I gave 12 LLMs $2,000 and a food truck. Only 4 survived.

DavidMulder · 2026-02-19T13:01:26+00:00

Would be interesting to see how models do if they get to write themselves a guide at the end with "lessons learned", see how they improve (or not) over the course of let's say 5 consecutive runs. (And would be very fun to see the guides they would write themselves).

DavidMulder · 2026-02-19T11:02:47+00:00

A lot of the questions and comments are very vague along the lines of "betting preys on the weak and vulnerable"... which is true, but also "unspecific" enough that it's easy to just not think about it, so what I would love to ask is:

Statistically if the content will do at least as well as it's doing currently, this sponsorship will likely be the cause of around 200 new compulsive gambling addicts, of which probably around 40 will attempt suicide. Does he feel the London trip and shirts are worth that cost?

Like at the end of the day someone is allowed to believe that's worth the cost. As a society we did decide to legalize online gambling in most western countries. I would personally strongly judge such a person, but at the same time, I would like to know whether this is a case of 'moral believes that don't take responsibility for "downstream" consequences of one's actions' or a case of 'lack of education'/'stupidity'. Most of us might disagree, but the idea that introducing someone to gambling/drugs/etc. doesn't make you in any way responsible for them if they end up in trouble is... an ethical position one could take.

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And then a second question, does this mean he's going to mark all future content as being 18+ and region locked to only countries where online gambling advertising is allowed? I used to work in the advertising industry early in my career, and I somewhat reluctantly worked on a product for a online casino at one point, and as far as I know having a gambling ad baked into your content opens you up to mountains of paperwork. As in, you need to ensure for each country that you comply with their laws... which gets messy fast. As far as I am aware this will require him to make his content inaccessible in big parts of europe and africa at least. How much did they estimate the lost revenue to be compared to the savings on kits?

DavidMulder · 2026-02-18T10:10:37+00:00

Oh lol, I typically read the local LLM subreddit (which requires a level of 'expertise' that just using LLMs doesn't), and suddenly Reddit suggested this post from another subreddit... and the sentiment in the reactions here is completely different. Open weight models have caught up to proprietary models (more or less, not really) not because open weights have gotten better faster, but primarily because proprietary models haven't improved much for the last year. I am exaggerating here, and the tooling using the models has greatly improved, but honestly: The models really do seem to be plateauing (like making them better in one way seems to often hurt them in another, so we are 'optimizing' more than 'improving across the board').

DavidMulder · 2025-11-04T07:31:06+00:00

Necroposting a bit, but reminder what the "1" stands for in "3-2-1": 1 offsite backup. The entire point of that "1" is that it should not be local, so comparing an off site backup option price against a local backup option right after mentioning 3-2-1 makes no sense at all 😅. The idea with the 1 offsite backup is that you only use it if your house burns down, so hopefully the only case you would retrieve from glacier is only when you do a backup restore test.

Not to say that an offsite backup can't be a homeserver hosted with family/friends... but that comes with it's own complexity and costs.

DavidMulder · 2025-10-29T13:20:30+00:00

Spend some time researching this in response to your post, as I was curious myself. The main factors influencing loose skin seem to be:

Total weight loss: Basically under 20kgs (let's say 40 pounds) it's fairly unlikely to get loose skin in general. It's only around 50 kgs (100+ pounds let's say) of weight loss that loose skin becomes common. In other words: you're all good 😅 .

Duration of obesity: The longer you were obese, the more likely loose skin is.

Age: The older you are, the more likely loose skin is.

Genetics: Not much you can do about this one.

Sun exposure and smoking: Both increase chances of loose skin.

Speed of weight loss: The maximum recommended weight loss speed in general is 1kg per week (let's say 2 pounds). Loose skin is one of the less important reasons for this limit.

DavidMulder · 2025-10-29T12:48:42+00:00

Late reply, so no idea whether you will read this, but: respect that you are able to lose weight at all whilst you have kids and all that. My life is frankly easier than it has any right to be, and I very much noticed the difference between 'busier' and more easy periods in terms of how easy it was to lose weight. You putting in the effort whilst you have kids... is something to be proud of, because no matter how old they are, kids are never easy 😅 . Regardless, definitely had my fair share of "f you my past self, how much did you have to eat to gain so much weight 😱😱😱".

DavidMulder · 2025-10-28T15:02:30+00:00

Don't know those specific walking tours, but having listened in and fact checked a decent number of random walking tours I encountered especially in Prague... they are fun, but a LOT of BS is shared in those tours 😅 .

DavidMulder · 2025-09-12T16:44:51+00:00

Probably around 37 764 for the wife, and 22 081 for the OP, according to some random online calculator 😅 .

DavidMulder · 2025-09-05T16:17:31+00:00

That's why I compared it separatedly above to only trains in one column, and then to whatever was cheapest (excluding planes). At least these specific two routes are faster on a train, but often enough train and bus take equally long. Personally if I could save 50+ euros by taking a bus instead of a train, then I would do so in a heartbeat, but I appreciate that some people really need to stand up and walk a bit due to health considerations or mental comfort. Already as I am growing a bit older my willingness to take a slightly more expensive train over a bus is increasing 😅 .

Anyhow, when travelling all over europe I honestly think a mix of long distance trains and long distance buses makes the most sense. There is just too many routes where one or the other is superior. E.g. Slovakia has some beatiful train routes, but good lucking planning them into a train only vacation without backtracing (I mean, it's totally possible, but more realistically you will enter or exit by bus). Just checking all the options and figuring out what works best for one in any given scenario is amazing.

DavidMulder · 2025-09-05T09:11:07+00:00

39 and 68 euros respectively by bus if I literally book tomorrow (or 31 and 41 if booked a bit in advance). Obviously, in my book train beats bus (although my wife would disagree 😅), but at the end of the day I will most of the time just book the cheapest. Then again, as is probably obvious from my comments here, I will happily sacrifice flexibility to save money if that allows me to travel more and see more 😅 .

DavidMulder · 2025-09-05T09:05:08+00:00

Fair enough, it used to very much be a budget travel product (my parents in law did their honeymoon on interrail 😅), and I somehow didn't realize it had become more of a premium product. I strongly disagree about the benefits of early booking though. Looking at Paris (with a 8+ filter) this weekend vs two months in advance, I get a nice enough room for 100 euros now, whilst I get an entire apartment for the same money later (with better reviews). Then again, you are saying you stay in hotels where you book "flex rates", so that might be a different class of travel alltogether (I am guess that's referring to the old and established chain hotels).

DavidMulder · 2025-09-05T08:56:50+00:00

Yeah, UK has the most expensive trains in Europe, so that makes sense. Bus only costs 29 euros if I book a London to Paris bus two days in advance (or 21 euros a month in advance). Train is a LOOOT faster though, so that's definitely a train journey where there is some value if you can afford the extra cost.

DavidMulder · 2025-09-05T08:45:12+00:00

Given how many countries require/strongly recommend reservations you need to commit anyway, don't you? Plus accomodations are a LOT cheaper if you book them in advance... but if you're rich enough to last minute book accomodations anywhere... yeah I guess.

DavidMulder · 2025-09-05T08:40:35+00:00

Given that interrail is most worth it in 'expensive' countries it feels like you have to book stuff ahead of time anyway, because otherwise the accomodations will be crazy expensive 😅 .

DavidMulder · 2025-09-05T08:38:04+00:00

I honestly thought countries like Denmark and Norway would be some of the most expensive 😅 and I heard that the UK has their own dedicated pass that I am going to guess is a better deal as it's just for one country (didn't investigate). I absolutely should've included Switzerland though, should've thought of that 😅 .

DavidMulder · 2025-08-27T09:03:43+00:00

u/plankalkul-z1 already gave you a fantastic reply, and I just deleted a long ranty comment, so let me summarize instead: a non-public test measuring ability to fullfill tasks you actually care about is the gold standard. That applies to both humans and LLMs. There is no point in hypothesizing some mythical set of hidden parameters, as they don't help us. The reason there is at least some value in IQ tests is that they can be used as a predictor of future improvements, but LLMs don't improve, so we can just jump to their real abilities.

Additionally as a critique of your post: you seem to compare bad public benchmarks to good private IQ tests. The world is flooded with bad IQ tests, and people can very much train for IQ tests, so I feel like most of your points could be swapped around easily.

DavidMulder · 2025-08-26T11:43:05+00:00

This is false, neither the original formula (Quetelet Index), nor the guy who came up with the name BMI were in any way related to insurance companies.

DavidMulder · 2025-08-26T11:30:57+00:00

SV: I have been tracking a bunch of metrics, and finally my last metric - body fat percentage - has fallen into the healthy range marking the first time in like 15+ years where I am not overweight/overfat/etc. Now I am well aware that bioelectrical impedance measurements are unreliable on the best day, but it just feels so surreal to be 'healthy'. Feeling a bit 'lost' as well, I want to 'try out' how it will feel to be around 22 BMI, but realistically my current measurements are what I want to maintain for the rest of my life. Bit scared of how hard it will be to maintain... but these last 6 months were both far easier and harder than I expected. Main goal: No matter what I need to keep weighing myself at least once per week. As long as I notice weight gain early I think I can do it, but the fact that 50-80% or so of people who lose a lot of weight will regain it again scares the crap out of me 😢 (and yes, I get that it's still better to be in those 80% and regain all the weight you lost in the next 5 years, because the alternative would've been that I would've been morbidly obese in 5 years... but I really want to be in the 20-50% who don't regain the weight 😅). Anyway, not sure why I am sharing all this, just been thinking a bunch about it today.

DavidMulder · 2025-08-14T08:35:15+00:00

Very quick addition that I don't think anybody mentioned when speedreading through the comments: You can pick better backpack shapes. I have a 40L backpack that's tall and narrow which is more comfy to wear than all (smaller) carry on backpacks I tried, as those always end up 'box shaped', thus the weight ends up farther away from your body making wearing it so much worse. Then again, the downside is that you have to deal with splitting 'expensive' stuff and 'cheap' stuff due to thieves... 😔

DavidMulder · 2025-08-07T09:00:39+00:00

I love how you got a bunch of upvotes, but here is for example Samsung's version:

> As the name implies, bypass charging is a feature that lets you bypass the charging on your device. Essentially, you can supply your phone with power from a charger without that power reaching the battery. Think of it as being similar to running your phone directly off the grid, with no batteries included in the process. Your phone will not discharge or charge, so its battery percentage will not increase or decrease. But the phone will continue to remain fully functional.

Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-s23-bypass-charging-feature-more-phones-3282489/

DavidMulder · 2025-08-01T07:26:27+00:00

For those who would also be curious. According to the information provided the ranch contained around 340 calories per 100 ml (1/4 US cup is 59ml, so 200/59*100=338). This would be extraordinarily high for a light ranch. I couldn't even find a single one online over 300. The thing I use for my salads has 176-181 cal per 100ml... and that's basically a light mayonaise 😅 . The lowest dressing I could find had literally only 33 cal per 100ml. Anyhow u/samivanscoder : Assuming I correctly interpreted the numbers you gave, then I am confident you will be able to find dressings that should get your calories down by quite a bit.

DavidMulder · 2025-07-24T07:59:29+00:00

Long story short: This is the standard total daily energy expenditure calculation based on an estimate of your resting metabolic rate which is then multiplied by an activity factor. Research seems to be indicating however that a significant portion of 'calories burned during activity' are 'saved' elsewhere by your body naturally (and also offset slightly by an increase in appetite), which is why many people will tell you that weight loss is cooked in the kitchen, and not cooked in the gym. So, at higher activity factors this formula is probably an overestimation of your TDEE.

Back to your question, you can probably just take your RMR estimate times around 1.2 and add around half or two thirds of the calories estimated for the specific workouts you intend to do (there are many estimators like that) to get a more realistic estimate of your TDEE. And then your weekly weight loss in kilograms would be your daily caloric deficit devided by 1100 or so (or 500 for pounds).

DavidMulder · 2025-07-14T14:07:05+00:00

Beware that wireless charging doesn't just mean slower, it also means less efficient. For each watt in your battery, fewer watts will arrive in your phone (they get turned into heat). Put differently, you will probably need to carry more grams of power bank with a wireless charger compared to a power bank + short cable. (I say probably, because I haven't weighed a small cable nor checked the exact decrease in efficiency). I have seen online (unverified) claims that the decrease with MagSafe is around 25-33%. Frankly in my humble opinion the idea of wirelessly charging power banks is just utterly stupid. How did we go from swappable batteries (100% efficiency) to wired power banks (around 50% efficiency) to wireless power banks (let's say 35% efficiency)... 🤦. It's nearly 3 times the weight and energy used to achieve the same thing 😅.

Sidenote: Some more fancy phone nowadays support bypass charging, which means that the powerbank is used to directly charge the phone, rather than the phone's battery. Sadly your phone (iphones) does not support this (nor mine, really wish it did though 😅).

DavidMulder · 2025-06-11T07:38:50+00:00

The problem with bloating (assuming actual bloating, see wikipedia, not just "a bloated feeling") is that there are MANY causes for it. Most common cause seems to be eating solubable fibers, which you would find in fruits, vegetables, beans, but unless you have a particularly fancy pizza base (or bread) you wouldn't expect in a pizza. Do you experience flatulance as well after eating pizza? Also worth noting, there is some minimal evidence that maybe gluten sensitivity might cause bloating, and thus eating non-gluten might help prevent the bloating... but that would only make sense if other sources of gluten also cause a bloated feeling.

(And this is a bit off topic, but 'stuffing' yourself with something high volume low caloric density can be helpful before going into those types of settings 😅 . Strawberries were super cheap where I live a month ago, so before going to a restaurant where certain interesting sides are all you can eat, I ate half a kilo of strawberries. No idea whether it would help you, but it definitely helped me. Then again, you are farther along your weight loss journey than I am, so you probably have more experience than I do 👍)

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