thereddaikon (u/thereddaikon)

thereddaikon commented on How to win an argument with a toddler seths.blog/2025/04/how-to... · Posted by u/herbertl

dkarl · 4 months ago

The purpose of the validation step is to get someone out of a reactive, unreasonable frame of mind into a frame of mind where you can start problem-solving together. It can feel condescending if they're already in a problem-solving frame of mind. "There, there, it's natural to be hysterical."

It's like when your team is sitting together handling an issue calmly and competently, and a manager strides into the room yelling, "Okay everybody, calm down! Everything's going to be okay. No need to panic." It shows that they aren't paying attention and don't appreciate the professionalism of the team.

thereddaikon · 4 months ago

Or the classic example of,

"Hey man calm down!"

"I am calm!"

One of the best ways to upset someone is to claim they are upset.

thereddaikon commented on The Wright brothers invented the airplane, right? Not if you're in Brazil washingtonpost.com/world/... · Posted by u/benbreen

mulmen · 5 months ago

Exactly. Ford didn't actually invent anything. Kinda like Jobs and Woz didn't invent the IC or CPU or even PC. Ford was in tune with the innovations of the time and composed them in a novel and appealing way. His success came from his skilled execution and were more financial and social than technical in nature. Ford marketed cars to the middle class, and paid his employees well enough to buy the products they built.

thereddaikon · 5 months ago

I'm not even sure I would compare ford to Jobs or Woz. Woz is a talented engineer. Jobs was a great product guy. I've always thought of Ford as process/production expert. The Model T wasn't a particularly great car compared to its competition. What made it and Ford succeed was his production process made it cheaper than the competition. But his processes also allowed him to make it faster and he came up with the franchise system which gave Ford national reach at a time when every other car maker was regional. The Model T wasn't just cheaper than the competition, in many parts of the country it was realistically the only car you could buy for awhile.

thereddaikon commented on The Wright brothers invented the airplane, right? Not if you're in Brazil washingtonpost.com/world/... · Posted by u/benbreen

VMG · 5 months ago

The same is true to some extent for cars (Ford/Benz). LLMs will even answer differently depending on the language the question is asked.

Edit: I cannot actually reproduce this with the automobile question, but asking ChatGPT-4o about the inventor of TV yields different answers:

Asking in German yields Paul Nipkow and Philo Farnsworth, asking in English yields Philo Farnsworth and John Logie Baird

Asking about Radio inventors in German yields Maxwell, Hertz, Tesla, Marconi, Fessenden. In English it yields Marconi and Tesla.

thereddaikon · 5 months ago

Nobody claims Ford invented the car. Its undisputed in the mainstream that Karl Benz did. What Ford achieved was making it into a viable mass market product. Ford's inventions had less to do with the car itself and more with the process of mass production. Ford's system was incredibly influential and very wide reaching. But the car was very much invented and known before he did that.

thereddaikon commented on AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court lawfaremedia.org/article/... · Posted by u/hn_acker

mitthrowaway2 · 6 months ago

I agree. The article didn't touch on this aspect, but we're now at the point where even authentic recordings could be plausibly denied and claimed to be fake. So the entire usage of recordings as evidence will suffer a hit. We may essentially be knocked back to an 18th century level of reliance on eyewitness testimony. One wonders what the consequences for justice will be.

thereddaikon · 6 months ago

There's already a process for this, its called chain of custody. If you cant prove the evidence has a solid chain of custody then it was potentially tampered with and isn't reliable.

thereddaikon commented on TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S. wsj.com/tech/trump-chip-m... · Posted by u/perihelions

hayst4ck · 6 months ago

There is no “reason” or justification. The decision to invade has already been made, all these explanations exist for the sole purpose of making it easier to do nothing about it when the invasion happens. Chinese people feel they way they are taught to feel.

China's fundamental argument distilled to its most pure form is "we are strong enough to do this, what are you going to do about it?" A world where the strong do whatever they want because no one can do anything about it is not a world anyone should want to live in.

All of the Chinese expressing these opinions from a position of safety can’t seem to put themselves in the shoes of Taiwanese. The inhumanity of an invasion is being hidden by high level ideas like history.

The American civil war comparison fails. No American sits and thinks about invading the UK to “complete” our revolution and that’s much closer than your scenario.

thereddaikon · 6 months ago

Everything has a reason. Xi didn't make that decision for the lulz. The reason is they see Taiwan as part of China and in active rebellion. Simple as. That doesn't make it right, but that explains why they are doing it. You don't have to accept that but that's what actual chinese and taiwanese nationals have told me and I'm inclined to believe them.

thereddaikon commented on TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S. wsj.com/tech/trump-chip-m... · Posted by u/perihelions

wnevets · 6 months ago

> China doesn't want Taiwan for TSMC. They want Taiwan because they see them as a rebellious province. In their mind, the Chinese civil war never ended and that island is the last bastion of the Kuomintang. One way I've heard it described in a way that is easier for Americans to understand is; Imagine at the end of the American Civil War, a confederate army retreated to an island like Cuba or Hawaii, they took it over and have been calling themselves the real America ever since.

We know this version is closer to the truth because Mao tried to take Taiwan

thereddaikon · 6 months ago

Its an imperfect analogy but I'm trying to illustrate an idea in a more relatable way. If you pick at the details it will fall apart.

thereddaikon commented on TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S. wsj.com/tech/trump-chip-m... · Posted by u/perihelions

onlyrealcuzzo · 6 months ago

> They want Taiwan because they see them as a rebellious province.

We can argue about what the exact desire is - there's 100M people in the CCP - we'll probably never know an exact answer.

The important thing is - China is willing to spend a LOT more money to take Taiwan than it is economically worth.

So this idea that 1) China wants Taiwan for chips, 2) War would cost more than chips, 3) Therefore, Taiwan is logically safe - is a fallacy.

The war in Ukraine is never going to pay off for Russia. They're not fighting that war to make money. They're fighting that war because a bunch of dick bags got together in a room and decided it was expedient for them for millions of people to lose their lives.

thereddaikon · 6 months ago

I use China in this context to mean the Chinese state which given their system is interchangeable with the CCP. So you can subv in CCP in my statement or even Xi if you want since he is unequivocally running things.

In the case of Ukraine, Russia's (read: the russian government which is synonymous with Putin who dictator in all but name) motivation is somewhat similar. But they don't see Ukraine as a rebellious province. They see it as a vassal state as they do all of the other former SSRs and members of the Warsaw pact. Putin and his nationalist group have a very old world view of things and a very specific concept of what their rightful sphere of influence is and what exactly it means to control it. This isn't even unique to them. After securing power, the Bolsheviks quickly attempted to bring former Russian imperial possessions back under their control. That included Ukraine, Poland and Finland. Poland and Finland were able to secure their independence, Ukraine was less fortunate. For all the talk of anti imperialism, they were just as imperial as their predecessors. So this is just russians being russians and an inability for their world view to evolve past the 19th century.

thereddaikon commented on TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S. wsj.com/tech/trump-chip-m... · Posted by u/perihelions

glenneroo · 6 months ago

You speak as if you have some special insider knowledge.

I personally would guess that the 9-dash line also has something to do with them wanting to take Taiwan.

thereddaikon · 6 months ago

Insider knowledge? Not really, unless you count asking actual chinese and taiwanese nationals what they think about it instead of assuming their world view is the same as my own.

thereddaikon commented on TSMC expected to announce $100B investment in U.S. wsj.com/tech/trump-chip-m... · Posted by u/perihelions

tnt128 · 6 months ago

The idea that the US protects Taiwan from a possible Chinese invasion over chips is one of those things that sounds believable but really isn't going to happen.

From China’s perspective, the cost of war is much higher than the cost of developing these chips themselves. In the worst-case scenario, they would be 2-3 years behind the cutting edge, which is not mission-critical. Most electronics (civilian or military) don’t really need cutting-edge chips, and China has already proven that they don’t need the latest chips to be a significant AI competitor.

From the US’s perspective, if a war with China were to break out now, there are only three possible scenarios: 1. China takes Taiwan quickly. In this case, there would be nothing for US to defend, and the US would have to try to take Taiwan back militarily—unlikely to happen. 2. Stalemate. Taiwanese people fight bravely, and Chinese forces turn out to be weaker than expected. In this case, the US would be in a comfortable position to send aid and weapons to help Taiwan, prolonging the war to weaken China. With some luck, a regime change could happen without firing a shot. 3. Taiwan successfully defends itself, repels the Chinese invasion, and possibly even takes back some territory—an unlikely scenario, but this is the only one where the US would send troops to help defend Taiwan. If the US gets involved at this stage, it secures a sure win, puts a military base on the island, and further cements its role as the protector of taiwan.

If you believe the US will or should only act in its own interest, then its interest is to remain the only superpower. Rushing into a war on foreign turf and losing is the quickest way to cede the Asia-Pacific region to China. So, despite what politicians might have you believe, the US is not going to help defend Taiwan, no matter who is in the White House.

thereddaikon · 6 months ago

China doesn't want Taiwan for TSMC. They want Taiwan because they see them as a rebellious province. In their mind, the Chinese civil war never ended and that island is the last bastion of the Kuomintang. One way I've heard it described in a way that is easier for Americans to understand is; Imagine at the end of the American Civil War, a confederate army retreated to an island like Cuba or Hawaii, they took it over and have been calling themselves the real America ever since.

I'm not saying China is right in wanting to invade Taiwan. But that's closer to their real motivations than anything having to do with economics or technology. And its important to understand your potential adversaries motivations because that will inform their decisions and tactics.

thereddaikon commented on RT64: N64 graphics renderer in emulators and native ports github.com/rt64/rt64... · Posted by u/klaussilveira

mouse_ · 6 months ago

> Uses ubershaders to guarantee no stutters due to pipeline compilation.

I may sound way out of the loop here, but... How come this was never a problem for older dx9/dx11/GL games and emulators?

thereddaikon · 6 months ago

Older games used precompiled shaders. These are inaccessible to the game devs and usually handled by the hardware makers, so the platform OEM for consoles and the video card OEM on PCs. Game devs have begged for the ability to write their own shaders for years and finally got it with DX11 and Vulkan. And that's when things went to hell. Instead of the shaders being written and compiled for the specific hardware, they now have to be compiled for your GPU at run time. It's a messy and imperfect process. EA, Ubisoft or anyone else is never going to have the same level of understanding of a GPU that Nvidia or AMD will have. Often the stuttering is due to the shaders having to be recompiled in game, something that never happened before.