bryanrasmussen (u/bryanrasmussen)

bryanrasmussen commented on Curating a Show on My Ineffable Mother, Ursula K. Le Guin hyperallergic.com/curatin... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

Phelinofist · 7 hours ago

> ... 'The Left Hand of Darkness'

I read it last year. I found it to be quit boring and it also felt kinda "dated" in the sense that more recent SF is more space-y. However, the social constructs were well thought out.

bryanrasmussen · 3 hours ago

what does space-y mean in this context? Spacey, as in trippy (vernacular definition), in the way that Phillip K. Dick is? Or set in outer space?

If the second, there was a lot of sci-fi set in space for decades before The Left Hand of Darkness, and the cultural focus of that book and a lot of the new wave of science fiction writers of that time was a reaction against the outdated space focused science fiction of the previous generations.

bryanrasmussen commented on Curating a Show on My Ineffable Mother, Ursula K. Le Guin hyperallergic.com/curatin... · Posted by u/bryanrasmussen

Telemakhos · 10 hours ago

“Ineffable” means “too great to be spoken in words,” so I’m wondering what you found sexualized about that.

bryanrasmussen · 9 hours ago

A coworker made a sort of cartoon, pompous jerk says "Who dares disturb the ineffable blah blah blah"

Cleaning lady: "Sorry I had no idea you wasn't effable, I'll come back later"

that is to say since effable as a slang term for some someone that one might like to have sex with exists, it is a reasonable pun to make with ineffable as being, well, not effable. However one should probably be able to realize the ineffable in question is not a pun on the slang term and figure things out. Somewhat embarrassing really.

on edit: added in disturb, must have missed it because very tired.

bryanrasmussen commented on Pensions Are a Ponzi Scheme poddley.com/?searchParams... · Posted by u/onesandofgrain

bryanrasmussen · 12 hours ago

the pension that the government provides in most places is not enough to support someone in a continued middle class life, therefore you may often get a pension on top of your governmental pension from a company. The money paid in to this pension is often beneficial to you in that it will not be taxed as part of your income therefore you are deriving a benefit for your work that you do not get taxed on presently. Obviously when you get your pension you will be taxed but probably at a lower rate than when actually working.

These pensions that invest and compound your investment over time can turn a comfortable middle class life into a very comfortable retirement, the American model instead of the European model of these kinds of company investments tends to be more risky however, and so there can often be scandals where you were supposed to be getting a pension but the rich company looted you and you're screwed hah hah.

bryanrasmussen · 12 hours ago

so for the case of negotiating for a job in Europe, if it is a good job, you should often consider not just the present wage but what the pension gives you.

For example you may get a pension of 5% of your wage goes into the fund, and the company you work for matching that, indicating 5% extra wage that is not part of your taxed income. Depending on how your life is structured it may be smarter to go for a pension.

bryanrasmussen commented on Pensions Are a Ponzi Scheme poddley.com/?searchParams... · Posted by u/onesandofgrain

onesandofgrain · 12 hours ago

Isnt that the american style? Saving up for pensions urself? I never quite understood the steucture

bryanrasmussen · 12 hours ago

the pension that the government provides in most places is not enough to support someone in a continued middle class life, therefore you may often get a pension on top of your governmental pension from a company. The money paid in to this pension is often beneficial to you in that it will not be taxed as part of your income therefore you are deriving a benefit for your work that you do not get taxed on presently. Obviously when you get your pension you will be taxed but probably at a lower rate than when actually working.

These pensions that invest and compound your investment over time can turn a comfortable middle class life into a very comfortable retirement, the American model instead of the European model of these kinds of company investments tends to be more risky however, and so there can often be scandals where you were supposed to be getting a pension but the rich company looted you and you're screwed hah hah.

bryanrasmussen commented on Pensions Are a Ponzi Scheme poddley.com/?searchParams... · Posted by u/onesandofgrain

onesandofgrain · 13 hours ago

Andrew Tate says that pensions are a Ponzi Scheme that depends on new incoming people to support the underlying base of people (at lesst that’s how I understood it).

Is there any truth to this? Or is he just being hyperbolic?

bryanrasmussen · 12 hours ago

he could or could not be correct depending on how any particular pension is constructed, but as I understand most pensions are constructed as taking the money you put in and investing it and then paying you out of what gets returned from the pension.

Why don't you just invest yourself?

Well first because pensions being large scale investors can get better results and second because most people don't do the smart thing and put some money aside for a rainy day, a pension forces that.

In such a scenario the incoming people function more as a failsafe, the investment should handle paying out for your pension but in cases where there have been a problem in the market, you have outlived your pension expectations etc. you then end up having the failsafe of new people always putting money in. Thus giving the pension an extra layer of security than just investing for yourself.

on edit: of course there can be difference between governmental and company pensions.

bryanrasmussen commented on Turning books to courses using AI book2course.org/... · Posted by u/syukursyakir

bryanrasmussen · 15 hours ago

I wonder how this would work if fed the combined histories of the acts and life of Thomas Ripley. Highly educational I should hope.

bryanrasmussen commented on U.S. jobs disappear at fastest January pace since great recession forbes.com/sites/mikestun... · Posted by u/alephnerd

crims0n · a day ago

Wasn't trying to be political, just making an observation that 4 years is probably too short of a time to credit policy changes within a single administration.

bryanrasmussen · a day ago

Did you look at the graph?

Eisenhower had two terms = 8 years - did poorly.

Kennedy + Johnson two Democratic terms in a row = 8 years, did well.

Nixon + Ford, two Republican in row = 8 years, did poorly.

Carter 1 term, did well.

Reagan Bush - 3 terms Republicans 12 years, did poorly.

Clinton 2 terms 8 years did well.

Bush the second, 2 terms 8 years did poorly.

Obama 2 terms 8 years did well.

Trump, 1 term did extremely poorly

Biden 1 term did well.

So this 4 years thing you're talking about you mean that we can't be sure about Biden, Trump, or Carter. Fair enough, is the 8 years good enough or is that also too short to draw a conclusion?

bryanrasmussen commented on Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use vecti.com... · Posted by u/vecti

crazygringo · 2 days ago

> I kept finding myself using a small amount of the features while the rest just mostly got in the way. So a few years ago I set out to build a design tool just like I wanted. So I built Vecti with what I actually need...

Joel Spolsky said (I'm paraphrasing) that everybody only uses 20% of a given program's features, but the problem is that everyone is using a different 20%, so you can't ship an "unbloated" version and expect it to still work for most people.

So it looks like you've built something really cool, but I have to ask what makes you think that the features that are personally important to you are the same features that other potential users need? Since this clearly seems to be something you're trying to create a business out of rather than just a personal hobby project. I'm curious how you went about customer research and market validation for the specific subset of features that you chose to develop?

bryanrasmussen · a day ago

Assuming that users only use 20% of the program and that the usage is evenly distributed, which would be a really big assumption right there, then there is still a finite number of users before you will have used up every part of program functionality between your user base and that any users past that amount will be repeating an actual and specific percentage of program functionality already assigned to some other user, unless you want to argue that functionality can be reduced infinitesimally in a sort of Zeno-like process.

If you agree however that functionality profiles will repeat among users given a large enough user base then it implies a particular limited feature set can still be totally adequate to support program development.

And that is with assumptions stacked against you succeeding, if indeed, as would seem likely, that some user profiles are more widely distributed than others it would follow that a successful product can just focus on those.

bryanrasmussen commented on Learning from context is harder than we thought hy.tencent.com/research/1... · Posted by u/limoce

bradfa · 2 days ago

The key seems to be that you take the transcript of a model working within a problem domain that it’s not yet good at or where the context doesn’t match it’s original training and then you continually retrain it based on its efforts and guidance from a human or other expert. You end up with a specialty model in a given domain that keeps getting better at that domain, just like a human.

The hard part is likely when someone proves some “fact” which the models knows and has had reinforced by this training is no longer true. The model will take time to “come around” to understand this new situation. But this isn’t unlike the general populous. At scale humans accept new things slowly.

bryanrasmussen · 2 days ago

> But this isn’t unlike the general populous. At scale humans accept new things slowly.

right, the model works like humans at scale. Not like a human who reads the actual paper disproving the fact they thought was correct and is able to adapt. True not every human manages to do that, science advancing one death at a time, but some can.

But since the model is a statistical one, it works like humans at scale.