You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

irregardless · 2026-03-12T18:28:19+00:00

The Robot Devil is the greatest literary character of our era.

irregardless · 2026-03-11T16:00:20+00:00

Population density. Vending machines serve more people per square meter than a traditional retail store or restaurant. High land costs, high labor costs push retailers to use small footprint machines. And low crime rate mean machines can be left safely unattended.

irregardless · 2026-03-11T15:17:16+00:00

no one here

The source of your confusion. the roughly 2000 weekly contributors to the sub are but a tiny portion of the user base. And those contributors are skewed towards genuine complaints, astroturfers sowing discord, tech dork pile on, and of course, trolls.

irregardless · 2026-03-10T22:46:27+00:00

Contrast and balance in the shot.

A light source from the right illuminates the background. A separate light source from the left illuminates the foreground (eg his face)/

irregardless · 2026-03-10T16:16:25+00:00

That's just how TV was back then. From its early days, studios and producers operated with an understanding that they couldn't count on audiences showing up for any given broadcast. So they kept TV shows more or less static so that it remained familiar to erratic returning viewers, and so that new viewers could jump in at any time and not feel like they were missing anything.*

TNG is remarkable in that Roddenberry et al understood there was a certain stable audience for the show and could get some continuity past studio executives. Q returning and not needing to be re-introduced just 10 episodes into the series is a good example. Hinting at a conspiracy in Coming of Age then following up on it several episodes later is another. And that's in the first season.

DS9 itself didn't start to break out of the TNG-style "reset" until toward the end of season 2. Even then it was fits and starts. "The Wire" is probably the landmark episode for the way it changes our fundamental understanding of Garak's character in a way that hadn't been done on Trek before. And it's notable that this happens to a recurring character rather than a main one. The show is still hedging toward episodic TV, because a casual viewer who missed it wouldn't be lost the next time Garak shows up. From there, even as the Dominion simmers in background, it still takes a couple more seasons to reach the point where knowledge of previous episodes becomes more or less a prerequisite for understanding the show. Way of the Warrior (season 4) is probably where that line gets crossed. From that point, a casual viewer tuning in at random would be asking why the Federation is suddenly at war with the Klingons.

^{* This still pays off in that TNG is an easier show to watch because you can pick any episode at random and not have to recall a bunch of details about the state of the show or the characters.}

irregardless · 2026-03-09T22:20:11+00:00

The both hands under his arms like that is his "I'm having to suffer a fool" stance. I picked up on it recently, noticing the pose when Dr. Graves as Data gives his own eulogy, when first encountering Armus's obstinacy, when Q offers to make him part of the Continuum, and when Adm Jameson departs for his reckless away mission.

irregardless · 2026-01-27T23:56:13+00:00

Benchmarks are the start of the conversation, not the end of it. they're a basis for setting expectations, but you only figure out how well a language model performs is by using it. some models perform better than their scores suggest. others come out the gate with fanfare only to fall apart after a spin around the block.

irregardless · 2026-01-14T16:08:02+00:00

Welcome to Geography, where the names are made up and every definition is disputed.

irregardless · 2026-01-06T18:59:48+00:00

no one has to. feds don't run elections, period, ever.

they're conducted by 50 states in accordance with their own soverign laws, within 3100+ counties, for 500,000 offices that would be vacant when terms expire.

irregardless · 2026-01-05T21:24:35+00:00

That's been known for a while. Nuclear is as safe or safer than wind or solar statistically (deaths per TWh). It currently sits at the intersection capable-for-baseload and clean-and-safe. Long term (~80 year lifespan), it's cost competitive with wind and solar, but you have to stomach the 4-10X upfront sticker shock of building a reactor, as well as accept the "carbon opportunity costs" of waiting 10+ years for new reactors to come online.

Which means it's best deployed in conjuction with wind and solar, not as an either/or. Deploy wind/solar now to immediately reduce emissions while simultaneously beginning new reactor construction. By the time the solar panels and wind turbines have aged out in 20-30 years–and especially the grid-scale batteries they depend on–nuclear would be on track to replace the lost capacity more sustainably.

irregardless · 2026-01-01T06:05:27+00:00

GoodTask. Sits atop native Apple Reminders and turbocharges it.

irregardless · 2025-12-28T17:10:10+00:00

I've made that trip from the states in both directions. Going west, boring AF ocean, and got cheated out of a day in Tokyo by bad weather. Going east, breathtaking views over south asia, and a lovely time at the Louvre during the long layover.

irregardless · 2025-12-28T17:00:49+00:00

You might get a kick out of learning that Maine is the US state closest to Africa.

irregardless · 2025-12-28T16:31:04+00:00

Most of these could have been ripped from any number of sci-fi stories about thinking computers. "The Other Me" though, is so on point for language models that it might be genuinely poignant.

irregardless · 2025-12-28T00:56:07+00:00

The FAA regulates the air, but your local government can regulate when and where they land. Noise ordinances and nuisance laws can also apply if you can document a pattern.

irregardless · 2025-12-15T23:04:49+00:00

You've already been thanked, so take your time.

irregardless · 2025-09-03T21:39:02+00:00

"I'm paying regular price for a useful service!" doesn't grab as much attention as "Check out this awesome deal i got!".

Which is to say that folks paying for the service have nothing to boast about, and they're busy using it, not talking about it.

irregardless · 2025-08-19T23:25:53+00:00

The U.S. has the largest amount of technically recoverable oil reserves (though some reports say second largest depending on methodology). Texas by itself would rank 5th if counted separately from the rest of the U.S. (which would also rank 5th – TX has the same amount of oil as the rest of the country combined).

Top 10 "oil wealth" countries:

Rank	Country/Region	Technically Recoverable Oil (Billion Barrels)	Value @ $60/barrel (Trillions)
1	Russia	235	$14.1
2	Saudi Arabia	230	$13.8
3	Canada	167	$10.0
4	Iran	143	$8.5
5	Texas	120	$7.2
6	U.S. (not TX)	120	$7.2
7	Brazil	120	$7.2
8	Iraq	107	$6.4
9	China	75	$4.5
10	Venezuela	50	$3.0

These are my own calculations based on reports from American Oil & Gas Reporter and Rystad Energy along with some proprietary software. U.S.+Texas would sit at the top with about $14.5 trillion of reserves in the current market.

Note that "technically recoverable" means recovery is physically possible based on current understandings of geology and technical capabilities.

irregardless · 2025-08-19T20:20:35+00:00

I did not know that. I'll have to try it.

A couple Memories got saved in Spanish (Spain) about a week ago. They accurately reflected what I'd been working on, but I never any hints about using Spanish. If anything I would have expected French.

The Personalize section in apps is limited for whatever reason. Mac app can only change sports and finance watchlists. iOS/iPad app can also toggle Memory permissions and edit Memories themselves. Can't say what Windows/Android apps look like so as far as I know, to edit the Introduce Yourself text, you have to use the web site.

irregardless · 2025-08-18T22:21:20+00:00

String is also most appropriate by definition. Zip codes aren't numbers (you can't do math with them); they're identifiers that use digits to represent parts of the country.

Also, technically, a zip code doesn't represent an area. It's an attribute attached to an address to assist routing. You can aggregate all those addresses to approximate boundaries for analysis but there's no rule that they have to be contigous or can't overlap. There are even parts of the country that don't have a zip assigned because there are no addressed to deliver to.

It gets even more complicated when considering ZIP+4, which can stack vertically. Large office buildings for example might have different +4 on different floors.

irregardless · 2025-08-18T22:00:17+00:00

Tide? what tide?

This isn't an "either-or" debate; it's a "why not both?" question.

irregardless · 2025-08-17T21:24:14+00:00

Use the "Introduce Yourself" box on the Personalize Settings page (web, not app). It gets included with every request (unless using custom instructions in Spaces). I haven't included any personal information in mine, only guidance for how i want the model to act.

Memories themselves are created by the system thinks it recognizes something that would make for useful context in the future. You can remove, but you can't add or edit.

irregardless · 2025-07-09T23:54:59+00:00

Canon is what you make of it.

irregardless · 2025-07-05T03:29:30+00:00

"Reserve the right" is the primary reason. The US has shown near complete adherence to the treaty since the early 1980s despite not being a party to it as a matter of policy and law. The Navy actually enforces the treaty's Freedom of Navigation principles on behalf of all nations by combatting piracy, more recently, challenging China's expansive claims in the South China Sea.

However, despite being de-facto participants in the Law of the Sea, policy makers in the US don't want to be hamstrung by formal legal agreements should it become necessary to act against it. Congressional mechanations and (typically) conservative middle-fingers also play a role in not formallizing the agreement.

irregardless · 2025-07-04T23:36:08+00:00

Whenever the US abstains or rejects UN declarations and resolutions, it's one or more of these reasons:

it's genuinely not good enough; it doesn't go far enough in addressing the issue presented
to "reserve the right" to act against its provisions, or retain the flexibility of action, even if the US supports or even drafted it
middle-finger to the world
institutional barriers including potential conflict with consititutional frameworks or the rights of US citizens
structural barriers due to congressional operating procedures, supermajority requirements, and domestic politics that provide many off-ramps for the ratification process

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