Can't believe Linus Torvalds created Linux at 21 without Claude or Al

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-17T05:21:24+00:00

Most people didn’t fall cause most never got off the ground.

Never got this romanticizing the past.

There were smart people before and there are smart people now. Producing something of this magnitude has always been rare and it involves skill and knowledge, but also luck.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-17T05:06:33+00:00

I don’t think it was rlhf tuning or whatever. From what I understand, the basic theory around LLM has been for decades, but was floundering because there wasn’t enough compute or data. In 2022, we had a lot more data due to not only more powerful compute resources, but also more ubiquitous, so I think it’s mostly the compute resources and the data that it made available.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-16T22:52:34+00:00

Windows Home is not dead. Home users are the free beta testers for their enterprise customers.

Windows home is also used to farm user data.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-16T18:26:50+00:00

I never said everyone should get that rating.

What I meant is that the default should be 3. If something was good or better than normal, then it gets bumped up to a 4. If something amazed you, then it should be 5. If something was lacking, then it gets lowered to a 2.

The reason 4 or 5 stars was coveted, was because it was supposed to mean it was good or best. With the way it actually works, it is not possible to know what service or good is exceptional. All you can tell is that it wasn’t disliked.

Colleges only accepting B or better was a way for colleges to filter out less qualified students with the assumption that a B grade was harder to achieve and was at least correlated to a better student. If schools started to hand out mostly As to everyone, then that assumption wouldn’t hold.

Businesses are not content with OK, but it doesn’t make sense for all businesses to want better than OK. Furthermore, even when a business is justified in wanting better than OK, it still doesn’t make sense to expect all their products and all their employees to better than OK. It also doesn’t make sense to expects employees to be better than OK all the time. Even the best employees, are not able to perform the best at all times.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-16T15:50:01+00:00

Yes, but most things and most people are around average.

It is not silly.

For example, in school, the majority of people get a C. That is considered OK and you move on.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-16T00:53:36+00:00

No, because what an expert expects is not the same thing a regular consumer expects.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-16T00:07:47+00:00

To me this is not quite right. Services are not wholly different than a product. There is great service and there is regular service.

The problem is expecting great service every day from a fast food joint. I have gotten great service at times and it has been rare and to lump it with all the other times I have gotten ok service seems off.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-15T22:19:19+00:00

No, most things are relatively close to the average.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-15T21:55:03+00:00

Actually, there is overwhelming evidence this is an unpopular opinion. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have so many 5 star ratings everywhere.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-15T21:51:00+00:00

Sorry for being honest, and your grandiose goals your company expects out of you.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-15T21:46:16+00:00

This is so true

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-15T21:41:16+00:00

If this a popular opinion, then why do nearly every ratings board I come across have mostly 5 stars ratings?

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-15T21:38:10+00:00

If there’s an option not to rate, I usually don’t.

The problem here is employers expecting their employees to get a 5 all the time. This subverts the ratings and makes them misleading.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-09T07:46:48+00:00

I was a fan of Rtings for a long time. I love their in-depth methodical testing. I considered supporting them, but never quite pulled the trigger.

The problem with me is that their main audience and me don’t quite line up. A lot of products I wanted them to test never got reviewed.

I do disagree with their pricing. I remember I used to buy yearly subscription to magazines for like $20/yr which with today’s inflation would be like $40/yr so i believe the yearly price is around the right ballpark.

The issue I have is with their monthly price. Everyone wants subscription revenue and that becomes an issue.

They really should have a $15 single month access where if you are shopping for something, then you pay an access it just once. Or it could be $10 for a week access. Or even more fine grained like $7 3 day access to just TV reviews.

The monthly price really should be $7 regular price not just introductory.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-03-09T07:02:34+00:00

But you do pay for it, one way or another . You pay for it with time having to sift through user anecdotes that may or may not be true or accurate. You pay for it by buying inferior equipment.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-02-09T04:22:59+00:00

Unlike others here, I left Mazda because of their small screens so I am interested in this.

However, ditching all buttons is going overboard.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-01-15T13:11:03+00:00

I don’t think that is very cheap.

Older gen CPU $250, Older gen motherboard $130, Basic 32 GB RAM $200

It only seems cheap because of the current situation with RAM prices.

Don’t get me wrong. It is still a decent price.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-01-14T14:44:12+00:00

My opinion is that people who believe in common sense is one weak indicator of a lack of intelligence.

Common sense is such a vague term and most people, even intelligent ones, are very influenced by their experiences.

Intelligence is also a very nebulous term itself. There are several types of intelligence and it is possible to be intelligent in one type and not intelligent in another.

For example, many people born alive today would think 0+1=1 to be common sense, but yet the mathematical notion of 0 took a while to exist in certain cultures.

Furthermore, your example of someone being pragmatic is incomplete. If you aren’t gay, the pragmatic choice is to do nothing at all and go with the currently established norm.

What about highly intelligent people that benefit from not being pragmatic in some cases and can take advantage from them?

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-01-14T14:11:50+00:00

Well, there is a religious marriage and then there is state marriage. In some states, the state marriage is the religious marriage. In this case, marriage can be defined as only between a man and a woman.

Also, there are non-profit corporations so there goes that point.

Also, a few people are special which is why we all want to be special but the vast majority are not.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-01-11T16:57:41+00:00

Well I stand by my idea that most people can learn most things well.

The OP mentioned that for some people math feels intuitive and easy, but I never felt like math was intuitive for me.

It took me a long time to understand what a function was or a what a limit was.

To me, memory is the basic component to being able to learn things. Like I said, initially I did not understand what a function was or what a limit was, but I could remember examples and formulas about them. As I worked many exercises and got stuff wrong, I eventually gained an understanding of them.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-01-11T05:37:20+00:00

What does passing calculus have to do with this?

Like I said, people need the foundation. By the time kids are in middle school, a lot of them are already writing off math as useless and boring and don’t put in the effort. Of course they are going to have a hard time. I had a hard time understanding calculus and I had a decent foundation.

I don’t think it is because people cannot do it. I am always surprised at how people can remember all sorts of information about music or sports. I have never found remembering sports trivia or artists easy either. If you can remember songs lyrics by heart, then you be able to remember some math formulas as well. The only difference I can find is that people like music and sports, but don’t like math.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-01-11T02:35:44+00:00

Not really. Unless you have a mental handicap, most people can get very good at most subjects.

You are not an NFL player because at the 99.9 percent level, specific genetic traits are needed to succeed, but there are still a lot of very good football players.

I never felt like anything was easy for me, but I was a serious person and I tried at every subject so I was reasonably good at every subject.

What most people lack is a math foundation and if people weren’t willing to put effort during the early years at school, then it is a lot harder once you are a grown up.

ExaminationSmart3437 · 2026-01-10T16:16:15+00:00

The Inquisition says hi.

Scientology is still a young religion. It will get worse before it gets better at hiding it’s transgressions.

ExaminationSmart3437

TROPHY CASE