Miraste (u/Miraste) - Readit News

Miraste commented on Most technical problems are people problems blog.joeschrag.com/2023/1... · Posted by u/mooreds

yobbo · 9 days ago

> MDF and veneers are inherently worse than hand-crafted wood.

Generally incorrect, but it depends. Wear can cause mdf/veneer to have "bad optics" compared to solid wood, but mdf/veneer can have more suitable physical properties and enables more consistent visual quality and design possibilities.

Miraste · 9 days ago

I suppose it depends on your definition of worse. It is more versatile. It's also toxic and fragile, and far more likely to break in ways that are hard to repair. I can only think of one object I own where the physical properties of particle board or MDF are a positive: a subwoofer where its consistency helps with acoustics.

Miraste commented on Most technical problems are people problems blog.joeschrag.com/2023/1... · Posted by u/mooreds

lupire · 9 days ago

Comparing a cheap thing to an expensive thing is absurd.

The appropriate comparison is which is better for the same price

Miraste · 9 days ago

If the cheap thing replaces the expensive thing and there is no same-price comparison, is it absurd? My point is that many products that were handmade at high quality no longer exist because of modern manufacturing. If you want a chair or, say, a set of silverware at the same inflation-adjusted price it would have been available for seventy years ago, you can't get it because the market sector has shifted so thoroughly to cheaper, worse products (enabled by modern manufacturing) that similar quality is only available through specialty stores at a much higher price. This happens even if the specialty stores are using computer-aided techniques and not handcrafting, because of the change in economics of scale.

Miraste commented on Most technical problems are people problems blog.joeschrag.com/2023/1... · Posted by u/mooreds

taeric · 9 days ago

This is almost certainly a nice story we tell ourselves about a mythical past that just didn't exist.

It can be annoying to say, but modern factory produced things are in an absurdly higher quality spectrum than most of what proceeded them. This is absolutely no different from when machined parts for things first got started. We still have some odd reverence for "hand crafted" things when we know that computer aided design and manufactured are flat out better. In every way.

As for ownership, I hate to break it to you, but it is very likely that a good many of the master works we ascribe to people were heavily executed by assistants. Not that this is too bad, but would be akin to thinking that Miyazaki did all of the art for the movies. We likely have no idea who did a lot of the work we ascribe to single artists throughout history.

On to the rest of the points, even the ones I somewhat resonate with are just flat out misguided. People were ALWAYS resources. Well before the modern world.

Miraste · 9 days ago

Computer and machine manufactured parts can be better, but it's a mistake to believe they always are. Take two contrasting examples.

In guitar manufacturing, CNC machines were a revolution. The quality of mid-range guitars improved massively, until there was little difference between them and the premium ones.

In furniture, modern manufacturing techniques drastically worsened the quality of everything. MDF and veneers are inherently worse than hand-crafted wood. The revolution here was making it cheaper.

CNC and other machining techniques raise the high bar for what's possible, and they have the potential to lower costs. That's it. They don't inherently improve quality, that's a factor of market forces.

Miraste commented on Most technical problems are people problems blog.joeschrag.com/2023/1... · Posted by u/mooreds

parpfish · 9 days ago

One weird thing about software jobs as opposed to other crafts is the persistence of the workpiece.

A furniture maker builds a chair, ships it out, and they don’t see it again. Pride in their craft is all about joy of mastery and building a good external reputation.

In most software jobs, the thing you build today sticks around and you’ll be dealing with it next month. Pride in your craft can be self serving because building something well makes life easier for future-you

Miraste · 9 days ago

That only applies if you expect to be at one job for a long time. Current business culture makes that a poor bet, both due to pernicious Jack Welch style layoff management and the career and salary benefits of changing jobs every few years.

Miraste commented on OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race theverge.com/news/836212/... · Posted by u/goplayoutside

dumah · 9 days ago

You're generalizing a failure at delivering one consumer solution and ignoring the successful infrastructure research and development that occurs behind the scenes.

Meta builds hardware from chip to cluster to datacenter scale, and drives research into simulation at every scale, all the way to CFD simulation of datacenter thermal management.

Miraste · 9 days ago

More than one failure. They had a project to make a custom chip for model training a few years ago, and they scrapped it. Now they have another one, which entered testing in March. I don't think it's going well, because testing should have wrapped up recently, right before the news that they're in serious talks to buy a lot of TPUs from Google. On the other side of the stack, Llama 4 was a disaster and they haven't shipped anything since.

They have the money and talent to do it. As you point out, they do have major successes in areas that take real engineering. But they also have a lot of failures. It will depend how the internal politics play out, I imagine.

Miraste commented on How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduces persuasion costs arxiv.org/abs/2512.04047... · Posted by u/50kIters

omilu · 10 days ago

People that favor tariffs, want to bring manufacturing capabilities back to the US, in the hopes of creating jobs, and increasing national security by minimizing dependence on foreign governments for critical capabilities. This is legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are aware of the increased cost associated with it.

Miraste · 10 days ago

Even ardent protectionists generally agree that tariffs can't bring jobs and manufacturing back by themselves. To work, they have to be accompanied by programs to nurture dead or failing domestic industries and rebuild them into something functional. Without that, you get results like the current state of US shipbuilding: pathetic, dysfunctional, and benefiting no one at all. Since there are no such programs, tariffs remain a cost with no benefit.

Miraste commented on RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung pcworld.com/article/29989... · Posted by u/sethops1

londons_explore · 10 days ago

Apple software typically seems to give a better user experience in less RAM in both desktop and mobile.

For the last 10+ years apples iPhones have shipped with about half the ram of a flagship android for example.

Miraste · 10 days ago

They used to, but they've caught up. The flagship iPhone 17 has 12GB RAM, the same as the Galaxy S25. Only the most expensive Z Fold has more, with 16GB.

RAM pricing segmentation makes Apple a lot of money, but I think they scared themselves when AI took off and they had millions of 4GB and 8GB products out in the world. The Mac minimum RAM specs have gone up too, they're trying to get out of the hole they dug.

Miraste commented on RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung pcworld.com/article/29989... · Posted by u/sethops1

Dibby053 · 10 days ago

>the only player to have the supply chain locked down enough to not get caught off guard What?

Miraste · 10 days ago

Tim Cook is the Supply Chain Guy. He has been for decades, before he ever worked at Apple. He does everything he can to make sure that Apple directly controls as much of the supply chain as possible, and uses the full extent of their influence to get favorable long-term deals on what they don't make themselves.

In the past this has resulted in stuff like Samsung Display sending their best displays to Apple instead of Samsung Mobile.

Miraste commented on Everyone in Seattle hates AI jonready.com/blog/posts/e... · Posted by u/mips_avatar

usefulcat · 11 days ago

The best argument I've yet heard against the effectiveness of AI tools for SW dev is the absence of an explosion of shovelware over the past 1-2 years.

https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware...

Basically, if the tools are even half as good as some proponents claim, wouldn't you expect at least a significant increase in simple games on Steam or apps in app stores over that time frame? But we're not seeing that.

Miraste · 11 days ago

Interesting approach. I can think of one more explanation the author didn't consider: what if software development time wasn't the bottleneck to what he analyzed? The chart for Google Play app submissions, for example, goes down because Google made it much more difficult to publish apps on their store in ways unrelated to software quality. In that case, it wouldn't matter whether AI tools could write a billion production-ready apps, because the limiting factor is Google's submission requirements.

Miraste commented on Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm theverge.com/report/82065... · Posted by u/evolve2k

lallysingh · 11 days ago

Slowly getting their stuff independent of wintel gives a lot of flexibility. And the big gaming market's on phones / tablets. A steam controller could find itself paired to an iPad running steam in a year or two.

Miraste · 11 days ago

We're too far into the grip of monopolies for that. Apple would never let a full version of Steam run on iPads. Google wouldn't either.

I think more ARM Valve hardware is likely.