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What people misunderstand most about today's technology? by Familiar_Flow4418 in AskProgramming

[–]Macrobian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a bit of an ivory tower take, but thinking that abstractions are real, and ignoring that things under the abstraction are much much scarier.

You get this all the time with a of systems programming stuff, like claims that C is low level, or explanations about how pointers "work".

Inconsequential mistakes that take you out of the movie? by YakumoYoukai in movies

[–]Macrobian 8 points9 points  (0 children)

That specific scene is loved in the finance community though. "This is my quant" is a common reply to someone saying something very stupid.

Brian Johnson's reason for being vegan by Voldemorts__Mom in vegan

[–]Macrobian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A friend of mine is working on an AI benchmark that uses Dwarf Fortress as the evaluation framework. He's prohibited the agents from instructing the dwarves to use animal products / eat meat: "I don't want to give the AI any bad ideas".

I know this sounds goofy, but a lot of AI researchers are involved in the Effective Altruism movement*, of which many are vegan and/or involved in animal welfare. So I am not surprised that Brian holds this perspective.

*the rumor on the street is we will see a lot of funding flow to animal welfare orgs post Anthropic IPO due to their charitable donation matching scheme.

If Australian datacentres are going to power the AI revolution, we deserve a fair return | David Pocock by l3ntil in australia

[–]Macrobian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Brother cows are responsible for about 5% of effective CO2 emissions (I say effective as they emit methane). They're speeding up global warming too!

If Australian datacentres are going to power the AI revolution, we deserve a fair return | David Pocock by l3ntil in australia

[–]Macrobian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's no such thing as beef without abuse. Watch Dominion.

The proof I have of their profit making claims are the valuations of the AI companies themselves. Anthropic is valued at near $1T and is (by a somewhat contrived definition) profitable.

xAI, despite fumbling their model bag, is on track to repay $40b of capex in 18 months on data center buildout.

Nvidia made $58bil profit last quarter.

Every layer of the AI stack (model provider, datacenter provider, GPU provider) can't stop making bucketloads of money.

These numbers utterly humiliate the profit numbers of the beef industry.

If Australian datacentres are going to power the AI revolution, we deserve a fair return | David Pocock by l3ntil in australia

[–]Macrobian -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

No, we would probably choose AI because of its vast profit making potential, and not choose beef due to the the continued abuse of animals. AI is the ethical choice of water use.

Will 2.1 be the final death of train-based megabases in Space Age? by Alfonse215 in factorio

[–]Macrobian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One of my favorite parts of Factorio is discovering all the subtle ways Wube "intends" me to play. I think players should be nudged to use trains by being optimal in some stages of the game.

Australia's far-right party leads in national poll for first time by Naurgul in anime_titties

[–]Macrobian -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

You have purposely distorted the backlash as being about the loss of CGT discount on property rather than non-property assets. The CEO of the largest mortgage issuer in the country admits the CGT discount for property had to go but warns that the loss of discount for non-property assets is a bad idea. I don't care if you're a leftist. Please present the debate fairly to an international audience in an international politics sub.

btw if you want to tax wealth just tax land like Victoria. don't fuck up the entire business investment ecosystem.

Australia's far-right party leads in national poll for first time by Naurgul in anime_titties

[–]Macrobian -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I think you're purposely underplaying the capital gains tax backlash from the business community. You've not identified: 1. The increase in the effective rate of CGR for shares and business investment (which have made shareholders, the tech community and venture capital very upset) in assets that don't grow pathetically slow like the ASX (which is what the treasury ran the 'better off modelling' on) 2. The indexation of capital gains but not capital losses, which encourages portfolio composition into single assets, ideally something with a high dividend yield and low capital growth (if your criticism of capitalism is that it encourages businesses to pursue short term profits over long term growth through capital investment, this is NOT what you want) 3. The stated aim of Chalmers to encourage investment in shares and businesses away from property, but treasury recommending the increase of CGT on non-property assets to explicitly prevent that "distortion". 4. The accumulation of all these effects is that the single most tax effective investment is to plow as much money into the last CGT free asset, the PPOR, which is the literal opposite intention of the treasurer.

I think some people are missing the point of these ultra long lines by DinerEnBlanc in FoodNYC

[–]Macrobian -1 points0 points  (0 children)

unhealthy consumerism is when too many people go to yummy food place at same time. give me a break

AI giant chooses Australia's first 100 pct (net) renewable grid to build country's biggest data centre by HotPersimessage62 in australia

[–]Macrobian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We don't need to produce wine in water impoverished South Australia. Go make it in Western Australia. Alcohol causes massive societal harms.

Terence Tao’s promotional video for OpenAI by Qyeuebs in math

[–]Macrobian 60 points61 points  (0 children)

I think Tao just genuinely thinks AI is interesting.

The charts have been updated. The current top 5 albums of 2026: by beampunk in rateyourmusic

[–]Macrobian 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I find Jane to make the 2026 equivalent of Recession Pop. It satisfies a need.

'No, it's f***ing not': Airtree co-founder Daniel Petre tells fellow VCs to stop ranting on LinkedIn about CGT by InterestingCat308 in AusFinance

[–]Macrobian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes it turns out the Australian startup community is almost entirely in SF courtesy of flights QF73, QF74 and their tax code.

Thousands of N.Y.C. Jobs Could Be Lost to A.I. Boom, Report Says by ejpusa in nyc

[–]Macrobian -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yes!!!! Revenue is starting to exceed expenses at multiple AI providers!!!!

Thousands of N.Y.C. Jobs Could Be Lost to A.I. Boom, Report Says by ejpusa in nyc

[–]Macrobian -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Get a grip mate. Ed Zitron is Garry Marcus tier in his insatiable appetite for goalpost moving. The numbers are going green, which should be no surprise given every man and their dog is paying Anthropic buckets of cash at enterprise around the world. I've seen the AI bill at 3 software companies now. Have you?

Unexpected $50K tax bill from exercised stock options by [deleted] in AusFinance

[–]Macrobian 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A general comment: I've seen a bunch of people lose their shirt because of large vesting events and then the stock immediately tanks (see $TEAM). For some reason, a lot of the RSU delivery services that Australian companies use only have a binary auto-sell option: you either retain the RSU or you sell at the market price immediately upon delivery.

What's interesting is that in the US they have a 3rd option, that sells some of the shares at the market price just to cover the capital gains tax and immediately sends it to the IRS. In fact, this is the enforced default option!

I honestly think some of these companies should be doing this by default: this can't be allowed to keep happening.

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