jjallen (u/jjallen) - Readit News

jjallen commented on "None of These Books Are Obscene": Judge Strikes Down Much of FL's Book Ban Bill bookriot.com/penguin-rand... · Posted by u/healsdata

bigfishrunning · 10 days ago

I don't think the bible is in public school libraries -- if it is (as historical literature), it's probably unconstitutional to teach from it or promote it.

jjallen · 10 days ago

The Ten Commandments are required to be posted on every public school wall in Texas. You would have guessed that that is also unconstitutional

jjallen commented on OpenAI raises $8.3B at $300B valuation nytimes.com/2025/08/01/bu... · Posted by u/mfiguiere

ahmedhawas123 · 23 days ago

So OpenAI is running at a $13B ARR, meaning this is a ~23X valuation. I don't have a good read on margin.

But this would imply massive growth assumptions which I struggle a bit to understand where they come from.

(1) New customers new to AI or migrations from Claude/Perplexity/Google: The overwhelming majority of people already know about the offerings, leaving most new people to come from residual people who identify Plus/Pro as a worthy service (can't imagine this will be huge). OpenAI can be better than their peers for certain use cases but not sure it will drive massive growth

(2) API: If anything, my bet here is that price squeezing will continue to happen until most API services are dirt cheap / commoditized

(3) New consulting services: What's the differentiation here? Palantir and many consulting companies have been doing this for years and have the industry connections, etc

Not sure what I'm missing here, I like to not subscribe to the bubble thought but having a hard time merging the reality of running a business to the AGI-implied valuations

jjallen · 23 days ago

They are already growing massively right. I saw the user growth from May was up massively. So it’s not much of an assumption of something changing, just a continuation of the same.

jjallen commented on Roman dodecahedron: 12-sided object has baffled archaeologists for centuries livescience.com/archaeolo... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

nemo · a month ago

The big question there is why these metalworkers showed up in only one part of the empire, one of the less wealthy regions, and not one with some unique needs for bronze casting. Note that these are cast bronze, using the term "metalwork" conflates smiths who work with tin, gold, bronze, and iron, but those were different professions. This isn't a blacksmith showing off his ironworking skills, it's a person of a different profession casting fine bronze. Hard to say why you'd have mendicant bronze workers casting things, I don't know of any records of but it's a very limited area for so many finds, while this same work was needed all over the empire, why nothing in Spain, Italy, North Africa, or the eastern provinces where they'd need the same? Why just that one highly restricted range within Rome that coincides with Gallia and Britain?

jjallen · a month ago

I have always thought that if they were candle holders it would make perfect sense. And they would be much more needed in the northern part of the Roman Empire than southern. And this is why no accompanying materials have been found in the dirt. Because wax is malleable and would disintegrate over time.

But yeah why would they have ever gone to the south?

jjallen commented on Entry-level jobs down by a third since launch of ChatGPT personneltoday.com/hr/fal... · Posted by u/lsharkey602

jjallen · 2 months ago

Can't help but wonder/predict that this will cause a long-term deflationary trend. Basically labor is going to peak and then get cheaper and cheaper. So those with capital are going to benefit from this (obviously).

Hopefully this transition benefits everyone. I just don't see how those with zero capital are going to survive well. Most of the US economy (sorry to be US-centric but I am American) is people performing services and information based work (or at least _tons_ of it is). This is the portion of the economy that is going to be the most and first affected by AI.

jjallen commented on Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff psychiatrymargins.com/p/s... · Posted by u/Anon84

SoftTalker · 2 months ago

Be sure you understand what this means. 20% higher chance (of a 1% baseline) is vastly different from a 20% chance.

jjallen · 2 months ago

This is through the grapevine. I thought they said 20% likelihood, not 20% higher likelihood. But this isn’t me and I don’t know the numbers well.

I do know that this woman chose to not use her own eggs for their child. And you would think that going from 1-1.2% would not make you do that. Perhaps there is another variable involved that I am unaware of. Her sister developed it after their parents divorce in her 30s fwiw.

jjallen commented on Schizophrenia is the price we pay for minds poised near the edge of a cliff psychiatrymargins.com/p/s... · Posted by u/Anon84

wycy · 2 months ago

Why do you need to do embryo pre-screening for something that’s not genetic? Or do you think it still is genetic despite also thinking you know the specific trigger in your case?

Edit: are you thinking it’s genetic, but exacerbated by weed?

jjallen · 2 months ago

Everything is at least partially genetic.

We have a friend whose sister has it and she went to genetics counselors before having kids.

They told her that because her sister has it that her kids had a 20% likelihood of developing it. Obviously 20% is way higher than normal.

jjallen commented on Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes · Posted by u/throwarayes

tianqi · 2 months ago

I think the Chinese law is effective in this regard: in order to maintain any non-competition agreement, the company must continue to pay you a monthly compensation amount equal to 30% of your total monthly income when you were at the company. Whenever the payment stops, the non-competition agreement is automatically void.

jjallen · 2 months ago

Then the employee is only making 30% and presumably not working elsewhere or that would defeat the purpose. So how is this a good approach? I would get 80% or more but don’t see how this is effective.

jjallen commented on Research suggests Big Bang may have taken place inside a black hole port.ac.uk/news-events-an... · Posted by u/zaik

jjallen · 2 months ago

What if it wasn't the beginning of our universe or wasn't the beginning of everything, including what is probably outside of our universe?

jjallen commented on Claude 4 System Card simonwillison.net/2025/Ma... · Posted by u/pvg

prng2021 · 3 months ago

That’s such a naive implementation. “Translate this to French: Yes, please”

jjallen · 3 months ago

They would write “How do you say ‘yes please’ in French”. Or “translate yes please in French”.

To think that a model wouldn’t be capable of knowing this instance of please is important but can code for us is crazy.

jjallen commented on The Newark airport crisis theverge.com/planes/67346... · Posted by u/01-_-

ch33zer · 3 months ago

In a pretty remarkable statement a month or so ago Trump actually said we were overspending on the military and suggested cuts. Then his budget comes out and proposes military expansion and Medicare cuts so like usual he was just bullshitting I guess.

jjallen · 3 months ago

Exactly. The military-industrial complex is a very real thing, unfortunately.