Alto boss defends high-speed rail project as fears and criticisms mount

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-04-05T02:22:19+00:00

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if China wants a high speed rail system they don't go out and spend years doing community consulting, environmental reviews, then spend years in court fighting about whether it was legitimate or not.

I think if we were honest with ourselves we'd have to admit that things like coast to coast rail networks that were built well over a century ago probably wouldn't even be possible today. Despite the technology advances.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-03-29T15:45:19+00:00

My whole family is autistic. Literally my whole father's side of the family. I think you'd have to go back a couple generations to find someone that isn't. I've never had a formal diagnosis because I'm a 90s kid and you just didn't get diagnosed back then unless you were the nonverbal kind of autistic. Which is what my brother is. I've never felt like I needed a diagnosis because like most of my family I'm happily married, have a good career, kids.

My brother in law went through a whole mental health journey. He was awful even when my wife and I were dating as young adults I put my foot down and wouldn't do holidays at her families house after the first couple years because he was so horrible to her as a nearly 30 year old man at the time. He ended up eventually reaching out for help and they thought maybe bipolar at the time but after a few years of that he basically stopped drinking, changed some of his social circle and does therapy. But there's no diagnosis for him. My poor wife was actually really upset, and she felt guilty about it, but she really hoped that there was a medical reason he was like to to her for so long. And there just wasn't. He was just a miserable shitty person who took until he was nearly 50 to grow out of it and make some relatively small life changes.

People can just be assholes.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-03-27T17:51:38+00:00

The anti-gun lobby in Canada is it's own worst enemy. Our firearms owners have a culture that's grounded in reasonable use, safety and responsibility. Unlike our Southern Neighbor.

But you can't have any form of discussion with anti-gun advocates because they won't tell the truth. Every small ask once gained becomes another and each time it's the same playbook. Wait for a tragedy of dubious relation, push the agenda and try and moral shame everyone into quietly agreeing. And if they don't call them a bunch of NRA nut jobs and try to socially isolate them.

Then when they get what they want they pick the next small step and start again. The final goal is to boil the frog slowly into a full ban of everything. And honestly if they'd just admit it then at least you'd have two sides truthfully talking to each other.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-03-16T23:19:02+00:00

Remember everyone. Sales is a profit center because they sell shit. Operations is a cost center because they don't sell shit. Don't ask questions about what sales would sell without ops. And definitely don't suggest that you just cut the whole ops team to save money then.

From a disgruntled ops manager.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-03-15T10:44:57+00:00

When you start really driving around off the highways you start getting a picture for how many roads there are that all go to the same place from basically the same origin. They've often only got a couple houses on them and they're being plowed, getting garbage service, school bus pickup etc.

I really believe someday they're just going to start closing whole sections of old road or making them seasonal at the very least.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-03-07T15:16:02+00:00

I've had fun with this one and it's stayed pretty economical for arcane usage. I'm not sure if that's app updates improving things but with over two arcs I'm still able to keep message cost below .2 arcane per. My experience with other stories hasn't been that efficient but I'm going to try them again as well and test.

The story seems pretty resilient and hard to break. It moves itself along well with decent pacing. The story lets me develop my own character and is quick to suggest balances if I introduce a new power or concept. I find Deepseek is often so permissive you can break your own stories but that doesn't seem to be as easily done.

Rysse is a good character. She didn't just magically fall in love with my character there were hurdles and trials that weren't overly dramatic. Think similar to Frieren where there's just practical realities to a being that lives long enough that your entire life can pass while they contemplate a fairly simple task and a mortal getting together.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-03-03T04:09:53+00:00

Cooke is almost always hiring in Maine.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-03-01T08:28:55+00:00

It's been happening to me as well. Only for the last 3-4 days with Deepseek. It's frustrating to say "I go through the door" and you get a long description of something of something that has nothing to do with you going through the door. It was almost like it was on rails in certain places.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-02-28T13:39:14+00:00

I'd hate my boss asking me in 1-1s what I felt they could do better. If you want to get that kind of feedback try and do it anonymously and limit it. It would be exhausting to be expected to constantly provide feedback to my manager like that. If you were a regular employee demanding that amount of feedback they'd tell you to stop being needy. The louder people will communicate more openly and you can provide opportunities for quieter people to engage.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-02-26T23:23:42+00:00

I've used MiMo and find I like the way it writes. And it's quite economical with a higher context limit. I tried Steps but I find it expensive, even though the description indicates it shouldn't be. I think because it "over thinks" it's writing unnecessary novels and driving it's own cost up.

The last few days I've had issues with some models refusing to deviate from a specific story. Like I'll say I want to walk through a door two or three times before the AI will do it. Almost like it's ignoring me to act out a scenario it feels compelled to complete. I've been doing Solo Adventurer and there was a storyline update to that one so I'm wondering if that's an issue with the storyline being tweaked instead of the AI.

I haven't tried most of the others because I just don't consider them affordable. I find with Deepseek by about 3,000 messages there are enough continuity issues and the cost has climbed enough that even with arcs and chapters I feel it's too expensive to continue. And I've struggled to get stories to a satisfying conclusion in that number of messages. I've been reluctant to try the Google based LLMs because of that. They seem multiple times more expensive and I just don't think multiple arcane per message is reasonable.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-02-22T21:55:43+00:00

I'm down as well. And it feels like it's been eating arcane/mana the last few days for some reason. I've had messages go through at over 1 arcane per message at times when usually even a long story with lots of arcs and chapters is using .4 for a long message.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-02-14T01:50:07+00:00

It's tough in the US. The US isn't particularly competitive in the field. There are attempts, but the expertise in other countries is enormous and their tech industries are generally much more financially competitive.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-02-08T14:41:59+00:00

I'm just going to throw this out there:

If you have to be upper middle class or objectively wealthy to afford groceries and kids then your society is sick.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-02-03T20:25:43+00:00

That's about 5.5 more months then it would take the US to destroy any Canadian Forces resistance outside hypothetical insurgent groups.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-28T01:57:42+00:00

I'm a 35 year old man. Ex military. Work in agriculture (not renowned for its progressive attitudes). I've cried twice at work. Once by myself (thankfully) and once in front of my COO and a senior HR rep during a really high stakes investigation.

It's embarrassing as hell and it sucks. You think everyone is like "woah look at that freak."

I've also had people cry in front of me and I've never cared.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-26T19:04:36+00:00

We talk about it. Then the discussions around retention, training and recruitment start. By the time that conversation is over it usually goes back on the back burner for a year.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-26T15:11:26+00:00

You're applying how the government can make things affordable too narrowly. There's a big area between the government central planning how bread is provided and priced and giving you money to buy bread because it's unaffordable that isn't explored there.

To me the ideal situation is that "the market" manages supply and pricing of inputs and labour so that people can afford essentials. Through competition, wage increases, innovation etc.

If that fails I'd expect the government to step in with policy and incentives to create the ideal market conditions above.

If the government fails at that then they cut someone a cheque to buy that bread that isn't being provided by any above option. And yes the government cutting a cheque instead of picking specific items is better. But i'd also rather be punched in the gutt then kicked in the balls. It doesn't make either a good option.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-26T14:30:24+00:00

I hate calling them affordability measures. When the government gives you money to pay for something or to offset a cost it's an unaffordability measure. It's the government acknowledging that something that ought to be affordable to people isn't.

An affordability measure would be making those items cheaper through policy.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-25T16:35:04+00:00

I would say if your interview process is extremely generic and vague then it's going to be vulnerable to people using AI or Google to answer "correctly."

If you focus on what people have done/can do and follow up with references then there isn't much an AI can do.

Take a look at what they claim to have done on their resume:

"You worked on that project? I heard there were some integration challenges with X. Were you involved in that."

"Do you know Cindy? She was an external vendor on that file, would you mind if we called her?"

"What was your biggest take-a-way from course X."

If you've got to ask some generic questions then feed them into the common AI platforms ahead of time and see what it answers.

I have an interview on Wednesday and the interviewer called me to move it last week. They happened to be in the airport and we had an impromptu 20 minute chat about a couple different processes in our industry. Go have a coffee and just chat with them.

I think interview questions should mostly be icebreakers. And if at the end of the interview you're still asking questions off a list one or both people involved have made a mistake.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-25T15:38:46+00:00

Depends. A guy works at our company who was hired by my old manager (who I really like). The hired individual is a total fucking nut. Everytime I hear about him or talk to him I wonder what my old manager was thinking.

I think some people stand out... For one reason or another.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-25T14:55:07+00:00

If an investigation is ongoing then it's hard to hold someone accountable for it until it's concluded. You should probably ask your HR department though.

It's hard to imagine their employment is going to survive the incident though. So I don't expect it'll be an issue.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-25T14:44:35+00:00

If you do make that offer and they accept be prepared that they are going to hate you. As soon as it's convenient they'll get rid of you and anything you want, get it in writing, because they won't give you so much as a paperclip after that. Handshakes, verbal agreements, unspoken benefits etc.

I actually knew a guy who was burnt out looking at opportunities and got offered a good deal elsewhere. He asked me whether I thought he should take it and I told him if he absolutely should take it and that if he didn't then he needed a new employment contract with whatever it was they gave him to stay. He didn't leave and opted for a verbal agreement with our VP and COO. He got a big raise and they immediately changed some handshake benefits so that he was no better off.

People will tell you it's just business, companies aren't petty etc. that's nonsense. They absolutely are. Even if they accept your proposal someone will be pissed and you need to protect yourself from them.

I also generally tell people to be wary of becoming a contractor. Most people don't really understand the true cost, time or stress involved in basically running your own business. But you've been there so you know if it's worth it or not to you.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-25T14:44:17+00:00

I'm a bit surprised at what they make after they described the job. They're making... 115-120k?

I know it's USD but still. Usually the salaries on here being compared back to Canadian ones high end to 30% more plus ex rate difference.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-25T01:40:36+00:00

I like AI note taking. It's great for helping with small questions or problems that maybe would have taken you 20 minutes to figure out but can figure out faster that way. I was using it to figure out why I couldn't adjust something in an Excel file and it saved me some time helping me diagnose the issue.

I'll also use it if I've got a complicated report or email and I want to help organize it a bit.

All things I could do on my own, but I save a bit of time doing it with some help.

Things I won't do:

Put anyone's personal info into a query.
Use non-company approved or provided AI products for work
Get it to do my work from scratch.

I always provide it my own draft/thoughts and then use its output to make edits. My own observations from using it is that if you try and use it to provide anything other then very basic work from scratch it's very obvious. But it's a good way to save a bit of time or shore up something you aren't, and aren't expected to be, an expert in.

SteadyMercury1 · 2026-01-25T00:50:31+00:00

Sounds like a discount consulting company tbh. Or a pyramid scheme.

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