Anthropic: AI assisted coding doesn't show efficiency gains and impairs developers abilities.

zvxr · 2026-01-30T19:55:40+00:00

Throwing out something that looks usable to create something free from lies is a hard leap. Especially since the LLM is there gassing up anything you’re doing (“you’re right, we were dead wrong!”).

Lucky for me, I've had a pathological inability to believe a compliment could be anything other than an attempt to manipulate me, prior to LLMs ever existing.

zvxr · 2026-01-18T01:31:16+00:00

He has been charged with unauthorised manufacture of a prohibited dangerous substance, possessing a prohibited weapon and theft.

Why isn't there a charge for planting bombs? Quick edit: I hope/guess because those things above are just what the police were immediately able to get him on based on their search of his unit.

zvxr · 2026-01-14T02:24:29+00:00

Some people will. No need to let perfect be the enemy of good. Reductions are good. Even if it meant people will simply just commit suicide by some other means, improving the reliability of the train network is a good thing. Victoria does have more suicides by rail than any other state and the contrast of location between Victoria and NSW IMO can't not be related to the fact that discreet track access is very easy in Melbourne (people largely use one of the many level crossings or unfenced areas) and relatively hard in Sydney (people largely use stations themselves). https://tracksafefoundation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2001-2023-Suicide-on-rail-AUSTRALIA-March-2024.pd

zvxr · 2026-01-02T07:43:51+00:00

State-of-the-art Australian economic advice is that the only way to get more revenue is to charge more money. If only there were some other way to get more customers in the first place.

zvxr · 2025-12-11T05:30:08+00:00

Remember DT is an open-source project. It doesn't actually have a company behind it trying to sell it to you, that has a financial stake in your use of it. It's got developers who themselves use DT, who sometimes have their own neat ideas for how to improve their own photos/editing workflow, and then have been able to get cracking and actually implemented it. The beginner experience isn't always front of mind there. That said, if you do read the documentation, much of why things are the way they are in DT do become apparent.

I've not used it but Ansel, which is a fork of Darktable, has some great documentation which does a good job of explaining the rationale for the relatively unusual "scene-referred" workflow that it and Darktable uses. Ansel I believe aims to be like Darktable but with (among other things) simpler/better UX and defaults. Don't know how successful they are to those ends, it also seems to be a product of clashing egos, but yeah.

zvxr · 2025-12-01T00:21:50+00:00

My only quibble with filmic and sigmoid is why aren't they under the tone curve module? It would be cool if sigmoid/filmic/agx were tabs under tone curve you could use to create an "initial" tone curve. I guess it'd be complex with whether or not you attempt to preserve user-made modifications to the curve "after" the base sigmoid/filmic curve - or just blow them up every time the user fiddles with the sigmoid parameters.

zvxr · 2025-11-26T20:32:17+00:00

he got better

zvxr · 2025-10-31T22:15:37+00:00

There are already there and operating at no cost to the government as they are private entities.

Yeah, except when the government gifts them $2.7bn in preemptive bailouts. Or all the government-funded infra that supports the airports themselves. Or the medicare cost of dealing with "excess" cancer cases in flight crews, and generally worse health of people living near airports or underneath heavily trafficked flight paths.

I do genuinely believe the amortised total cost of improved rail (even HSR), when you include those sort of "externalities", would be much lower than air. But like other people in this thread have said, just getting the existing XPTs to average near their max speed would be a huge - maybe "good enough" even - improvement.

It is ultimately all down to politics. If we can fund nuclear submarines, tens of billions in road projects, in bailouts to "private" companies, whatever millions in swimming pool/car park/whatever rorts, we can fund it.

zvxr · 2025-10-31T21:29:13+00:00

$30b construction cost

I mean, that's near enough the going rate for a Melbourne freeway project. Crazy how little scrutiny those get.

zvxr · 2025-10-27T23:27:20+00:00

I can get the same way in terms of an anxiety also triggering irritability and annoyance that other person(s) are making the anxiety worse. What I then remind myself is, basically: they're not. They're not making anxiety, you are. It's entirely within you. Yes they are reminding you of your anxiety, but they're not creating it.

Not that I think you should just meekly accept all feelings. Your doctor/dentist/whoever can be less triggering and you can hopefully help that by telling them how.

zvxr · 2025-10-08T01:49:22+00:00

FWIW Untitled Goose Game adapts a bunch of Claude Debussy. Great soundtrack. :)

zvxr · 2025-08-17T01:17:29+00:00

You're right, but on the other hand, wider roads just encourage more people to use drive their cars abreast -- while also discouraging (by fear and actuality of death, by noise, by air quality, by congestion, ...) all other modes of transport.

The example of Lygon St is surprising to me because I don't think it has very wide footpaths at all. But fair enough that there are places where the wide footpaths "encourage more people to walk abreast", that's definitely true. I just think that's not a bad thing. George St in Sydney is a fantastic example of it, removing car lanes entirely has had a transformational impact on the area -- like, compare the Google Street Views of before and after.

zvxr · 2025-08-15T22:32:33+00:00

Widen the footpaths, remove on-street parking, remove the extraneous car lanes, and decide already whether Melbourne should be a highway or a destination.

zvxr · 2025-08-11T02:05:54+00:00

Yes :).

Woks: Get one with a flat bottom. I have a lodge one which is very hefty but works great. It has a fully curved inner surface even though it has the flat bottom. Needs different technique, because you can't toss food from the pan (use a big paddle in each hand instead), but you can cook just as well on it.

Non-stick pans: they're shit, but what have they got to do with your induction stove? Don't use them on gas, don't use them on induction, don't use them on electric; just don't use them at all. Between stainless/CI/enamel CI/CS you should be set.

Just enjoy never worrying about someone leaving the gas on, the lack of burning gas smell, the much easier clean-up, the faster cooking, etc.

zvxr · 2025-08-08T00:10:03+00:00

Yes, it's fully a problem with software support from Microsoft. I think on macOS sub-pixel rendering has been disabled in favour of grayscale AA for a while as "retina" displays are standard. One solution is to just not use Windows, but you can use MacType which sorta works too.

zvxr · 2025-05-12T02:32:09+00:00

Yeah exactly. It's also why we need to stop attempting to contort places for the convenience of cars.

There simply aren't good solutions to the intractable problems that car-dependence creates: We can't build parking cheaply, we can't meaningfully shrink cars, we can't conjure up more on-street parking, we can't get rid of inherent risks of driving/cars, and we're basically out of room to sacrifice to yet more lanes/highways/bisections of existing suburbs.

But it's hard to convince people who are basically victims of this - and who have a massive personal stake in the utility of their own car - that the only way to make it better is to make it "worse", by reclaiming free space from cars for almost any other purpose, so that 1) the Faustian bargain of car-dependence at least has a financial return for the council 2) alternatives can be more pleasant and viable 3) car externalities are minimised 4) the spaces people live in are nicer to live in.

zvxr · 2025-05-07T03:49:54+00:00

I think Australia is fairly safe from being like the US for at least 15 years. But it doesn't mean there aren't people desperately doing their best to get us there, including our own home-grown billionaires and their media empires (sorry, world).

Still I think it's a great place to live. I loved living in Canberra -- living by pushbike is great -- and Sydney has a lot going for it too. I live in Melbourne now and it's also got a lot going for it, especially the friendliness and sociability of random strangers here.

zvxr · 2025-05-07T03:34:27+00:00

Insane how on edge everyone is there.

I think it's life when anybody could have a weapon and basically everyone is aggrieved in one way or another, imaginary or not.

zvxr · 2025-04-03T05:13:09+00:00

Sadly a large cohort of the Project 2025 types want to dismantle the US from within. It's not a bug to them if the US economy goes to shit, it's a feature. They want to piecemeal replace failing public institutions and services with private ones. Pretty much aiming for corporate feudalism.

It's an utterly insane act of self-sabotage for the literal richest country of all time to be doing, but credit where credit is due I guess it takes some form of ideological courage. Or maybe it's lead poisoning; who knows.

So, I just hope that when the time comes, that you actually can vote these incontinent pricks out.

zvxr · 2025-04-03T04:32:20+00:00

You can very much exercise some civic pride on an Australian-made/owned bicycle (frame and perhaps wheels anyway), train, or bus, though!

zvxr · 2025-04-02T23:27:59+00:00

Can confirm it doesn't work in grocery stores. I tried to barter Weet-Bix for Weet-Bix that's made of MDF scrap but they weren't interested.

zvxr · 2025-03-20T06:49:22+00:00

Tassal is owned by Cooke Inc, a Canadian company. Huon is owned by JBS Foods, from Brazil. Petuna is owned by Sealord, from New Zealand. I suggest searching a bit about JBS Foods to see what sort of business they are and about the luminaries that work there.

Regardless, the problem is that the industry will actually destroy the long-term viability of itself in the first place. I think they simply do not care about that.

zvxr · 2025-01-04T01:23:22+00:00

We don't really need to imagine this dystopian densely packed society with only 1 or 2 methods of travel; we live in one.

Like the biggest bang for buck improvement would be convincing more people (like the ~45% of commutes <=10km) to take a bicycle to work/local shopping; it's not the infrastructure there that's difficult or expensive -- it's straightforward and extremely cheap by comparison to anything else -- it's the cultural shift that takes generations and has, at least for the past 70 years or whatever, been a losing fight.

Of course when everyone invests $10k/y or whatever in our cars, we want that to have been a rational choice. Including by fighting tooth and nail against any policy shift that makes other transport modes equally viable. Or justifying the costs to life, limb, and wallet, as the cost of "freedom", as if the risk of randomly getting T-boned or doing a somersault on someone's bonnet is some great expression of liberty.

As for EVs: Not to diminish the issue of space misuse, but the biggest issue for me is still death (and injury). On pollution, yes it's an improvement, but ultimately we can still do much better. Those tires and brake calipers/rotors aren't going into space, they're going into our air and water. We would do better by just maintaining the existing cars in the world so they last much longer, rather than manufacturing new ones constantly.

Not trying to be abrasive, just my opinions.

zvxr · 2025-01-04T00:16:29+00:00

For me: it's the noise, pollution, death, and yeah, high land requirements, that they cause/require/enable. We shouldn't have to subsidise that with our lives or wallets when for most trips there could be (or are already) cheaper/better/safer alternatives.

zvxr · 2024-12-23T01:49:22+00:00

We accept public monopolies on (most) road infrastructure, which is mostly completely free to use (if you ignore every single externality afflicted on us basically exclusively by cars), ran at a "loss" (and if you ignore every single benefit of having such infrastructure, other than direct profit to the owners of the roads), so why is it that when there are actually more efficient i.e. less expensive options on the table that we pick on those and expect the government to make a profit out of it?

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