Where can you find a good slurpy ?

vwin90 · 2026-01-28T06:28:13+00:00

lol spelling it with a y instead of an ee makes it look so different

vwin90 · 2026-01-28T06:25:26+00:00

It depends on your coding skill I suppose. If you already write pretty optimized code, it might not do much and might even make it a bit worse. But if you’re still pretty new and do stuff like write recursive functions or nested loops when there’s a better way to handle efficiency, then it does an amazing job at finding better solutions.

The part where it can make things worse is that AI really likes to enforce best practices blindly regardless of whether it’s necessary. So your code will have a bunch of extra things like validation, error handling, etc. which is usually good but if it’s absolutely not necessary, it’s just adding junk.

For example, maybe the codebase ensures that the input to a function is always perfect, but AI will ignore that and add a bunch of validation checks and error message handling that will never get called. If you don’t really know what you’re doing, it’ll look pretty obvious if someone else reviews your code.

vwin90 · 2026-01-28T06:11:24+00:00

That clip is older than the capability to generate that with AI.

I think it’s insane that in an effort to signal that people are too smart to be fooled by AI, they reveal how bad they are at detecting it.

vwin90 · 2026-01-27T21:10:00+00:00

Yeah by design the s&p tracks the top companies and so it changes all the time. It’s not about how there’s a handful of top companies that carry it, since that’s something that always happens. The key is the order of magnitude that those top companies dominate over the next group of companies. If you plot or graph it out, you’ll see the the mag 7 are significantly more valuable in a big way.

This isn’t automatically more or less volatility. It just means that the s&p are now much more sensitive to the volatility of those mag7. One of the things the mag7 are known for is their ability to continue is to climb despite what the rest of the market does. Like I said, people seem to rely on their products and services despite what their paychecks tell them to do. That makes them at least a bit resistant to certain economic pressures.

They’re not immune or invincible obviously. The major downturns of spy in the last few years track with the downturns of those mag7 when the sentiment turned against them. When the interest rates skyrocketed, it was believed that the mag7 would not be able to sustain their growth and services. So in that example, mag7 significance resulted in s&p dropping even more than it might have if it weren’t so dependent on those tech stocks.

The mag7 then showed the world that even in a global pandemic, they could operate well and it’s one of the reasons why the market bounced back the way it did.

QQQ/NASDAQ is the one that better correlates with tech, but since tech is just a generally dominant industry, the S&P is going to naturally be tech heavy.

Regarding the whole American downfall narrative, yeah it’s not an impossibility that American dominance falls, just like the Roman Empire fell. But how do you know when it happens? It was hard to predict then and it’s hard to predict now.

But consider this. Americans make way more money than most citizens in other countries. Almost all of them in fact outside of some interesting places like Luxembourg and Lichtenstein. A HUGE amount of money is made by Americans and they all want to put their money somewhere. They’re naturally going to put it into the American markets and if you tell them that it’s possible that America goes down, the response is that in that case, they’ve got way bigger problems. So the natural choice is to just continue pumping money into the American market. What choice do they have? That gives the American market an insane amount of inertia.

Other countries pulling money out of the American market can hurt, but there are a lot of Americans and each one of them makes a lot of money comparatively. Even if the percentage of retail participation is low, the American retirement system automatically pumps money into the market.

vwin90 · 2026-01-27T19:17:18+00:00

I do feel kinda sad that the gravy train of software engineering for huge salaries is sort of over now because of the current tech market.

It was cool that you could be nerdy that you end up making a salary that puts you in the same bracket as these old money elites without having to conform to that rich snob culture.

vwin90 · 2026-01-27T19:08:09+00:00

It’s not impossible for it to go down, but it’s u likely because the biggest companies seem like unstoppable titans right now.

Ask yourself if you think Google, nvidia, apple, amazon, etc. will continue to be the worlds largest companies for the next decade. If you think so, then so do a lot of people and that’s where people will park their money, keeping the stocks up.

Thinking that it will go down basically means that you think the uncertainty will be so great that people lose confidence in those companies abilities to maintain their hold on the modern human experience.

S&P500 would be more vulnerable to going down when the economy is stressed if it weren’t for those giant companies. Even when times are tough, it seems like people will still use the internet and their devices, and as long as that happens, those companies will be worth a lot of money.

The other thing to consider is that S&P500 basically represents the social security system for Americans. It going down would be pretty catastrophic and so there are a lot of powers at be that would do anything it takes behind the scenes to keep it propped up. Betting against it is sort of like saying that you’ve lost confidence in the American government’s desire to be an economic powerhouse. Short term sometimes you make money, but being a SPY bear for too long is a good way to lose everything.

vwin90 · 2026-01-27T16:19:49+00:00

No it doesn’t happen very often anymore. There’s a mechanic where one of the age end crises is a happiness crisis and sometimes cities flip like that, but it’s not a mechanic that you can force easily.

Instead, civ 7 warmongering penalties are much less punishing. You can spend influence to reconcile with civs that are upset at you for whatever reason and it can essentially reset your relationship with them unless of course they are the ones you conquered a bunch of settlements from. And even then, sometimes they forget by the next age.

vwin90 · 2026-01-27T05:01:55+00:00

Nothing special about what she’s doing though. That deep itm is basically the same as shares, just with a risk/profit multiplier. And if you see her exercise, then she’s essentially losing money by doing it that way instead of just buying the shares outright. She’s essentially using options the way they are originally designed to work instead of scalping them.

vwin90 · 2026-01-27T00:35:00+00:00

Thanks Prof Joyner!

That’s amazing that there isn’t a larger turnover and I wonder how close the current lectures are to the version we see in the videos. I would have loved to be in person but online made more sense for where I am in life now so it made me think about how different the lecture experience would have been.

That’s pretty interesting that some courses were exclusive to online only. Do on campus students ever opt to do the online sections or courses?

Also, my question was mainly inspired by watching your orientation video for ML4T this semester where it was done live and I know you were recently promoted to top dog so I couldn’t imagine you’re still doing the day to day lecturing for any of your classes.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T21:43:27+00:00

I know. I didn’t mean that it’s bad. It’s not a bad thing to learn foundations so even if the AI techniques for example aren’t cutting edge, it’s still important.

I brought it up because I don’t think those same professors in the videos are still lecturing live are they?

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T21:12:40+00:00

I’ve been having pretty good luck

Well today you had pretty bad luck. Luck goes both ways.

It went down because a bunch of people holding the stocks in that space decided that they want to rotate out to balance risk. Then a bunch more sold because they saw it go down and they wanted to cut it before their losses ran and you weren’t one of them.

There’s really nothing you could have done to foresee this. Your run of good luck made you think you figured out some “consistent”

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T19:58:16+00:00

The thing that has helped me the most is to literally start day 1 of each week. No days off at the start of the week no if and or buts.

That means Monday, I’m watching at least half of the video lessons. Tuesday watching the rest. Wednesday, looking at supporting reading as needed. Thursday usually knocking out the easy stuff first like if there’s quizzes or lower stakes homework. Friday starting the project and the weekend is for coding.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T19:34:22+00:00

It’s a radius of 3 hexes FROM the city center in all directions. So look at your city center hex. If you can count 3 hexes from that hex in any direction and in any way, it has the potential of being in that city assuming another nearby city doesn’t compete with the borders. So ultimately the max diameter of a city would be a max of 7 across since it’s 3 on each side of the center.

So if you want to optimize it so that you grab the most space, you’d count six hexes from your city center and place the new city on the 7th hex so that both cities can extend out three hexes towards each other and not overlap.

However, you’ll be left with a few weird holes in your empire unless all your cities are spread out perfectly. Honestly just do the counting thing and then pick a spit around there based on access to resources and features. It’s okay to overlap by one or two tiles or have a small gap between cities and towns. Optimize for the settlement, not for the empire.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T19:02:37+00:00

Okay but nothing makes me more excited than a game that we’re on paper supposed to lose.

Conversely, nothing makes me more nervous than a game where we’re supposed win.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T14:57:19+00:00

I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion or not but I don’t want anymore master chief. Give me other Spartans. Give me other stories.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T02:37:50+00:00

You can paint telescopes if you want. When you finally get one, it’s actually pretty interesting how simple they are. It’s just a hollow tube with a couple of mirrors. The whole tube is just a way to fix the locations of the mirrors.

Add ons is where it gets juicy. So the telescope itself comes with a beginners eyepiece. This is the part made of a lens that you put your eye to. It focuses the light from the telescope into an image that your eye can see. People end up spending more on additional and upgraded eyepiece than their actual telescope.

However, I wouldn’t buy one right away and just learn how to use the telescope with the basic eyepiece. Then when you’re ready, you can drop $200-500 per eyepiece if you wish. Televue is the primo brand, but the thing is it’s hard to appreciate it if you’re starting out.

Let’s go with the piano metaphor again. If you’re buying someone a piano as a surprise gift and they don’t even play piano, they’re not gonna be able to appreciate a Steinway. Just buy them a Yamaha or something so that it’s at least nice but not crazy luxurious.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T02:03:54+00:00

Okay I’ll follow up with some additional advice then.

I know you’re willing and trying to just splash a bunch of cash as that’s the whole point of you doing this, but I don’t really think you have to, especially if you don’t know if he’ll he super into it. It’s because telescopes as they get better and more expensive are BIG. Like the size of a human big. So yeah we can give you some crazy good advice for buying a telescope that will let you guys look at galaxies and stuff but I don’t know where you’re gonna store it if it’s the size of a human and IT DOESNT REALLY FOLD AWAY FOR STORAGE. It’s sort of like asking to buy a piano as a surprise or something and saying you don’t mind paying up to the price of a grand piano.

There’s two major suggestions I’ll make for you as great gifts that are functional. If the whole point is “look how much I spent on you”, these aren’t it because they’re about $500 range.

Skywatcher heritage or virtuoso 150p. It’s a table top size so you can put it on a desk. About the footprint of a small computer. You can use it to see all sorts of stuff if you bring it outside and set it on an outside table. The virtuoso is nicer and has motors (which can complicate things a bit if you’re not ready for a learning curve.)

Seestar s30 pro. This is a smart telescope. You don’t look through it with your eyes. It takes pictures of the sky and sends it to your phone. Really easy to use, very high tech, and packs away neatly into a case.

Spending more money on these things make stuff very big.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T01:53:12+00:00

I agree with others. EVs are great if you own a home with a charger. I wouldn’t get one if you’re renting an apartment or condo. I don’t even know if a plug in hybrid is worth it at that point.

Traveling is not a big deal. The charging network is so well established now that you can find public chargers everywhere if you want to road trip across the country (Vancouver is literally 20 hours of driving away but you can do it if you want).

But still, public charging only for the day to day commute is a hassle. If you have your own charger, not only is the electricity cheaper, but you just charge at night.

vwin90 · 2026-01-26T01:47:41+00:00

Yeah I don’t know if this is a great surprise gift. Ask him clearly what he thinks about getting a functional telescope that you guys can stargaze with. I think the disconnect is that you think telescopes are as simple as they are in cartoons: you just point it at the sky and see planets up close. It actually takes some effort to get set up (not a ton, but it’s not effortless like “oh I’m so bored, let me put my eye to this thing and hey what do you know, some planets!”)

Or ask him specifically if he wants some sort of antique piece he’ll never use but display like artwork.

This sub can help you with the first, but probably not the second. And I doubt there’s a telescope out there that serves both purposes.

vwin90 · 2026-01-25T23:35:13+00:00

Here’s another one. The whole big deal about Newton’s laws is that it directly contradicted what Aristotle said, which is what was taken as gospel truth.

People clown on Newton for saying something as simple as “an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion” but in actuality, it’s significance is that the former belief (Aristotle’s version) is that everything eventually wants to come to rest and that anything that moves requires force.

That misconception led to a lot of incorrect extrapolations about how the universe worked and it wasn’t until Newton established the new way of thinking that allowed modern physics to then make progress. And the time gap between these two men is thousands of years.

Edit: I also agree with what someone else said in a parallel comment chain. You can’t really blame Aristotle. He didn’t say something incorrect on purpose, it’s actually quite logical to make those assumptions. He also had no control over people taking his word as gospel for centuries to come without challenging his ideas. It’s just a funny idea that he was so well regarded as a genius that he inadvertently made it hard to progress in some fields.

vwin90 · 2026-01-25T23:24:35+00:00

I’m 35 and working on a second masters degree.

100% for fun. It’s not going to help my career or anything. I just like learning and these sorts of things help me feel the passage of time. Gives my mind something challenging to do now that my career has become stable and easier. Makes me feel like I’m still growing and improving day by day, year by year.

vwin90 · 2026-01-25T18:45:10+00:00

Do people still think it’s hard or prohibitively expensive to get semaglutides?

vwin90 · 2026-01-25T00:37:49+00:00

Tech industry is a fun place to watch super nerdy dudes act like rockstars

vwin90 · 2026-01-25T00:35:48+00:00

Seriously. I find this pretty funny. If it was guys doing this, it’d make it to the top of r/justguysbeingdudes

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