birb_cromble
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User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
18m ago
Thank you. I am glad that I'm now immortalized as "that guy who makes metaphors about testicles and office furniture" in the AAQC archive. I feel like that's how I want to be known around here.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
I'm optimistic that over time the industry will develop better norms and understand how LLM tooling should and should not be used
Overall, I am less optimistic than you. It seems like the incentives are too broken for us to reach a new equilibrium any time soon. If we do get there, it'll be on the other side of a graveyard of companies that got too greedy.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
I've seen it repeat at every scale, from legally-a-small-business to a fairly memorable consult at a Fortune 100 company.
I won't argue as to whether your group has some secret sauce or unusual competency, but I will say that what you have described is absolutely not the norm at the kinds of places that will contract me.
birb_cromble
1hr ago
but as a whole I would agree that software engineering productivity has been meaningfully enhanced via AI.
I'm not sure if I would even go that far. I work at a software company, and I do some consulting on the side. I've been able to watch a lot of AI-coding initiatives from the sidelines due to that consulting, and I see the same pattern a lot.
First, management picks something they can measure. Lines of code, commits, and PRs merged are the most common ones. This causes a certain kind of climber who doesn't actually want to be a programmer to ruthlessly optimize for whatever the metric is. Management lauds that person as a "10x/100x/1000x developer" and they receive glowing performance reviews while spending their days giving presentations to their coworkers about how to avoid being Left Behind In the Permanent Underclass.
At the same time, the rest of the team ends up drowning in this person's "work". Their PRs are 30,000 line, codebase-spanning fever dreams that come with "helpful" documentation that doesn't make any sense. The "spec" is under-defined and the code fails to adhere to it. The tests are made up nonsense. Management softly forces to team to rubber stamp the Rockstar's work. Nobody knows what the hell is going on, defects rise, baffling production down events occur, and nobody can figure out why.
The net productivity for the organization doesn't actually change much. What the technology does do is shift perceived productivity into a small group of people who have offloaded all the work to everybody else.
The con man who job hops has been a rampant problem in this industry for decades. LLMs have just systematized and automated it.
birb_cromble
1d ago
It's heavily dependent on where you live and the local terrain.
If your property is:
- Flat
- Well-exposed to the sun
- Up to code with modern wiring
You might be a good candidate.
If possible, try to line the work up with additional major work around the roof or your wiring to save on scheduling headaches and labor.
At my house, for example, I have trees on two sides of my property and I live on a slope that obscures the sun even further. This is compounded by being a very overcast region in terms of weather. The cost of the installation would exceed any reasonable ROI until either the cost of the install dips by ~40% or I have to get rid of the trees for other reasons.
birb_cromble
1d ago
Youngstown isn't too far from Pittsburgh. He might have been a guest at the wedding Rov_scam crashed.
birb_cromble
1d ago
One thing I've noticed is that a lot of these mathematical breakthroughs involve lower bounds, upper bounds, or counter examples, and they usually involve the LLM interfacing with some kind of deterministic tooling.
Sometimes I wonder how much of this is the LLMs themselves, and how much is what happens when mathematicians finally get access to hundreds of billions of dollars in computing power, albeit through a weird interface.
Would we have 5% of these breakthroughs with equivalent computing power without LLMs? 50%? 90?
I don't know if I have a good answer, but I do wonder sometimes.
birb_cromble
2d ago
Note however, that the same growth will make oil cheaper to extract.
What is your thesis here? That LLMs will improve the efficiency of oil extraction and refining, or that increased demand will lower the cost rather than increase it due to energy companies actually building capacity?
birb_cromble
2d ago
Gas and diesel prices are setting records this labor day weekend.
Elevated fuel prices seem like they're here to stay, and with winter approaching, fuel oil will likely see similar price hikes. What do you expect to happen as a result of all of this?
I'm assuming the following:
- Consumer discretionary spending will drop as that money is rerouted to fuel.
- Prices for consumer staples will (continue to) rise due to increased costs for inputs and increased transport costs.
- Purchase patterns for vehicles remain stable for at least another year. Fleet vehicle contracts have a lot of inertia, and individual consumers seem to think the current prices are transitory.
- The healthcare sector may see a small slump. Heavy healthcare consumers are also frequently on a fixed income, and may defer elective care until spring.
birb_cromble
2d ago
Money laundering fronts make the best restaurants. They don't give a shit about food costs. There was a pizza joint near my a in college that charged $3.79 for an 18" cheese pizza, and it was loaded with cheese. Years later they got busted as a front.
birb_cromble
3d ago
The clippers thing is interesting. The story was broken back in September 2025 by a guy named Pablo Torre.
The league and sports media closed ranks and alternated between mocking and ignoring Torre, until it was too obvious to keep up the charade.
I feel like there's a lesson in there.
birb_cromble
4d ago
guaranteed income club
The what now?
birb_cromble
5d ago
My mortgage payment cleared a little earlier this month, so spending is only $196.14 lower than last year.
birb_cromble
6d ago
I used to think this was quite the hallowed award, as it is often used as clemency for more provocative posts receiving warnings not bans
I remain baffled by which of my own posts people consider to be "quality". So far the only consistent property that I can find between them is length. It's a little embarrassing for me, because that usually means I haven't taken the time to tighten up the prose.
birb_cromble
7d ago
This is actually why I was asking about the commodity futures fund in the other thread. There are an increasing number of things occuring these days that seem similar to the runup to the stagflation era. Commodities did well during that era, compared to the alternatives.
birb_cromble
9d ago
Do any of you have an opinion on the Invesco Optimum Yield Diversified Commodity Strategy No K-1 ETF? I'd like to diversify into hard assets, and this seems nice because it doesn't involve a K-1 and spreads across a pretty big mix of materials.
birb_cromble
9d ago
I've experienced what could plausibly be called poltergeist phenomena, so I'm fairly open to the idea.
birb_cromble
9d ago
Has anyone here ever experienced a miracle? I've experienced some profoundly weird shit, but no miracles.
birb_cromble
10d ago
It looks like huel black isn't too expensive compared to gas station food, and I could probably keep it in my car.
What separates it from standard protein powder? The fiber?
birb_cromble
11d ago
That's not a bad idea. There are a lot of Wawas and Wawa competitors on my route.
My biggest issue is I walk inside and grab the first food-shaped-object that I see.
birb_cromble
11d ago
Due to my father's illness, most of my available time has been spent traveling to and from his home. As a result, I've absolutely been eating like shit for several months, and it's starting to catch up to me.
Do you have any recommendations for gas station/convenience store/hospital cafeteria food that might be less bad? I try to meal prep and pack ahead, but it's not something I can do all the time.
birb_cromble
11d ago
Unfortunately this was a brand new and extremely weird issue, so I had to show up in person for X-rays.
birb_cromble
12d ago
(2) a vocalist wearing a low-cut dress
Sure, when a female vocalist does it, it's constitutionally protected, but when I do it I'm not allowed back in the seminary.
birb_cromble
12d ago
I haven't asked, but he's a software developer who is trying to be an influencer. I'm assuming it was either the former or it just turned out that producing the content was entirely too much work.
I can't rule it out. By the time a company calls me, they're generally fucked to the point where they'll call me.
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