Herr Pseudonymous

Passionate about philosophy, strategy and occasionally tech.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

The EU and more broadly the European alliance is the only way for Europe to have negotiating power at the international table.

All of Russia, China and even the U.S. sometimes have it in their interest to make Europeans forget this simple fact.

[Robin Hanson @robinhanson]

Some of the most important intellectual skills are knowing when to move from abstract to concrete, or from concrete to abstract, in your thinking. A big reasons why LLMs often fail is a lack of such skills.

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

This weekend, I met a Ukrainian Marine who spent two and a half years as a prisoner of war in Russia.

He told me about how they tortured him with electric shocks and by beating him with sticks. He lost more than sixty pounds in captivity. He spent long stretches in solitary confinement.

They did all of this to try to get him to sign false confessions. They’ve done this with other prisoners. The Russians try to torture them until they sign a false confession that could be used for propaganda. It goes against every law of war and every basic tenet of our humanity, but that’s exactly who Putin is.

This Ukrainian Marine didn’t give in. He told me that every night, when they were done abusing him and he finally had a moment, he would say out loud “one more day closer to home.”

He didn’t know when that day would come, but he had faith it would. Finally, he was released in a prisoner exchange.

That’s what ordinary Ukrainians are sacrificing for their homeland. Which is why we need to put the screws to Putin economically so that he actually comes to the table to end this war.

[Stephen Pimentel @StephenPiment]

Explosives aren’t intelligent. Bullets aren’t intelligent. Things don’t need to be intelligent to hurt you. Most cyber attacks employ ordinary code.

[Agustin Lebron @AgustinLebron3]

"The [...] biggest and most important questions do not fit into standard ideological categories." - @tylercowen

This fully generalizes across countries and eras.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

The end of OpenAI?

[Wall Street Rollup @WallStRollup]

OpenAI is planning to take a cut of Customers’ discoveries.

OpenAI’s CFO says they will take a cut of the IP it helps create.

Per The Information:

[Stephen Pimentel @StephenPiment]

Create your own personal assistant with Claude Code.

Buy a new MacBook Air and install no apps, not even the ones you use today; delete some of the unneeded ones Apple put on it.

Put anything you want to work with into a folder: text files, Markdown for anything new. Avoid third-party file formats where you can, but don’t stress about it for common ones (e.g., MS Word). Export numeric data into CSV, e.g. for finances.

Run Claude Code against the folder. Ask for whatever you need. Pretty much any data analysis can be done on the fly, with visualizations.

If you really want an UI to fiddle with some data, you can ask for that too.

If you get comfortable and ambitious, you can install MCPs to access your email or whatever, but there’s no need to start there.

Voilà, a personal assistant.

[Gary Basin @garybasin]

If you thought LLMs were non-deterministic, the current gen of harnesses are a whole other ballgame. I’ve ran some evals for how well agents like cc and codex use various APIs and the variance is through the roof. Although there are def tricks to get it narrower

[Stephen Pimentel @StephenPiment]

Claude Code isn’t a killer app. It’s an app killer.

In many cases, you no longer need to buy an app. You can build a custom app yourself or have Claude Code itself perform the desired function.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@everytstudies It's really just the Nietzschean element in the LLMs.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@JohnDCook Cool suggestion, thanks. Though I would say it's most of what business audit is, so not underrated in all fields.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@StephenPiment True

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@johnrushx So nothing in this Webshop would have been technology not already solved thousands of times. So I would try a project again but not with handing over ownership to a code agent

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@johnrushx I'm surprised so many senior engineers say this because based on the hype I tried building a webshop with Claude Code (even Opus 4.5) and after a few days I had to give up because Claude stopped being able to solve issues and I didn't know the codebase well enough (nor coding)

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

A retired Tennessee policeman who spent more than a month in jail over an anti-Trump Facebook post is suing the authorities responsible for his arrest.

“In America, we do not jail people for political speech,” the lawsuit states. https://t.co/lpFyhIVJvt

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@michaelshermer @HiFromMichaelV Protecting diverse views is important, protecting insults is not.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

Insults are not covered under free speech in Europe, yes. That is a valid standpoint.

[Under Secretary of State Sarah B. Rogers @UnderSecPD]

I’m traveling in Europe on a diplomatic passport, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to say a few things ordinary Europeans (and Brits) can’t.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@robinhanson In that reading it sounds like "surpress emotions" is still a safe bet.

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

@cognazor Do you see your PHD as a worthwhile formation period looking back?

[Herr Pseudonymous @HerrPseudo]

If following your heart leads you consistently into situations that hurt you, of what use was following your heart?