Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | Terr_'s commentslogin

"Follow the money" was always relevant, but especially when it comes to any kind of LLM news or investment-du-jour.

The cautionary/pessimist folks at least don't make money by taking the stance.


A few do.

At the extreme end you'll get invited to conferences but further down you could have other products you are pushing. Even non-AI related that takes advantage of your "smart person" public persona.


I'm still shocked that the links are so dang close together on mobile. You don't even need the proverbial fat fingers.

1. It's good to hold people in certain positions of power to higher standards, especially when...

2. They commit an additional concurrent offense of abusing those powers and public trust for crime.


> Would Kim Jong Un consider giving up his position if he could be pardoned, or at least credibly believe that he could live a life in luxurious exile?

The kind of despot that sends assassins against people in exile is unlikely to choose it themselves.


Hense the credible belief. The Russians did manage to step down from violence so it is possible.

May want to check Russian agression for years. They did not stepped down much.

Not Russia in general but their leadership succession

To quote something from a favorite fiction-series, where someone is visiting a relatively backwards planet:

> "Poor?" said Cordelia, bewildered. "No electricity? How can it be on the comm network?"

> "It's not, of course," answered Vorkosigan.

> "Then how can anybody get their schooling?"

> "They don't."

> Cordelia stared. "I don't understand. How do they get their jobs?"

> "A few escape to the Service. The rest prey on each other, mostly." Vorkosigan regarded her face uneasily. "Have you no poverty on Beta Colony?"

> "Poverty? Well, some people have more money than others, of course, but... no comconsoles?"

> Vorkosigan was diverted from his interrogation. "Is not owning a comconsole the lowest standard of living you can imagine?" he said in wonder.

> "It's the first article in the constitution. 'Access to information shall not be abridged.' "

-- Shards of Honor (1986) by Lois McMaster Bujold


To turn to other, much older publications... The US Constitution was written ~230 year ago, when the state of the art was carrying letters by horse, and it explicitly authorized making a public service to provide it scale, which became the US Postal Service.

If the same ideals and priorities had been applied against today's technology, we'd have the US Networking Service. Certainly not a deluxe ISP (even today USPS exists alongside other package companies and couriers) but an affordable baseline available to all residents.


I’ve always thought it a travesty that USPS doesn’t provide a public email service

I guess it's also available today via RFC 1149

And pgp certificate signing

I completely agree with this sentiment. Good luck getting anything like that locked, sadly.

[flagged]


there are many democrats who would block such a thing as well.

historically there is always the one or two who (perhaps too conveniently?) block or water down legislation: joe lieberman against public option [0], two democrats block student debt relief [1], the dynamic duo of manchin and sinema blocking voting rights legislation and build back better [2] [3]...

you don't need to blame republicans for democrats sabotaging themselves over and over.

[0] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/joe-liebermans-...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/which-democrats-voted-to-blo...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/biden-voting-rights-bill-collapse...

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/manchin-says-he-no...


Lieberman and Sinema are great examples of quixotic people who weren't even representing their constituents' wishes. They're legitimate targets of criticism and intra-party competition through being primaried or losing access to fund raising.

Manchin also didn't represent his constituents' wishes, but in the other direction on the political axis. The Democratic caucus won many votes it otherwise would not have, if a Republican was occupying the seat. If the Democratic party is serious about gaining and holding power, it needs to accept that some seats are tenuously held. Legislators in those seats need to be able to break with the party line to satisfy their constituents.

Ironically, Manchin attempted to include permitting reform, which would allow renewables and utility projects the same latitude that oil & gas projects enjoy. However, Democratic party stalwarts blocked the proposal.


If the margins weren’t so razor thin, it wouldn’t happen

The US Democratic party is a mix of conservatives, liberals and socialists, so of course it's bound to happen in scenarios where one or two votes can decide whether something gets passed.

I’m not going to let you hide behind a big word.

You are publicly proposing “throwing all Republicans through a window to their death”.

This isn’t normal, and it isn’t right. If we allow anyone to call for political violence, then we become numb to it. Worse still, your call to violence against Republicans gives them a call to defence, and then a call to preemptive action.

“It was ok for us to shutdown HackerNews because they called for our deaths.”

We shouldn’t tolerate calls to political violence from anyone. Be better.


"A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again."

(It didn't, it was just an empty threat, but calls to political violence are the currency of the day)


That doesn’t make it right either.

I just read this book a week ago. Cannot recommend it highly enough. Bujold has excellent prose. A joy to read.

malka older's "infomocracy" is another interesting science fiction look at universal access to information

That may say more about needs than affordability.

It's clearly affordable if it can be afforded. Otherwise nothing is affordable.

What I mean is that there are different needs and constraints on different users. Some homeless folks need a smartphone more than, say, retirees.

It also affects what would normally be considered "inferior goods" in economics. If someone is camp-in-the-bushes homeless, they can't really "save money" by having an old laptop instead. Being able to carry it with you is more of a requirement than a convenience.


Even if 100% of owners choose to pay someone else to do it, they are still benefiting from the user-serviceable standard.

First, anything serviceable by the owner is also accessible to a local garage or independent repair shop. That means a competitive market for those owners, rather that being stuck paying extra to a local monopoly or to a rent-seeking manufacturer.

Second, it makes long-term repairability of the product much easier, things don't just suddenly become irreparable because the manufacturer closed down their "unlock codes for trusted affiliates" site. Their asset retains more of its value.

There are things which provide value even when nobody uses them.


Yeah, for example a bunch of my system updates began showing scary error notes because somehow there is a header inconsistency between the amdgpu driver and the kernel.

I'm not regretting my choice, but it's also something where the average user can't just call Linux Support and get a "run X and it'll fix it" solution.


One can call Windows support? And get help?

Arguably there are more support options for Windows because it's got fewer derivatives than Linux, and was historically more common on desktop.

I'd prefer the receiving end looks at sender's metadata on the message, and uses that to determine where the line is between recipient-convenience and betrayal.

I suppose you could do both, but "Hey I've got something extra important to send you, but it says need to change your settings first please hurry" seems worse than "sometimes I don't get full notifications on my watch, weird."


Whenever I see something about a single blood sample, I think of the Theranos fraud.

I suppose in this case it's a false alarm, because they're talking about a single type of test (that "consumes" the sample) with a rich result set, rather than many different kinds of tests that each require pristine inputs.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: