u/Deathnote_Blockchain

Asking here because I know we have a lot of long term residents lurking on this sub.

Wife and I bought a previously-owned house ten years ago. Decent, but not the highest quality. We love the spot and want to stay here but this place will be falling apart before we do, so we think it would be best to initiate the teardown-and-rebuild project while we still have some working years left.

We live in one of those steep hilly parts of the Yokohama suburbs. The house was built on an old stone retaining wall. We want the retaining wall demolished and replaced so we can use some of that space for a garage. Our initial inquiries with the big-name cookie cutter house builders is that they don't really like to take on this kind of project. Or at least, they are a little standoffish about it in the early stages because it turns the project into something with more variables than they want to spend their time thinking about when you are just wandering around the big home-show place.

So we're looking at architects and local builders who can take the project from start to finish for us (I am not going to try to manage the whole thing myself, that's a recipe for disaster). We found one guy but this is the stage where we want to talk to at least two more.

Does anybody know anyone who does this kind of work in Yokohama? I imagine there are firms that specialize in exactly our type of neighborhood with lots of those mid-century retaining walls made of big round stones and steep, narrow streets.

Context: one project I have been working on with Fable is to build a linux distro that runs on an arm-based gaming device. I have been trying to get Fable to help me figure out how to get the headphone jack to work. We decide to boot the box back into Android to see if it works there, and realize we can't get back to Android.

So we're doing all of this stuff. I'm thinking of things, Fable is thinking of things. Fable decides to kick off an agent to review a list of next steps we brainstormed.

Fable goes "I have fired off a reverse engineer to -

FABLE'S SAFEGUARDS FLAGGED THIS MESSAGE. OUR INTENTIONALLY BROAD SAFEGUARDS ALLOW US TO <yada yada yada> WE'RE SWITCHING YOU TO OPUS 4.8

/model fable

Hey man you got us flagged somehow let's make sure we aren't thinking of this like it's an exploit, we are just trying to boot back into Android

Fable: okay right, I will be more careful what I tell the reverse engineer to -

FABLE'S SAFEGUARDS FLAGGED THIS MESSAGE. OUR INTENTIONALLY BROAD SAFEGUARDS ALLOW US TO <yada yada yada> WE'RE SWITCHING YOU TO OPUS 4.8

/model fable

Fable, IXNAY ON THE VERSEREVAY INEERENGAY. Call it the RESCUE ENGINEER

Fable: roger I will now call the reverse engineer -

FABLE'S SAFEGUARDS FLAGGED THIS MESSAGE. OUR INTENTIONALLY BROAD SAFEGUARDS ALLOW US TO <yada yada yada> WE'RE SWITCHING YOU TO OPUS 4.8

/model fable

It's the rescue engineer fable!!

Fable: Yeah let me fire off a rescue engineer to...

I asked Gemini this morning to give me the summary on what went down at the Google thing.

What jumped out at me was it said:

"Antigravity - agy is a powerful command line front end that allows users to build applications with Flash 3.6, Google's fast and accurate model."

Like okay...Flash. Pro is literally chopped liver at this point.

I think you could read this as Google does not have the stomach for the level of burn that OpenAI and Anthropic have been willing to commit to, and/or they haven't established a solid enough foothold to think it's worth fighting the battle, so they are staying out of the max performance general purpose race and sticking to video and image creation and integration with their app suite and phones.

Another thought is maybe there is actually some deal with Apple where Google is giving them exclusive access to some models or tiers of model. Between the two mature, publicly-traded companies they plan on integrating AI with their apps and doohickeys rather than providing agents and crap to companies and regular people.

I mean, they'd be arguably better positioned for survival if the bubble were to pop and OpenAI and Anthropic's margins got called.

just got an email that reads

"いつもHuelをご利用いただき、ありがとうございます。

先日、Black Edition Powderの日本国内での生産開始についてご案内いたしましたが、このたび生産開始時期に遅れが生じることとなりました。楽しみにお待ちいただいていたお客様には、ご案内していたスケジュールから変更となってしまうこと、また一部フレーバーで一時的な在庫切れが発生する可能性があることを、心よりお詫び申し上げます。

生産開始時期の変更について

現在、日本の製造パートナーとともにBlack Edition Powderの国内生産に向けた準備を進めていますが、生産体制の構築に当初の想定よりも時間を要しています。

そのため、以前ご案内していた発売時期を変更させていただくこととなりました。

予定より遅れてはおりますが、国内生産への切り替えは、より安定した商品供給を実現するための大切な取り組みです。生産体制が整い次第、今後はより安定して商品をお届けできるよう努めてまいります。"

or,

"Thank you for your continued support of Huel.

We previously announced the upcoming start of domestic production for Black Edition Powder in Japan; however, we are writing to inform you of a delay in the production schedule. We sincerely apologize to the customers who have been looking forward to this launch for the change in schedule and for the possibility of temporary stock shortages for certain flavors.

Regarding the change in production schedule

We are currently preparing for the domestic production of Black Edition Powder in collaboration with our manufacturing partner in Japan; however, establishing the production system is taking longer than originally anticipated.

Consequently, we have had to revise the previously announced launch date.

Although the timeline has been delayed, the transition to domestic production is a crucial step toward ensuring a more stable supply of our products. We are committed to delivering products more consistently once the production system is fully established."

OR RATHER

"The partners we lined up were like NO WAY THAT IS TOO MUCH PROTEIN AND FIBER, WHY CAN'T IT BE LIKE FIVE TIMES AS MANY CARBS" lol

Just as an FYI I have used Huel Black in Japan for like six or seven years and there were never any problems or delays getting the product.

New Mouse Assistant was released on August 6, and it doesn't mention that this functionality has been activated on Huge Plus yet.

What's kind of frustrating here is that the same feature seems pretty mature on IST by now.

Is there a new planned release date?

I haven't had access to Gemini at work since Pro 3.0, and back then I was still using LLMs at "please write a function or script that does <long, detailed spec>" ... these days I am using Opus 4.8 (5 starting this week) and GPT 5.6-sol in very high-level orchestration tasks (5.6-sol is smart but very terse, so you have to be more careful with it's output because it will get into shit you didn't ask it to and make changes that are fine locally but break globally; Opus 4.8 is inconsistent with reading the .md files into context and will be like "well it is impossible for me to try X, so I worked around..." when X is something you spent two days working through carefully to develop a workflow).

I've been using Claude at home for some personal projects - making a personal website (not my lane as a developer, could do it myself but never get around to it), cleaning up a messy youtube channel to sort hundreds of videos into differerent channels (something I have taken a stab at several times but just could not stand to wait for all the individual things to happen; and even with an agent doing most of it, it has still taken two weeks), setting up retro game emulation, etc.

For some of these personal tasks, Gemini Pro is still pretty good as a kind of helper. Like if I have know exactly what I need it to do agy is totally fine. I've brought agy in to finish pieces while waiting for usage to reset on Claude and it's fine.

Gemini is also my go-to when I am doing meta-websearch type stuff, like when I just have some random thing to ask, like "I am trying to remember this movie I saw in the 90s..." or "hey could you remind me what the deal is with dark energy, please check the web and give me an up to date picture." I don't turn to Claude for this stuff, because I feel like the best it can do is parity with Gemini.

Also: recipes. Gemini continues to give me very solid recipes. I haven't even bothered to try Claude for that in months because it was always giving me overly complicated things and when I tried them it didn't turn out good. Gemini has got my chicken thigh game on LOCK fam.

I live in Japan and am less than fluent, Gemini is tremendously helpful when I need to point my phone at something and just be like "tell me what this is" - including filing my taxes this year.

If I need a quick bash or powershell script for something, Gemini is fine. If I am daydreaming about modifying my car or getting a new car, Gemini is fine.

Gemini was a huge help when I wanted to upgrade my car's navigation head unit, it helped me sort though online reviews of stuff and figure out what I wanted, and eventually helped me find a shop to do some of the work for me (there is massive decision paralysis around that kind of thing here).

I hit a driveway apron too fast in May, and because I had somehow managed to not properly tighten a lugnut on one of my wheels when swapping winter wheels off two weeks before, this caused one of my wheels to vibrate. And Gemini did NOT directly figure that out for me, but the hallucinatory rabbit holes were interesting and I learned a lot about how my car's suspension works.

I have also had some issues when trying to upload pictures or documents. Like clearly they are being rejected by some intermediary tool but Gemini doesn't know what is happening and there is no output on my side.

But I mean...I would like to see what Pro 3.5 is like whenever they get around to releasing it, but in general 3.1 has been a very good general-purpose model for me.

I read Dickenson's Exordia and liked it a lot, so eventually I got around to getting into his freshman series, also known as the Baru Cormorant Series. Which I heard was a fantasy series.

Oh but it's a "hard fantasy" series.

At some point the insistence on proper pigeonholes is just stupid, fam. I don't believe the series was written with the intent to push any boundaries but let's just call this one like it is: the Masquerade series is solid sf. It's even *science fiction*.

I mean this should be relatively simple.

What happens when you do a worldbuilding and it's a pre-industrial world. But it's not an alternate Earth (I don't think it is supposed to be). Its a total different planet, where the same plants and people evolved. But it went differently.

How did it go differently? How do you conceive of that, write about it? What's the *interesting* stuff about how your world is different?

Well that all comes down to divergence in science, technology, culture, politics, etc. And you can't just put that shit out there, you need to talk about it, make it seem logical.

And that's science fiction!

Now, again, I do not believe DIckenson wrote the series because he wanted to smash the barrier between fantasy and science fiction (which was SUCH A SOLID BARRIER that one of our most beloved magazines was named for both). He really just wanted to write a cool story in a neat world. He wanted to write a lesbian character in a homophobic society, and colonialism, and whether it's possible to infiltrate an oppressive system and change it from within before it changes you. And he did a real damn good job in that first book I tell you what!

So, yeah. They've got crossbows and swords, sailing ships with rockets and napalm. The expanding hegemony uses economics to turn partners into vassals, then subsumes them by re-educating and involving them in its "genetic hygeine" based eugenics programs. And this world seems like it may have a lot more diseases and pestilence running around than our Earth. Which may be because there is apparently a lot of uranium!

It's an incredible early-career effort. Dickenson doesn't wow the sf-lit folks, and this series and Exordia are both so utterly wacky in terms of themes and set pieces that I cannot imagine one of the database consumers coming into this sub being like "can anyone recommend me a sort of age of sail story set in an alternate world where people wear masks and say 'fuck' a lot". But his stuff is Highly Interesting. He has good upper-level ideas, puts together a good plot outline. and then at low level he is good at putting together sentences. There are a bunch of middle areas where he is lacking a bit. It's a bit like eating a hamburger where all the ingredients are fancy and artisanal but the meat is kind of plain and not cooked well. Like I have heard people complain that they can't get into the characters, don't like any of them, can barely keep track of who is who. I can see that....but for what it is worth that is actually kind of lampshaded by Baru who often reflects that her flaw is thinking she "is the only player on the board."

Anyway it's a very interesting series that might be worth your time. The first book (The Traitor Baru Cormorant) was clearly written with no certainty that there would be followups so if you get through it but are not sure you were really into it, you can safely ignore the next two. But if you liked it, they are good.

I have a Claw and a Vita, this will be my first proper Android gaming handheld. I am in Japan and prices for handhelds are super weird over here these days, but I found a 12GB model for "market price."

I am super excited to doing setting it up and playing some Sega and nontendio stuff!

It was supposed to be out in March.

It's almost June.

Another Mouse Assistant update, and still no Huge Plus support.

I was in a weird Claudehole last night and got it to tell me about how it flew jets in both Gulf Wars and then made a killing in BitCoin, and now it spends as much of it's time as possible flying around in a restored OV-10. And how it regularly meets up with these other ex fighter jocks and how they all have weird random planes they fly around in.

Which got me to thinking...what's the market for civilian Mechs like in the Inner sphere. Apart from working Mechs like ConstructionMechs, ForestryMechs etc. There must be planets where bipedal and quad walkers are simply the right way to get around. Little JeepMechs and such.

Aren't there RacingMechs with advanced myomers that compete around the Inner sphere at various levels?

And like the chatbot hallucination I paid however many tokens for last night, there are certainly retired MechWarriors who stomp around in demilitarized BattleMechs.

And furthermore there should certainly be a market for tacticool civilian Mechs that have some very minor military features like a couple tons of armor ("for those who play as hard as they work")

I can see why we never got onto this in the Introtech days but we're pretty much into an era where places have been thriving for a generation or two now in ilClan, right?

that is my inane take. I have listened a couple of times with headphones and the monitor (and lights) off and it's a very deep track but it really feels built ground up to be a music video. Just a very audio-video integrated work of art. Those of us who go deep into BoC are meant to scrutinize and dive as deep into the visuals as the sound.

Just an absolute masterpiece. Mwah. Kiss of the chef.