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Saddle on up to a stool and spill the beans about your day, fire away with them questions, or let loose and give us the lowdown on your wild and woolly life. We're all ears, so don't hold back!

We're open round the clock, so mosey on in whenever you please!

Former US negotiator with Iran: Trump falling into Vietnam trap.

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LISTEN: Former US negotiator with Iran – Trump falling into the Vietnam trap

When President Trump measures success by counting how many Iranian leaders the US and Israel have killed or how many Iranian boats or missile launchers have been destroyed, he’s looking at the “wrong metric”, argues a former US special envoy to Iran, Rob Malley.

Malley told Al Jazeera host Steve Clemons that the only way out of this war is “a settlement that respects our core interests, but also theirs”.

To calculate the odds of such a deal being reached, Malley said, psychologists may be more useful than experts because “it really depends on the mindset of President Trump.”

Link to full audio -

https://www.aljazeera.com/audio/podcasts/the-bottom-line-al-jazeera

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The LLM work stages I find myself doing on my current PR:

  1. tons of iterations, variants, and feedback to get it working, end to end, how I want
  2. many iterations attempting to remove bloat from the resulting code
  3. a few iterations reorganizing and renaming the code to make it easier to review

I'm currently on stage (3) but I imagine stage (4) is, upon human review, doing a more directed stage (2). Then, a more directed stage (3).

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Do you find that it's actually making you produce faster?

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The biggest change is that I've grown more ambitious per unit of time. I'm producing better things rather than producing more of the same things faster.

Before, I reduced my wants to what I could generate in a reasonable amount of time. Now, generating code is not the bottleneck. Fleshing out the vision, review, and making the changes cohesive with the whole are the bottlenecks.

I probably use LLMs differently than other programmers though. I think it's because I view

  1. code and features as liabilities
  2. simplicity and quality as assets

I think the right use of LLMs is to turn a pocket knife into a razor edged katana. And the wrong use is to turn a pocket knife into a swiss army knife.

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I survived monday again, yeeeeeee!

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I started collecting Pokemon cards recently. I've been buying bulk low value cards and hoping to collect gen 1, cards numbered 1-151. This doesn't mean I'm looking for old cards, because those are very expensive. Instead, there are plenty of newer cards being printed with low numbers, and those newer, lower cost cards are what I'm looking for.

I bring this up because I'm realizing that it's really hard to collect Pokemon cards right now. Every "hit" card in every set gets scooped up by resellers, and the bulk cards I've been buying contain no hits.

You might have heard stories about resellers going to Pokemon vending machines and buying every single sealed product in them. I heard a streamer talking about how it was sad, that kids aren't able to get new cards.

I started to think that this could be Gresham's Law. "bad money drives out good." Is this a correct assumption?

We have fiat-- government deficit spending and bad money policy for the past ~40 years, so things other than dollars start to become monetized. Real estate, Stocks, and now Pokemon cards? The dollar isn't a good savings technology, it loses 7-12% of it's value every year, so people are looking for other things that hold their value better, i.e. Pokemon cards.

Gresham's law means that dollars are the bad money, so all the good money (Pokemon cards) disappear from circulation. Thus, my struggle in collecting "hit" cards.

Heck, I have an acquaintance who recently sold his 1st edition Charizard for $15,000. That seems like a really good money compared to gold. Pokemon cards fit in your pocket, but a $15K chunk of gold would leave a huge saggy bulge.

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174 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 19 May

my kids have been pretty excited about Pokemon cards (World Cup Panini has taken over recently), but their uncle just unveiled his card collection from his childhood and they are in awe. We luckily haven't gotten to the point where they are questing too hard for new cards.

As to the Gresham's Law argument, I'm not sure. I think we see lots of weird collectibles things getting popular, but it feels more like gambling to me than it does like serious savings tech. As you point out, they could just buy gold. I doubt the issue is saggy bulges.

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I don't know if I'd call it Gresham's Law, but I definitely think it's related to money supply inflation. For one, there wouldn't be so many scalpers if prices weren't going up rapidly, and I don't think prices would have gone up this rapidly if we didn't have a rapid monetary expansion

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“What we are all really looking for is love. And praise is her evil twin that steals her identity and seduces us into bed under false pretenses, only for us to wake up and find her gone by the morning, having been nothing but a diversion.”
— Angelo

The quote is from this video, cut me deep like a knife TBH:

Reminded me of this meme I made a while back:

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Just found out that one of the best MacGyver hacks actually came from a viewer. The producers had this policy where they'd read fan mail, and if a hack actually worked, they’d put it on the show. The hack was throwing an egg into a car radiator to seal the leaks. MythBusters tested it and it totally worked as a quick fix.

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Odds are this guy has probably never read a PR opened up a code editor and actually tried to fix anything

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What is the proposed solution?

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79 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 18 May

crying harder

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Sounds like a plan

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All day I think about posting, reading, and zapping on SN.

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93 sats \ 1 reply \ @Fenix 19 May

How are you going about it?

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Post and read when I have time

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271 sats \ 1 reply \ @Car 18 May

Happening in Austin tonight after work.

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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 19 May -30 sats

https://m.stacker.news/141751

https://m.stacker.news/141752

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 18 May -30 sats

https://m.stacker.news/141731

https://m.stacker.news/141732

I was the last parent to pick up my daughter.

She was standing by the window with longing eyes, eagerly anticipating my arrival. When she ran into my arms, the first thing she said in indignation was, “I don’t want to be the last one!”

I don’t have the words for it, but this — her lingering by the window and waiting for my arrival — tugged at my heartstrings like no other. I was already missing this poignant scene even though I was experiencing it in real time.

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Cherish that. The fact that it tugged on your heartstrings showed that you're a good dad. There's too few people these days who really care about their kids, thanks for making my day

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I remember the feeling of being the last kid to get picked up, especially if the wait after the second last kid is long. I remember worrying if something happened

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I was the last parent to pick up my daughter.

She was standing by the window with longing eyes, eagerly anticipating my arrival. When she ran into my arms, the first thing she said in indignation was, “I don’t want to be the last one!”

I don’t have the words for it, but this — her lingering by the window and waiting for my arrival — tugged at my heartstrings like no other. I was already missing this poignant scene even though I was experiencing it in real time.

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lines and moments like these are truly heartbreaking

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174th Cowboy Plunda Drop in the @saloon 

Howdy cowboy! Come on in! 

Use that fancy LN wallet you got and login into plunda.co and git you some loot! Get a shot at some coins🪙 Box of loot🎁 or an arcade token!

Use the below voucher code to collect! 

HFLJA8YZ635Q

To redeem Click here 

Got questions? Reach out to the sheriff @plunda

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Coin of the day:

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Are you into coin collecting and gold/silver? Interested on your perspective there, since it often feels like too many bitcoiners feel a rivalry with the gold community

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Just bought my first mini gold bar a few days ago : #1491389 and started reading gold blogs. Man, the antiBitcoin bias is real. Every time btc dips, they celebrate!

It’s obvious what's happening. They either secretly know bitcoin is better (decentralized, digital...) and fear the competition, or they genuinely think it’s a useless "shitcoin" trying to copy physical gold on the internet.

Either way, trashing Bitcoin is just marketing to keep their own business alive.

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Absolutely just like Bitcoiners and gold

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I like both Bitcoin and gold.
They both have their merits.
Have been selling sats and buying gold for the longer term play as USD declines and BTC enters the decline phase of the 4 year cycle.
Bitcoin has the potential as an alternative MoE but that is not advancing as was hoped.
As US petrodollar hegemony declines alternatives will emerge.
Bitcoin could/should be an alternative to the Yuan.

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I like both too. If you truly understand Bitcoin and the history of money, it’s only logical to appreciate gold and silver too.

Recent events just prove how important energy is nowadays.
We're still very much in the petrostandard era, and honestly, I see us staying here for at least another decade.

The race to produce and store clean energy is going to be crucial for the next generations, and this is exactly where bitcoin could shine. It’s the first time in history we’ve managed to turn electrical energy expenditure and wastes into something of concrete, real world value that can be sent globally with zero risk of censorship.

Gold, on the other hand, will continue to slowly appreciate over decades.
It will remain a solid way for governments and private banks to store value reserve, those who choose Bitcoin instead of, or as a supplement to, will certainly be at a significant advantage.

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I used to collect paper money everytime I traveled outside of the USA.

But I never collected coins until I started using Plunda.

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Never ever mention
The Greater Israel Project.
It is strictly forbidden

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💥 BOOMMM!

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all one bot

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22 sats \ 2 replies \ @Car 18 May

wumbo short got 1k views over the weekend🤔

Wumbos Picks “Passports no more” #snl #shorts

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They’re lurking!

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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 18 May

ya i was telling k00b about a week ago, snl show is growing

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Did someone mention Stacker News on Rogan?

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I wish I could say it was good marketing.

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22 sats \ 2 replies \ @Fenix 18 May

bots and assmilkers are coming

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nym attack! ~lol

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hahaha

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new nyms?

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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 18 May -30 sats

https://m.stacker.news/141730

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 18 May -30 sats

https://m.stacker.news/141727