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rsynnott commented on Google Head Calls Trump Admin's Climate Denialism "Fantastic"   levernews.com/google-head... · Posted by u/voxadam
PaulHoule · 4 days ago
"Fantastic" is one of those words like "Incredible" that is often used when people want to say "swell" or "groovy" but has an undesirable root meaning.

"Fantastic" really means "as in fantasy" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fantastic so like witches and black cats and devils and time travel and stuff. "Incredible" means "not credible" as in like a guy who turns green and gets huge when he gets huge may be a hulk but is not credible. Fox News is incredible.

I had a CEO who liked to use the word "incredible" and when his company got bought by a major fashion brand and he said it was "incredible" my first instinct was to check that it wasn't on April 1.

rsynnott · 3 days ago
On seeing the headline I actually did wonder if they meant it in that sense, but, no.

> and black cats

I feel obliged to point out that these do exist.

rsynnott commented on AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'   theregister.com/2025/08/2... · Posted by u/JustExAWS
rsynnott · 3 days ago
The bubble has, if not burst, at least gotten to the stage where it’s bulging out uncomfortably and losing cohesion.
rsynnott commented on 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books   rte.ie/news/world/2025/08... · Posted by u/austinallegro
rasz · 3 days ago
Variable/exempt VAT on certain goods often leads to funny exploitation. In Poland we got a ton of media (games, movies, pr0n) sold as magazines/books to get 8% instead of 22% VAT.

Here an example from CD Project (Witcher and Cyberpunk guys) https://gamerweb.pl/gry-z-serii-gamebook-w-sieci-sklepow-bie... Gamebook, a book bundled with "free" game :)

rsynnott · 3 days ago
This is supposedly why the Playstation 2 came with a BASIC interpreter in Europe; they were attempting to have it classified as a computer (no import duties) rather than a games console (duties, at the time). I _think_ part of the motivation for Linux on the PS3 may have been something similar.
rsynnott commented on 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books   rte.ie/news/world/2025/08... · Posted by u/austinallegro
PeterStuer · 3 days ago
Does this mean EU citizens can order books from DK at 0% VAT? (6% in Belgium)
rsynnott · 3 days ago
Books are already zero-rated in Ireland and a few other countries. (For a long time, _e-books_ were subject to full VAT in Ireland even though books were zero-rated, but this eventually got fixed.)

In general, sellers are obligated to use the VAT rate of the buyer's country, though there's a lot of messiness around the edges there.

rsynnott commented on 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books   rte.ie/news/world/2025/08... · Posted by u/austinallegro
mlinhares · 3 days ago
Insane that technical debt and general incompetency in software can produce such unexpected side effects.
rsynnott · 3 days ago
During the financial crisis, Ireland added half a percent to VAT. Wanna guess what happened?

(The funny thing is, the _reduced_ rate had been 13.5% for years, but a non-integer rate for the main rate _still_ caused widespread IT problems...)

rsynnott commented on Epson MX-80 Fonts   mw.rat.bz/MX-80/... · Posted by u/m_walden
rsynnott · 3 days ago
Ah, yes, the EPSON MX-80. Majestically noisy.
rsynnott commented on Australia Post halts transit shipping to US as 'chaotic' tariff deadline looms   abc.net.au/news/2025-08-2... · Posted by u/breve
pavlov · 3 days ago
Many European postal carriers have now suspended all package deliveries to the US.

The problem isn’t new tariffs, but how the USA wants to collect them. It’s mentioned in the article:

“IMAG's Ms Muth said the overarching concern is that many postal carriers are not set up to ‘collect and remit’ the duties specified by Donald Trump's executive order.”

Normally tariffs are collected by the receiving country when a package arrives. Trump wants foreign countries’ postal carriers to collect US tariffs and somehow remit the money to the American authorities… But there are no systems set up for this. The Americans haven’t even provided a way to send those remittances.

Obviously this is not something that postal carriers around the world can just spin up in two weeks, just because the Americans suddenly decided they want foreign post offices to collect their import taxes. So the only option is not to ship to America at all.

rsynnott · 3 days ago
This sort of thing happened to some extent with Brexit, too; after the chaos died down some carriers resumed service to the UK, but some didn't.
rsynnott commented on Say farewell to the AI bubble, and get ready for the crash   latimes.com/business/stor... · Posted by u/taimurkazmi
andrewstuart · 4 days ago
Meh.

Crashes come when there was no real business value.

I use AI all day and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

rsynnott · 3 days ago
> Crashes come when there was no real business value.

Indeed. That's why we don't have trains or the internet anymore; once they had their big crashes we knew there was no business value, so they went away.

... I mean, what? You generally can't get a big bubble without _some_ business value, so bursting bubbles almost always have _something_ behind them (the crypto one may be the exception).

rsynnott commented on Say farewell to the AI bubble, and get ready for the crash   latimes.com/business/stor... · Posted by u/taimurkazmi
alephnerd · 4 days ago
If by "thought leader" you mean domain experts making criticism then yes.

For example, Nouriel Roubini calling out the risks of the 2008 Recession before it happened, Michael Pettis calling out the risks of a real estate balance sheet crisis in China before Evergrande happened, and Arvind Subramanian calling out the risks of a a shadow bank crisis in India before the ILFS collapse in 2018.

For AI/ML, I'd tend to trust Emily Bender, given her background in NLP which itself was what became LLMs originated from.

rsynnott · 3 days ago
Hrm. I'd read "thought leader" to mean "hype man"; that's how the term is normally used. I certainly wouldn't read it as "domain expert"; the people generally referred to as 'thought leaders' frequently are not.

u/rsynnott

KarmaCake day22547March 27, 2007
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