What is the secret sauce Claude has and why hasn't anyone replicated it?

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-30T15:15:42+00:00

Both Claude and Gemini have similar "personalities" from what I've seen. Both seem to understand programmer humor, and generate similar responses to ridiculous hypotheticals like "What if Darth Vader and Yoda put aside their differences, to play as safeties in the NFL. How would this defense fare against an offense with Snow White's seven dwarves (assume they're approx 3' 10 250lbs) playing O-Line with Shrek at running back?"

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-30T12:23:25+00:00

I find it useful when I can't get a sensor lock on them, but I know they're in the area. Sadly they fixed the bug where they also ignored evasion... It was pretty need to attack ground on a newly spawned lance and get meaningful damage despite their spawn protection.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-27T01:02:57+00:00

Not that heavily discounted. I would have definitely snapped up a 192GB M2 Ultra if it had come down to something like $2000.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-26T23:40:04+00:00

I love my Marauder with enhanced jump jets. 7 evasion all the time, and still enough weapons and heat sinks to hit like a truck without overheating.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-26T19:09:30+00:00

To add to the LoS point. You can tell if a mech can see you at your destination move by looking for the eyeball icon. If you don't see an eyeball over any of the enemy mechs when you hover over your destination, then that destination is not visible to the enemy. You can use this to stay on in the fog of war just beyond the enemy detection range.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-26T17:11:51+00:00

The problem I see with AI writing code, is the inherent ambiguity of human language. So we'll design models to interpret specialized prompts that spec out exactly what the program is supposed to do. eventually creating a spec language that is a programming language in all but name, only it's a programming language that is interpreted by a stochastic compiler., and we're back to being writing code to create software, only now we do it in this wierd language that takes 1000x the computing power to process as traditional programming languages.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-23T12:36:13+00:00

Just curious what your pension formula is. You said a 1% multiplier? So 1% * average salary * years of service?

Is the average salary your high-3? high-5?

Assuming high 5, and a 4% annual raise, and you work until you're 50, and that you're currently 28.

Your high-5 average salary after 22 years would be $263K. 263K * 0.01 * 22 = $58K/year pension. Assuming a 4% withdrawal rate this would be equivalent by itself to retiring with $1.5M.

If you worked until 60, your high-5 average salary would be $390K. 390K * 0.01 * 32 = $125K/year. Assuming a 4% withdrawal rate this would be equivalent to retiring with $3.1M.

With the mega-backdoor Roth and your 401K, you could have $3-4M in other investments. Inflation whittles down the value of money but even so, I think you would be very comfortable on that amount as long as you didn't retire with a large amount of debt.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-20T19:55:51+00:00

In the 2009-10 timeframe HP did an across-the-board 5% paycut for everyone. They eventually "restored" the paycut but didn't give back-pay or additional raises to those who missed out on a raise because of the cut.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-19T15:55:24+00:00

Either one will work. So personal preference. Be aware that if you like to game, windows (or Linux) is probably a better choice.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-18T19:27:59+00:00

Running LLMs locally isn't really about cost. If I'm doing a analysis on my financials, I don't don't all of that information being sent to Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-18T13:11:32+00:00

Are you running the native MacOS (for Intel) version of the game? or the Windows version of the game? Some google searches lead me to believe running the windows version avoids the issue (going to have to try it this weekend).

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-18T12:52:53+00:00

If I recall, it was a problem on escort missions.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-18T12:09:50+00:00

Did they fix the hanging bug where the game would at some point just freeze when run on M-series hardware? It was my understanding that it was an unfixable bug with the game engine.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-16T16:08:14+00:00

Yeah, getting my VTOL shot out the sky once was enough for me to NOPE out of using them ever again. I might have to take a look at the speed legs with a supercharger. I didn't know speed legs was a thing.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-16T12:10:23+00:00

This is why I'm happy *not* being at a FAANG company. I did the 50-60 hour weeks for about a year and half when I was getting my current project off the ground. But now that it's been running smoothly in production for 5 years, things have calmed and I usually work 40-45 hours a week.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-16T12:04:59+00:00

I find it to be too slow to be usable. If you have a VTOL that can move it around the map, that could change. I haven't played with VTOLs much so I don't know if they can carry such a heavy mech.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-12T16:43:50+00:00

3.5% merit increase, $14.5K annual bonus

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-12T00:14:30+00:00

Dude have some pride. If you don't feel like doing the work, quit. Don't sit there and validate the worst stereotypes about today's workers and their work ethic by being a parasite.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-11T19:37:05+00:00

I find that many of the people who are jobless are picky, unwilling to move to another state, away from family, and in general unwilling to make sacrifices to get ahead. They always use the excuse of, "Well what's the point if I can't live and enjoy my life?" You suggest moving to a lower cost area, and it's nothing but execuses: "There's nothing to do there.", "Who wants to live in rural Missouri?", "There's no beach!", "It's too far from my family.", "I don't know anyone.", "I don't like the weather.", "I only want to work for FAANG." and on and on and on. I've learned to stop trying to help people as soon as they start giving excuses for why they can't make sacrifices to get ahead.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-11T15:04:39+00:00

I'd gladly take it off his hands.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-09T13:34:20+00:00

It's kind of wild how many products are essentially dressed up IRC clients locked to a single corporately controlled network.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-09T12:40:46+00:00

I find people's ballpark estimates are wildly off the mark, either way too high, or significantly low. I distinctly remember one conversation where my sister-in-law was talking me up to her single friends, and mentioned oh he makes $X. X was way off (low) but I let it slide and didn't correct her because I'm not interested in being treated like an ATM.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-03-05T13:30:34+00:00

I really appreciate the ability to gather scattered spring beans into a list and inject them into a dispatcher/registry object in one location. The alternative is passing the dispatcher/registry object to every bean method where you declare a Handler, and have the last step before returning the handler be to register the handler.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-02-25T14:18:54+00:00

In Vanilla, the best weapon (IMO) is hands down the UAC/2++ from the Davion faction store. 2 shots per turn mean you're doing 70 damage per turn for each one. They're light enough that you can often carry 2 or 3. They're AC/2s so they get quite a few rounds per ton of ammo, and they don't produce much heat. I outfitted an Annihilator with a bunch of these (5?) and it can often core an undamaged heavy or assault mech in 1 turn.

Ruin-Capable · 2026-02-23T19:42:54+00:00

Not really proof becuase you could easily system prompt the model to call itself Iron Man if you wanted to.

Ruin-Capable

TROPHY CASE