BitwiseFool (u/BitwiseFool)

BitwiseFool commented on What is going on right now? catskull.net/what-the-hel... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

I'm pretty sure I'm that guy on some topics.

>"I'm pretty sure I'm that guy on some topics."

The use of 'pretty sure' disqualifies you. I appreciate your humility.

BitwiseFool commented on What is going on right now? catskull.net/what-the-hel... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

xnorswap · 2 days ago

I won't say too much, but I recently had an experience where it was clear that when talking with a colleague, I was getting back chat GPT output. I felt sick, like this just isn't how it should be. I'd rather have been ignored.

It didn't help that the LLM was confidently incorrect.

The smallest things can throw off an LLM, such as a difference in naming between configuration and implementation.

In the human world, you can with legacy stuff get in a situation where "everyone knows" that the foo setting is actually the setting for Frob, but with an LLM it'll happily try to configure Frob or worse, try to implement Foo from scratch.

I'd always rather deal with bad human code than bad LLM code, because you can get into the mind of the person who wrote the bad human code. You can try to understand their misunderstanding. You can reason their faulty reasoning.

With bad LLM code, you're dealing with a soul-crushing machine that cannot (yet) and will not (yet) learn from its mistakes, because it does not believe it makes mistakes ( no matter how apologetic it gets ).

BitwiseFool · 2 days ago

>"It didn't help that the LLM was confidently incorrect."

Has anyone else ever dealt with a somewhat charismatic know-it-all who knows just enough to give authoritative answers? LLM output often reminds me of such people.

BitwiseFool commented on The Geological Sublime harpers.org/archive/2025/... · Posted by u/prismatic

wpollock · a month ago

Geology jokes are beneath me.

BitwiseFool · a month ago

That's a strike against your character but I'll let it slip.

BitwiseFool commented on Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship polygon.com/news/616835/v... · Posted by u/mrzool

jmclnx · a month ago

This is just a peek into a possible future. With the trend of eliminating cash, the powers that be can prevent people from buying anything deemed harmful. Or a large company can close down a small but innovative competitor with a flick of the wrist.

Yes, some may save the bitcoins will save us from this. But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the *coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards.

So we need to ensure we keep cash available.

BitwiseFool · a month ago

>"But seeing all governments are looking closely to regulate the coins, I believe it will be locked down just like the credit cards."

The Bitcoin crowd is adamant that no government can regulate Bitcoin. They are correct in the sense that Congress is unable to pass a law dictating what the Bitcoin protocol must do, and that as a decentralized network people are free to follow whichever fork of Bitcoin they choose.

However, they have not given much consideration to the fact that governments have full authority to regulate those that use Bitcoin. In other words, no government needs to change Bitcoin. All they need to do is dictate what the lawful use of Bitcoin looks like in their jurisdiction. There is nothing stopping a government from declaring that all wallets owned by their citizens must be registered, and that all transactions must be voluntarily reported to the authorities. In the context of this article, I doubt that a government would prohibit the sale of these games, but I agree with your assertion that the government is likely to start locking down cryptocurrencies in some way that impedes privacy.

BitwiseFool commented on The Geological Sublime harpers.org/archive/2025/... · Posted by u/prismatic

alexpotato · a month ago

One of the wildest parts of geology from a "meta" level is that plate tectonics as a theory wasn't fully accepted until the 1960s!

"Plate tectonics came to be accepted by geoscientists after seafloor spreading was validated in the mid-to-late 1960s." (from the Plate Tectonics Wikipedia page)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics

BitwiseFool · a month ago

Plate tectonics created a serious rift in the Geology community, with both supporters and detractors citing serious faults.

BitwiseFool commented on Apple introduces AppleCare One apple.com/newsroom/2025/0... · Posted by u/ingve

BitwiseFool · a month ago

This is a pet peeve of mine, but I dislike when any corporation resorts to using "One" to brand something. It signals a lack of creativity; it is just so bland.

BitwiseFool commented on Seven Engineers Suspended After $2.3M Bridge Includes 90-Degree Turn vice.com/en/article/7-eng... · Posted by u/_sbl_

BitwiseFool · a month ago

Personal anecdote: As a child I played a lot of Sim City. In those games bridges must be perfectly straight and as a result I developed a mental model that curved bridges simply don't exist. When I first drove over a gently curved bridge in my late 20's I felt a serious disturbance to an irrelevant worldview that I never questioned.

BitwiseFool commented on Why English doesn't use accents deadlanguagesociety.com/p... · Posted by u/sandbach

dkdbejwi383 · 2 months ago

> That is the fun thing about English. There isn't really a single right way to speak or write it. It is defined by common usage. As long as your audience understands you, it is correct.

That's how all languages work - to the chagrin of l'Académie Française - English is no special exception.

BitwiseFool · 2 months ago

I like to believe that, by definition, the only person who speaks English properly is the King of England. Everyone else has an accent.

BitwiseFool commented on A glob of 99M-year-old amber trapped a zombie fungus erupting from a fly cnn.com/2025/06/24/scienc... · Posted by u/jackgavigan

pabs3 · 2 months ago

My favourite tree evolution thing is the forests in the Galapagos being evolved from dandelion seeds blown in on the wind from South America.

BitwiseFool · 2 months ago

Fascinating. Do you have a link to that, or the name of that species?

BitwiseFool commented on JWST reveals its first direct image discovery of an exoplanet smithsonianmag.com/smart-... · Posted by u/divbzero

BitwiseFool · 2 months ago

The JWST is a marvel of engineering. It is also a machine designed around the restrictions of what the most powerful rockets of the 1990's were capable of. Just imagine how capable future telescopes will be now that we have multiple super-heavy launch vehicles with cavernous payload fairings in development.