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basscomm commented on Map of all the buildings in the world   gizmodo.com/literally-a-m... · Posted by u/dr_dshiv
f4c39012 · 8 days ago
Or, they subtracted a digital elevation model from a digital surface model, ran a point-in-polygon match against an existing building dataset, and labelled the difference as the height of the building. No ML needed.
basscomm · 8 days ago
There's a notice in the bottom-left corner on desktop that says: "This is a machine-learning-derived product. Errors may occur"
basscomm commented on Emacs is my new window manager (2015)   howardism.org/Technical/E... · Posted by u/gpi
aaaaaaron · 10 days ago
"However, I also don’t like to carry two computers just to jot down personal notes. My remedy is to install a virtualization system and create a “personal” virtual machine."

I have the same problem, but I'm not sure if a VM is a good solution. The work OS has full access to the VM and I don't trust putting my personal things even in the VM. (I consider the work laptop backdoored and full with spyware.)

basscomm · 10 days ago
If I'm just jotting down personal notes, I use a pen and a notepad. If I need to transcribe anything into my long-term notes, then I can do that at the end of the day/week/whatever, when I review what I wrote down.
basscomm commented on The "confident idiot" problem: Why AI needs hard rules, not vibe checks   steerlabs.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/steer_dev
morkalork · 10 days ago
This drives me nuts when trying to bounce an architecture or coding solution idea off an LLM. A human would answer with something like "what if you split up the responsibility and had X service or Y whatever". No matter how many times you tell the LLM not to return code, it returns code. Like it can't think or reason about something without writing it out first.
basscomm · 10 days ago
> Like it can't think or reason about something without writing it out first.

LLM's neither think nor reason at all.

basscomm commented on Making RSS More Fun   matduggan.com/making-rss-... · Posted by u/salmon
dan_h · 13 days ago
I've felt similarly about RSS for a while now--I've made a ton of attempts to build my giant collection of subscriptions but always just burn out on maintaining it. Another issue is when I try to get anyone even slightly non-technical to use RSS they bounce off immediately; it sadly just seems too complex/too much overhead for a large number of users.

I've been trying to build a site/app that adds some features mentioned in this post ("upvoting" based on views, tiktok-style video experience in the app, etc), but it's still very much a WIP and doesn't exactly fix the complexity problems yet. Still, I get encouraged seeing more projects like the OPs that hopefully bring about some sort of RSS resurgence.

[0] https://jesterengine.com

basscomm · 13 days ago
> I've made a ton of attempts to build my giant collection of subscriptions but always just burn out on maintaining it.

RSS subscriptions aren't like Pokemon. You don't have to catch them all. One of the major selling points of RSS is that you can subscribe to sites that update infrequently so you get notified when they have a new update instead of checking the site manually and being disappointed that it hasn't updated in three weeks or whatever.

Adding a bunch of sites that update hundreds of times a day is a great way to DDOS your own attention span

basscomm commented on Making RSS More Fun   matduggan.com/making-rss-... · Posted by u/salmon
N3mor · 13 days ago
My Inoreader became unmanageable and reminded me a lot of the reason I quit using Gmail: over 100k emails to go through in one lifetime isn't worth the trouble.
basscomm · 13 days ago
> over 100k emails to go through in one lifetime isn't worth the trouble

Unless you're on a bunch of mailing lists, I can't even fathom having that much email, much less that much unread email. I'm fanatical about making sure that I'm at inbox zero as much as possible because the 'unread' counter is the enemy. It takes some effort to set up and adjust filters and actually unsubscribe from stuff, but it's completely worth it to have a mailbox that's actually usable.

basscomm commented on Everyone in Seattle hates AI   jonready.com/blog/posts/e... · Posted by u/mips_avatar
adastra22 · 13 days ago
I'm a native speaker of English, northern California dialect. I pronounce every one of those letters, to varying degrees. Some just affect the mouth shape by subtle amounts, but it is there.
basscomm · 13 days ago
> I pronounce every one of those letters, to varying degrees

That must be fun any time you talk about Worcestershire (the sauce or the place).

basscomm commented on RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung   pcworld.com/article/29989... · Posted by u/sethops1
Forgeties79 · 14 days ago
I am so glad I built my PC back in April. My 2x16gb DDR5 sticks cost $105 all in then, now it’s $480 on amazon. That is ridiculous!
basscomm · 14 days ago
I'm also glad I overbought RAM when I did my last PC upgrade in January, because who knows when I'll be able to do that again.

The 96GB kit I bought (which was more than I needed) was $165. I ended up buying another 96GB kit in June when I saw the price went up to $180 to max out my machine, even though I didn't really need it, but I was concerned where prices were going.

That same kit was $600 a month ago, and is $930 today. The entire rest of the computer didn't cost that much

basscomm commented on Everyone in Seattle hates AI   jonready.com/blog/posts/e... · Posted by u/mips_avatar
ajkjk · 14 days ago
disagree completely. You're doing the thing I described: assuming it's all ultimately about personal benefit when they're telling you directly that it's not. The same people could trivially capitalize on the shifting climate and have a good career in the new world. But they'd still be pissed about it.

I'm one of these people. So is everyone I know. The grievance is moral, not utilitarian. I don't care about executives getting rid of people. I care that they're causing obviously stupid things to happen, based on their stupid delusions, making everyone's lives worse, and they're unaccountable for it. And in doing so they devalue all of the things I consider to be good about tech, like good software that works and solves real problems. Of course they always did that but it's especially bad now.

basscomm · 14 days ago
> You're doing the thing I described: assuming it's all ultimately about personal benefit when they're telling you directly that it's not.

It doesn't matter how much astroturf I read, I can see what's happening with my own eyes.

> The grievance is moral, not utilitarian.

Nope, it's both.

Businesses have no morals. (Most) people do. Everything that a business does is in service of the bottom line. They aren't pushing AI everywhere out of some desire to help humanity, they're doing it because they sunk a lot of resources into it and are trying to force an ROI.

There are a lot of people who have fully bought in to AI and think that it's more capable than it is. We just had a thread the other day where someone was using AI to vibe code an app, but managed to accidentally tell the LLM to delete the contents of his hard drive.

AI apologists insist that AI agents are a vital tool for doing more faster and handwave any criticism. It doesn't matter that AI agents consume an obscene amount of resources to do it, or that pretend developers are using it to write code they don't understand and can't test that they're shoving into production anyway. That's all fine because a loud fraction of senior developers are using it to bypass the 'boring parts' of writing programs to focus on the interesting bits.

basscomm commented on Everyone in Seattle hates AI   jonready.com/blog/posts/e... · Posted by u/mips_avatar
ajkjk · 14 days ago
> like building an AI product made me part of the problem.

It's not about their careers. It's about the injustice of the whole situation. Can you possibly perceive the injustice? That the thing they're pissed about is the injustice? You're part of the problem because you can't.

That's why it's not about whether the tools are good or bad. Most of them suck, also, but occasionally they don't--but that's not the point. The point is the injustice of having them shoved in your face; of having everything that could be doing good work pivot to AI instead; of everyone shamelessly bandwagoning it and ignoring everything else; etc.

basscomm · 14 days ago
> It's not about their careers.

That's the thing, though, it is about their careers.

It's not just that people are annoyed that someone who spends years to decades learning their craft and then someone who put a prompt into a chatbot that spit out an app that mostly works without understanding any of the code that they 'wrote'.

It's that the executives are positively giddy at the prospect that they can get rid of some number their employees and the rest will use AI bots to pick up the slack. Humans need things like a desk and dental insurance and they fall unconscious for several hours every night. AI agents don't have to take lunch breaks or attend funerals or anything.

Most employees that have figured this out resent AI getting shoved into every facet of their jobs because they know exactly what the end goal is: that lots of jobs are going to be going away and nothing is going to replace them. And then what?

basscomm commented on Everyone in Seattle hates AI   jonready.com/blog/posts/e... · Posted by u/mips_avatar
Ekaros · 14 days ago
If there is a g in there I will pronounce a g there. I have some standards and that is one. Pronouncing every single letter.
basscomm · 14 days ago
> Pronouncing every single letter.

Now I want to know how you pronounce words like: through, bivouac, and queue.

u/basscomm

KarmaCake day507February 5, 2016View Original