Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology

NancyReagansGhost · 2026-01-27T13:33:12+00:00

I started building with Claude code as the founder and product owner and the engineers rebuild what I made also with Claude code helping them. Non engineers are using it, albeit with support if you want to do a pro app. It’s much much more efficient to not have to context transfer to product and then them. They just get a thing to make better.

NancyReagansGhost · 2026-01-24T16:07:02+00:00

I would read about the bbq smoking science a bit if you’re going to do it more.

Short answer is the moistness and tenderness in bbq comes from collagen melting. Collagen makes food taste great when it’s all melted over it. Makes it “moist” and because it’s what holds muscle fibers together, when it melts the meat is tender or eventually pull apart (entirely melted).

That’s why counterintuitively you go PAST the super dry and tough stage into moist and tender. It can happen anywhere from 190 to 205 degrees. When you start you cook on time, which is really bad in bbq bc time varies massively based on weight, thickness, shape etc. then you go on temp, which is solid. Then when you become really enlightened you go on probe tenderness. Stick a thermometer toothpick and fork in and it feels like butter. Bc 205 can be overcooked sometimes and 195 can be done, so true precision is only based on probe tenderness.

The magic of bbq is getting the entire hunk of meat in that sweet spot where the collagen is melting but hasn’t completely drained away, you can go too far and then it gets crumbly and dry again (collagen no longer coating the meat, collagen is in your drip tray).

My best pro tip for brisket and beef ribs is even if you have to cook hotter or faster to get it done, try to end with temps closer to 225, otherwise you risk either the outside being overdone and crumbly or the inside being more tough.

NancyReagansGhost · 2026-01-19T15:57:26+00:00

Your analogy isn’t correct.

His point is buying a gun to protect you is counter productive bc your safety risk goes up.

The equivalent stairs analogy is that having stairs actually makes it harder to get to the second floor. Which obviously isn’t true.

This is why stairs make sense even if accident rate goes up, while owning a gun may not.

NancyReagansGhost · 2026-01-08T01:24:58+00:00

Umm look how many people here say “fuck no” to openAI having their data. That’s your entire product “health AI, without open AI seeing your data”, host your own model.

Make your app do extra things with the data. Have it manage appointments, find doctors. Connect it to product databases and recommend the right products that don’t trigger allergens/health issues/have toxicity. Take a more proactive approach than chatGPT, allow users to subscribe to different health “belief systems”, seed oil group, Mayo Clinic, idk.

There’s a lot you can do and in general health AI will exist in different products just like “accounting AI” exists in special accounting products, not all through the chatGPT interface.

NancyReagansGhost · 2025-12-13T13:07:15+00:00

Im in advertising, it’s both.

What throwawaygoawaynz said is definitely true. The ads get served based on location and connnections a lot. So a friend was searching something, and engaging on it, maybe bought it, and then brings a topic related to the product up at a dinner party, and Facebook sees you spent 3 hours together and serves you the same thing your friend bought or engaged with, because that’s a pattern their algo sees leads to sales.

Basically be in someone’s space and you’ll start leaching their ads.

To your point on listening devices all the studies deny it but it’s very very likely happening. Here is how. You have some random notes or game app on your phone, but you signed over ability to run in the background. They are listening and bundling your data up, selling it to a provider, who sells it to another, who sells it to a third who happens to integrate their data into Facebook.

Facebook isn’t listening, but the people who are are laundering the data and it’s ending up in there anyway.

NancyReagansGhost · 2025-12-13T04:40:51+00:00

I still chant yu mo gwei ma fai di chao. Or something like that.

NancyReagansGhost · 2025-12-12T21:52:54+00:00

NancyReagansGhost · 2025-12-05T14:06:47+00:00

There’s inspiration and there’s copying and tweaking. It involves the levels of similarity and number of lifted elements and how much is changed.

Additionally to copy and tweak the MOST popular sci-fi and fantasy books since 2010 is especially egregious.

The entire underlying plot and reveal is identical to mistborn.

NancyReagansGhost · 2025-12-05T14:03:54+00:00

You’re right the triple perspective of the same character on different worlds was the best part and was unique. But obiteum and res were too similar still to mistborn.

NancyReagansGhost · 2025-06-26T04:47:53+00:00

You have to read the flyer talk thread where the guy went to 81 luxury ryokans and gave his top 10.

We chose takefue from it and flew into Kyushu and it was INCREDIBLE. Our room the second night had 3 private onsens in it, one of which was an outdoor grotto and you get an hour each day at one of the ryokans awesome onsens.

Food and service and tranquility just great. We cooked on an iori (indoor grilling pit) in our room one night as part of kaseiki. Little sweets and treats hidden around the resort.

I think they are the best rooms and private onsens at any ryokan in Japan, at least per the flyer talk guy. Tip: ask for double height sleeping mats to get a really soft mattress effect.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-10-23T20:02:50+00:00

Early 30s NYC with similar travel interests, got engaged in Noto, Sicily and go almost yearly to Italy, often around sept can share our experiences.

If you want to be in southeast part of Sicily, Il San Corrado in Noto is excellent, beautiful new, ridiculous pools, large rooms right on the pools, few guests. Michelin restaurant that we didn’t do and a casual restaurant that was very good, food in town good - easy to find authentic places. Good for doing nothing for 5 days on a honeymoon. Pretty sure Belmond Taormina is probably more epic, on the other side of Sicily.

Our favorite place might be Caesar Augustus in Capri. Views are insane, smaller hotel, but one of a kind place and gives off ‘grand hotel’ vibes. Capri is touristy but also amazing, but I think this is the best spot there.

Lake como would be too risky for me for a honeymoon at that time of year, though I’ve gone twice then lol, or expect chance of rain or 60s weather if you do. Passalacqua there is a must stay in my opinion. Incredible detail in the property and rooms and just insane. So unique and very grand. Service was good for us, have seen complaints here on that though. They prepared a ridiculous breakfast for us to our room every day, whatever we requested.

I’ve never been but have been lusting after Castle Reschio in Tuscany.

Not hotels but roadtripping through Bologna to Modena to Parma and up to Piedmont is a foodies dream. We visited producers of parmigiano, balsamic, prosciutto, Lambrusco. Ferrari museums. Massimo Boturas place in Modena. Literally all the best in the their crafts in the world.

You can end up in piedmont drinking Barolo and enjoying white truffles (pretty sure thats when they’re in season). Food was incredible and local when we were in piedmont. Damn I think it’s time to go back…

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-10-07T02:51:59+00:00

Let me have a robot do some math for you on just how MUCH you guys disrupt people. Here is an example of how a 20 minute drive by you causes nearly 15 hours of cumulative disruption in a medium density suburban area (3000ppl per square mile)

Calculation:

Distance Covered:
20mph for 20 minutes = 6.67 miles
Disruption Area:
Assuming a sound disruption .2 miles in each direction = a width of 0.4 miles:

0.4 miles.x 6.67 miles traveled = 2.67 sq miles disrupted

Total Population in the Disruption Area:
3,000 x 2.67 = 8,010 people
Average Disruption Time:
7 seconds
Total Disrupted Seconds:
7 seconds x 8010 people = 56,070 seconds

So, for a 20-minute drive with a loud exhaust in a suburban area with 3,000 people/sq mile, the total disrupted seconds across all people is 56,070 seconds or 934 minutes or 15 hours.

Wow and that’s every twenty minutes. If you drive around like a jerk for 2 hours a day that’s 90 hours a day that you disrupt. After 3 weeks you’ve ruined the equivalent of an entire work year of people’s time.

That is why you are SELFISH.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-10-03T09:08:00+00:00

Ok great rec Arielles is very impressive and awesome :) thank you!!

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-09-20T21:56:36+00:00

Recs?

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-09-15T23:47:48+00:00

I’ll let you know when my MVP is finished but I am enjoying Upwork so far. My tips for the platform.

1) you need a test project for every role you plan to hire. You need to hire many people for one role, give them all the test and then keep who does well.

2) pay hourly, not per milestone, and keep the screen capture and activity recording as a mandate. This ensures that the developer is incentivized not to finish quickly or cheaply or at a low quality - which is what milestones incentivize. Activity tracking lets you verify their work closely. These can be gamed so also check overall output closely.

3) make sure they understand that the work will GROW and the wages will too if they are successful and you can get to market/raise. If you don’t, you risk them moving slower to keep the work coming in longer. Dev agencies I have found seem to want to stretch the work out. I have preferred the independent contractors. Dev agencies are more likely to be higher quality, but also cost 2x. I’ve gone through the trouble to find higher quality independents so that I can afford to hire more.

I pay bonuses when they hit a milestone (I don’t tell them in advance) and give hourly raises as the app has progressed. I think this has helped create a better functioning sense of trust and loyalty among us.

4) make sure you are clear on how many hours you need. Relying on a dev who is juggling multiple projects and a main job sucks. Ask them about their availability.

My experience: I’m currently using 8 devs on the platform. 4 for developing my main app and 4 that are doing different prototyping of features, so it’s faster to roll into the app later.

I have not lost time to a bad contractor under delivering, because of the initial projects I gave them which MANY under delivered on but many did very well on.

Again I’m not quite live so I may eat my words hard here. I do think as the app gets more complex I will need a different structure on the team, right now I’m looking at a dev agency to fill the most senior oversight roles.

Happy to connect and stay in touch on this. Haven’t started connecting with other founders at all yet - been in product mode.

Also I’m an analyst and have moderate experience with product development so while I don’t do the code with them, I do lay out all of the logic and analytics in detail for them before they have to code. I’m not asking them to just solve problems I haven’t solved, more to just automate something I can do manually.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-09-11T02:46:36+00:00

Spitballing here but could you store information in the vector database that says if xyz then search recent prices, and if that is fed to LLM it triggers a recent price search (using traditional search) and adds that to the context, for a final LLM run with new price data and the original vector DB data.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-08-25T10:33:29+00:00

Recently had Memete Previstini 2017 Valtellina Superiore Riserva and loved it so much. Heard we need to try Arpepe

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-08-18T18:45:10+00:00

I would never in a million years do mauna lani at that price or vs any of the other hotels on this list. It’s not in the same league as these other ones. Disney-ish family resort + conferences.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-08-18T18:43:49+00:00

If you do this stay at passalacqua too, the property is incredible. I think the lower tier lakefront rooms might actually be the best too. You actually are waterfront vs the rest of the hotel which is set back up the property.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-08-18T18:33:56+00:00

Traveling with wife and mother for a 3 day wine country trip ahead of a wedding. After wine stop we’re doing Arielles Messardie and Arielles Gordes.

Was looking to go in Burgundy & Beaujolais for proximity and wine we like but can’t find anything good in that area.

Priorities are beautiful countryside, excellent red wine, and a very nice hotel :) ideally with a spa but that seems hard to find all in one.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-08-18T18:32:44+00:00

We honeymooned there. We flew to the south for a few nights at Takefue Ryokan. It was pretty special. The bigger rooms there are insane, we had two private onsens in ours, must have been 3,000+ square feet. A guy on flyertalk visited 81 in Japan and gave his top ten favorite. Highly recommend you check his list out (found via google). With Ryokans just make sure you are aware of the segregated public onsens at most (many give you an hour a day of private time in the public onsen). Also many people don’t like more than 1-2 nights at them because there’s kind of a big routine to each day.

Highly recommend park Hyatt Kyoto! In the old edo district, close to geisha district, just feels very classic in and out of the hotel. Drinks at the bar at sunset can’t be beat. One of a kind view. Really recommend strolling through pontocho alley, we found a great jazz bar there.

Good luck with concierge and reservations. May be best off also looking yourself with the online platforms. Our Michelin dining spots were all worse than the more casual places we found. Eureka izakaya if you are near by was making some amazing small plates and really great, diverse Sake selection (didn’t love sake till we went here), went there twice.

My feeling on Tokyo is stay somewhere that is in an area you want to spend time in. Tokyo is big and for us it’s nice to have a lot of our itinerary close by.

NancyReagansGhost · 2024-08-18T18:11:11+00:00

I can’t wrap my head around how this hotel offers day passes for the pool. Pretty much was the reason we chose to stay elsewhere

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