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dustincoates commented on Obsidian Bases   help.obsidian.md/bases... · Posted by u/twapi
dimitri-vs · 6 days ago
It's not you, it's the productivity influencers making you think it's "supposed to be" more than what it is: a nice UI to edit a collection of markdown files.

I realized this when I opened my Vault in Cursor/VSCode to use the coding agent for editing (which is truly a bizarre feature for Obsidian to NOT have for normal writing).

Every Obsidian YT video is about mind maps, how to organize your files, using relative links and weird plugins that break the premise of having universal markdown files. Well it's completely wasted time now that an LLM can search the whole vault and aggregate an answer across dozens of your notes.

dustincoates · 6 days ago
While I agree that the zettle-nerds take it way too far, I disagree with this:

> Well it's completely wasted time now that an LLM can search the whole vault and aggregate an answer across dozens of your notes.

I've actually found that having well-linked files _more_ important since I started pulling the vault into Cursor. The other day, for example, I was able to point to the page where I had aggregated links to all of my "<Project> Onboarding" notes and know that I was giving the right context when I asked it to help me brainstorm a six month plan. The alternatives were to instead put everything in a single note (not feasible), manually include each note as context (and hope I didn't forget one), or hope that Cursor found the right ones (unlikely).

dustincoates commented on UK government states that 'safety' act is about influence over public discourse   bsky.app/profile/tupped.b... · Posted by u/JoshTriplett
dustincoates · 10 days ago
Without passing judgment on the act, this is incredibly misleading. I found the source of the original quotes[0], and they are taken quite out of context.

From the article:

>First, we are told, the relevant secretary of state (Michelle Donelan) expressed “concern” that the legislation might whack sites such as Amazon instead of Pornhub. In response, officials explained that the regulation in question was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but was about regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”, a phrase that rather gives away the political thinking behind the act.

From the source (emphasis mine):

> On 18 March 2024, the Secretary of State was provided with a Submission which made it clear that Category 1 duties were not primarily aimed at pornographic content or the protection of children _(which were dealt with by other parts of the Act)_. Rather, the aim of Category 1 was to capture services that have a significant influence over public discourse. The submission offered, as a possible option, requesting information from Ofcom as to _how content recommender systems function on different types of service_.

The quote leaves out "which were dealt with by other parts of the Act" and the fact that the subject was specifically "Category 1 duties" not the Act in its entirety. It also doesn't mention that the subject was on content recommender systems.

_Again_ this is not a judgment on the Act itself, but providing the full context, which does change the message.

0: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v_Secret...

dustincoates commented on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says GPT-5 scares him – 'what have we done?'   tomsguide.com/ai/openais-... · Posted by u/pera
dustincoates · 17 days ago
This is OpenAI's MO. Remember how they wouldn't release GPT-2 because of concerns of what people would do with it?

Though, I wonder how much of it is honest versus marketing. When I worked with the OpenAI team before the GPT-3 rollout, they had a lot of requirements in place about what we could and couldn't do. A lot of those requirements got in the way, so I imagine it wasn't all for show.

dustincoates commented on Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big   eidel.io/exit-tax-leave-g... · Posted by u/olieidel
profstasiak · 17 days ago
Isn't USA even worse? If you move as US citizen to EU, you would need to pay bot h local EU tax and USA tax right? (I am not a USA citizen, this is legit question)
dustincoates · 17 days ago
Not in most cases. According to this estimate, who comes from an organization that is against US citizens abroad having to file[0], 77% have AGI "well below" the cutoff where you would have to pay taxes. For those that are above that threshold, you can deduct the taxes you pay in your home country agains what you would have been charged in the US. For almost everyone in the EU, that is a higher rate than the US taxes, so you don't pay anything on that European income.

_However_, you do still have to pay taxes on your US income if you're abroad. So if you are making money from freelancing with US companies (and, I assume, they aren't paying a European business you have set up), then you'll pay US taxes there, but due to tax treaties you are generally not double taxed.

You do, also, have to file every year.

0: https://www.taxfairnessabroad.org/blog/americans-abroad-by-t...

dustincoates commented on I launched 17 side projects. Result? I'm rich in expired domains    · Posted by u/cesargstn
dustincoates · a month ago
This is timely, as I've got a domain expiring in the next week. It's a .bingo TLD, so at $50+, I'm going to just let it expire.

"Vibe coding" has actually been a boon for me on this front. Fewer than 10% of my side projects are serious and 95% of it are static pages, so there's no big security concerns to worry about. Most of them are joke pages anyway, which I've started calling "Sht Coding," as in Vibe Coding + Sht Posting.

dustincoates commented on Nobody knows how to build with AI yet   worksonmymachine.substack... · Posted by u/Stwerner
baxter001 · a month ago
The fact that you think it was suggested _by_ them is I think where your mental model is misleading you.

LLMs can be thought of metaphorically as a process of decompression, if you can give it a compressed form for your scenario 1 it'll go great - you're actually doing a lot of mental work to arrive at that 'compressed' request, checking technical feasibility, thinking about interactions, hinting at solutions.

If you feed it back it's own suggestion it's no so guaranteed to work.

dustincoates · a month ago
You're misunderstanding me. Underneath the prompt box on the main page are suggestions of types of apps you can build. These are, presumably, chosen by people at the company. I'm not talking about things suggested within the chat.
dustincoates commented on Nobody knows how to build with AI yet   worksonmymachine.substack... · Posted by u/Stwerner
nirvanatikku · a month ago
This article is spot on.

I had stumbled upon Kidlin’s Law—“If you can write down the problem clearly, you’re halfway to solving it”.

This is a powerful guiding principle in today’s AI-driven world. As natural language becomes our primary interface with technology, clearly articulating challenges not only enhances our communication but also maximizes the potential of AI.

The async approach to coding has been most fascinating, too.

I will add, I've been using Repl.it *a lot*, and it takes everything to another level. Getting to focus on problem solving, and less futzing with hosting (granted it is easy in the early journey of a product) - is an absolute game changer. Sparking joy.

I personally use the analogy of mario kart mushroom or star; that's how I feel using these tools. It's funny though, because when it goes off the rails, it really goes off the rails lol. It's also sometimes necessary to intercept decisions it will take.. babysitting can take a toll (because of the speed of execution). Having to deal with 1 stack was something.. now we're dealing with potential infinite stacks.

dustincoates · a month ago
Repl.it is so hit or miss for me, and that's that is so frustrating. Like, it can knock out something in minutes that would have taken me an afternoon. That's amazing.

Then other times, I go to create something that is suggested _by them below the prompt box_ and it can't do it properly.

dustincoates commented on “Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps   smithsonianmag.com/smiths... · Posted by u/arbesman
ajuc · a month ago
> 17,000 libraries

It doesn't seem like "A lot" for a country the size of US TBH.

Poland has 7541 public libraries. Which is 1 per 41 km^2, but of course big cities have many libraries, so the actual distance is larger in the countryside. But it's a number.

17000 libraries in US is like one per 580 km^2.

And yes every school has one too, there's 35 000 schools. But many of these are very small libraries that mostly carry mandatory lectures for school + some classic books. In my village the school library sucked.

I lived in a village of 500 people and had a library within 5 minute walk.

dustincoates · a month ago
You can have small towns with libraries in the US, too. Flatonia, TX has a population of 1,300 and has a public library.

There are probably even smaller towns, but I know Flatonia has one because I've been there.

dustincoates commented on “Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps   smithsonianmag.com/smiths... · Posted by u/arbesman
ChrisArchitect · a month ago
Reminds of another 1980s reading incentive thing, tho during the schoolyear not summer: Pizza Hut's Book It!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_Hut#Book_It!

dustincoates · a month ago
We did Book It! for a couple of years, but Accelerated Reader for most of the others. One of my favorite childhood memories as a kid was having to go to the local junior high, because the elementary school didn't have the test for the books I was reading.

It also made me want to read Anna Karenina, because that was listed as the book with the highest points awarded. It only took me 30 years to get around to finishing it.

u/dustincoates

KarmaCake day1454June 6, 2012View Original