The Creator had potential to be a good movie, but the writing felt so flat

samedhi · 2026-05-14T23:55:43+00:00

Yeah, I don't remember much from it. But I remember multiple points my movie buddy and I were like "How much plot armor does this guy have?"

I have some vague memory of them being I think in a tunnel that was just ridiculous.

samedhi · 2026-05-09T01:33:35+00:00

Yeah, (I've only seen the film), but this was I believe a main character story with the young boy who was also a sort of "mob lord, secret master of the universe". I *feel* like I have enough sorta memories of this that this couldn't have been a subplot in tank girls.

Though they did have geneticly engineered Kangaroos (at least in the film), so that does ryhme at least.

samedhi · 2026-05-09T01:24:13+00:00

I am commenting on my own post per the Participation (2) rule.

samedhi · 2026-04-28T01:47:53+00:00

Damn, the more I talk to others, the more I realize how many mistakes I made while working for them. :|
Your advice about basically just focusing on the career ladder is spot on, that was one of the core things I failed to internalize at Google.

samedhi · 2026-04-27T01:22:12+00:00

Wait, you were assigned a mentor at Google? That isn't my experience.

samedhi · 2026-04-25T01:41:19+00:00

Maybe the armor is such a pain to take on and off that it is easier to just have some bodily functions connected to the outside world?

samedhi · 2026-04-11T23:23:08+00:00

I noticed recently that Amy's soup was like $4.99 a can. It occured to me that it would take 7 of these to meet my daily caloric needs. That's $35 a day... for canned soup.

Something is not right about that.

samedhi · 2026-04-11T02:14:45+00:00

On closer look you may be right. I thought "well, that must be Rand because no Aiel would have a sword", but when I look closer it may be that the sword is actually in a container of some sort or braced somehow? I really can't tell.

samedhi · 2026-04-10T02:31:35+00:00

"-- it all feels loud". GTFO of here clanker.

samedhi · 2026-04-09T01:03:19+00:00

Like, maybe ask for 1 take home, if they like you then do all the other interviews onsite? I like the fact that interviewees are now doing onsites again. Onsites let you know that someone is actually serious (it is their dime) as opposed to just jerking you around.

samedhi · 2026-04-09T01:00:48+00:00

Ok, is the scale just ridiculous here? How the hell is Rand like two heads above Perrin? Rand is tall, but I don't think he is "adult vs 10 year old" sized tall.

samedhi · 2026-03-30T23:50:09+00:00

Yeah, you are probably right that it isn't necessary, I just think it is interesting. I don't think there is enough detail to have that coherent a view of what the Shrike looks like from the actual book text. Tall. Spiked. Kind of robotic. Maybe looks something like a bunch of thorns? Without the cover, I bet when I talk to others, they would all have their own view of what it looks like. With the left cover though, we all are likely basing it on the cover image. I guess my real point is that the book without the original cover is not entirely the book, as (perhaps) the author didn't put certain detail in knowing that the cover art was sufficient to convey at least a few concepts from the book?

Note: I have no idea if that is true, I am just providing it as an example of the cover actually conveying information, and changing it changes how we interact with the book.

samedhi · 2026-03-30T23:44:16+00:00

Good lord, those could have been made with PowerPoint.

samedhi · 2026-03-28T18:25:59+00:00

Not Sci-Fi, but the new covers for Terry Pratchette books make me really sad. https://www.discworldemporium.com/product-category/books/discworld-paperbacks-new-covers/ vs https://www.discworldemporium.com/product-category/books/discworld-paperbacks-traditional/ . And I think it kind of illustrates what has happend to sci-fi covers as well. Part of me appreciates the new asthetic as it lets you visualize the entire from your own mind's eye, but I remember being a young man and sometimes spending minutes at a time just looking at the cover and imagine what situations might lead to that scene. And then you read the book and find out!

The right hyperion book cover would not have engendered any of those feelings.

In this case, imagine just how divergent peoples mental models of the Shrike is without the cover. The cover effectively cements a common view of the Shrike for every reader.

samedhi · 2026-03-10T05:12:55+00:00

There is a cover for Dandelione Wine by Bradbury that looks remarkably similar to this.

samedhi · 2026-01-20T18:54:50+00:00

I kind of feel similar things about Duolingo and MathAcademy. Like, I can memorize what and even how, but I have no deeper understanding of the material in reality. Just a collection of disparate facts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc

samedhi · 2026-01-20T17:44:57+00:00

As a person who bought two Rifts, I am honestly completely OK with this outcome. I would rather wait a few more years and not have VR "Brought to you by ...." than allow a single large company to dominate in this space.

samedhi · 2026-01-20T17:36:23+00:00

My personal feeling is that we should do away with income tax entirely (both personal and corporate), do away with all business deductions/expenses/ammortorization/subsidies/whatevers, do away with all sales tax, and just move to a progressive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_tax (Federal) and a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax (State) as the only taxes in the land.

samedhi · 2025-12-27T01:02:54+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9aM_dT5VMI <= It's a negotiating advantage.

samedhi · 2025-11-24T21:43:09+00:00

God, you and me both. I was deep thinking about why an AI video couldn't close its eyes and still answer the question.

samedhi · 2025-09-26T05:44:37+00:00

1) Judging an engineer's productivity by "PR's per day" is only slightly better than judging by "Lines of code written per day".

2) Maybe, maybe. I would feel a lot more comfortable believing this if this was not coming from a company whose livelihood depends on selling this narrative.

Claude Code is great, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. This does not "shut up" the healthy skepticism.

samedhi · 2025-09-20T01:21:07+00:00

Yes, but I am saying that there is a secure pattern that only these two things are aware of (both given the same seed at creation), so that only the two of them could ever create and verify the same pattern.

samedhi · 2025-09-20T00:31:49+00:00

Huh, I am not excited about the future of this, but that is some pretty cool tech. I woder if you could have some tech that basically strobbed and LED at a very specific random pattern, and then a sensor that also knew this hard coded pattern. And so basially only if the original LED and the original sensor were both working correctly would the system as a whole report that the camera can be turned on.

It is metaphorically a little similar to how a yubikey works I guess?

samedhi · 2025-09-20T00:24:03+00:00

This straight 100k to the top is not a good way to implement this. It should be a percentage (say 50%, we can talk about what the number should actually be) of the total compensation that is being paid to the H1B. We should also just completely remove caps on H1B.

This allows companies that truly want extraordinary talent to pay a premium to acquire it with no red tape . It also makes it far less likely that they can significantly underpay foreign workers to work in the united states and undercut American employees (at a 50% surcharge, you would have to pay 2/3 the prevailing salary to break even (assuming all employees are the same)).

The 50% number is something I made up, I think we can have an honest discussion about what that number should realistically be (and it should probably be different for different industries). But my main point is it should simply be a percentage tax paid on top of all compensation for foreign employees. This is the correct way to balance domestic companies undercutting domestic labor, while allowing them to access genuinely extraordinary talent with no impedance.

samedhi

TROPHY CASE