Readit News logoReadit News
tomxor commented on AI was not invented, it arrived   andrewarrow.dev/2025/12/a... · Posted by u/fcpguru
tomxor · 4 days ago
> The idea is unsettling because it reframes human agency

Not really, it's called discovery, aka science.

This weird framing is just perpetuating the idea of LLMs being some kind of magic pixie dust. Stop it.

tomxor commented on Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden   andyljones.com/posts/hors... · Posted by u/pbui
tomxor · 9 days ago
Terrible comparison.

Horses and cars had a clearly defined, tangible, measurable purpose: transport... they were 100% comparable as a market good, and so predicting an inflection point is very reasonable. Same with Chess, a clearly defined problem in finite space with a binary, measurable outcome. Funny how Chess AI replacing humans in general was never considered as a serious possibility by most.

Now LLMs, what is their purpose? What is the purpose of a human?

I'm not denying some legitimate yet tedious human tasks are to regurgitate text... and a fuzzy text predictor can do a fairly good job of that at less cost. Some people also think and work in terms of text prediction more often than they should (that's called bullshitting - not a coincidence).

They really are _just_ text predictors, ones trained on such a humanly incomprehensible quantity of information as to appear superficially intelligent, as far as correlation will allow. It's been 4 years now, we already knew this. The idea that LLMs are a path to AGI and will replace all human jobs is so far off the mark.

tomxor commented on Accepting US car standards would risk European lives   etsc.eu/accepting-us-car-... · Posted by u/saubeidl
stagg · 15 days ago
Would be great if that was the case in the UK. Currently road tax, or Vehicle Excise Duty is related to CO2 emissions. Road upkeep is from general taxation. Road tax was abolished in 1937, I like to remind motorists of this fact when they say "cyclist should pay road tax". Although EVs now have to pay 3p per mile from 2028, which is a big change. Yeah the super-sized vehicles might pay more in fuel tax and have a higher VED rate, but nowhere near enough.
tomxor · 15 days ago
> Road upkeep is from general taxation. Road tax was abolished in 1937

I was skeptical of this being true since fuel duty is notoriously high in the UK, so I did a quick fact check.

Based on the change in 1937 you are "technically" correct, in that none of the motoring taxes are ring fenced for road funds since 1937.

However the opposite is true of what you are implying... income from fuel duty alone is generally around 3 times larger than all road maintenance spending (a fairly steady +25bn/yr [0] Vs -8bn/yr [1] over the last decade).

In other words, although it's officially one big tax pot, motoring taxes pay for road network expenditure more than 3 times over.

This is why they are introducing the per mile EV tax, because fuel duty provided a proportional tax to road use, but EVs skip that and electricity can't be so easily taxed for road use specifically.

TLDR, UK road users pay for far more than the road network.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/284323/united-kingdom-hm...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/533171/annual-road-trans...

tomxor commented on CLI tool to check the Git status of multiple projects   github.com/uralys/check-p... · Posted by u/chrisdugne
johnisgood · a month ago
I really like your response and your approach to it; I would like to work with you. :P

I do not need a CLI tool. I can come up with a very simple script or even an one-liner (like you just did) to achieve what I want.

Worth noting that neovim shows some git status when editing a file inside a git repository, and there are ways to do the same from your shell.

FWIW, I think this project was vibe coded with an LLM, but if it works, it works, so it makes no difference to me. The only reason I mentioned it is that "vibe coding" is not inherently bad. I do not even like the term. If you "vibe code" without knowledge, then yeah, it is bad, just as bad as a shitty developer writing code is.

tomxor · a month ago
Thanks :D I like working with people who appreciate simple solutions.

This sort of response to complex solutions used to be more prevalent on HN. When I got downvoted I was like "..this is the end isn't it" :P Maybe the unix way is a dying strategy IDK, but you give me hope.

> FWIW, I think this project was vibe coded with an LLM, but if it works, it works, so it makes no difference to me.

I did not realise that, I'd be far more worried about running it than most human coded projects out of fear of it doing something destructive. Not that humans don't make mistakes, but at least they have a mental model and intent. I suppose it depends on the definition of "vibe coded" I've heard some people talk about sending the LLM off into a loop and then trying to use the result, whereas if you are just using it as a more powerful autocomplete and playing captain then that's a lot better.

tomxor commented on CLI tool to check the Git status of multiple projects   github.com/uralys/check-p... · Posted by u/chrisdugne
listeria · a month ago

  sh: 1: [[: not found

tomxor · a month ago
Forgot that was a bash feature..

  ls | xargs -I % bash -c 'cd %; pwd; [[ $(git status -s) ]] && echo WIP || echo clean'

tomxor commented on CLI tool to check the Git status of multiple projects   github.com/uralys/check-p... · Posted by u/chrisdugne
chrisdugne · a month ago
this lists all modifications, when check-projects tells you one line if your project is WIP:

x uralys/web * M www

then you go work with your modifications on your project. https://github.com/rupa/z is perfect to go from projects to projects.

tomxor · a month ago

  ls | xargs -I % sh -c 'cd %; pwd; [[ $(git status -s) ]] && echo WIP || echo clean'

tomxor commented on CLI tool to check the Git status of multiple projects   github.com/uralys/check-p... · Posted by u/chrisdugne
tomxor · a month ago

  ls | xargs -I % sh -c 'cd %; pwd; git status -s'

tomxor commented on Armed police swarm student after AI mistakes bag of Doritos for a weapon   dexerto.com/entertainment... · Posted by u/antongribok
tomxor · 2 months ago
Armed and dangerous until proven chips.
tomxor commented on Modern Linux tools   ikrima.dev/dev-notes/linu... · Posted by u/randomint64
tomxor · 2 months ago
btop is a worthy and missing contender.

It looks quite fancy but I actually like it more for it's functionality, particularly it's tree view for navigating the processes list. I'm not a big fan of full multicolor in these kinds of tools and so appreciate how easy it is to flip to grey scale mode from the built in colour schemes (even from the TUI settings menu).

tomxor commented on Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine   express.co.uk/news/uk/211... · Posted by u/ANewbury
ta1243 · 3 months ago
They could have insisted websites include something like a TXT record saying they are "for over 18s only". Or even come up with a standard saying "this website is suitable for under 18s" under a dns record.

Then the bill payer can enable or disable access for three categories

* Under 18s

* Over 18s

* Unknown

as they are the bill payer and entering into a credit agreement requires you to be over 18. If you wanted belt and braces the phone companies doing PAYG could set it to disabled unless you authenticate your age to avoid the "buy simcard for cash" loophole.

ISPs could choose to implement finer grained controls in their routers. The majority of the big ISPs would likely block the "over 18" category by default.

tomxor · 3 months ago
> as they are the bill payer and entering into a credit agreement requires you to be over 18. If you wanted belt and braces the phone companies doing PAYG could set it to disabled unless you authenticate your age to avoid the "buy simcard for cash" loophole.

This is already the case in UK, has been for years. The bill payer needs to prove age with an ID to lift IP level blocks from some default age blocklist.

It doesn't work well because obviously a lot of internet is shared amongst a household, and the blocklist is too broad to make it annoying enough that any adults will remove it. Then of course you can always just use a VPN same as with the current situation.

u/tomxor

KarmaCake day10376January 23, 2017View Original