MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by gwd | 2025-04-04 13:05:54+00:00
> Someday we will have a machine simulate a cat, then the village idiot... This isn't how LLMs work.

I think you misunderstood that argument. The simulate the brain thing isn't a "start from the beginning" argument, it's an "answer a common objection" argument.

Back around 2000, when Nick Bostrom was talking about this sort of thing, computers were simply nowhere near powerful enough to come even close to being smart enough to outsmart a human, except in very constrained cases like chess; we did't even have the first clue how to create a computer program to be even remotely dangerous to us.

Bostrom's point was that, "We don't need to know the computer program; even if we just simulate something we know works -- a biological brain -- we can reach superintelligence in a few decades." The idea was never that people would actually simulate a cat. The idea is, if we don't think of anything more efficient, we'll at least be able to simulate a cat, and then an idiot, and then Einstein, and then something smarter. And since we almost certainly will think of something more efficient than "simulate a human brain", we should expect superintelligence to come much sooner.

> There is no evidence or argument for exponential growth.

Moore's law is exponential, which is where the "simulate a brain" predictions have come from.

> It is science fiction and leads people to make bad decisions based on fictional evidence.

The only "fictional evidence" you've actually specified so far is the fact that there's no biological analog; and that (it seems to me) is from a misunderstanding of a point someone else was making 20 years ago, not something these particular authors are making.

I think the case for AI caution looks like this:

A. It is possible to create a superintelligent AI

B. Progress towards a superintelligent AI will be exponential

C. It is possible that a superintelligent AI will want to do something we wouldn't want it to do; e.g., destroy the whole human race

D. Such an AI would be likely to succeed.

Your skepticism seems to rest on the fundamental belief that either A or B is false: that superintelligence is not physically possible, or at least that progress towards it will be logarithmic rather than exponential.

Well, maybe that's true and maybe it's not; but how do you know? What justifies your belief that A and/or B are false so strongly, that you're willing to risk it? And not only willing to risk it, but try to stop people who are trying to think about what we'd do if they are true?

What evidence would cause you to re-evaluate that belief, and consider exponential progress towards superintelligence possible?

And, even if you think A or B are unlikely, doesn't it make sense to just consider the possibility that they're true, and think about how we'd know and what we could do in response, to prevent C or D?
by fipar | 2025-04-04 13:06:09+00:00
As much as I like Douglas Adams' work, I think that quote describes what, for lack of a better term, and in no way trying to be derogatory, I'd call a "normal person"'s reaction to technologies.

I mean obviously the age boundaries may change a bit but otherwise he's spot on. Also, I'd say it's not just technology as I've seen a similar attitude towards other things (e.g, how a dress code is not that common any more, or how you can walk up to a store or even go to a hospital and be greeted by someone with tattoos and green hair "is against the natural order of things").

And to stress again that I'm not being derogatory, I've got close people who have those reactions and I love them even if I disagree with them.

But for people not in that "normal" group my experience is nothing like that. I've seen: - People being amazed at how exciting something that existed when they were born is, to the point of building emulators and even physical replicas of it. - People way after 35 who go deep in on very new things that drastically change the way they work (the example I'm thinking of here is the old musicians I know who've embraced modelers and DAWs, things that only got good enough to be used by professionals in, what, the last 20 years? - In that same line though, I know young kids who use portastudios and hate DAWs. Some release cassettes too. One has to guess their target audience never wasted life untangling tape and rewinding with a ball pen ...

Still, I think your last line is most likely spot on as far as the author goes. Probably going through some mid-life crisis (lest this come across as ageist, I'm way past half my country's life expectancy).

Also, "Every pub conversation winding up talking about it."

That's just the author going to the wrong pubs! Like the Jonathan Richman song says:

"Well the first bar things were alright But in this bar, things were Friday night."
by busyant | 2025-04-04 13:06:44+00:00
> What was even the goal here?

Like many of us*, Trump has one tool in his chest. For Trump, that tool is extortion. Extortion has worked for him a lot, so why not apply that to all facets of his life?

I don't like the fact that I'm glibly summarizing someone like that, but I think it's pretty close to the truth.

When your one tool is a hammer (extortion), you think everyone else is a nail.

See, for example ...

- Columbia University, etc.

- Law firms that investigated him

- every single country that just got hit with tariffs.

* I think many of us have our own "one tool" that we like. Extortion, however, is a malevolent tool.
by n4r9 | 2025-04-04 13:07:18+00:00
No problem; I've pored over and deeply understood your paper by a process I call "vibe-grokking". I'd explain more but have a patent currently in application.

Do you think the gravitational anomaly could be intensified by having the Thinkapds run multiple local copies of GPT-4.5 passing messages in an input/output circle? I call this setup "ChatGPT whispers" and frequently utilise it to write the abstracts of my own papers. I also used it to design, code and publish the website "https://www.chatgptwhispers.com/". I've only vibe-surfed the website myself but feel free check it out the old-fashioned way.
by lolinder | 2025-04-04 13:07:25+00:00
> is that every language has as many dialects as speakers.

This is actually treated as linguistic fact, although we call them "idiolects" when we're talking about that level of granularity.

> not because it is impossible to have prescriptive definitions or grammar, it is just that dictionaries do not even try

They don't try because the field of linguistics has arrived at the conclusion that the role of the linguist is to document what is, not to prescribe what should be. They arrived at that conclusion by studying languages and discovering that they are far, far more messy than prescriptivists had hitherto believed.

The only role that prescriptivism has these days among serious academics is an acknowledgement that while all forms of language are well-structured according to well-defined grammatical rules, cultures assign value judgements to certain forms of speech and so it's valuable to learn your culture's value judgements and learn to speak and write in a way that earns you credibility in your culture.

But even this looks very different than the prescriptivism of old, because what forms of speech and writing get creds vary dramatically from generation to generation, place to place, and even context to context. Learning the grammatical rules taught in traditional schools will not help you fit in on modern social media.
by mtlynch | 2025-04-04 13:07:38+00:00
This is one of the best articles about running a bootstrapped business that I've ever read.

These are all great tips that obviously come from years of hard work and introspection.

>When I started, I integrated with standard SaaS product analytics software that most big SaaS products use. They tend to have features like session recording, where you can see exactly where their mouse moves in your product, and funnel tracking for working out how many users make it the whole way through from landing page to using your product.

I had the same experience. When I started out, I'd see people talk about complicated views in their analytics with cohort analysis and A/B testing. I'd think those people were succeeding because of their analytics, so I kept trying to build complicated views in Google Analytics or investigate expensive alternative analytics platforms. And I eventually just landed on going even simpler than Google Analytics and not checking it unless I had a specific question I wanted to answer.

>People will suggest you should build particular features to improve your product. They'll never use those features.

I've experienced this as well. Early on, prospective customers would tell me that they'd definitely buy if I had X feature, and I'd spend a week implementing it, and then the customer would disappear or say they couldn't purchase for some other reason.

>When a user signs up for OnlineOrNot, I have an automated email going out asking what brought them to sign up today. I explicitly tell them I read and reply to every email. This is the main source of my insight for building product.

I like this a lot. The main competitive advantage indie founders have is a personal touch and direct access to the founder.

I think too many indie founders over-automate and over-outsource their customer interactions. It always drives me crazy when I use a product from an indie founder, and I reach out with feedback and the response is just a generic, outsourced customer service rep who says, "Thank you for your feedback. I'll pass it along to the team."

>Tracking your MRR is a crap way to measure how you're doing as a business... Find another success metric to figure out if people are actually using your product, and whether it's bringing them value. Things like number of images generated, or number of form completions, for example.

I agree, but I'll add the caveat that the other metric should be as proximate to revenue as you can get.

Early on, I made the mistake of measuring success based on things like social media followers or SEO rank, even though those things didn't directly translate into revenue. I felt like I was succeeding, but I eventually realized I was pursuing metrics that were too loosely related to revenue.
by coldpie | 2025-04-04 13:07:38+00:00
I don't know how to reconcile this point of view, which I understand, with quotes like "science advances one funeral at a time," which I also understand. I understand the individual desire for advancing anti-aging techniques, but it also seems to contain extremely real risks of stagnating our sciences & societies. I can't tell whether anti-aging science is ethical or not.
by pclmulqdq | 2025-04-04 13:07:57+00:00
I am not sure there's technically a due process right in the case of immigration visa revocation and the ensuing deportation. There is a due process right in the case of crimes, but getting your visa revoked is not a crime.

The best argument I have heard is that visa revocation may be like firing: the US can do it for almost any reason and you can fire someone for no reason, but can't do it for specific prohibited reasons. Speech would probably be one of those bad reasons under the US's civil rights framework.
by doom2 | 2025-04-04 13:08:04+00:00
It's too bad that INS v Chadha essentially gutted the National Emergencies Act, which could allow Congress to end some/all of the tariffs. In it's original form, the NEA allowed Congress to pass a concurrent resolution to terminate an emergency without needing the president's signature. Now it has to be a joint resolution, which can be vetoed by the president, and what president is going to sign off on the termination of an emergency they themselves declared?
by spacephysics | 2025-04-04 13:08:10+00:00
Reminds me of Fallout's Children of Atom "Church of the Children of Atom"

Maybe we'll see "Church of the Children of Altman" /s

It seems without a framework of ethics/morality (insert XYZ religion), us humans find one to grasp onto. Be it a cult, a set of not-so-fleshed-out ideas/philosophies etc.

People who say they aren't religious per-se, seem to have some set of beliefs that amount to religion. Just depends who or what you look towards for those beliefs, many of which seem to be half-hazard.

People I may disagree with the most, many times at least have a realization of what ideas/beliefs are unifying their structure of reality, with others just not aware.

A small minority of people can rely on schools of philosophical thought, and 'try on' or play with different ideas, but have a self-reflection that allows them to see when they transgress from ABC philosophy or when the philosophy doesn't match with their identity to a degree.
by tremon | 2025-04-04 13:08:23+00:00
1) This is a collective-action problem. Stop blaming individuals for failures of the collective, it's counterproductive. The only thing that will happen is that people will entrench themselves in their current position (and might make them start voting for orange convicts whenever they can).

2) Your ire is misdirected. Whether this individual does or does not eat meat has 0.000000001% impact on the meat production industry. Your energy is much better spent advocating for policies that reduce overall meat consumption, as the GP was voicing their support for.
by StopDisinfo910 | 2025-04-04 13:08:47+00:00
> My comment does not apply to the small business board game company the original op thread link was about. My comment is only a direct reply to what this other comment is saying

The other comment is directly targeting companies which are in every points similar to the small business board game companies.

I don’t understand your disclaimer (which I somehow missed when I replied first) nor why my reply is downvoted but so be it.
by mitchitized | 2025-04-04 13:08:56+00:00
This actually strikes at the heart of the disconnect between open source philosophy and common vernacular.

I've argued for years that "free" does NOT mean "free to use as long as you follow my restrictions". To me the only licenses that meet this criteria are the permissive ones such as MIT, BSD and friends where the only requirement is preservation of the copyright notice. The vast majority have limits of what you can do, or when you have to pay, or some other BS that just complicates everything and IMHO just reeks of "I'm manipulating the FOSS community so I can make a buck" or "I'm pretending to give this software away but actually have a laundry list of rules you have to live by". Basically the opposite of what "free" means!

Similarly, "open source" implies that I can do whatever I want, since it is "open". But most open source licenses - including this one - have restrictions and in many cases pretty strict ones that forbid use for many. This is not open at all.

Either give it away, or lock it up, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop with the hypocrisy, lying and wordplay so you can make a buck (or satisfy a religious tilt). If you want me to help you with your code then you gotta let me use it how I see fit!

And for the love of all things holy, quit calling restrictive licenses "free". This is a binary state, it is either free or non-free, and "you can only use this if you make less than X" or "only use this with other free software" or "if you make changes you have to share" are NOT FREE.

There. Thanks for reading. Stepping outside to yell at a cloud now. And get off my lawn.
by lurk2 | 2025-04-04 13:09:00+00:00
> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tactic literally hypnotizes you into dropping all your money on an arbitrary good or service. It is isomorphic to somebody mugging you.

I like the quote and despise advertising of any kind for mostly the same reason, but you could apply this logic to any kind of business and it starts to fall apart.

> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect pharmaceutical is physically addictive. It is isomorphic to narcotics trafficking.

> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect medical system keeps you sick.

> The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect food product induces constant cravings.

There’s arguments to be made that all of these things are true, but what we’re talking about is not essential to the activities themselves but the profit motive that underlies them. Profit motive in and of itself is not sufficient to cause this kind of behavior; it requires a disregard for the consequences that your actions will have upon others. A lot of marketers fall into this category, but I’m not convinced that marketing in and of itself can be reduced to this spherical-cow in a vacuum.
by theThree | 2025-04-04 13:09:10+00:00
function f1(a:number, b:number, c:number, d:number) { [a, b] = [b, a] [c, d] = [d, c] console.log(a, b, c, d) }

For the above codes Typescript gives error message: Type 'number[]' is not assignable to type 'number'.
by ajross | 2025-04-04 13:10:16+00:00
> they can sell it there for more money than it can be sold locally

So, just to be clear here: you want Utah farmers to foot the bill for the trade war? If they are forced to sell locally for less, they're the ones losing money. Utahns end up poorer in this scenario.

Obviously in a trade war, everyone ends up poorer. It's just simple math. It's absolutely dumbfounding the extent to which people have simply decided to ignore an honest truth simply because of the lies of one political cult.
by watwut | 2025-04-04 13:10:21+00:00
You genuinely think the corporations will stop "selling their souls to the highest outside bidder" with tariffs? Like, how exactly could such a thing happen?

Besides, corporations are actually better equipped to deal with sudden expenses then small businesses. Corporations will suffer the lest and possibly will pay for exceptions for themselves in white house. Smaller businesses wont be able to do the same.
by pc86 | 2025-04-04 13:11:21+00:00
There is clearly a difference between signing into some server just to see if you can, and breaking & entering into a building. Yes of course they're both wrong, you may even think they should both be serious federal crimes, but it's a very clear difference in degree at the very least.

"Real damage" means exactly what any reasonable person would think it means, I don't even understand the question. If you break a door or window to gain access, that's real damage. If you SSH into a server there is no real damage. If you delete files, there is real damage.
by CodeHorizon | 2025-04-04 13:11:36+00:00
Thanks! That’s a really interesting perspective. From the outside, it’s hard to get a full view of how Pat was perceived by potential foundry customers or what was happening inside the boardroom. I actually watched Lip-Bu reading from the teleprompter at that recent Intel conference, and yeah, maybe I see what you’re saying. The tone felt more grounded compared to Pat.

The only sad part is… it feels like Lip-Bu might now need another 4–5 years to fix things.. . basically restarting the clock.
by yladiz | 2025-04-04 13:11:58+00:00
It’s not the only solution, but it is one, as we saw back in the first Trump administration and their tariffs on, and the resulting counter tariffs from, China. It will almost certainly dramatically reduce demand for crops like this from the US, which will lead to less farmers (as many leave the business or go bankrupt) and ultimately less water usage by the farmers.
by rs186 | 2025-04-04 13:12:00+00:00
I can pretty confidently say that every article I have seen in the past 5 years that complain about weirdness of JavaScript is about things that you would never do in a modern, production-level codebase. Many of these issues are about pre-ES6, outdated practice (e.g. eval, using == operator) that are almost certainly going to be flagged by a linter. Very occasionally, you do get hit by some weirdness, but likely doesn't take more than a few minutes to figure out. And if you write in TypeScript, like almost every serious new project created these days, most of these questions don't exist at all.

Which is why I don't bother reading these posts any more.
by SkyBelow | 2025-04-04 13:13:54+00:00
Compared to the population at large, how does their definition do? Compared to philosophers and neuroscientists, it is lacking, no doubt. But that's the top 1% of the population in being able to define intelligence. So where does this view of intelligence rank compared on a more global sense? It seems better than those who just go with a "I know it when I see it" gut check (especially given how often that gut check is now letting newer models pass as long as they don't know it is an AI model). Or the "humans, because humans are clearly better" view that assigns mythical status to the human brain. Is it in the top 5%? Top 2%?

For a group to come up with a good enough definition that still ranks among the top and which is suited for the specific tasks at hand, seems like a show of intelligence. It isn't perfect, but to what extent is that avoiding premature optimization? Once the definition has issues, it'll be refined more. No need to waste time refining it if we never build tools that hit the limits of the current definition.
by h2zizzle | 2025-04-04 13:14:06+00:00
Still waiting for the WYSIWYG GUI-base authoring tool for a web animation API. You know what artists - animators - generally don't like? Wading through docs and code to spin a square. It's been about a decade since the average of the various watersheds in the slow death of Flash, and we still don't have a replacement.
by Peritract | 2025-04-04 13:15:17+00:00
> a machine that can generate a poem or illustration depicting [CHARACTER_X] in [PLACE_Y] doing [ACTIVITY_Z] in [STYLE_S] without being creative

Your example disproves itself; that's a madlib. It's not creative, it's just rolling the dice and filling in the blanks. Complex die and complex blanks are a difference of degree only, not creativity.
by lolinder | 2025-04-04 13:15:17+00:00
> it is literally impossible for someone to be incorrect about the meaning of a word.

Yeah, it's important to frame it in terms of idiolects and dialects—any given speaker has an idiolect, and that idiolect is worth describing and documenting uncritically. But that speaker also benefits from speaking a shared dialect with other speakers, and it's valuable for that speaker to be on the same page with other speakers of their dialect about definitions.

I think what OP is getting at is that it's not the role of linguistics to assign a value judgement to a given usage—there are merely benefits that speakers can derive from better understanding the dialects that they use in daily life.
by rchaud | 2025-04-04 13:15:21+00:00
Apple CEO Tim Cook made a personal $1 million "donation" to the Trump inauguration in January 2025:

> Cook, a proud Alabama native, believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity, the sources said.

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-apple-donate-1-mil...
by pc86 | 2025-04-04 13:15:24+00:00
The whole signal thing is an excellent example and I know several people who voted for Trump who agree that was a boneheaded move (having a signal chat at all let alone accidentally adding a journalist to it).

What evidence do you have that DOGE (which is just USDS that everybody loved during the Obama administration) has bypassed any vetting for its employees?
by bobchadwick | 2025-04-04 13:15:28+00:00
My home in the US Northeast was renovated a few years back and we went from gas heating, cooking, and water heating to all electric (heat pumps for HVAC and water; induction for cooking). As part of the renovation, we added insulation and performed air sealing. Our bill has gone up significantly in the winter, despite the home being better insulated.

That said, I've heard gas costs have also increased recently, so I'd likely be seeing higher costs if we hadn't converted.