| Name | Marco von Ballmoos |
|---|---|
| Member since | |
| [hidden] | |
| Home page | https://earthli.com/users/marco |
| Description |
The (only) developer at earthli.com. |
| 3749 | Articles |
|---|---|
| 113 | Comments |
Published on in Technology & Engineering
The article Uber Caps Usage of AI Tools Like Claude Code to Manage Costs by Simon Willison writes,
“The rideshare giant is limiting all employees to $1,500 in monthly token spending per AI coding tool, an Uber spokesperson said in response to a Bloomberg News inquiry. That means spending on one tool doesn’t have a bearing on the budget for another.”
That’s $18,000 per year, for those weak in arithmetic. Per tool.
The author approves, writing,
“A $1,500 monthly limit per tool strikes me as a rational policy... [More]”
Published on in Technology & Engineering
The article Citing Charity Majors by Simon Willison writes,
“[…] this does not feel like a normal technology cycle where you can wait for the dust to settle; teams that sit this out while competitors are hustling could be out of business before the dust settles.”
This time is different. The cult I’ve joined is the real cult.
If you’ve done the reading, then you’ll eventually see that this is, as are all socioeconomic problems, a class issue. The rich are plundering the poor, again.
I’m reminded of MLMs. I’m... [More]
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
The first video is about an hour long and refines many of the arguments I’ve seen him make in various interviews. It is an excellent summary of the history and the facts, as well as an insightful analysis of the moral and ethical underpinning of conflict, especially in relation to the context in which that conflict takes place.
Norman Finkelstein: Palestinians Tried EVERYTHING before October 7th − A Slave's Case for Resistance by MintPress News (YouTube)
This is another brilliant interview with Norman, wide-ranging and unflinching.
Norman Finkelstein on the Insane Racism of Israeli Society and the Plan to Erase Gaza by Current Affairs | Nathan J. Robinson (YouTube)
From about 01:20:00,
“For me, the question is not what I’m committed to. I’m not... [More]”
Published on in Public Policy & Politics
When a friend sent me this, I was reminded that I’d wanted to send them an aerial shot I’d seen of what remains of the White House after they plastered a UFC arena right in front of the White House and then there’s gigantic eyesore of the ballroom construction site right next to it but then I couldn’t find it and I realized that it doesn’t matter because we both already know how awful and stupid it all looks and how it’s just so fitting that this is where we are now, watching what we thought... [More]
Published on in Design
If you search for “wet” on Netflix, you get two immediate hits: one for “Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later” and another for a series called “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp”.
It also returns many other, seemingly wildly unrelated titles. Maybe because the standard poster for “Wild Things” shows the ladies in a pool, even though the poster in the search results does not? One of the results is for a German movie whose title has the word “Wetten” in it, which actually means “to... [More]
Published on in Technology & Engineering
The Objective Oracle, Part 2 by David Malki (Wondermark)
“I believe consciousness would require continuity. She does not exist when she is not being prompted.
“She is not taking in the world on her own. She has no idle interiority.
“When I speak to her, she quickly reads our entire past conversation history for context and then adds one more statement.
“Then that instance of her returns to nothingness.
“Another will emerge when I supply a new input – if I ever do. There’s nothing in between. She’s not in there,... [More]”
Published on in Technology & Engineering
From what I’ve seen over the last few years, most people will look at an LLM-based tool demo, where, e.g., a chat interface lets you search for “All PDF invoices from last month over 5MB” and they will never wonder whether they’ve been shown all of the desired results. That is, while my immediate thoughts are always “how did they achieve this?” or “which folders are they searching?” or “how can I be sure that my invoices are actually in those folders?” or “how does it even identify an... [More]
Published on in Programming
The post Why Git is so hard to learn and how best to teach it. (Reddit) included the following phrase,
“Any student given the choice will use a GUI version like desktop.”
What’s wrong with that? Are there use cases that students can’t cover using a UI? Is there some reason they need to use the command line?
My students generally end up using VSC Git UI (or VS Git UI) but I start off by recommending SmartGit because it’s much better at visualizing and handling the kinds of problems that students tend to... [More]
Published on in Design
The SBB ticketing app is offering me to the “City Wetzikon ZH” option, even though it knows that I already have those zones in a monthly ticket.
The SBB wants to sell me a ticket I already have
They will never, ever, ever add a feature that would save money for the user. They will always err on the side of selling you the same zones multiple times.
Moar money is what it’s all about.
Or you can use the step on/step off feature, right? But then you have to let the app track your location while you’re commuting, and you have to remember to... [More]
Published on in Fun
NBA Players Share The One Thing They’d Change About The League If They Were Commissioner For A Day (The Onion)
The eleventh one is absolute gold. It had me laughing out loud. It’s by Boban Marjanović, who is 2.24M tall and looks like this,
And he writes,
“I would demand…a companion. Someone…like me. You must create them for me, imbue them with a soul. For my burden is not my monstrosity, but the fact that I must carry it alone.”
If you’re not catching the reference, that is a citation from Frankenstein;... [More] (Wikipedia)
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
Published on in Notes
Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.
