Mᴀʀᴋ VᴀɴᴅᴇWᴇᴛᴛᴇʀɪɴɢ

@brainwagon
428 Followers
202 Following
3.8K Posts
He/Him. Formerly Senior Technical Director, Pixar Animation Studios. K6HX. Telescope Maker. Tinkerer. Woodworker. Programmer. Open source afficionado. Enthusiast for enthusism. Make stuff, and share your knowledge and expertise!

RE: https://mastodon.social/@jef/116797449414434995

I didn't realize they just decided to plant sod there.
Makes sense.
Not very reflective, though.
Ah, well…

Combining my experiments with #telescopemaking and #ai, I used Claude Code to help me make a small application that can output DXF patterns for all the major flat/cut from plywood items to make a basic Dobsonian telescope. It will automatically layout finger joints for my CNC, which is kind of a pain to do by hand with OnShape or other cad tools. I haven't tested it for real yet, but I will probably use it to make the rocker box for my 6" revival project.

Okay I'm a teacher so let me explain this to you in as simple a way as I can.

Let's say you're hungry for a sandwich. So you go to the local deli. You walk in the door, and your credit card is immediately charged $1,000. In return, the deli guy hands you a sandwich ticket - good for one sandwich. You don't get a say in this. You are required to buy this sandwich by law. What's more, there were no signs outside the deli, you received no text message, nobody called you. There was absolutely no warning that by simply walking through the door you would be forced to buy this sandwich.

The deli owner gives you a ticket and tells you your sandwich will be out soon. You don't care. You didn't want this sandwich. But you're not allowed to say no. Besides, you already bought the sandwich. So you take a seat at a nearby table and wait for your sandwich to be delivered.

You sit and watch as every person who walks through the deli door that day is automatically made to buy one of the expensive sandwiches, handed a ticket, and told to wait. Hundreds of people. The deli is starting to get crowded. Because of the demand on the sandwich, you watch as the deli owner starts raising the price of the sandwich throughout the day. It goes up to $1,150 per sandwich. Then $1,500, then $1,900. Before long, the price has skyrocketed to well over $2,500 per sandwich. And you still don't even have your sandwich. The deli owner informs you with pride that this is the single most expensive debut of a sandwich ever.

Finally, after several hours, the deli begins to close. You ask for your sandwich and the deli owner informs you that you won't actually receive it until tomorrow. Today was for BUYING the sandwich, he says. Not selling it. The selling part happens tomorrow. Again, you have no choice in this. This is just how it works. It's the law. Oh well, you think, at least once you have this really expensive sandwich, maybe you can recoup some of your $1,000 by selling it at the current price, which is valued now at almost $3,000.

So you go home, hungry, but with a sound financial plan to try to recoup your money. The next day, you're first in line at the deli. You have your ticket in hand. But before the store opens, the deli owner lets in all the employees. You notice some of them are carrying sandwich tickets of their own. Some of them have a lot of tickets. Some of them are hauling in tickets by the wheelbarrow. You try to get in, but you're not allowed yet. Again, it's the law. Inside, you can see the employees of the deli trading in their sandwich tickets for sandwiches. And because there are so many sandwiches going out the door, the price of the sandwich starts dropping again.

After the first hour, the price has dropped to $1,500. Then back to $1,000, and then, to your horror, you see it dip to $750. Then $450. Then $100. Finally, the last employee turns in their ticket and leaves. And the price of the sandwich has settled all the way down to $50.

THEN, the deli owner opens the doors and lets the general public in. You turn in your ticket, which you paid $1,000 for, and receive your sandwich, valued now at $50. Don't feel bad, the deli owner says. You came here for a sandwich. You're getting a sandwich valued well above market value. Why, that sandwich from any other deli would only be worth $20, he says. You should feel good about this! You basically made $30 today!

You look at the gigantic stack of money in the corner, from all those thousands of enforced buys yesterday. There must be trillions of dollars there. Yes, the deli owner says with pride. I am the world's first trillionaire. And I did it all just selling sandwiches. Doesn't that make you feel great? What's wrong? Can't you just be happy for me? I worked hard for this money.

Congratulations, now you understand how Elon's SpaceX IPO made him a trillionaire, and who that money came from. It came from you. On July 1, SpaceX will get two things that no other major IPO in history has ever been granted. First, they will be automatically added to the NASDAQ 100. And because of that, every single person with a retirement account, or student savings account, or mutual fund, will be forced - not asked, not suggested - required by law, to buy SpaceX stock. And you'll do it at SpaceX current July 1 prices. This will skyrocket the value of SpaceX stock through the roof. This isn't theory. This is basic supply and demand. The chair of the NASDAQ 100 said this will happen. Then, the second half of the trade will happen. Two weeks later, every employee of SpaceX who have been up to now paid in SpaceX stock, will be allowed to sell up to a fifth of their shares. They will do that at July 15th prices. This will flood the market with stock. And again, this isn't theory. This will drive the value of SpaceX stock down. Basic supply and demand Economics 101. The more supply there is, the lower the value. Then, and ONLY then will you, the general public, be allowed to liquidate any mutual funds or IRA accounts, that were forced, by law, to buy SpaceX. And you will do that at August 1 prices.

Elon isn't becoming a trillionaire from selling rocket ships. No more than that deli owner got rich from selling sandwiches. Elon is becoming a trillionaire because he rigged the game. He is forcing you, yes you specifically, by law, to purchase shares of a company that he, and every single other person from the CFO on down admit, in writing, in their IPO prospectus, that they are going to immediately devalue as soon as they can. It's a classic pump and dump con. And you're the mark.

Some more #onshape cad, the rough model for the next few bits of a Dobsonian telescope project I'm working on. No details yet, just mucking around with how it looks. Trying to use 1/2" ply rather than 3/4" ply, and will add some gussets to reinforce bits. #telescopemaking
Cutting parts for my telescope project on my homemade CNC.
Remembered to commit r5rs https://github.com/brainwagon/r5rs my implementation of the R5RS version of scheme, done with Claude Code in a couple of afternoons.
GitHub - brainwagon/r5rs: an AI generated implementation of the R5RS Scheme specification. Largely untested, use at your own risk, but it was generated in under three hours.

an AI generated implementation of the R5RS Scheme specification. Largely untested, use at your own risk, but it was generated in under three hours. - brainwagon/r5rs

GitHub
Made a loaf of banana bread this morning. That may be my biggest/only achievement today. Not feeling like anything else.
Crazy #ai programming project of the day: a prototype application (front end/back end) that allows LLMs to play the old board game Diplomacy. The python diplomacy package https://diplomacy.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ did all the heavy lifting for move generation, but each nation is represented by a large language model that also has access to a MCTS to help it plan and evaluate moves. It's by no means a great opponent, or even competent at this minute, and it runs fairly slow, but the architecture is interesting.
Did something change in token usage limits on #claude code in the last couple of days? All of a sudden, I run out in just a few minutes of Opus usage, and I haven't changed my working habits. (I'm on their Pro plan)
Playing around with Claude Code and a self-training checker playing engine reminds me of the optimization work I used to do in rendering/lightspeed: trying to produce the best result in the least time with the available machinery. I can even emulate meetings with separate agents arguing for different techniques, proposing different experiments, and evaluating results. Almost like still having a job!