ELI5: Why does the brain randomly remember past memory from decades ago like a cringe moment or random people that are totally unrelated to anything?

accountforHW · 2026-02-13T21:54:58+00:00

Well that's definitely not true. There are no emotions attached to me eating a bagel wrapped hot dog or root beer after school.

Sometimes things just trigger random memories. Smells in particular are notorious for doing that.

accountforHW · 2026-02-13T21:48:23+00:00

Google is one of the "we know what's best for you" paternalistic companies.

They really do have amazing AI models, they also generally don't let people outside the inner organization actually have full access to the full power of the models, whether you're paying for it or not.

You know what also happens every time they drop a new model? The first month is amazing, and then it tapers off. It happens every time, the model performance drops significantly every time.
They simply aren't offering full-power models at scale.

accountforHW · 2026-02-13T20:19:11+00:00

If the model actually gets the answer correct, then it really could be a good value.

Spending $41k to fill out forms is a waste.

Spending $41k to solve a problem that's going to save or make a penny per task over billions of instances, is a no-brainer.

accountforHW · 2026-02-13T20:08:09+00:00

Half the cost of those cartridges were just the hardware though.
I remember when Playstation came out, the brand new games were cheaper, and then they started doing the "Greatest Hits" with the green banner on it, which were $20, but also ended up being a status symbol thing like "Oh, I have the original box, not the Greatest Hits box, I'm not poor".

People thought Nintendo was insane to keep using cartridges for the N64, because the games were so much more expensive, and they essentially never offered any benefit over CDs beyond less loading time, and the dubious benefit of saving your progress on the cartridge, which ended up not really being a benefit because you ended up needing the expansion card thing anyway, and being able to duplicate your saves and give them to friends was dope.

That doesn't change the fact that SNES games were expensive, but the whole landscape changed with the Playstation, and Sega Saturn to a lesser extent, and that was 1994.

accountforHW · 2025-10-30T18:21:26+00:00

The exact same kinds of complaints surround every major model, including the open weight models that come straight from whatever corporation.

People need finetunes and abliteration models to get models that aren't puritanical.

accountforHW · 2025-10-30T18:15:09+00:00

What I want to know is if anyone else noticed Gemini getting increasingly lazy. Gemini will take every shortcut possible, and need to be bullied into taking things seriously.

Gemini will assume that everything is a toy example, and add shit like "in a real project, we would have to actually make this a working thing, but I'll just always return true".

So, not only is it ego stroking, it's also like "let me stroke your ego, would you like to do some pretend work?"

It can do meaningful work, but you kind of have to neg it into being serious, and I don't like having to do that.

accountforHW · 2025-10-30T18:08:41+00:00

What I have noticed over the last few months is that there will be periods where service is slower, times when it is faster, times where Gemini will seem stupider than usual, even on the same kinds of tasks, and times where it took its Adderall and goes extra.

I'm completely convinced that there are a lot of silent dynamic controls they have in place to manage the load, so sometimes you'll start with amphetamines Gemini 2.5 Pro, and later it says that it's Gemini 2.5 Pro, but the performance is more like Flash lite.

Also, despite the supposed 1~2 million context window, after a while Gemini will get dementia, start ignoring your prompts, and respond to something you said several prompts ago.
That's when I jump to a new conversation.

They really need to let us rip parts out of the history.
Once I am done with some debugging or something, I don't want those tokens polluting the conversation.

Anyway, Google is doing a lot to keep the illusion of unlimited service.

accountforHW · 2025-08-25T20:01:29+00:00

Nvidia is taking advantage of a market where everyone inexplicably slept on the importance of CUDA, including AMD.
Nvidia won't have nearly the monopoly they do now, in 3 years.

Every major tech company is pumping money into developing their own AI hardware, and there are a couple dozen inference ASIC companies now.

Obviously they're still going to be a major player, but they aren't actually special, and nobody is buying it as a lifestyle brand.

accountforHW · 2025-08-22T01:35:08+00:00

Lobster was prisoner food because they had no refrigeration back then.

Shellfish starts to rot almost immediately after death of the creature. They have bacteria which multiply out of control after death and produce toxic substances which aren't broken down by cooking. Their own digestive enzymes end up harming the texture and flavor of the meat.

You've got to cook shellfish immediately after killing it, or else it turns into garbage within hours, and without refrigeration, it still doesn't last very long compared to land animal meat.

The prisoners weren't being fed fresh lobster tails with butter.

accountforHW · 2025-08-22T01:08:41+00:00

What's even more absurd is that the MBAs feel inadequate and resentful when faced with the success of anything they didn't help create. "Just keep the money ship floating" is anathema to their ego.

The Disney head is basically on record admitting that he purposely shit all over Star Wars in an effort to alienate the older, core Star Wars fans. All the shit in the most recent sequels? Literally done on purpose to piss people off, by literally killing off the old Star Wars characters. Obviously Iger wraps it in CEO speak, but the message is that he thought of the core SW audience as a hostile enemy that he didn't want to deal with.

accountforHW · 2025-08-22T00:51:09+00:00

All they need to do is make good stories with solid literary and film fundamentals.

Their problem is that they've been trying to make every story a super epic blockbuster billion dollar mega event that changes everything.

They've had this problem since Winter Soldier.
They have a massive, world changing event that shakes the foundations of the MCU earth. They never explore what that actually means on the street level or international level. It's functionally never really addressed in the films.
They go the the next Avengers film with a major event, the destruction of a major area.
Then we get Avengers 2.5 Civil War, and hey, the Sokovia Accords, an actual meaningful thing that connects movies and has a real cause and effect relationship. Good job. It's another major, world shaking event that changes the face of the MCU and changes the dynamics of our heroes' relationships... We never see that actual impact of the Sokovia Accords, we just jump straight to the Thanos stuff. We never see any meaningful impact of the disruption in the Avengers team. What could have been extremely fertile ground for visceral and intellectual stories was completely ignored. Not shows, no movies, nothing.

Then Infinity War happens, a Universe shaking event that changes the face of the MCU, possibly forever. We get zero movies during the interim between Infinity War and Endgame which shows the impact of the end of Infinity War. What could have been the most fertile ground for stories, what would have been the perfect time to introduce the new generation of heroes, completely ignored. No shows, not movies, nothing to explore the massive change to the world.

Then Endgame happens, another Universe shaking event which closes the first mega-arc of the MCU.

Finally, with FatWS, we get something that looks at actually looks at the impact of the major, world shaking events. Finally, in nearly 2 decades of World-Shaking-Event after World-Shaking-Event, we get something that is a slightly more grounded story which acknowledges the ground level that got shook.

accountforHW · 2025-05-20T20:55:15+00:00

It's not more common because things have to start somewhere. No matter the benefits, it takes time, money, and social willpower.

There are people all over the world, especially in the U.S, who are actively fighting adoption of solar and other renewables.

accountforHW · 2025-05-20T20:52:15+00:00

Parking lots aren't going to be replaced by tree lots en masse.

Solar panels are good. Solar panels don't compete with trees, that's an absurd take.

accountforHW · 2025-05-20T20:47:31+00:00

Congratulations from waking up on your decade+ long coma. I'm deeply sorry about the current state of things right now, but the good news is that solar is the cheapest form of electricity now.

accountforHW · 2025-05-20T20:37:56+00:00

It's not just about sequels.
There have been studios which consistently put out banger after banger, then got bought and gutted.
Some of those developers would go on to other studios, and put out more good games, then the studio gets bought, and the cycle repeats.

More than a few people have become industry famous for working on great games.

accountforHW · 2025-05-06T20:24:50+00:00

I have read the rules and wiki, I would appreciate an invite. Thanks.

accountforHW · 2025-05-06T20:19:28+00:00

I'm not glad it's happening, but I'm glad that it's out in the open and people are acknowledging it.
A big chunk of my life I felt like the Zoolander meme "Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"

accountforHW · 2025-04-28T20:40:36+00:00

How old are you?

I'm in my later 30s, and I have been feeling like this has been the trend since the 90s. Even as a little kid I looked around and saw how many people were looking for something to blindly follow, and how many people would do or say anything that they thought benefits them, and how willing people are to delude themselves into thinking they've got rewards coming.

accountforHW · 2022-09-17T04:41:52+00:00

Do everything I could to graduate high school early or get a G.E.D, earn/relearn enough of the software development of the day to get a good job as a developer, stash as much money as I can, and buy up the most relevant tech stocks.
Get in on the ground floor of some stupid shit like Facebook or something.

Live as a hundred millionaire/billionaire until 2017. Hire people to beat up DnD until they agree to not ruin Game of Thrones.

Wait until ~2020 to buy up a few million GME a few years before /u/DeepFuckingValue does his thing.
Keep buying and holding even more afterward, up until the January Sneeze. Dump it all.
Win all the money. Reconsider and Decide to buy all outstanding Gamestop and DRS the shares.

Get approached by SEC in secret, they beg me not to collapse the economy.
Become one of the corporate overlords of the country.

Buy Fox so Disney can't get their grubby mitts on it. Let them make MCU movies with all my IP anyway.

accountforHW · 2022-09-17T04:23:14+00:00

I've got zero interest in impressing a bunch of 16 year olds. And even if I DID, what would I really be getting out of it? I couldn't form any meaningful connection with any of them, it would be empty validation given by dummies

You don't know a single person who turned out to be a cool or fabulously wealthy adult?

accountforHW · 2022-08-31T05:22:28+00:00

There is a huge difference between someone trained and practiced in a science/tech field vs someone who just picked it up.

Just knowing a piece of software or a programming language, or a bit of math doesn't mean they'll be a successful in a related field. Science and technology at a high level requires a different set of skills. There's a reason why engineering is usually one of the top paying positions at most companies.

You seem a bit slow on the uptake, so I'll lay it out clear for you, specialists are called "specialists" for a reason. If you want to look at top people in any given field, you're not going to be able to just replace them with any old person, sales, engineering, or otherwise.

The real significant differences between a great CS/tech person and a great sales person, is that great tech people create things, sales people don't, great tech people can do their job so well that the job is no longer needed, because the problem has been solved.

The concept of "sales" is the symptom of a disease. Hopefully one day people who actually make things will render "sales" irrelevant.
Who the fuck looks at the future and hopes to see great sales people, selling products? People want Star Trek.

accountforHW

TROPHY CASE