I think this is an odd idea. For a lot of reasons, but one is simply that higher level languages _tend_ to be terser, and context window matters for LLMs. Expressing more in less is valuable.
Readit Newsmatthewowen commented on If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C? stephenramsay.net/posts/v... · Posted by u/sramsay
matthewowen commented on Removing juries: 'A move towards an authoritarian state' theguardian.com/law/2025/... · Posted by u/binning
It’s a silly bit of theater and American exceptionalism.
Infamously, “grand juries” are supposed to be a check against bringing frivolous charges, but they’ve never done this: there’s a famous quote about a prosecutor being able to get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. They’re also used to kill trials which are politically inconvenient but which the government doesn’t want to take the blame for burying, usually for killer cops: just tell the grand jury not to indict and then say “welp, nothing we could do.”
All the romantic stories about jury nullification being a check against government overreach are also crap. Historically the most common use in practice, by far, was when juries would exonerate people who’d been caught dead-to-rights lynching black men.
Ironically, grand juries refusing to indict frivolous political charges has been in the news quite a lot in the past couple of months.
It's true that jury trials have a less than perfect history of applying justice (though of course I think it's fair to say that the judges presiding over those trials exhibited similar trials so the counterfactual of a bench trial may have been the same outcome). That said, my understanding is that jury trials are just generally favorable to defendants compared to bench trials.
FWIW jury trials are arguably less vulnerable to corruption, which is a benefit. Would be hard to pull off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal#Criminal... (which wrongly put thousands of children in jail for the financial benefit of judges) with juries.
I think calling it 'American exceptionalism" is a little reductive. The idea that a jury trial is a protector of civil rights in a system that upholds the law as something no-one is above literally dates back to Magna Carta. Suggesting that this throughline of civil liberty is "silly theater' is not a serious proposition.
matthewowen commented on OpenAI needs to raise at least $207B by 2030 ft.com/content/23e54a28-6... · Posted by u/akira_067
It's sort of hard to judge this.
The article mostly focuses on ChatGPT uses, but hard to say if ChatGPT is going to be the main revenue driver. It could be! Also unclear if the underlying report is underconsidering the other products.
It also estimates that LLM companies will capture 2% of the digital advertising market, which seems kind of low to me. There will be challenges in capturing it and challenges with user trust, but it seems super promising because it will likely be harder to block and has a lot of intent context that should make it like search advertising++. And for context, search advertising is 40% of digital ad revenue.
Seems like the error bars have to be pretty big on these estimates.
Occams Razor says no.
A proper ebike won't stand a chance against the modern queen stage of the tour de france, even if ridden by a professional with appropriate gears otherwise, because the battery would run out half way on the first HC and it would just be a very heavy bike for the rest of the stage.
Same with a tiny motor - you gain tiny amount of force but you'll have to carry a full bidon with you on all the climbs, not to mention that the delicate mechanism can break easily.
I'd rather believe they're doping.
but cycling races are won by being able to put out a critical extra 50 watts for a few minutes at a key point in the race. I don't think anyone is trying to motor the whole way up a climb, but I can imagine how you could have a useful motor if you're just trying to run for ten minutes total? at that point it's analagous to the <250g drones that are out there.
I am definitely a layperson when it comes to organized sports, but from my POV it seems like competitive cycling attracts WAY more fraud/cheating/doping/etc. than many other kinds of sports. At least I have heard about it a lot more. I wonder why that is.
there's probably just as much doping in distance running but it's easier to evade (top athletes spend most of the year in countries that have limited interest in testing)
matthewowen commented on The $25k car is going extinct? media.hubspot.com/why-the... · Posted by u/pseudolus
> Standard plan is £5.99 in UK, €7.99 in france, $7.99 in the US. So the US is the cheapest of those after currency conversion
Standard with ads, which is distorting because ads have a different cost and benefit (more expensive and lucrative in the US). Standard Standard is 14.99€ in France, £12.99 in the UK, $17.99 in the US.
> US median price in 2022: $10.53. In the UK, £7.69 == $10.54 (uncanny tbh)
2022 is distorted due to Covid.
> > groceries
> https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/360768/what-a-basket-o... puts the US at $52.80, France at $51.08.
I like how you picked France, not Poland at $27, Spain at $35, UK at $35, Ireland at $39, Belgium at $42, Italy at $44, Germany at $46, etc.
> I'm genuinely struggling to understand where you are pulling these conclusions from because they don't fit the trivially searchable data, nor do they fit the anecdotal conclusions that I think most people would make from spending time in these places.
From visiting the US multiple times over relatively extended periods (few weeks at a time) over the past few years, while living and travelling extensively over the EU. Plus anecdotes from the internet. A lot of things are more expensive, when you count everything (tax, tips, etc).
> Yes, they're more favorable
You said they're favourable, not more favourable than e.g. in the UK. What's the average APR?
> You were the first person in this thread to bring up GDP per capita! The person you are replying to said "richer".
The only metric by which Mississipi is "richer" than France is GDP/GDP per capita.
> Standard with ads, which is distorting because ads have a different cost and benefit (more expensive and lucrative in the US). Standard Standard is 14.99€ in France, £12.99 in the UK, $17.99 in the US.
so it's 30 cents cheaper per month on that basis. that doesn't really support the claim.
> I like how you picked France, not Poland at $27, Spain at $35, UK at $35, Ireland at $39, Belgium at $42, Italy at $44, Germany at $46, etc.
I picked France because I had specifically mentioned France previously. I'm aiming to be consistent.
> Plus anecdotes from the internet.
It all becomes clearer.
> You said they're favourable, not more favourable than e.g. in the UK. What's the average APR?
I said "better access to favorable rates", not that every person is getting good rates. For what it's worth I would say that any interest rate that's below the expected return on money in the SP500 is quite favorable.
> The only metric by which Mississipi is "richer" than France is GDP/GDP per capita.
Clearly untrue: it has higher household disposable income, almost certainly the most relevant statistic.
I really don't think you're sincerely interested in this topic, you just want to dunk on America.
matthewowen commented on The $25k car is going extinct? media.hubspot.com/why-the... · Posted by u/pseudolus
> You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher.
Income would include the money being immediately spent to cover debt (be it student loans, mortgage, medical, car).
> Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries
I'm struggling to think of things which aren't inflated. Only one I can come up with is gas/petrol/fuel, because there are much less taxes on it. Everything else I can think of is more expensive in the US - healthcare, transportation, food (groceries, and absurdly so for restaurants, for worse quality at that), various types of recreation (cinema, theatre, netflix and co, cable, watching live sports, concerts) internet, phone bills. Electricity is way too location dependent so I'll skip that one.
> But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.
Are interest rates favourable? There are multiple concerning trends (like car payments being one of the top household expenses and people struggling with that, people owing more on car loans than what the vehicle is worth, etc. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/american-consumers-are-incre... )
> You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.
I'm not ranting, I'm correcting a wrong comparison using a wrong metric incorrectly. I don't know what is it with Americans reassuring themselves with GDP metrics, but it's very confusing why anyone would throw in GDP numbers when talking about disposable income and the car market.
> netflix and co
Standard plan is £5.99 in UK, €7.99 in france, $7.99 in the US. So the US is the cheapest of those after currency conversion
> cinema
US median price in 2022: $10.53. In the UK, £7.69 == $10.54 (uncanny tbh)
> groceries
https://www.lovemoney.com/gallerylist/360768/what-a-basket-o... puts the US at $52.80, France at $51.08.
I'm genuinely struggling to understand where you are pulling these conclusions from because they don't fit the trivially searchable data, nor do they fit the anecdotal conclusions that I think most people would make from spending time in these places.
> Are interest rates favourable? There are multiple concerning trends (like car payments being one of the top household expenses and people struggling with that, people owing more on car loans than what the vehicle is worth, etc. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/american-consumers-are-incre... )
Yes, they're more favorable. The interest rates available to US consumers on auto purchases are lower than those available to UK consumers. And again, it's a case where your need to moralize is getting in the way of the topic: I'm saying that easier access to credit is a contributor to Americans spending more on cars. You are saying "oh, but Americans then struggle with auto loans". Yes! These are not conflicting statements. You seem to be attaching a value judgement that isn't there to the statement that "Americans are able to spend more on cars". It doesn't have to be a good thing, but that doesn't necessarily make it untrue.
> I'm not ranting, I'm correcting a wrong comparison using a wrong metric incorrectly. I don't know what is it with Americans reassuring themselves with GDP metrics, but it's very confusing why anyone would throw in GDP numbers when talking about disposable income and the car market.
You were the first person in this thread to bring up GDP per capita! The person you are replying to said "richer". You're the one interpreting this to be a GDP reference, but it doesn't need to be since it's also true with regards to disposable income.
I also don't understand why you think it's people "reassuring themselves". I don't need reassuring of anything on this topic, and I'm not sure why you think you know what beliefs I might hold about the relative merits of living in MS versus various European countries. I think it's a pretty basic ability to be able to decouple the question of "is the median american is willing and able to spend more money on a car than the median german?" from "which country has an overall higher standard of living?".
matthewowen commented on The $25k car is going extinct? media.hubspot.com/why-the... · Posted by u/pseudolus
That's a big part of it for you perhaps, but not for everyone?
IME it's a big part of it for a lot of people. People don't buy a car for what they do with it every day, they buy it for what they do with it a few times a year. If you have a boat on a trailer, you buy a vehicle that can pull the trailer. If you drive to the mountains in winter a few times a year, you buy a higher clearance AWD vehicle so that you can skip chain control.
You might say that this irrational and that people might be better off renting something on the occasion that they need to tow something, or go on a long road trip, or fit more than five people in their car. But people are irrational and they really do make these choices!
matthewowen commented on The $25k car is going extinct? media.hubspot.com/why-the... · Posted by u/pseudolus
> Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans
Funnily your last point invalidates your first. Most Americans are loaded on debt, which impacts how much actual money they have left over at the end of the month. How many Americans can't stomach a $1000 surprise bill again?
> Isn’t your argument basically saying that people choose to buy larger cars when the government doesn’t step in and penalize people for doing so? European regulators basically just forcing people to buy smaller cars is what that sounds like.
No, you're looking at this the wrong way. US regulators make bigger cars more lucrative for manufacturers, so they only do that. EU regulators mostly focus on safety and emissions, which also slightly favours bigger cars (whose bigger price absorbs the safety features better), but not nearly to the same extent. Two of the biggest EU car groups (Stellanti and Renault) both are publicly asking to reduce some of the burden for smaller cars to be able to make cheaper small cars. On the other hand, US manufacturers (even Stellantis' Jeep, Dodge, Ram) don't mind just churning oversized monstrosities.
> The poorest American state, Mississippi, is richer per-capita than most European countries, including France.
GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.
> GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU, and the amount of medical bankruptcies is also telling.
Healthcare is a particularly _atypical_ example to choose, and the particularly poor health outcomes of MS are only partly explicable by healthcare cost/access: it's also cultural and lifestyle issues. So it's rather disingenuous to say "take health insurance", as though it can be used by analogy to comprehensively explain other aspects of American finance.
You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher. Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries.
Would I rather live in Mississippi than France? Are Mississipians living better lives than French people? I mean it depends on where specifically, but almost certainly no. Of course having more money doesn't necessarily make a place better to live in.
But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.
You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.
I don't think class action lawsuit is needed here.
It's enough for one case to get to SCOTUS and then we will hear their opinion about how 14th amendment should be interpreted.
It will be an interesting case I think both 4-5 against and 5-4 in favor of changing the interpretation is possible (with 3-6 and 6-3 less likely outcomes).
The problem (which Sotomayor raises in her dissent, pages 94 and 95 of the PDF) is that it may never reach the supreme court:
> There is a serious question, moreover, whether this Court will ever get the chance to rule on the constitutionality of a policy like the Citizenship Order. Contra, ante, at 6 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.) (“[T]he losing parties in the courts of appeals will regularly come to this Court in matters involving major new federal statutes and executive actions”). In the ordinary course, parties who prevail in the lower courts generally cannot seek review from this Court, likely leaving it up to the Government’s discretion whether a petition will be filed here. These cases prove the point: Every court to consider the Citizenship Order’s merits has found that it is unconstitutional in preliminary rulings. Because respondents prevailed on the merits and received universal injunctions, they have no reason to file an appeal. The Government has no incentive to file a petition here either, because the outcome of such an appeal would be preordained. The Government recognizes as much, which is why its emergency applications challenged only the scope of the preliminary injunctions