sxan

sxan, 16 days ago

Spell check won’t fix stupidity, or bad grammar. “Their” -> “They’re”.

sxan, 16 days ago

That may be what they meant, but that’s not what it says.

sxan, 16 days ago

You can’t install FireDragon on any other Linux distribution?

sxan, 17 days ago

I want to see the posts where they successfully crow about how well it worked. We’re only seeing half the story here! Or maybe after they get their $5M, they are too busy spending their money to post?

sxan, 17 days ago

Sorry to hear that about your dad. I’ve got two of those in our family, too. Well, my dad would be, but he was a cop himself once and is a staunch, practicing Christian and I think his ethos is founded on profound respect for authority - even if he doesn’t agree with them. The one placed he breaks any laws is a tenancy to speed on rural roads. My MIL, on the other hand, is practically an anarchist, except not really; she just thinks she should be in charge, and everyone should be doing what she believes. She’s the one with dementia, and even if I didn’t think QAnon/OAnon weren’t insane grifters, I will never forgive them for what they’ve done to her. She wouldn’t be nearly so bad if she didn’t consume that idiocy.

Dementia destroys families. It really helps if the person was diagnosed early and accepts the diagnosis and gets medication. Undiagnosed, or late diagnosis, of Alzheimer’s and dementia is the worst case. Paranoia is a common symptom, and once they decided that it’s not that they’re not going crazy but that The System and their family is out to get them, it’s just a living hell.

sxan, 17 days ago

Because cops have a Union and you don’t beat your coworkers.

sxan, 17 days ago

How are campaign promises that result in contributions not considered quid pro quo bribery? I know it’s hard to prove cause and effect in these cases, but surely situations like this must be among the easiest to prosecute…

Sure, there’s no "quox part yet, but you can still go to jail for hiring an assassin even if the assassination isn’t attempted.

sxan, 17 days ago

A hedge fund bought Red Lobster.

Sold all of the ladder (so the hedge fund no longer owns the land).

The people the hedge fund sold the land to jacked the rents (because the hedge fund couldn’t have, since they don’t own the land).

And since the hedge fund still owns Red Lobster, they screwed themselves over.

Right? That’s how this reads.

sxan, 17 days ago

Then they’re raising the rent… on themselves.

sxan, 17 days ago

And so raised rents on themselves.

They’re killing the company so they can feast on the carcass. I get it; it’s not like it was a thriving chain with a lot of prospects for future growth. I just think the title of the article implied something different than what’s really happening.

sxan, 17 days ago

So, I’m curious: do you feel soiled?

I once worked for a company that I, in retrospect, wish I hadn’t. It wasn’t as bad as a VC firm (in my opinion), but it did leave me feeling… dirty. not so bad that I’ve committed my life to charity, but it certainly has changed and drastically limited the kinds of companies at which I’m willing to apply for jobs.

sxan, 17 days ago

The Russians are desperate for Biden to lose; they are funneling so many resources into buying media time and messaging.

sxan, 17 days ago

I agree that his team has been extraordinarily incompetent, for months.

He has handlers. They all do; they employ strategists to plan and coordinate getting them elected. Biden has a full time job being president; he’s not managing his election campaign directly. His failing is employing completely incompetent campaign managers.

sxan, 17 days ago

So, the take away is that God is punishing Red States… right?

sxan, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago)

This exact scenario scares me, because what we know about current LLMs is not that they are good discovers of things, but that they are very convincing liars.

sxan, 17 days ago

Oh, believe me, I don’t. At all. I’ve been working in the software engineering sector since the mid 90’s; I’m quite aware of the rapid pace of change in this sector. I was briefly considering a focus on AI when getting my degree, back in the early 90’s.

But this specifically mentions LLMs, and the fundamental way LLMs function is not going to lead to self-aware AI, or any sort of system that is going to be able to self-evaluate for accuracy or “truthiness.” It’s going to take an advance in neural net science; maybe in combination with LLM - but LLMs by themselves will only ever be dumb machines that generate predictive text based on - I don’t know, Bayesian probabilities, or whatever.

sxan, 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago)

What this is, technically speaking, is “wishful thinking.”

sxan, 17 days ago

:shrug:

It’s trivial to host yourself, and super light on resources. Personally, I don’t use it; for blogging I write markdown and rsync it over to the server where Hugo picks it up and turns it into a blog. Now that I think about it, I should probably go shut my WriteFreely down. I have a few pages on it, but I hate web app interfaces, so I didn’t put much content in it.

sxan, 17 days ago

It depends on how you want to write. If you want to use a web interface, WriteFreely is decent. If you like your text editor, Hugo is fantastic.

sxan, 17 days ago

Hugo isn’t a server, per se. It’s basically just a template engine. It was originally focused on turning markdown into web pages, with some extra functionality around generating indexes and cross-references that are really what set it apart from just a simple rendering engine. And by now, much of its value is in the huge number of site templates built for Hugo. But what Hugo does is takes some metadata, whatever markdown content you have, and it generates a static web site. You still need a web server pointed at the generated content. You run Hugo on demand to regenerate the site whenever there’s new content (although, there is a “watch” mode, where it’ll watch for changes and regenerate the site in response). It’s a little fancier than that; it doesn’t regenerate content that hasn’t changed. You can have it create whatever output format you want - mine generates both HTML and gmi (Gemini) sites from the same markdown. But that’s it: at its core, it’s a static site template rendering engine.

It is absolutely suitable for creating a portfolio site. Many of the templates are indeed such. And it’s not hard to make your own templates, if you know the front-end technologies.

sxan, 17 days ago

Everyone remembers his irascibility in the film but ignores that, for the three original years, he transported without complaint in nearly every episode. And it was a reliable, proven technology that apparently only got worse and more twitchy a couple of decades later.

sxan, 18 days ago

I agree with your points, but I object to this statement:

Even if the actor had done a basic check to ensure the gun was only loaded with blanks, it’s entirely reasonable that he did not look down the barrel to make sure it wasn’t blocked.

You and I have very different definitions of “basic check.” Especially when using blanks, checking that the barrel is clear is (a) not hard, and (b) should be considered part of a basic check. It’s no harder than pointing the barrel at a light source - of which, on a set, there will be any number of bright options - and looking through the open breech to see on there’s light.

That said, what baffles me about the entire industry is that they use real guns at all. Or that they don’t just buy whatever real gun they want and weld-plug the barrel; even an expensive handgun is going to cost them $2k - the welder’s time might double that. An extra $4k is peanuts to any professional production. Shit, there must be a company who’s entire business is providing prop gun rentals to movies. You’re already employing prop people, like Adam Savage; have them replace the front part of the barrel with a solid rod of steel. It has to be cheaper than employing an armoror, and safer than relying on processes.

This part, I’ve never understood. Maybe someone can explain it: why does anyone have to - and why does the industry allow - anyone using Union labor to use real, functioning guns?

sxan, 18 days ago

The first management job I accepted (as opposed to being promoted into), when discussing compensation a had forgotten to ask about PTO. I called the hiring manager back and asked him how much there was for the position and he said, “more than you’ll be able to take.”

I think that’s pretty typical of middle management.

sxan, 19 days ago

You don’t?

I don’t snuggle strange animals, or even my friend’s pets, unless they ask for it. I treat humans the same way. My cats get snuggles; so does my wife. I give my family about the same amount of hugs as I do their pets. My sister’s dog asks for head skritches; if my sister asked for them, I’d probably give them to her.

But, no: I don’t go around molesting other people’s pets unsolicited. Nor people.