timr

54 ms·

721.
by timr 1y ago
GGP is responding to my own anecdote, about my own friend who runs a small neighborhood restaurant that is now overrun with tourists. I don't think I misinterpreted the response.
722.
by timr 1y ago
I didn't say "speak Japanese" (I said try to use the language, which is just table stakes for visiting a country), and it should go without saying that you cannot change your race. You can still blend in far more than most
723.
by timr 1y ago
> So effectively the advice becomes "stay at home, don't vacation, or if you do vacation stay at some prepackaged place". I didn't expect it to be a popular take, but I feel like the "sightseeing travel" mod
724.
by timr 1y ago
It's pretty amazing that you've managed to both take the least-charitable interpretation of my comment, and apply a dated stereotype of Japanese people in one post. So: 1) There is a whole spectrum of alternatives between "
725.
by timr 1y ago
Yes, agreed. I’m not talking about places like Roppongi or the sketchier parts of Shinjuku and Shibuya, Dotonbori, Umeda, etc., which have always been red light districts. I’m talking about a more pedestrian type of ripoff, which is simply
726.
by timr 1y ago
> But the thing I worry about, having never been there, is that I might get some good recommendations for out-of-the-way spots where there would be few if any other tourists, and take the time to go find them, only to be denied entry bec
727.
by timr 1y ago
> Anyway, I disagree with you: Japan is still a miracle in terms of the quality and service you get for the money. I saw this many times over. I assume you mean "relative to other places" here, and in that sense, I agree. Japan
728.
by timr 1y ago
> So, much like every restaurant that becomes popular, anywhere in the world? No, but thanks for the spot-on imitation of an entitled foreign visitor. The insinuation that somehow it's the local people's fault that they don&#
729.
by timr 1y ago
You're not going far enough: before Covid, finding a place (excluding conbini) that took a credit card was rare . Credit cards are common now, like you say, but nearly any business will still accept cash. I think I've encountered
730.
by timr 1y ago
Yes, I agree that it's a better way to travel if you can do it, but most people can't [1]. That said, even for short-term tourists, Japan used to be kind of a miracle in terms of the quality and service you would get for the money
731.
by timr 1y ago
> How long ago was that? It was certainly true in fairly large portions of the world, but there are plenty of places where, for as long as I can remember, you could pretty much expect to be scammed regularly. To be clear: "scamming&
732.
by timr 1y ago
Sure, of course. I've just never seen one that didn't take cash or credit card.
733.
by timr 1y ago
I don't know about the Ramen place (I can't believe that they wouldn't take cash?), but I agree with you that more places are doing this kind of "two markets" stuff -- it's even becoming official, in that now t
734.
by timr 1y ago
They're starting to ban it. Japan's wheels of government move slowly, but they tend to be effective when they do move.
735.
by timr 1y ago
I have been to many snack bars. They're everywhere, they're not "seedy", and nearly all of them are open to anyone.
736.
by timr 1y ago
> What's the advantage of seeing an original piece of art over a serviceable replica? Especially in the case where the "original" is a print, one of dozens. And when you consider that "original" in woodblock prin
737.
by timr 1y ago
No, it means "balanced". You shouldn't hide the ugly parts, but you should report on the good arguments of the opposition -- as well as the ugly parts of your own team. Both the left and the right have good arguments and ba
738.
by timr 1y ago
> That even if a show is apolitical (or mostly apolitical like TAL), it will inherently have some political bias because the creators are inherently biased. I agree, but I'd extend with one other observation: a show can be rigorousl
739.
by timr 1y ago
See my reply to the sibling comment. I don't know what a "statistically accurate representation of society" would be, nor do I hold that up as my standard here. > Such shows will not survive - not enough people will listen
740.
by timr 1y ago
Yeah, I didn't say they never cover them. They do it -- to their credit -- and I'd even go so far as to say that they're one of the more balanced programs on public radio. But they're still far from actually balanced.
741.
by timr 1y ago
I'm not on the political right, but it's plain that they don't give it equal time. I don't expect the audience cares very much about this, though, which is sort of to OPs implied point. We've reached a place where e
742.
by timr 1y ago
> Yet. Obviously time and talent moved us from Eliza to ChatGPT/Gemini. Time being the big word there. Eliza came out in the 1960s. >Is it really unlikely that time and talent can’t push us over the artificial emotion precipice a
743.
by timr 1y ago
LLMs are cool and they're amazing for what they are, but the hype is just ridiculous right now, and the extrapolation fallacy is still a fallacy. Without a good structural reason to assume exponential growth (e.g. organism reproduction
744.
by timr 1y ago
Agreed. Or "AI models are getting faster", which seems defensible.
745.
by timr 1y ago
The proper comparison is not a human, it’s a computer. Or even a human with a computer. But my point wasn’t to judge LLMs on their (in)ability to do math - I was only responding to the parent comment’s assertion that they’ve gotten better i
746.
by timr 1y ago
For those people who won’t read anything more than the headline, this is a silly paper based on a metric that considers only “task completion time” at “a specified degree of reliability, such as 50 percent” for “human programmers”. Then, in
747.
by timr 1y ago
The same sort of rigorous analysis that the parent comment used (that’s a joke, btw). But seriously: If you find yourself agreeing with one and not the other because of sourcing , check your biases.
748.
by timr 1y ago
I consider the reasoning models to be primarily a development of efficiency/cost, and I thought the first one was about a year ago, but sure, ok. I don’t think it changes the argument I’m making. The LLM ourobouros / robot centipe
749.
by timr 1y ago
> I don't disagree with your assessment of the world today, but just 12 months ago (before the current crop of base models and coding agents like Claude Code), even that 10X improvement of writing some-of-the-code wouldn't have
750.
by timr 1y ago
Where did I "lie"? I expressed an opinion.

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