I personally don't find using LLMs "fun" but I do like this article for one simple reason. It points out that most contemporary frameworks for web are forms of slop and I don't think you should feel bad using an LLM to generate slop code and config to deal with it.
Readit NewsCoolestBeans commented on Web development is fun again ma.ttias.be/web-developme... · Posted by u/Mojah
CoolestBeans commented on Ask HN: Has anyone else been unemployed for over two years? · Posted by u/ncarlson
I learned an instrument (guitar), then I learned another instrument (bass guitar). I caught up with my family, I got to spend a lot more time with my nephews and nieces. I got to spend a lot of time with my dad. I picked back up circuit design and made an overdrive guitar pedal from scratch and learned KiCad in the process. I caught up with old friends but lost touch with other ones. I probably acted like an ass to a lot of people. I finally came to understand why people like watching sports. I learned how to write in cursive. I walked a lot. I listened to a lot of music. I listened to some podcasts.
I dunno, it sucks and its painful. You're constantly worried and people who at first try to support you then get pissed off at you for something you can't really control. I hope you can find your way through it.
CoolestBeans commented on Hollywood Has Left L.A vulture.com/article/holly... · Posted by u/ViktorRay
I'd caveat everything in this article with the backdrop of film and TV being in a down cycle. So of course everyone is trying to cut costs. If and when studios figure out how to profit in the streaming era (or the distribution method changes) then I would be more confident that production has truly left LA.
Of course, everything in California is too damn expensive and that can't be ignored. You can put up all the tax credits you want, the overall price level is a tough headwind for production in LA.
CoolestBeans commented on Why should anyone boot *you* up? solmaz.io/why-should-anyo... · Posted by u/hosolmaz
They're never going to boot any of us up. They're just going to use the brain data set to optimize ads another 2%.
CoolestBeans commented on How Gen Z became so nihilistic about money bbc.com/worklife/article/... · Posted by u/akpa1
Money should be no object, I just worry that this is the result of a generation coming of age in the tightest labor market in a half century and they're all in for an extremely rude awakening over the next couple years.
CoolestBeans commented on So you want to build a browser engine robert.ocallahan.org/2024... · Posted by u/zmodem
> So You Want To Build A Browser Engine
The only correct answer is, "don't".
I mean, if you want to build a toy browser engine for a CS class or fun or something, then sure.
But the idea that "you want to build an engine that’s competitive with Chromium" is, quite simply, nonsensical.
If you want your own browser engine, you're going to fork Chromium or Gecko (Firefox). I mean, even Microsoft gave up on maintaining its own independent engine and switched to Chromium.
I literally don't understand who the author thinks this post is supposed to be addressed to.
Building an independent browser engine could have made sense in 1998. These days it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars in dev time to catch up to existing engines... just to duplicate something that you already have two open-source versions of?
Even Chromium started with WebKit which itself was a fork. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be interested in browser dev but you also don't have to do a totally clean sheet implementation.
CoolestBeans commented on Base 10 is not a good base teamten.com/lawrence/writ... · Posted by u/andsoitis
I agree but it's more important that we share a common system and it's incredibly expensive to switch (not just monetarily). For better or worse, if there's gonna be one system it will be decimal. Take heart that decimal time didn't catch on.
CoolestBeans commented on Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice daily.jstor.org/saffron-t... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
Here's what I don't get... so here in the US, saffron is generally speaking, extremely expensive and rationed carefully by cooks. Meanwhile, I watch these cooking videos on YouTube and people in villages in places like Azerbaijan are casually throwing the equivalent of $10,000 worth of saffron into their tea. Granted, I understand places like Iran (spoiler alert: not the best relationship with the US) are major producers, so maybe it is cheaper in that part of the world, BUT it almost by definition is a scarce resource. I do find myself wondering if trade issues / foreign relations are a factor in the cost.
My parents love watching those videos so I know what you're talking about. There's four factors I think.
One, the quality of the saffron makes a big difference in price. Longer deeper red strands are much more expensive than shorter and more yellow strands. I suspect they are not using the most expensive saffron in their teas.
Two, there's a lot of markup purchasing saffron from most retailers, especially here in the US. You can get that amount of saffron for far less than $10,000 if you know someone who has a connect.
Three, as you said the majority of saffron production is from Iran. Some friends I know are getting their saffron from the UAE but I'm pretty sure its being re-exported from Iran.
Four, those videos are ultimately productions. If you compare the earlier videos to the later videos on some of that channel you can tell they've upgraded their digs. They might just be exaggerating for the camera.
I still listen to a lot of prog rock as well as classical, more than I did when I was a teenager or in my 20s. But I also occasionally listen to current popular music with my teenage daughters. Some of it I like, some I do not, but myself and my daughters all agree that they would like to hear some big change in popular music. Not saying it should be a return to something like grunge, but it would be interesting to hear something different like that style was.
Part of me agrees that pop is ripe for that sort of upheavel but my arguments that it won't happen are:
1. Angst will probably always be the teenage condition but I don't think the distance between what's being recorded and what teens and young adults are feeling is as great as it was in the 90s.
2. Music listening is so much more fragmented now that even if some artist hooks into some underserved emotional need, it might just grab its group of followers and then sorta descend into its own little subculture, safely away from the mainstream. The third and fourth lines on any contemporary festival act list has a lot of acts that fall into this category.
3. Kurt Cobain was this unusual combination of wanting to be anti-authority, anti-establishment, alternative on one hand, but then very ambitious and seeking fame and record deals on the other. It's paradoxical but he was that and that combination of attributes is really good for changing the mainstream music scene but I don't think most people can live in that contradiction for that long and therefore people like that are rare.
In my view, we're in a sort of repeat of 00s R&B. Lot of substanceless tunes with honestly seriously vulgar lyrics but immensely catchy and fun. The main difference is this version is less danceable (but also more subject to dance routines on TikTok!). And I don't mean it in a pejorative way, not every good song need to be meaningful.
It's a bit like TSMC: you couldn't buy space on $latestGen fab because Apple had already bought it all. Many companies would have very much liked to order H200s and weren't able to, as they were all pre-sold to hyperscalers. If one of them stopped buying, it's very likely they could sell to other customers, though there might be more administrative overhead?
Now there are some interesting questions about Nvidia creating demand by investing huge amounts of money in cloud providers that will order nv hardware, but that's a different issue.