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thenoblesunfish commented on Equal Earth – Political Wall Map (2018)   equal-earth.com/index.htm... · Posted by u/bjelkeman-again
rich_sasha · a day ago
I have always found it a bizarre idea that we allegedly judge a country's importance by it's size on a Mercator projection map. Does anyone really think Greenland is the most important place in the world? Europe is tiny, yet the kind of people to complain about it will also complain about the outsized importance of it. Africa, which is apparently a victim of such projectionism, is also placed in the middle because of where the arbitrary Greenwich meridian goes.
thenoblesunfish · a day ago
Agreed - territorial area is only one measure of importance, and probably not a great one. What would be more useful on a wall, if we are interested in such things, are bubbles with size showing population, GDP, life expectancy, etc. (a la https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles&url=v2 ), arranged to preserve, as much as possible, country positions on the projection of your choosing.
thenoblesunfish commented on AI vs. Professional Authors Results   mark---lawrence.blogspot.... · Posted by u/biffles
waltbosz · 7 days ago
There is an Asimov story called "Someday" in which a toy computer called a Bard generates random fairy tales and reads them to children.

In the story two children try to hack their Bard, to make it tell more interesting modern stories, by feeding it a new vocabulary of modern words. In the end, it just generates the same old fairy tale plots using the new words it has learned.

I really feel like that story embodies today's AI generated stories. I've tried to get ChatGPT to generate original fairy tales and whatever plot prompt I give it, it spits out what is essentially the same dull story every time.

I always enjoy spotting a good anachronism in a sci-fi story (societies with space travel but still use typewriters), but this is a case of really spot on prediction.

thenoblesunfish · 7 days ago
Is this why the Google product (now just called Gemini) was called that?
thenoblesunfish commented on “Good first issues” are usually not good first issues   am17an.bearblog.dev/why-g... · Posted by u/am17an
thenoblesunfish · 25 days ago
This might just be an instance of a larger problem: it's a lot of work to onboard people. To really do it well requires personal attention.
thenoblesunfish commented on I know when you're vibe coding   alexkondov.com/i-know-whe... · Posted by u/thunderbong
thenoblesunfish · 25 days ago
The author is undermining their own point by calling the vibe code "maintainable", when the whole point of the post is that it's not.
thenoblesunfish commented on Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?   washingtonpost.com/world/... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
gwelson · a month ago
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.
thenoblesunfish · a month ago
Relative to other sports it doesn't require much skill that can't be easily quantified. The person who can produce the most Watts over the required window is a strong favorite. I assume that doping simply makes a difference in a way it doesn't for skiing or soccer, and probably not as much as even swimming or running.
thenoblesunfish commented on Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?   washingtonpost.com/world/... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
Steve16384 · a month ago
Any headline with a question mark at the end is usually answered with "no".
thenoblesunfish · a month ago
True, but in this case the story is about the suspicions of cheating themselves, and the new checks, so fair enough.
thenoblesunfish commented on The Promised LAN   tpl.house/... · Posted by u/Bogdanp
PcChip · a month ago
This sounds really interesting and something I'd be into

no word on how to join though

thenoblesunfish · a month ago
Read the linked manifesto. I think the idea is to inspire you to set up your own, rather than join this one.
thenoblesunfish commented on TODOs aren't for doing   sophiebits.com/2025/07/21... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
thenoblesunfish · a month ago
It seems pointless to write "TODO" if it's not, you know, to do. Yes you should write comments describing ways the code can be inproved, but those can just be comments that don't confuse other people, not to mention trip all sorts of code highlighting and automated checks.
thenoblesunfish commented on Why is AI so slow to spread?   economist.com/finance-and... · Posted by u/1vuio0pswjnm7
thenoblesunfish · a month ago
Maybe I'm naive, but .. aren't businesses slow to adopt anything new, unless possibly when it's giving their competition a large, obvious advantage, or when it's some sort of plug-and-play, black box improvement where you just trade dollars for efficiency ? "AI" tools may be very promising for lots of things but they require people to do things differently, which people are slow to do. (Even as someone who works in the tech industry, it's not like my workflow has changed all that much with these new tools, and my employer has to be much faster than average)
thenoblesunfish commented on The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million   calvin.sh/blog/fed-lie/... · Posted by u/c249709
thenoblesunfish · 2 months ago
It does contain $1,000,000, just not exactly that much.

u/thenoblesunfish

KarmaCake day1002April 13, 2020View Original