Viewing profile — smokefoot

Yeah but the smoking gun is that volumes didn’t really go down much. I would buy higher unit margins on a shrinking volume, but for total profits to materially increase that means …

Woodworking taught me a lot about planning and design. As a young person, I was like the authors brother. I just wanted to do the thing, not draw a diagram and figure out how much …

Yes but what about AI? (Perhaps the most annoying words written in the last few years mostly on LinkedIn). But actually in the years since this was written, I do think the world ha…

Doubt it. Consulting firms run 30% gross margin and operating margins in The single digits or teens. I’d bet IBMs legacy portfolio is 40%+ operating margins. Sometimes you might he…

I mean no. The LIBOR analogy is appropriate. Large, long-term egg supply contracts are fixed to an index and that index was manipulated. That's criminal conspiracy and price fixing…

Maybe fair. I think my point was the author emphasizes how strange the software is. The further you are from the training data, the less well a model will perform. I haven't looked…

The author admits that the logic of the language and the design of the parser are idiosyncratic. Even the solution the author likes is an extension of an existing hacky trap door. …

Which is so weird, right? Like what is IBM now and how does a research lab make sense with the rest of their business? The money-making parts of IBM are: legacy software and hardwa…

Um, did i just get mansplained compound interest by Paul f*ing Graham? I feel like this has been the subject of condescending advice since the beginning of time. "But now you at le…

Or intel … but I think Samsung comes considerably closer. I’m not close to it.

I mean, I don’t know how long the NVIDIA moats can hold. With this much money at stake, others will challenge their dominance especially in a market as diverse and fragmented as ad…

Chinese semiconductor dominance is not imminent and US containment has been somewhat effective. I don’t think that will hold on a generational timeline, but it will be hard to over…

It’s pretty hard to quantify. Reading the tone of NYT headlines over the last 20 years, I observe a steady increase in side-taking on both sides of the newsroom. Those headlines an…

Yeah, I mean I’m being negative but I enjoyed the video. I just found Ben’s whole line of questioning to be pandering and not a dialog (“why not MIT?”) I had a similar experience w…

What a circle jerk. I guess there aren’t successful people with any humility. But seriously, he just used his own podcast to feature himself!

The industry moved to 300mm 25 years ago. It’s going to take a lot to get off that standard. Also, round chambers for etch and deposition are good for homogeneity. I can imagine sq…

The cost of silicon is less than insignificant in an advanced semiconductor product.

It’s interesting to see the give and take between google sheets and excel. Google sheets came on the scene shooting for total backwards compatibility and then proceeded to develop …

Right, good point. We will see if regulators take up that cause.

The secrecy is ick, but this is the future and there’s no stopping it. There’s ample evidence that consumers won’t pay for privacy and as most consumers opt in to data sharing prog…

This is not how capitalism works. However, if insurance were priced perfectly, it would cease to be useful!

There used to be opt-in insurance programs with many carriers. They used to send you a device, but I guess that was mooted by secret mass surveillance?

Some serious ADHD apparent in this interview. Like what was that digression about North African countries writing in French? That really should have been edited out.

Most carriers operate both Airbus and Boeing. Low cost carriers have less diversity and operate either 737s or A300s. Southwest is the only airline I can think of that would have t…

Also there’s less downside risk for OpenAI. Google has layers of approvals and risk committees because they don’t want to put the money machine at risk through litigation, reputati…