TheDarkestSoul (u/TheDarkestSoul)

TheDarkestSoul commented on Musk’s inner circle worked through weekend to cement Twitter layoff plans washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

saurik · 3 years ago

6 months ago it was all painted (maybe seemingly, though, by prior executives who weren't speaking for Musk) as if this wouldn't be a big deal for employees, which to me makes this idea that people are being rapidly fired "for cause" after a suddenly-imposed weekend work shift deadline extra shitty :/. (Even if I do sometimes claim that Twitter is incompetent as an organization or bloated with idle staff, these are humans that deserve some basic respect with how they handle a transition plan.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/twitter-employ...

> At the meeting with employees on Monday [April 25], executives tried to assure employees that they wouldn’t be shortchanged by Mr. Musk’s acquisition. Mr. Agrawal told employees that their stock options would convert to cash when the deal with Mr. Musk closes, which he estimated would take between three and six months. Employees would receive their same benefits packages for a year after the deal was finalized and there were no immediate plans for layoffs, he added.

TheDarkestSoul · 3 years ago

My guess is Musk wants to punish them for making him go through with the deal _he agreed to_. He doesn't want to own Twitter and he's making them feel it.

TheDarkestSoul commented on Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking parsnip.ai/... · Posted by u/mizzao

drc500free · 4 years ago

Heh, I may be having a strong reaction to the overly-patronizing app. I'm surprised myself at how unpleasant I found it to use.

Reading through this thread, others have also been rubbed the wrong way. The approach they're using is to tell you you're wrong over and over, but in a saccharine "that's okay squirt, you're doing your best!" kind of way.

Like, here's another question: "What is the best way to store hard cheese?

A) In a cool, dark place like your pantry B) In an airtight bag C) Wrapped in parchment paper and foil D) Exposed to the open air of your fridge"

If you answer (A) it's wrong, because nowadays fridges have more constant temperature than pantries. Okay, let's try (D) since it's the only answer that refers to a fridge... nope, that would dry it out. It's (C), which doesn't refer to a fridge at all.

It's question after question like this, with a snarky little spawn-of-Clippy giving you an "ACKKshoowly" about a badly worded question or something that's really a matter of opinion. And in the end, if you unlock enough silly quizzes, they might deign to tell you how to actually cook a hamburger.

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

The matter of opinion thing got me too. I felt like I had to guess what the writer's intention was with many of the questions instead of just answering them factually. I was clicking through the pasta quiz on "Spaghetti and Meatballs" and one of the questions is something like "True or false: Any pasta dish can be made with any kind of pasta."

...What? What does that mean? I mean, I guess it's called "Spaghetti and meatballs" and not "spaghetti and pasta" for a reason? Most dishes use specific pastas for their specific qualities with regards to how they absorb sauce and things like that. False?

"Wrong! You can make any pasta dish with any pasta! Just because the recipe calls for spaghetti doesn't mean you can't use fettuccine!"

Ok? What does this have to do with anything?

I'm imagining it being 6:30 and the user is already hungry and can't even open the recipe yet because he's working through these insane questions lol.

TheDarkestSoul commented on Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking parsnip.ai/... · Posted by u/mizzao

colpabar · 4 years ago

people make comments like this often and it makes me wonder if you actually really need it, because you can very easily find several extensions that do just that. As an experiment, I copied your comment into google verbatim, and found exactly what you are looking for.

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

I don't understand. But then what do I have to complain about on the internet?

TheDarkestSoul commented on Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking parsnip.ai/... · Posted by u/mizzao

mizzao · 4 years ago

The goal we're building toward is that you can pick any recipe on the Internet and learn it in this way. But first we have to start with a small group (beginners) and make sure it's actually fun and interesting for them.

I explain how this works at https://parsnip.substack.com/p/a-new-hope

The unintuitive observation for beginners is that their pain doesn't seem to be cooking the food and making the recipe. It's "I don't know where to start", and building up confidence, and not being intimidated by that literal fire on your stove.

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

I don't mean to come off rude but your app comes off like it's aimed at people who are almost literally afraid and bewildered by the sight of a pan or stove or avocado like the apes in 2001 coming across the monolith. With people I know who don't cook it's usually due to wanting to avoid the hassle they think exists because of misconceptions about the difficulty or time it takes. I'm not sure there are that many people who are avoiding it because they're intimidated to the point that they need to be calmed down by playing a matching game with different spices

TheDarkestSoul commented on Show HN: Parsnip – Duolingo for Cooking parsnip.ai/... · Posted by u/mizzao

whateveracct · 4 years ago

Cooking has become a very weird thing - people both overrate its difficulty and complexity to the point of phobia..and also consume content of people cooking without ever doing it themselves. So many cooking tik tok etcs are so obviously not good food to make compared to normal stuff.

Scrambled eggs are a good thing to learn for a beginner, and maybe the app does try to teach you the real "hard" part of them: Heat control. If you understand the heat of your stove and your pan, you can make scrambled eggs.

You can learn it by getting a carton of eggs, a stick of butter, and a frying pan. You'll learn how butter burns and gets too hot, and you'll learn when you jump the gun and put the egg in too cold of a pan.

People want steps and skills and tricks. But the real way to learn how to cook is to look at & listen to your pan, taste your food, and then repeat and learn from your mistakes.

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

> Cooking has become a very weird thing - people both overrate its difficulty and complexity to the point of phobia

This is very astute and I think things like this app are probably actually counterproductive for this reason--if we imply learning to cook is comparable to learning a _language_ in its complexity you're only going to make people more wary. Really all you need to do is buy ingredients and follow a recipe; now you're cooking! It isn't that hard.

As you say, the real learning process of cooking involves making things, getting a sense for what works, what you like, and iterating, and you can't really get this from an app, or videos, or whatever.

TheDarkestSoul commented on Andrej Karpathy leaves Tesla twitter.com/karpathy/stat... · Posted by u/danols

rsynnott · 4 years ago

> but their vision only tech stack doesn’t seem capable of solving it

Well, I'm not sure that anyone's tech stack is capable of solving it; the live examples of robotaxis are, well, not something you'd bet your company on (and generally their creators are _not_ betting their companies on them). There was, I think, a decade ago the idea that fully self-driving cars were a near-term inevitability. That's fading, now.

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

I think a lot of that came from the Tesla hype machine creating a strong association between electric and self-driving as being the immediate future of cars in popular consciousness, so when people saw electric becoming a reality they assumed self-driving was right around the corner when in actuality their maturity levels aren't related much at all. Fallacious thinking that may doom a few companies between Lyft, Uber, and Tesla

TheDarkestSoul commented on Polar bears that can survive without sea ice nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/gmays

robonerd · 4 years ago

It seems bizarre to framing this as something bears discovered about themselves, rather than something scientists discovered about bears. It's not like anybody actually asked bears what the bears know.

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

Think you're reading the headline wrong there my friend. 'discovered' is passive in this sentence. [A] Polar bear population [has been] discovered [by researchers] that can survive without sea ice.

the perils of headline-syntax

TheDarkestSoul commented on Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold twitter.com/elonmusk/stat... · Posted by u/palebluedot

encoderer · 4 years ago

> For Tesla, the company, to grow into its stock price, it has to make more cars than Toyota, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, and the rest of the top 12 car companies put together.

You’re right that Tesla is valued on future performance but this part is just factually wrong. They will need ultimately to make more profits than those companies combined, but the number of cars is not that important. Apple has a ~25% share of the phone market but makes most of the profit.

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

These sorts of discussions start to seem nitpicky when you're talking about the sheer magnitude by which they're overvalued. Whether they have to make more _profits_ or _cars_ than every other car company combined doesn't really matter because it's so ridiculous.

TheDarkestSoul commented on Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place economist.com/business/20... · Posted by u/vadertemp

martindbp · 4 years ago

Tesla made more money last quarter than Ford, GM and Toyota. Toyota made 10x the number of cars as Tesla. Tesla is growing vehicle production 50% YoY, while growing profit even faster (having barely hit economies of scale yet). Tesla has a backlog of orders approaching a year in many regions. Everyone else is losing money on their EVs and can't make them in volume production, can't find the batteries for them, because they started 10 years too late. That's the reason for Tesla's valuation, it's pretty simple.

Whether you believe the competition will catch up, or Tesla will fail for some other reason is besides the point. I'm just trying to show that the current valuation is not "insane" given current trends, there's a very real logic to it and not (completely) FOMO.

Correction: Toyota's earnings were higher than Tesla, it was operating income that was higher (remembered it wrong).

TheDarkestSoul · 4 years ago

Even if that all were true (it's not), Tesla could be the most important and revolutionary car company since Model-T era Ford and _still_ be insanely overvalued. Before their recent stock slide they were worth as much as every other major manufacturer _combined_. Their P/E ratio hovers around 300. Mercedes-Benz hovers around 5.