JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
2d ago
I use Claude at work, and it's pretty decent for most tasks, but for personal projects I don't want to rely on it.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
If your problems is a newest ever fresh from the presses gaming toy costs too much, I don't think we have any issues with the economy. We have the issues with people's perspective. I mean you hear people talking in terms like they're on the verge of starvation, and then it turns out the problem is a newest shiniest toy is a little bit too expensive? Maybe diamond tiaras and Hermès handbags are too pricey too now? How can a simple working man get by in such an economy???
JarJarJedi
3d ago
What LLMs do you use for coding work?
I have a bunch of subscriptions from my employer for work coding, but for my personal projects I can't use those, obviously. I've been using Grok with some success but I recently had some login problems there and I discovered that even though I paid money for the subscription, they have absolutely no support. Like none at all. I mean, they have support@ email address, but nobody ever answers it. And that's all they have. So even though I figured out how to fix the problem, I don't really want to rely on them for anything I value anymore if I can help it.
I am also not very eager to use OpenAI or Anthropic offerings, especially given that they recently made a habit of restricting their models in various ways, I already hit it a couple of times even though I don't do anything illegal or even questionable, just plain old boring messing with code and looking for bugs. And they are all-in on controlling the industry, both by buying the laws that give them the advantage and restricting their own users so I am a bit reluctant to give them money.
So, I wonder what are my alternatives? Something you're using and can recommend? I'd prefer some low-maintenance, plug-n-play setup, reasonable pricing and preferably some free trial package so I could figure out if it works for my tasks. Somebody that hosts open models with good results? Local setup? I tried to run some models locally but it is pretty slow on my M2 Pro Mac (could be I am doing it wrong) so I wonder what is other people's experience here.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Average US gasoline price in October 2006 was $2.32/gallon, or about $3.87 in today's money
I just filled up yesterday at about $4.2. Yeah, it's a little higher. Not enough to scream "the economy is ruined!". Yeah, we have wars in two major oil-producing nations, it's going to affect the price of oil. But the economy is not ruined at all, and there are many more factors than the price of oil.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Not only did the wealth tax fail but Prop 42 banned future wealth taxes and also retroactive taxes.
I am not happy about it. Since I don't live in California, I derive no benefit from it, but that means California is not going 100% crazy but will remain like 80% crazy. Which is making people think being California is not that bad. Which supports turning other states into California. By the time Texans realized they goofed up and 80% crazy is not that nice, it'd be too late to fix anything.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
That's the very sad part. Trump created an option to stop America from turning into California and then to Europe, and then he himself - in close cooperation with the GOP - made sure this option was destroyed. Nobody outside Trump on the Republican team is even close to being able to do the same. So people that want change have an option between having no hope at all and having their hopes up and then immediately crushed.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
would merely cause conservatives to stop trusting doctors, with horrible side-effects
I think post-COVID that ship has irrevocably sailed, at least for the generations that were old enough when COVID hit.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
They say the best time to buy is towards the end of the month because then you get the interest for the whole month.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
OK could anybody explain to me WTF is going on in Poland?
All existing juggling guides for me look like the infamous "how to draw an owl" guide. The first steps are like "yeah ok I can do that" and then there comes the step when they say "after you have learned that, you can easily do this" and no, I totally can't.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Yeah sure, that's like the joke goes: "Can a woman make a man a millionaire? - Sure, if he's a billionaire!".
JarJarJedi
12d ago
O.C. Bible: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
JarJarJedi
12d ago
No. Bernie Sanders wants Soviet Union. El-Sayed wants Iran, and his friends who don't have to be polite because they're not in the spotlight want Afghanistan. Soviet Union is not nice, but Iran is worse, and Afghanistan is worse still.
OK I admit I have followed Ireland much less close than Canada or Australia, so it may be the news bias - I just hear something when something bad is happening.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Ok, yes, for small-time stuff there is. For something like surgery or long-term treatment or complicated condition there's only one system. Sure, you can pay out of pocket for everything and deal with all the billing systems by yourself, but the doctors and the hospitals and the pharmacies will still be part of the same system.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
I feel like everyone here just has employer insurance and doesn't feel the pain.
That is indeed the preferred mode. Obamacare plans were bolted on existing system for people that can not afford paying insurance, so "unsubsidized Obamacare plan" is a red-headed child of the system, nobody really is trying to make it workable because most people go either employer or subsidized.
At what price would you argue that someone shouldn't buy it?
There's certainly a point, which depends on your private risk assessment and risk tolerance. I have employer's insurance, and it's the best deal available for me, it'd be stupid not to use it. But if I couldn't use it I would have quite shitty options indeed before me.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
It won't go on your credit.
If it goes to collections and is substantial (over $500), it will. There are grace periods but eventually, if you don't pay, it will end up in collections, and on your credit report - unless you convince the owner to drop it (which they have no incentive to do unless you pay at least part of it). Once it's there, it stays there for 7 years (or until you pay).
JarJarJedi
12d ago
If you have 450k and dropping 450k is financially survivable for you, then fine, roll the dice. Note though they have literally hundreds if not thousands of people that make a living on getting maximum amount of money from people like you, and they have decades of experience and they paid for all the laws and procedures to be arranged to maximize their gain. They probably won't be able to take your home if you own it, and 100% of your income, but they have a lot of experience of making the lives of people like you unpleasant. Unless you have a lot of experience waging war on the other side, it may not go well for you. There are people who are good at handling such things, and milk the system for years while getting away with outrageous behavior - the question is whether you think you can be one of those people.
Mostly I don’t want to participate in a corrupt system.
There's no other system. Unless you forgo the medical care completely, your only choice is how, not whether you will participate.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Why are people still buying insurance?
Hospital stays are hugely expensive. Some drugs are ruinously expensive (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per month, at least at the official price). If you got a condition where you need one of those to survive, you have no choice. If you're healthy and foresee staying healthy for a year, and don't do any risky activities - like skiing, hiking, running, driving, etc. - sure, play that game. As your odometer picks up miles, this becomes more and more risky game.
Yes, the whole system is horrendously broken and becomes more broken each year. Nobody is capable of fixing it, and every half-assed attempt to do it makes it much worse. A lot of people make money on the chaos in the meantime though. So it's going to continue this way.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
I'm not sure you'd be in a mood for negotiation arriving at emergency room at 3am with an acute condition. You'll probably go to the closest hospital and sign everything they ask you to. And then the bills will come. If you are judgment proof, you're in luck. If you have a comfortable middle-class life, which means having assets that can be targeted, there's a whole industry aimed at of separating you from those assets. Very big risk, IMHO.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
I don't think you can prohibit translating. You can certainly, as a copyright owner, prohibit publishing the translation. It doesn't seem entirely accurate though - she had two of her novels published in Israel in Hebrew, but did not sign up the with the same publisher for the third, so it wasn't published there for five years. From quick research, she eventually found sufficiently ideologically pure, BDS-compliant self-hating Jews to sign up for publishing the third too, so as I understand, it is published in Hebrew in Israel too in 2026. I won't publish links because interacting with this kind of content makes me feel dirty, and not in a good way, but it's very easy to find, if you're into that kind of thing.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
Unless you for some reason live in an insanely expensive area or have to maintain extremely luxurious lifestyle, $5M+ is "never have to work again unless you want to" kind of money even in the US now. Of course, it's not "never can't spend it all" money - if you live too large, it's pretty easy to get through it, but if you lead a modest middle class lifetime, it should be enough.
JarJarJedi
12d ago
You got lucky. Enjoy it. Nothing to feel guilty about. You owe "tons of people" nothing, take care of your family and let everybody else take care of their own business. Give to some charity if you are so inclined (but you don't owe that too, it's just what some people feel good about doing).
JarJarJedi
12d ago
It's not about stories, it's about who is allowed to share their stories and whose stories are allowed to become narratives, and whose narratives are allowed to become policies. A lot of people have stories, but not every story gets to become The Story. If you need a policy that allows unlimited immigration, you know which stories are going to be shared and which are going to be suppressed. If you need a policy that promotes misandry and enables destroying frats, you know which stories are going to be shared and which are going to be suppressed. And so on.
We all know why (or at least one of the reasons why). People are selfish and short-sighted. They want housing built, in theory, but not where the good housing is, because that'd ruin the value of the good housing. There's no real solution for it that does not involve somebody left unhappy. And usually already having an expensive house correlates well with being able to leverage your desires into policy outcomes. So guess who is going to be left unhappy.
There are plenty of housing that is affordable if you don't want to live within 15 minutes walk of 200 restaurants and 50 shoe stores. One just needs to see what their priorities are. Again, there's no solution that would make desirable places inexpensive - it's a contradiction in terms, until somebody invents infinite space and infinitely scalable housing, people with more money will always outbid people with less money for desirable living spaces.
Also, the millennials (not only them of course) have been voting for various state-allocated goodies for decades. Redistribution have been growing rampantly. We're financing and subsidizing megatons of stuff we didn't before. Where all this is coming out? From the pockets of the people, ultimately. Via taxation, via inflation, via costs increases, via wages stagnation, via standards of living reduction.
Blaming Trump for data center buildup is the weirdest complaint of the season, to be honest. Trump didn't invent the AI boom, he just didn't destroy US chances of being the leading nation for the next 50 years by suppressing it. Europe is pretty much non-contender in this, but China very much is. China already leveraged perfectly the reluctance of the West to have physical industry - now if you want to manufacture anything, you have to go to China. Trump tried to change the trend, but that has costs - so everybody is whining "why Trump is making everything so expensive?!" You want it so that if you want to have any AI-related development happen, you'd also have to to go to China? And have China - read CCP - own all the best data centers and all the data in them? That, plainly speaking, is hooting insane. Trump didn't do that - for which I can't even really praise him, as not being hooting insane is not something we usually praise a person for. We are in the middle of a technological change, yes, it will have some pains, and it has nothing to do with Trump. Trump could make it worse, but he did not.
Well, this is something you can indeed blame Trump - and any politician - for. There are limits of what a politician - even the President - can do, and they are not as wide as they like to imagine. But you can't really run on the platform of "You know, really I can't do a lot, shit just happens and I'll try not to ruin good shit happening and maybe make bad shit happening slightly less bad, but that's all you can really expect of me in the best of cases". That would be a honest and a realistic platform, and nobody ever could win any election with it. No, actually, I am lying, this guy did: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16223571/man-wins-council-election-qualified-money-politics.html - but not a Presidential election.
Don't connect them to the internet. It's your choice.
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