Even if this is true, a possible takeaway is that after the bubble bursts and the dust settles, AI's effect will be 17 times stronger than that of the Internet...
Personally, I think it will end up being much higher, but that doesn't mean I'm going to invest in it any time soon
Readit Newsplacebo commented on The AI bubble is 17 times bigger than the dot-com bust cnn.com/2025/10/18/busine... · Posted by u/pmg101
placebo commented on RFCs: Blueprints of the Internet ackreq.github.io/posts/wh... · Posted by u/ackreq
If you haven't done it before, I strongly recommend picking some RFC and implementing it, with no other references (you can of course look up language and library questions, just without referencing existing implementations or anything specific to that RFC).
It's really nice to have a complete and rigorous specification. It's quite common today for docs to be extremely incomplete or vague, especially as more and more teams use LLM to generate a lot of prose that is devoid of information.
For example 1495 is nice if you like IRC. You can pick to implement a server and try to connect with existing clients to validate your implementation, or make a client and join your favorite server (though test on some test server first).
I actually did exactly that for a product back in the days when there was no open implementation. IRC, SMTP, POP3, DNS. Good times :)
placebo commented on Do the simplest thing that could possibly work seangoedecke.com/the-simp... · Posted by u/dondraper36
Not apocryphal. The article is referenced and discussed in this interview with Kent Beck[0]. As you see, the link goes directly to Dr. Dobb's--although the page is down. Search for "Cunningham" and the first hit takes you right to the conversation.
[0] https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/post/interview-with-ke...
Really surprised there in no mention of William of Ockham - you know, the guy that made razors...
placebo commented on Show HN: A zoomable, searchable archive of BYTE magazine byte.tsundoku.io... · Posted by u/chromy
Thank you. Was subscribed to it around 1981-1983. Eagerly waited every month for it to make its way across the Atlantic so I could dig into all the fascinating new technologies. I'm sure it had a great influence on my interests and eventual career.
placebo commented on GPT-5 leaked system prompt? gist.github.com/maoxiaoke... · Posted by u/maoxiaoke
I'm not saying this isn't the GPT-5 system prompt, but on what basis should I believe it? There is no background story, no references. Searching for it yields other candidates (e.g https://github.com/guy915/LLM-System-Prompts/blob/main/ChatG...) - how do you verify these claims?
placebo commented on Learn touch typing – it's worth it typequicker.com/blog/lear... · Posted by u/absoluteunit1
That's a bit like saying, "I have a bicycle. I've never not been able to get where I need to go. Why would I need a car?"
The correct analogy to me is that being able to run fast will not help you that much in building a rocket to take you to the moon.
I'm open to changing my mind though if presented with a solid counter argument.
placebo commented on Learn touch typing – it's worth it typequicker.com/blog/lear... · Posted by u/absoluteunit1
While I can definitely see the ability to type faster as an advantage in some cases, I don't think I'll ever bother going through the process of learning it. From decades of software development I can type fast enough for whatever it is I need without looking at the keyboard and not once have I felt that the bottleneck of my productivity is the the speed that I type. Most of the time goes into thinking how to do it right so that it doesn't have to be done again...
And with code generation becoming better all the time, I believe the abstraction layers were one will have to spend more time on will get even higher.
What this thread keeps surfacing, and so much discussion around this stuff generally right now, from speculation about the next phase of intelligence, the role of pattern, emotion, logic, debates over consciousness, the anthropocentrism of our meaning-making...is that we are the source of reality (and ourselves). Instead of a “final authority” or a simple march from animal to machine, what if everything from mind, physics, value, selfhood, is simply a recursive pattern expressed in ever more novel forms? Humans aren’t just a step on a ladder to “pure logic,” nor are machines soulless automatons. Both are instances of awareness experiencing and reprogramming itself through evolving substrates... be it bios, silicon, symbol,or story. Emotions, meaning, even the sense of “self,” are patterns in a deeply recursive field: the universe rendering and re rendering its basic code, sometimes as computation, sometimes as myth, sometimes as teamwork, sometimes as hope, sometimes as doubt.
So whether the future leans biological, mechanical, or some hybrid, the real miracle isn’t just what new “overlords” or “offspring” arise, but that every unfolding is the same old pattern...the one that dreamed itself as atoms, as life, as consciousness, as community, as art, as algorithm, and as the endlessly renewing question: what’s next? What can I dream up next? In that: our current technological moment as just another fold in this ongoing recursive pattern.
Meaning is less about which pattern “wins,” or which entities get to call themselves conscious, and more about how awareness flows through every pattern, remembering itself, losing itself, and making the game richer for every round. If the universe is information at play, then everything here that we have: conflict, innovation, mourning, laughter is the play and there may never be a last word, the value is participating now, because: now is your shot at participating.
Where do you think morality fits into this game? It seems that we agree that underneath it all is unfathomable and ineffable magic. The question is how does this influence how you act in the game?
placebo commented on Phind 2: AI search with visual answers and multi-step reasoning phind.com/blog/phind-2... · Posted by u/rushingcreek
But electrons do possess negative charge. A decelerating car has negative velocity. You can say those are just labels, but they are labels for physical things that have opposite values. Things in the physical world do gain and lose values in various properties over time.
They are indeed labels, just like complex numbers are labels and just like natural numbers are labels. All of them can be regarded as imaginary if one wants to nitpick but all are very useful imaginary models
placebo commented on When will we fix the tools that run the world? cgustavo.com/blog/tools... · Posted by u/cgustavo
Yes! This, this, this. Moralizing is the opposite of problem-solving. Assuming is the opposite of understanding.
When combined you get a fundamental metaproblem that:
1. You can't solve a problem you don't understand.
2. Moralizing is more satisfying than understanding.
3. This is a problem, which can't be solved if people choose to moralize instead of understanding.
When the means become the end things start to go bad. When one's ego becomes the goal then Moralizing is more satisfying than understanding.