Old article, from June...don't get me excited
Readit Newsalpineman commented on New records on Wendelstein 7-X iter.org/node/20687/new-r... · Posted by u/greesil
This is what you get when YC is full of 22-year olds founding companies. Great ideas and fast execution but absolutely no clue when it comes to running a company.
Twitter VCs won't repent, once again.
alpineman commented on Volvo delivers 5,000th electric semi electrek.co/2025/06/29/vo... · Posted by u/JumpCrisscross
Reasons behind this:
- many U.S. truckers are owner-operators --- the rig has to appeal to them, and is in many ways, an extension of their self-perception
- bring up a map of the U.S. and plot occupations on it, removing "school teacher" and "farmer" --- for many rural counties, the most common (and one of the best-paying) is long-haul trucker --- I can still vividly recall the elaborate drawings and plans which many of my classmates in a rural school would draw up of elaborate 18-wheelers (that this situation was brought about by the county board of supervisors being comprised of large land owners who wanted an essentially captive population to work their farms is a different discussion)
It's fine for it to be an extension of their self-perception, but when said extension reaches into my bedroom when I'm sleeping then I am 100% in the pro-regulation camp.
alpineman commented on Raphael discovery emerges from Vatican museum restoration news.artnet.com/art-world... · Posted by u/andsoitis
The artwork was already there, so not sure 'discovered' is the right word. Does it make a difference now we know it was painted by Raphael himself?
It will make a difference, of course. But should it?
It was falling behind. The dodgy stores were getting more creative and Fakespot needed to play catch up.
You've got stores that would include a $5-$20 coupon/gift card in the item in exchange for a positive review. Sure, this didn't 1:1 translate but if a user did it would look like a legitimate review.
You've got a plethora of LLMs out there just itching to GENERATE.
Then an expensive option I was suprised happened - I bought a Dyson clone vacuum cleaner off of Amazon. A few weeks later, the company emailed me and said 'We have a new model. Buy that one, leave a review, we'll refund the purchase'. So I did it. This happened about 10 more times in 2024. My outdoor shed is entirely stick vacuums.
Feel a bit dirty doing it but that's ok I've got 12 vacuums that can clean my conscience.
I think Fakespot would have difficulty with all 3 of these scenarios.
Horrible for the environment
alpineman commented on Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT personneltoday.com/hr/fal... · Posted by u/lsharkey602
Okay. It also coincides with the end of the post-pandemic hiring boom and the UK bank rate going from 0.1% to 5.25%. It's kind of funny that reliable data analysis has never been part of the AI hype when you consider that AI is used for data analysis.
and an increase in employer taxes for each employee introduced in the UK this year
alpineman commented on Solving LinkedIn Queens Using Haskell imiron.io/post/linkedin-q... · Posted by u/agnishom
So you're the co-worker playing Queens according to my LinkedIn notifications!
alpineman commented on Ask HN: Anyone else feeling increasingly alienated from the industry? · Posted by u/saubeidl
Absolutely agreed. It is disillusioning. We have become completely consumed by 'TC', Bitcoin, vesting, conversion, SaaS, subscriptions, monetization etc.
We are folding ourselves into an ever smaller bubble and disconnecting from the world we live in. Not unlike the finance industry in the 2000s prior to the crash.
It's sad because technology can and does improve so much in the world.
alpineman commented on A practical guide to building agents [pdf] cdn.openai.com/business-g... · Posted by u/tosh
There is no memory that the LLM has from your initial instructions to your later instructions.
In practice you have to send the entire conversation history with every prompt. So you should think of it as appending to an expanding list of rules that you put send every time.
You can use a RAG / embedding database as a kind of memory and add pulled 'approved examples', 'feedback comments' etc alongside future prompts.
Edit: I am in no way saying conservatism is bad and liberalism is good. I have my values in both.
I personally blame social media and the financialization of everything for this. A person's entire self-worth can be reduced to the size of their 401K and their instagram reels (brunch, dog, destination wedding, hike, repeat).
Depressing.