rasmus-kirk (u/rasmus-kirk)

rasmus-kirk commented on Every country should set 16 as the minimum age for social media accounts afterbabel.com/p/why-ever... · Posted by u/paulpauper

knollimar · a month ago

Can I prevent shorts from showing up for me?

rasmus-kirk · 25 days ago

You can create two Google accounts and parental control yourself. You can also use ublock or other browser addons, and of course, NewPipe. Youtube should have more settings for this, it's clearly going down the drain, but it's not like you can do nothing.

Honestly, it's one of the reasons I don't want to pay for Youtube Red, why would I pay for "no ads", when I still feel like I'm the product, because of my complete lack of control over the algorithm and user experience.

rasmus-kirk commented on The Influentists: AI hype without proof carette.xyz/posts/influen... · Posted by u/LucidLynx

jimbo808 · a month ago

Yep - no doubt that LLMs are useful. I use them every day, for lots of stuff. It's a lot better than Google search was in its prime. Will it translate to massively increased output for the typical engineer esp. senior/staff+)? I don't think it will without a radical change to the architecture. But that is an opinion.

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

I completely agree, I found it very funny that I have been transitioning from an "LLM sceptic" to a "LLM advocate", without changing my viewpoint. I have long said that LLM's won't be replacing swathes of the workforce any time soon and that LLM's are of course useful for specific tasks, especially prototyping and drafting.

I have gone from being challenged on the first point, to the second. The hype is not what it has been.

rasmus-kirk commented on Ask HN: Share your personal website · Posted by u/susam

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

https://rasmuskirk.com/

My personal blog and resume. I have written a couple of blog-posts:

- 2025-06-18: Lasso Transactions as an alternative to Copyright

  A Solution to Fund Creativity and Combat the Free-Rider Problem in a World Without Copyright.

  https://rasmuskirk.com/articles/2025-06-18_lasso-transactions-as-an-alternative-to-copyright

- 2024-12-23: Why Nix Is the Perfect Package Manager for Your Steam Deck

  An article exploring the benefits of using Nix on the Steam Deck, with a step-by-step guide to installation and configuration using Home Manager.

  https://rasmuskirk.com/articles/2024-12-23_why-nix-is-the-perfect-package-manager-for-your-steam-deck

- 2024-07-24: You Don’t Need NixOS

  Why you should consider Nix Devshells and Home-Manager rather than NixOS if you want to get into Nix

  https://rasmuskirk.com/articles/2024-07-24_dont-use-nixos

The blog is custom-made, built using Nix and pandoc. The website builder is its own Nix flake:

https://github.com/rasmus-kirk/website-builder

rasmus-kirk commented on To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI passo.uno/letter-those-wh... · Posted by u/theletterf

nicbou · a month ago

I write documentation for a living. Although my output is writing, my job is observing, listening and understanding. I can only write well because I have an intimate understanding of my readers' problems, anxieties and confusion. This decides what I write about, and how to write about it. This sort of curation can only come from a thinking, feeling human being.

I revise my local public transit guide every time I experience a foreign public transit system. I improve my writing by walking in my readers' shoes and experiencing their confusion. Empathy is the engine that powers my work.

Most of my information is carefully collected from a network of people I have a good relationship with, and from a large and trusting audience. It took me years to build the infrastructure to surface useful information. AI can only report what someone was bothered to write down, but I actually go out in the real world and ask questions.

I have built tools to collect people's experience at the immigration office. I have had many conversations with lawyers and other experts. I have interviewed hundreds of my readers. I have put a lot of information on the internet for the first time. AI writing is only as good as the data it feeds on. I hunt for my own data.

People who think that AI can do this and the other things have an almost insulting understanding of the jobs they are trying to replace.

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

Spot on! I think LLM's can help greatly in quickly putting that knowledge in writing, including using it to review written materials for hidden prerequisite assumptions that readers might not be aware of that. It can also help newer hires in how to write and more clearly. LLM's are clearly useful in increasing productivity, but management that think that they even close to ready to replace large sections of practically any workforce are delusional.

rasmus-kirk commented on Banning Things for Other People Is Easy dogdogfish.com/blog/2026/... · Posted by u/matthewsharpe3

pixl97 · a month ago

I don't watch TV for years at a time, when I saw how many gambling ads are on now I was disgusted.

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

I think we should consider stricter restrictions on harmful advertising way before we rush to lock down the internet in order to "save the children". I don't understand why we have accepted that it's companies' God-given-right to blast propaganda which only functions to drain the working class of their money (gambling) and their health (endless ads for poor dietary choices). Why not limit advertisements to at least just products that makes people's lives easier? I especially would love to see more advertisement for rehab centers for example.

rasmus-kirk commented on Banning Things for Other People Is Easy dogdogfish.com/blog/2026/... · Posted by u/matthewsharpe3

RobotToaster · a month ago

In most of Europe it's legal for Children to drink alcohol.

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

But they can't legally purchase/access it without the involvement of an adult, unlike social media. You could argue that the parents sanction social media use by giving their kids a phone/computer without any sort of parental controls, but most parents probably have neither the resources nor proper knowledge of how to sufficiently provide a safe platform for their children.

rasmus-kirk commented on Banning Things for Other People Is Easy dogdogfish.com/blog/2026/... · Posted by u/matthewsharpe3

omnicognate · a month ago

It would be a fun exercise to replace social media with alcohol in this article so that it argues we shouldn't ban children from drinking because drinking is bad for adults too.

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

I think this is a good point. What differentiates alcohol and social media? Well, social media is not physically addictive, but it's pretty clearly psychologically addictive. Along those lines it would be hard to argue that children should have unfettered access to social media. Social media is also _not_ like TV in that there's psychologists and algorithmic engineers working hard to make these types of apps as addictive as possible. Not to mention the fact that children obviously can't consent to having their data harvested, most ADULTS don't understand the ramifications of that, much less children.

All of this also applies to adults, I don't like how corporate profit-seeeking algorithms dictate public discourse and I think it's perfectly reasonable to combat this. The great question is how to do so without trampling on people's right to freedom. The EU tends to combat "misinformation", but this has loads of problems, and I think it misses the mark of what the problem truly is. In my opinions it's the algorithms that maximize fear responses and lead people down rabbit holes that's the true problem.

I think the best way to combat it is by supporting federation and decentralization of the internet and attacking the advertising industry that maximizes eyeballs and time spent on the platform, rather than providing service to paying users. It also has the beneficial side-effect of increasing freedom of thought and speech rather than limiting it.

I know some people see the fragmentation of communities as the leading cause of echo-chambers, but this is not my impression. Actually, the smaller internet communities are often less extreme than algorithmically dominated central-hubs. Pseudonymous small communities function more like the local village that tends to mitigate extremism as the loudest, more extremist, community members can be challenged, without those challengers drowning in potential oppressive moderation and hive-mind mentality.

rasmus-kirk commented on I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too notebookcheck.net/I-dumpe... · Posted by u/smurda

tweakimp · a month ago

Can you also add why and for who you recommend it?

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

I like it because it's based on Ubuntu, so there's almost always a working guide/solution targeting it. It also ships with Nvidia drivers which saves a lot of headaches for some users. To me the game-changer is the fact that it supports tiling window management with minimal configuration.

It also looks and feels pretty sleek.

rasmus-kirk commented on I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too notebookcheck.net/I-dumpe... · Posted by u/smurda

buzzardbait · a month ago

Misery loves company. You won't see anybody telling people to switch to Windows, Mac or iPhone because those people are too busy enjoying their OS.

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

Not really, Linux evangelists are a thing because Linux is primarily held back by lack of adoption. A lot of common issues can be attributed to either:

1. The hardware manufacturer has never tested Linux support for drivers. 2. Some application that you need doesn't target Linux due to lack of users

This isn't everything, sure. But I think it's a majority of the headaches. Thus, Linux-users really want other people to also use Linux, so that companies actually give a shit about supporting it.

There's also the whole ideology involved. A lot of companies are increasingly pushing that you are not allowed to control the computer/phone/device you buy and Linux is at the forefront of combating this.

rasmus-kirk commented on "Microslop" trends on social media windowscentral.com/artifi... · Posted by u/01-_-

rasmus-kirk · a month ago

Microsoft invested heavily in cloud, when LLM's came it was an obvious way to increase profits if they made everyone use their cloud for "AI". I don't think they realize just how much of the current LLM hype is just that, hype. I think they will be severely burned.

Yes, LLM's are useful and valuable, but no, they won't be replacing major sections of the workforce any time soon. I don't need an LLM in every facet of my operating system, just like I didn't need Cortana integrated everywhere in Windows 8. And LLM's are obviously not worth the billions upon billions that are being invested currently.