applications can kill people. It would be good if we could avoid that.

  • That is true, except for the things he does on impulse that are different from what he was told to do. He is a front man, but he's not a reliable one.

  • Any time you wonder if Trump is exercising any kind of foresight, the answer is no. Any time you wonder if Trump is cleverly manipulating events, the answer is no. He makes decisions on impulse, without regard to advice, policy, consistency, or legality.

  • You're probably right about that. I find it hard to judge where the fine line between malice and incompetence will fall.

  • I agree with you. I'm an American and it makes me want to boycott American goods.

    In practice, I am trying to reduce the amount of business I do with large American companies. They're the ones who put Trump into power. I feel better supporting local businesses anyway.

    We may yet see a Buy Canadian movement in the US.

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  • Exactly. The Democrats have their own issues, but there is a difference between a candle and a burning house and the difference does matter.

  • If they have to do it a second time, they aren't very good at it.

  • The claim is that the remote operators do not actually drive the cars. However, they do routinely "assist" the system, not just step in when there's an emergency.

  • I saw an article recently, I should remember where, about how modern "tech" seems to be focused on how to insert a profit-taking element between two existing components of a system that already works just fine without it.

  • This would be more impressive if Waymos were fully self-driving. They aren't. They depend on remote "navigators" to make many of their most critical decisions. Those "navigators" may or may not be directly controlling the car, but things do not work without them.

    When we have automated cars that do not actually rely on human being we will have something to talk about.

    It's also worth noting that the human "navigators" are almost always poorly paid workers in third-world countries. The system will only scale if there are enough desperate poor people. Otherwise it quickly become too expensive.

  • The masks tell the whole story. People with legitimate authority do not need to wear masks. Everyone involved knew this was a criminal act and wanted to avoid being implicated.

    We're seeing a lot of masks on law enforcement and government agents these days. There's a reason.

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  • This may be the least important area in which China is displacing the US.

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  • I think most people from my culture (midwest American) find it uncomfortable to get help from anyone. It seems vaguely embarrassing, even when it's from friends or family. It's much easier to give than to receive.

    I've been on both ends of that pretty regularly and I have been working on learning to accept help gratefully as well as giving it. It is surprisingly difficult.

  • This is just another aspect of the conviction these people all share that the rules do not apply to them. And it is a perfect demonstration as to why no one with that attitude should ever be allowed to serve in the government.

    Also, my use of the term "serve" was inappropriate. None of these people are serving anyone or anything except for their personal interests and their egos.

  • He seems to only have one actual skill, but to be fair, being born rich is very difficult to master.

  • Poor grammar aside, the headline is inaccurate. I am all in favor of people dumping Teslas, but Musk neither designed nor built any of them. He paid people to design them, then he paid people to build them. And by all accounts, he did not pay them well or treat them kindly.

  • Hope she gets lots of cuddling and feels better soon.