birb_cromble
No bio...
User ID: 3236
If Scott Adams weren't dead, the current business zeitgeist around LLMs would kill him.
birb_cromble
18hr ago
I don't say shit. I've chosen to remain an IC so I don't have to deal with that kind of problem.
birb_cromble
18hr ago
We recently caught an interviewee typing our questions into an LLM and reading the responses back to us verbatim. She didn't even bother to change the pronouns to make it make sense.
birb_cromble
18hr ago
Google's AI is embarrassingly bad.
This is the technology that's going to completely upend the world order?
I think LLM-tech is over-hyped, and I think this site's rationalist/EA DNA makes its commentariat hype it even above that over-credulous baseline.
Even still, it's probably unfair to judge the current state of the LLM frontier by whatever Google is doing. Their latest Gemini models are dogshit, and anecdotally represent a regression over previous releases. The fact that they can't even get a new pro model out the door reinforces my opinion.
My work is using it along with GPT for various tasks. Management loves Gemini for some reason. It can't even consistently summarize emails. It will hallucinate basic things like who said what, or even completely invert the plain statements of speakers. This doesn't do too much damage, because management tended to hallucinate a lot in the first place, so all we've really done is streamline their rejection of reality.
When I have tried to use it for coding tasks, it frequently shits the bed because it invents APIs that don't exist, refuses to use tool calls, and goes into schizophrenic reasoning loops. I use it because politics demand that I be a team player, but at this point I'm pretty sure I've already lost more time to it than I will ever save.
In contrast, the latest GPT models are... OK I guess. They still hallucinate once you go a few steps off the beaten path, but it's not omnipresent and endemic like it is with the Gemini lineage. I think it's insane that we've spent nearly a decade and approximately 50 Manhattan projects worth of money to accomplish that level of utility, but it's... OK.
birb_cromble
1d ago
I was also going to say Emma Stone, mostly due to their appearances in the better SNL sketches of the last decade.
birb_cromble
1d ago
I'm also a huge fan of support builds in Darktide.
What are you using for that? I bounce between taunt ogryn, bubble psyker, and CDR-drugs hive scum.
birb_cromble
2d ago
not very well-paying
What do you consider very well paying?
I started programming for money in the 90s and I could make more in a day programming than I could in a week delivering pizzas. Maybe my calibration for very well paying is fucked, but that seems pretty good to me.
birb_cromble
2d ago
A good grilled sausage in a roll with all the fixings is hard to beat
birb_cromble
2d ago
It's tragic. Local libraries were a refuge for me growing up. Learning that there was a place with air conditioning and more books than I could ever read, for free, only an hour and a half's walk away, was one of the most mind-blowing things that ever happened to me.
birb_cromble
2d ago
I would imagine we've invented new ways of making fast food more expensive.
Franchise fees and real estate costs have gotten bonkers over the last ten years. Unless you're a real estate company masquerading as a fast food joint like McDonald's, this can be back-breaking.
Sometimes I feel like the data is capturing an accurate average of a highly lumpy picture.
My extended family is scattered to the four winds. The difference in outcomes in different circumstances and different regions is shocking.
The lucky ones in Northern Virginia are doing great. They all have six figure government-adjacent jobs and they bought homes before the real estate market exploded. Their retirement funds are bursting at the seams and their hardest decisions are whether Becky is taking dance lessons or violin lessons this year. The unlucky ones in Northern Virginia either live in run down shitty rentals an hour and a half away from their jobs that cost an increasing fraction of their paycheck every year, or they're reaching the point where they have to sell their farms.
The lucky ones in Pennsylvania are doing great. They work in healthcare or education and they bought their homes before the real estate market exploded. I don't think they could get fired unless they committed a felony on the clock. The unlucky ones in Pennsylvania can't hold down a decent job because the plants keep closing, and several have had to sell their homes because they have to desperately move around to follow the work. The skyrocketing cost of rent makes it harder and harder every year.
I have no lucky relatives in Kentucky. They're all doing their best to not starve to death as they try to recover from the floods a few years ago. There's very little work. The environment is hard on cars. It's reaching the point where they can't even afford to move out of the area. Drugs are a common escape.
I don't have any more relatives in West Virginia. They're all dead. The deaths over the last five years were not due to natural causes.
I don't disagree with @iprayiam3. I also don't disagree with all the people telling him that he's wrong because Actually Look at Line - Line Go Up. Line Definitely Go Up. I've read the same graphs as everybody else. I can't disagree with the direction that Line Going.
On the other hand, it feels like the truth of the average person doing better is obscuring another, separate truth, which is that the American middle class lifestyle is more precarious than ever, and a concerning number of people are falling through the cracks. It points to a structural weakness in our country that troubles me, both because it's a structural weakness and because so many people choose to use Line Going Up to avoid even discussing it.
My cousin who died of a fentanyl overdose after he got hurt in a forklift accident doesn't give a shit about how big his TV is. His widow doesn't really care either.
My cousin who's working 60 hours a week at three jobs just to make rent is doing his best. He's working far harder than I do. When my uncle smugly tells him that he "should invest in them mutual funds, boy", he's missing the entire damned point.
I'm reminded of a quote from Jeff Bezos
When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. It doesn't mean you just slavishly follow the anecdotes, then. It means you go examine the data. It's usually not that the data is being miscollected. It's usually that you're not collecting the right thing. If you have a bunch of customers complaining about something, and at the same time, your metrics look like they shouldn't be complaining, you should doubt the metrics.
Clearly, a lot of people think something is wrong in this country. It's easy to suggest that the people complaining are retarded, lazy, and wrong. After all, Line Going Up! Look at Line! If Line Go Up, why aren't you Going Up along with aforementioned Line? The thing is, that's exactly what the quote above is trying to warn us about. But if that's true, what the hell is actually wrong? What data are we missing that prevents us from getting a clearer picture?
I have some thoughts. I don't know if they're complete, or even correct, but I want to get them down.
One thing I've mentioned repeatedly above is the cost of housing. I don't think it's the whole picture, but it really seems like housing instability has an outsized psychological impact. It also tends to be the biggest single monthly cost most people have, so even a small percentile increase tends to be a big bottom line number.
At the same time, there are fewer and fewer places where a person can exist in public for extended periods without a financial transaction involved. This goes back to the $20 burrito. Maybe it's not universal, but for hundreds of miles around me, public libraries are cutting hours or shutting down. Small corner bars dying along with their owners and getting replaced by Another Goddamned Chipotle. You can't shoot darts at a Chipotle on a Friday night. You can't even linger for too long before they ask you to buy another burrito. The end result is that if you want to be out of your house, you're either deep in the woods, or you're spending money on another goddamned burrito in a way that simply didn't happen 20 years ago.
On top of that, job security is getting worse. Layoffs used to be the kind of thing that would get an executive fired, because it meant that they fundamentally misunderstood the nature of their business and client demand. Nowadays layoffs are just good clean fun that will probably result in the bosses getting a bonus. It was a lot easier to have a positive outlook about a meagre lifestyle if you know it represented a solid floor. That's less true in the year of our Lord 2026.
Am I ignoring the fact that Line Go Up? No, I am not. In fact, I'm one of the lucky ones. I have been able to capture some of the Upness of Line, and I'm doing better than I ever expected to do in my life as a result.
At the same time, the fact that this discussion is even happening suggests that there's something wrong that we're not capturing. When people say "It's just lifestyle creep," I'm reminded of the line from Chernobyl when Dyatlov says "3.6 Roentgen. Not great - not terrible". He's making decisions based on the readings while simultaneously not considering the limitations of those readings, and coming to a specious conclusion as a result.
Keep harping on Line and its Up at your peril. Calling people lazy and retarded and wrong feels good in the short term, but it feels like it's dangerously close to shooting the messenger. The fact that they're not communicating it in clear, quantifiable terms doesn't mean there's nothing there.
birb_cromble
2d ago
That's funny. I use SGOV for my Roth IRA contributions for the upcoming year, and VBIL for general savings.
birb_cromble
2d ago
If I'm reading this correctly, you have to itemize to get the benefit, right?
I'll be have to do some math to see if that would beat the standard deduction for them.
birb_cromble
2d ago
What's your prediction on SBRs and SBSs? I feel like SBRs will probably get legalized because pistol braces have already made them de facto legal, but we'll see some kind of weird, made-up exception for shotguns.
birb_cromble
3d ago
birb_cromble
3d ago
Spending is $3,091.99 less than the same day last year.
The contractor finally started the work this week, so I expect that buffer to crater in the next week or two.
birb_cromble
3d ago
that pay taxes
The Shapiro administration’s latest budget estimates show Pennsylvania could lose out on about $2 billion in revenue by mid-2031 due to a tax break that some lawmakers want to repeal.
birb_cromble
3d ago
Well, I guess I can stop looking at that.
birb_cromble
4d ago
@stolen_brawnze asked me to info dump what I've learned about fixed income over the last several months. I'm on the stationary bike and I'm getting bored, so let's go.
If anything here is wrong, please correct me and I'll update the post. I'd rather somebody tell me I'm wrong than spread misinformation.
At the highest level, I've been looking at government debt and corporate debt.
Government debt, like the name suggests, is issued by government entities. At the federal level, that includes treasuries, and below that, you're mostly looking at municipal bonds. Treasuries are considered the gold standard for low risk investing. Municipal bonds usually offer lower rates, but are are tax exempt at the federal level. In most states, they're exempt from state tax as well if the bond is issued by your state if residence as well; if you're high income or high net worth, that can be a real win.
Commercial debt is a lot more varied. Unlike sovereign nations, corporations generally don't have standing armies and taxable citizens to guarantee their loans. Instead, there are a handful of private groups that rate corporate credit. Generally, riskier companies offer higher rates to entice lenders. Safer companies can get away with lower rates, because they're probably not going to go out of business before the bond matures.
Bonds are great, because if the company doesn't default, you'll always get back your face value, but they're kind of a pain in the ass to hold individually. Bond funds offer an alternative to this, but they come with their own risks. Bond funds hold rolling collections of bonds and generally returns distributions monthly as ordinary income. Bond funds that hold significant amounts of US treasuries are usually state tax exempt.
Bond funds that hold significant amounts of municipal bonds also carry a tax advantage.
Bond funds have an average duration, which is the weighted average time it takes for a bond in the fund to recover its face value. Longer durations tend to offer better returns, but this is not always a guarantee. Longer durations also carry more risk, because the interest rate is locked into the bonds that are held by the fund. When you hold a fund at X%, it's not as attractive if the same issuer offers the same bond at X+1%. Rate increases tend to make the share price of a bond fund drop. Conversely, rate drops tend to make older bonds with higher rates more attractive, which makes the share value of a bond fund rise. If you're using a bond fund for savings, you should favor shorter durations. If you're using a bond fund for income, duration matters less because the yields tend to even out. Roughly speaking, a 1% increase in rates will cause the share price of a fund to drop by a number of percentage points equal to the fund's average duration. This is why 2021-2023 were so terrible for bonds. The fed jacked up rates seven times in rapid succession and absolutely obliterated a lot of bond funds.
On the corporate side, there are also collateralized debt funds. Collateralized debt funds hold a basket of debt (mortgages are common) and divide the returns into tranches. When everything is going well, everybody gets paid, with the lower tranches getting a higher rate. When things go shit wise, the tranches might not get paid. The highest tranche is AAA, and these funds tend to be very safe by the standards of corporate debt.
Tickers
Ultra Short term treasuries: I like VBIL. SGOV is also good. Average duration is about a month, so the share value is extremely stable. You can see a clear sawtooth pattern every month as the value builds up before a distribution. I like this as an enhanced savings account that has state tax advantages.
Short term treasuries: SCHO and VGSH. I haven't found a particular use for these. Average duration is just shy of two years.
Weird outliers: Bondbloxx is doing interesting under XHLF and XONE. These offer a six month and one year duration, respectively. I'm also looking at BOXX, which is doing some sort of synthetic fund that converts returns into capital appreciation for tax efficiency. I'm still not sure how that works or how it's legal.
Collateralized debt: My go to here is JAAA. It has a short duration (about 2.5 months right now) and a decent return. Be aware that the distributions are considered ordinary income. If you want more return, there's also JBBB. If you want alternatives there's also PAAA and CLOA.
Short term corporate debt: I like VUSB and I hold it as ballast in my HSA. It has an average duration of about 1.9 years.
I want to put my balls on the table: If you're bold, there's FALN. FALN is a junk bond fund for companies that have lost their investment grade rating. The thesis for the fund is that companies that were once investment grade are more likely to get their shit together and pay you than their bond yields would suggest.
Municipal bond funds: Not every state has its own municipal bond fund. If you want a national grab bag for the federal tax advantage, there's VTEB. For particular states, California has CMF. New Jersey has FNJHX. Pennsylvania has FTPA. New York has NYF. You'll probably need to check your own state of residence. These are only usually worth it if you can find one for your own state or if you're fuckin' loaded and need to keep your tax burden down. Municipal bond funds tend to have a very long duration because they tend to fund large projects.
I don't want to think about this shit: BND or BNDW. The former is a snapshot of the whole US bond market. The latter is the whole global bond market.
I am very patient: EDV is a treasury ETF with an average duration of twenty God damned four years. The 30 day yield is 5.1% though, so if you're looking for income it's not bad.
Other notables:
Bogleheads like USFR, which is a fund that holds floating rate notes instead of fixed rate treasuries. It has a slightly better 30 day SEC yield than SGOV.
JSI was something of a fixed income darling earlier this year, but it's been having a hard time, having lost 2.68% of its share price YoY. It does have a 5.83% SEC yield, however.
VTIP is interesting. It holds Treasury inflation protected securities. TIPS have a base rate, then a second additional rate that varies based on inflation. In theory, it should help you hold on to value if inflation spikes. In practice, the government lies about inflation and even if they didn't you'd get taxed on those returns. I'm not sure how it would fit into my portfolio.
birb_cromble
4d ago
Are you sure you want that kind of autism?
birb_cromble
4d ago
If you're feeling bold, there's also XONE
birb_cromble
4d ago
My understanding, corroborated by some people in previous threads, is that you generally want the longest duration you can manage without going over the date when you need it.
A 52 week treasury bill coupon equivalent is over 4% right now. That's not awful if capital preservation is a big deal. To get higher than that, you'd be looking at commercial debt like JAAA, and even then you'd have to consider the tax implications.
birb_cromble
4d ago
First, say a prayer of thanks that she's dispositionally a saver.
I do that pretty much every day.
Since she's aware of inflation, I've been gently pushing the idea of SGOV to her. I'm emphasizing the fact that her bank is likely using treasuries to fund the interest on her HYSA, so buying SGOV just cuts out the middle man. My hope is that if she can see it grow for a while without any catastrophes, she might accept more risk and investments that have a longer time horizon.
Do you believe you're so bad at controlling yourself that you will spend more than you can afford if you use a credit card?
I've met a surprising number of people over the years who seem perfectly functional, only to later learn that they have five figures of credit card debt. I'd rather not even put myself in a position where I could find out I'm that kind of person. I've got a lot of people in my family with addiction and impulse control problems, and putting a fence around temptation has kept me from finding out I have the same problems.
A while ago, I predicted that we would see one modest federal rate increase before the end of the year.
Since then, I've seen evidence for and against that prediction. Evidence in favor of a rate increase is that there were three votes in favor of an increase at the last meeting. Evidence against it is the recent weak jobs report, which pushes on the other side of the Fed's dual mandate.
Overall, I'm starting to lean against even that one token rate increase. What are your predictions?
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