MisterSandman (u/MisterSandman)

MisterSandman commented on GPT-5 openai.com/gpt-5/... · Posted by u/rd

levocardia · 22 days ago

with web search, is knowledge cutoff really relevant anymore? Or is this more of a comment on how long it took them to do post-training?

MisterSandman · 22 days ago

It still is, not all queries trigger web search, and it takes more tokens and time to do research. ChatGPT will confidently give me outdated information, and unless I know it’s wrong and ask it to research, it wouldn’t know it is wrong. Having a more recent knowledge base can be very useful (for example, knowing who the president is without looking it up, making references to newer node versions instead of old ones)

MisterSandman commented on Providing ChatGPT to the U.S. federal workforce openai.com/index/providin... · Posted by u/gmays

brokencode · 23 days ago

I don’t think these companies have a lot of power to increase prices due to the very strong competition. I think it’s more likely that they will become profitable by significantly cutting costs and capital expenditures in the long run.

Models are becoming more efficient. Lots of capacity is coming online, and will eventually meet the global needs. Hardware is getting better and with more competition, probably will become cheaper.

MisterSandman · 23 days ago

There is no strong competition, there’s probably 4 or 5 companies around the world that have the capacity to actually have data centres big enough to serve traffic at scale. The rest are just wrappers.

MisterSandman commented on The future is not self-hosted drewlyton.com/story/the-f... · Posted by u/drew_lytle

chris_engel · a month ago

Sure, in theory Hetzner could pull the plug or access the data on my VPS. But that’s true of any infrastructure... just like someone could break into my house and steal my self-hosted server.

In fact, I’d argue the physical risk of loss, theft, or data compromise is much higher at home than in a professional datacenter with power redundancy, security controls, and constant uptime monitoring.

It’s a bit like saying, "Don’t trust the bank, they could take your money and freeze your account — keep all your money under the mattress." Technically possible, yes. But come on.

MisterSandman · a month ago

I never said any of those things, you’re literally arguing with made up points I didn’t make?

But my point Hetzner isn’t self-hosted. Similar to how storing money in a bank isn’t self-banking. Self-hosting means you host your content yourself in a server room that you have physical access to. Hetzner isn’t that.

And that’s fine, self-hosting is pretty silly for most use cases nowadays. And all of the positives you mentioned are true. But I hate how we’ve turned “self-hosting” into a political dog-whistle for hosting with companies that seem more trustworthy than the big guys. And there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to trust GCP or Azure - just don’t call it self hosting.

MisterSandman commented on 4k NASA employees opt to leave agency through deferred resignation program kcrw.com/news/shows/npr/n... · Posted by u/ProAm

maxerickson · a month ago

I don't think we should underestimate how poor their grasp of technical reality might be.

MisterSandman · a month ago

And I hate to say it, but in this context, Musk would’ve been at least a little useful in having around. I’m aware he’s not the best person to make reliable predictions, but he does run SpaceX.

With both the cuts to NASA and Musk leaving the core inner circle of Trump, space exploration is going to be set back. Mars ain’t happening in our lifetimes, IMO.

I hope I’m wrong.

MisterSandman commented on Women dating safety app 'Tea' breached, users' IDs posted to 4chan 404media.co/women-dating-... · Posted by u/gloxkiqcza

makeitdouble · a month ago

› extremely robust existing system (payments)

It is not, indeed.

The first part is its goal: identity is secondary, the main purpose is money. It means a customer can put a fake name and address as long as the money part is considered OK. Most PSPs won't check the cardholder name (it can be used for fuzzy scoring, but exact match is a fool's errand). Address is usually only required for physical goods and won't be checked otherwise. And 3DSecure will shift the blame enough that the PSP won't need to care that much about the details.

The second part is the whole mess that comes with payments. You'll become a card testing pot in no time, and you'll be dealing with all the fuss just to check identities, you'll soon be rising the token payment to a significant amount to cover the costs, and before you realize it half your business has shifted into payment handling.

MisterSandman · a month ago

Payment systems are significantly more robust than taking a picture of an ID to prove you’re you.

MisterSandman commented on SF may soon ban natural gas in homes and businesses undergoing major renovations sfchronicle.com/sf/articl... · Posted by u/mikhael

ZeroGravitas · a month ago

Totally sensible policy that the average American thinks is crazy because their overton window is so skewed.

In Australia they're looking to identify larger areas to remove from the gas grid at the same time. Otherwise the few remaining on gas bear the entire cost of upkeep of the grid.

MisterSandman · a month ago

I’m guessing you’ve never been to SF? The quality of housing in SF is really poor, with most affordable homes being decades behind in renovations and upkeep. This requirement adds unnecessary costs in an already overheated market.

MisterSandman commented on The future is not self-hosted drewlyton.com/story/the-f... · Posted by u/drew_lytle

chris_engel · a month ago

I am irritated that "self hosted" seems to mean "in your own house" and everyone just agrees.

To me, self hosted also means I rent a machine with Hetzner and run the server software on it. Its cheap, stable, fast, secure and Hetzner wont screw me over with my data. I have a LOT less headache and I can rent a vserver for a long time until the hardware cost for a server running at home is surpassed.

I can also very simply assign a domain to it and am pretty sure that software like nextcloud offers oauth access so my friends would NOT be required to sign up for my "weird app". Well, technically they do but oauth automates it.

Am I missing something?

MisterSandman · a month ago

Why do you claim that Hetzner won’t screw you over with your data?

What you’re doing with Hetzner is just a few less layers of abstraction compared to AWS or Azure. They can still theoretically take down the machine or steal your data, if they wanted to.

I don’t know what the correct definition of self hosted is, but there is a big ideological difference between what you’re doing and self-hosting actual, physical hardware in your home.

MisterSandman commented on Anthropic tightens usage limits for Claude Code without telling users techcrunch.com/2025/07/17... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

globular-toast · a month ago

This is what really makes me sceptical of these tools. I've tried Claude Code and it does save some time even if I find the process boring and unappealing. But as much as I hate typing, my keyboard is mine and isn't just going to disappear one day, have its price hiked or refuse to work after 1000 lines. I would hate to get used to these tools then find I don't have them any more. I'm all for cutting down on typing but I'll wait until I can run things entirely locally.

MisterSandman · a month ago

I guess the argument has time goes on AI will get cheaper and more efficient.

…but idk how true that, I think it’s pretty clear that these companies are using the Uber model to attract customers, and the fact that they’re already increasing prices or throttling is kind of insane.

MisterSandman commented on What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another? derekthompson.org/p/what-... · Posted by u/mmcclure

MangoToupe · a month ago

My understanding is the cost of housing is increasing far faster than inflation in the entire anglosphere.

MisterSandman · a month ago

Quebec housing is not affordable by any means, but still much more affordable than the rest of Canada. Especially when you look at cities like Montreal and compare it to other cities like Toronto.

It’s not just affordability, it’s one big piece but it’s not the only thing.