MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by masklinn | 2025-05-29 12:22:06+00:00
> That's an orthogonal issue to me. IMHO, modern Google never really cared about social media platforms because it never really understood them.

Caring (or at least wanting in) and not understanding are perfectly compatible.

I know for a fact that a number of old googlers are still frustrated over Google Video got stomped, and Google having to buy Youtube in the end.

> Otherwise it would have bought Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tiktok, Twitter, early on before they became industry titans

That only works if:

1. they see it coming

2. the in-house competition effort does not remain politically unassailable

3. until the competitor is too big for google to realistically acquire it
by arp242 | 2025-05-29 12:22:44+00:00
It is impossible for any intelligence, artificial or otherwise, to deduce travel advice based on any prior knowledge. You need to actually go to these places and see what it's like.

I don't know of any more clear and obvious example of "AI uses your content, robs you of your income, and gives nothing in return" than this.

Whether AI (currently) gives "better" answers or not is rather besides the point.
by gorjusborg | 2025-05-29 12:22:50+00:00
I can't get past the sloppy and inflammatory use of English here.

This is not 'censorship'. It probably isn't banning, nor is it 'shadowbanning'. Google tunes its algorithms and lets the chips fall. Some win, some lose.

While I understand how Google's dominance in search can have outsized effects on Internet commerce, the writer has near-zero credibility with me based on their writing. Honest people making honest statements don't need to exaggerate to make the point.
by JimDabell | 2025-05-29 12:22:54+00:00
Evolt finally shut down last year:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240206220342/https://lists.evo...

However their browser archive, where you can download ancient versions of over a hundred different web browsers, is still online:

https://browsers.evolt.org

And that was back when browsers had their own rendering engines and they weren’t all based on Blink, Gecko, or WebKit!
by topaz0 | 2025-05-29 12:24:14+00:00
The article also doesn't claim there will be no impact, and indeed acknowledges that for particular roles it could be very consequential. The headline is just that when you average over everything the economy does, a 0.5% to 1% productivity gain is a more plausible outcome than 10-30%. That's the "somewhere in the middle" conclusion that this particular economist comes to (as of last year).
by tomalf | 2025-05-29 12:24:28+00:00
I also really like the idea for this product and can see lots of applications of the format/medium beyond leaving employees/handovers.

For example, I am currently transitioning my P&L into a new dept. at a large organisation and the amount of work to onboard into my new manager / team is significant and my weakness in the process is the structure / organisation of my own documentation that allows me to surface the right information to the right people without repeating myself.

Similarly, I've joined new teams (small and large) as a new manager - here you want to quickly get up to speed on lots of projects and how things do/don't join together.

Personally, I would like to describe my situation to the tool about my role and (almost like a user story or 'new manager, existing company' or 'experienced manager, new company) have the tool react to the situation.
by sebstefan | 2025-05-29 12:24:47+00:00
>Not unique at all; AI hate to the point of viewing it as literally the destruction of civilization warranting being stopped by any means is extremely common on Twitter

Well maybe because it's not at all being addressed by the other side

Things that are never addressed by AI grifters:

* The effect it's going to have on the sources of data it's driving traffic away from?

* What happens to the adoption curve when Stack overflow is dead and LLMs don't have a strong base of knowledge on it?

* Unlike the sewing machine, this one is primarily automating the tasks people enjoy?

* Climate change impact?

It's like wailing that the discourse around proof of work cryptos isn't up to snuff, but you don't care about the environmental impacts yourself. Well, then your discourse is not up to standard either.
by elktown | 2025-05-29 12:25:01+00:00
> A better question would be what is the point of CNCF?

I ask myself that every time I happen to stroll past CNCF things. I just can't avoid feeling that it's a big cloud complexity racket - and not even a classy one. A constant barrage of expensive conferences, vague memberships [1], and over-the-top certification schemes [2]. Not to even mention the obvious self-interests of hyperscalers of setting up this org in the first place.

[1] "The CNCF Silver Membership offers unmatched value across your entire organization. Whether a startup, scale-up, or mid-sized company, get ready to lead, learn, grow, and be recognized in the cloud native ecosystem." https://www.cncf.io/about/join/silver/

[2] "Individuals who have successfully passed every CNCF certification (currently CKA, CKAD, CKS, KCNA, KCSA, PCA, ICA, CCA, CAPA, CGOA, CBA, OTCA, KCA) and LFCS, will receive the title of Golden Kubestronaut for life [...]" https://www.cncf.io/training/kubestronaut/
by jsilence | 2025-05-29 12:25:12+00:00
Have been using Spacemacs and Doom Emacs some time ago, but turned off evil mode, bc I was not used to vim style editing. Lately I understood that vim key bindings is actually an editing language and finally found joy in vim [0]. Surely going to return to Doom-Emacs with evil mode on. Maybe switching to evil god mode later.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlR5gYd6um0
by rs186 | 2025-05-29 12:25:34+00:00
Relevant: Sundar Pichai recently gave an interview to The Verge, full transcript here: https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/67...

> You’re always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, etc., like app developers and platforms. That’s not on the web, etc. There’s always going to be — when you’re running a platform — these debates. I would challenge, I think more than any other company, we prioritize sending traffic to the web. No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do. I look at other companies, newer emerging companies, where they openly talk about it as something they’re not going to do. We are the only ones who make it a high priority, agonize, and so on. We’ll engage, and we’ve always engaged.

> There are going to be debates through it all, but we are committed to, I’ve said this before, everything we do across all... You will see us five years from now sending a lot of traffic out to the web. I think that’s the product direction we are committed to. I think it’s what users look for when they come to Google, and the nature of it will evolve. But I am confident that that’s the direction we’ll continue taking.

Sounds like he wants to be nice with publishers and direct traffic to them like "for over 25 years" (a phrase he used many times in the interview), but it remains to be see what their action is.
by wat10000 | 2025-05-29 12:25:59+00:00
Most business is about providing value by delivering goods or services that people want and are willing to pay for. Visit your local shops, how many of them are convincing people to buy proverbial tulips and leaving their customers holding the bag? Look at the most valuable companies in the world; they all do or make stuff people happily pay for because they actually find value in it.

Certainly there are people who succeed in business by doing what you say, but it’s not how most success happens.
by zeristor | 2025-05-29 12:26:00+00:00
Isn't Xenon very expensive?

I used it in my Laser MSc has part of the mix for a CO2 laser (marks how long ago that was). CO2 for the optic properties, and Xe to reduce the electron temperature.

So the Xe in this case triggers a response in the human body, but people aren't quite sure why. Quite strange considering Xe is an inert gas.
by wilde | 2025-05-29 12:26:06+00:00
> It was hurtful to hear Google thought our site was of “little value” to the web.

I read some of the guides. Google is right that there’s little unique content here.

Perhaps this is the right tone for a letter to the FTC. I find it hard to sympathize with the author with this style (even though they are likely right that Google is killing the web)
by vanattab | 2025-05-29 12:26:08+00:00
What a wonderfully weird store. If I ever need to buy an under powered can opener,some screen protectors for my palm pilot and I life size terracotta warrior for $1200 without going to multiple places I know now where to go.

https://sciplus.com/screen-protectors-2-15-16-x-2-1-4-12-pac...

https://sciplus.com/under-powered-automatic-can-opener-for-p...

https://sciplus.com/lifesize-terra-cotta-warrior/?searchid=1...
by eimrine | 2025-05-29 12:26:45+00:00
I want those subscriptions be active but only inside the borders of FB. I do not want to unsubscribe from everything just because I visit FB once a year or less. Those guys are my friends or schoolmates. But if FB provided that kind of instrument which unsubscribes from everything at once, I would do this just for the sake of being nice to Facebook, I understand that these annoying messages are not exactly a spam. For example, I never use their private message features, so I really do not need those 17 emails per day.
by tndibona | 2025-05-29 12:27:33+00:00
My personal opinion. Google sees the writing on the wall with the rise of perplexity. People want trustable summaries of long winding content to make decisions. It’s business of sending people to the relevant content and serving ads has to change to compete. It is simply redefining how it serves up information. The fact that small information servers like us get wiped out is the unfortunate consequence.

I’m not saying we all have to innovate or perish but how did our rules based order allow Google to get to this point.
by itchyjunk | 2025-05-29 12:29:02+00:00
Noam Shazeer says it at some point in the Dwarkesh Patel podcast.

Edit : Saw multiple people comment by the time I hit sent. Was it also memorable for you guys? I think it was just the way he said it or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0gjI__RyCY
by Arisaka1 | 2025-05-29 12:29:07+00:00
This article reminded of the days when building anything wasn't driven by neither the fear of being judged or the need to impress a future employer, but because I just felt like it.

I think there's a lack of kind of approach in general. There's a time and place when you build because the end goal is your client or boss, but it's ultimately the inner itch of experimentation that shapes your skillset and taste.
by rxtexit | 2025-05-29 12:29:08+00:00
I just doubt all this is true though.

It all seems like the same Utopian thinking any way you cut it. It makes for good fiction books because we can't see the actual counterfactual.

The simpler explanation to me would be it wouldn't matter if you had a religious or secular society. Just different trade offs on the long march of progress.

People 80 years from now will live better lives than we do today. That is just the way it goes. Of course if you asked anyone during WW2 this 80 years ago about 2025 they would give a highly pessimistic answer about 2025.
by CableNinja | 2025-05-29 12:29:13+00:00
Youd want some sort of filter and ocr in between to prevent things that were prevalent in the days of faxes. All black pages, endless printing, etc. And ofc youd want some csam filter because you dont want to end up having printed that. Gl proving it wasnt you.

That being said, it would be an interesting thing to see what people would decide to send to a random printer on the internet
by palmfacehn | 2025-05-29 12:29:29+00:00
Google's growth is directly attributable to the opportunities they created for consumers and entrepreneurs/publishers. Recognizing that the landscape has changed and needs to be adapted to isn't excusing the opportunities which have been taken off the table.

It is a tall order, but these changes create new opportunities for other publishers to capitalize on.

If you're seething over the valuation of Google rather than the content of their actions, that's something to reflect upon. Most of us here would find issues with their policies and evolution over the past two decades. I would love to see a better search experience. I hope the company that delivers it earns as much as they can, by serving consumers and creating opportunities for publishers.
by FinnLobsien | 2025-05-29 12:29:47+00:00
Welcome to the era of massively mediocre online content. It started with mediocre SEO content that just amalgamated 5 other page 1 results until Google results became basically inbred content that meant nothing to anyone.

Now we have LLMs which amalgamate that type of content and spit out a personalized, but still mediocre response.

On the visual side, TikTok and Reels are doing their part to make everyone run to the same picture spot, go to the same mediocre (but cool-looking) restaurants and so on.
by blinding-streak | 2025-05-29 12:29:57+00:00
> Apple is like "I'm pretty content with how much money I make".

What a laughably silly depiction of a multi-trillion dollar company.

Their predatory app store policies, defended (and lost) in court, paint a completely different picture. Just one of dozens of examples.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-executive-outright-lied...
by pmontra | 2025-05-29 12:30:22+00:00
But if nobody write SEO content anymore because questions to AI remove all human traffic to those sites, where will AI find up to date opinions? Facebook ? Instagram? Meta will block Google from scraping them or ask money. Booking? Same for Microsoft. Tripadvisor? They better have to buy it soon.

Or AI will invent opinions based on the better bid. That would be an extension of the ad business and sponsored contents too.
by onnnon | 2025-05-29 12:30:39+00:00
Elon is only permitted to work for 130 days because he's an SGE. The last day is May 30, which is 130 days after Jan 20.

A "special Government employee" (or "SGE") is an officer or employee in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government who is appointed to perform important, but limited, services to the Government, with or without compensation, for a period not to exceed 130 days during any period of 365 consecutive days.

https://www.doi.gov/ethics/special-government-employees
by somenameforme | 2025-05-29 12:30:52+00:00
With due respect, I really don't think you're thinking about your arguments. You're complaining about tax cuts and tariffs in the same sentence. You probably don't realize that tariffs are literally a tax, generally paid by the richest companies in America. The partisan takes on these issues often don't really make any sense whatsoever.

America entered into unprecedented debt exclusively by unprecedented spending. Government receipts (all the money the government takes in each year) has exponentially increased and basically never decreased except during major economic crises. [1] It's just that for every $1 the government takes in, they invariably decide to spend $1.20 more.

For the US this was more tolerable than for other nations because of a variety of factors - essentially coming down to the "special" place of USD in the world economy. But for a country like Germany diving into the debt hole will likely be catastrophic, even more so as they don't have control over their own currency. Gerexit starting to trend would be amusing, but also not entirely surprising if you've been paying any attention to German politics.

As for the implementation of the tariffs - no I don't think it's been done well. Of course I can take a purely ideological stance while the government is more obligated to take a pragmatic one, balancing the short-term pain such a change will entail against public support of it.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FGRECPT
by Gathering6678 | 2025-05-29 12:31:02+00:00
Might be nitpicking, but the Chinese text is actually saying it's for both (a) shortage of good bamboo, AND (b) safety in hurricanes, etc. It did not imply that bamboo which met the required standards is safe enough for these conditions. But I agree with your conclusion: safety is kinda important when it comes to scaffolding, on which people would walk around...
by empath75 | 2025-05-29 12:31:52+00:00
Okay, you have proposed a theory about a phenomenon that has some causal influence on the world -- ie, that there are spirits which can communicate with people and presumably alter their behavior in some way.

How do you propose to experimentally verify and measure such spirits? How can we distinguish between a world in which they exist as you imagine them and a world in which they don't? How can we distinguish between a world in which they exist as you imagine them and a world in which a completely _different set of spirits following different rules, also exists. What about Djinn? Santa Claus? Demons? Fairies?
by JimDabell | 2025-05-29 12:31:57+00:00
It’s appallingly bad faith.

Google have a page where they give advice on “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content”:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creat...

Things like “Provide a great page experience”, “Focus on people-first content”, and “Avoid creating search engine-first content”.

This article reframes it as an unfulfilled obligation and betrayal because ‘Google Promised to Reward Publishers Who Invest Resources Into Content Created “By People, For People”’
by supriyo-biswas | 2025-05-29 12:32:10+00:00
I'd like to look at this from a different angle.

Since Google is an established search player, and that the company has made many public statements on the symbiotic relationship between them and publishers, this means the FTC complaint is likely to go through. Given the current US admin, I also assume they'd pursue some action, either combined with the antitrust efforts, or through a separate legal action as it nicely dovetails with the various accusations of "censorship" that they have.

This means Google would be forced to reduce their AI offerings, and the website publishers in question get the thing that they were looking for. Meanwhile, new search entrants such as OpenAI/Perplexity, etc. are "allowed" to implement the same things that said publishers are opposed to, because of their smaller size and different perceptions, and the lack of similar statements.

Now, because LLMs are rapidly replacing most search engine uses (I've seen this firsthand while travelling on public transport that users in my country first default to ChatGPT etc.), this would mean Google is slowly replaced in an indirect way, not because they could not innovate but because they were not allowed to.

The implications of this are very interesting to me; it means that a corporation should rarely make any statements that have the tiniest chance of creating obligations (which is somewhat similar to Everything is Securities Fraud[1]) and corporate displacement happens not because companies out-innovate each other because the incumbent can do so too, but because legal obligations constrain their actions which ultimately lead to their death (somewhat similar to Planck's principle[2]).

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
by throw10920 | 2025-05-29 12:32:11+00:00
I hope that's true. The appropriate response to Google and OpenAI committing mass content/effort theft via AI training should be the disappearance of things that they can steal.

Unfortunately, there's enough slop that the average user will probably just continue using the AI, because it's so much easier that the quality floor they're willing to hit is very low.
by jasode | 2025-05-29 12:33:08+00:00
>And where the training data for your AI advice comes from?

It seems like the unstated assumption in that question assumes that the world totally depends on the information from small independent blogs like this thread's article. I.e. all other information sources would be derivatives of the independent blogs.

There are many other sources of organic info to feed AI training. Examples:

- transcripts of Youtube videos. E.g. somebody (maybe a travel agent or a well-traveled vacationer) records a video giving advice and uploads it to Youtube. Google auto-transcribes the audio and feeds the text to the training algorithm.

- AI assistants used by normal people to "analyze/summarize information" can feed that same data to the AI cloud. E.g. a travel agent types out an email giving advice to a customer. That customer then submits that same email content (or the AI autoscans the customer's email inbox) to enable the customer to ask the AI assistant, "Is this travel advice good? Is there anything this travel agent overlooked?"

Of course, the travel advisor would want to limit his "proprietary and valuable travel knowledge" to only his direct clients in that private email but they stop the customer from exposing it to AI assistants.

The common theme is that AI engines can insert themselves in between many types of communication between people. Those are the scenarios where you can think creatively about where all the new training data will come from. If AI assistants are used as mediators in private communication, information (including "travel advice") can "leak out" into the public. Independent blogs are a good source -- but they're not the only source.
by FinnLobsien | 2025-05-29 12:33:15+00:00
> I’m not saying we all have to innovate or perish but how did our rules based order allow Google to get to this point.

Well millions of people learned how to game the Google Search algorithm and created long-winded, hollow content that would rank on the first page to the point that people no longer trusted Google's results.

Then the perfect technology to solve that exact problem came along—one that let Google cease its dependency on the pesky people it was sending traffic to.
by drtgh | 2025-05-29 12:33:24+00:00
Two minutes in a search engine that is Not Google:

> Shazeer says he’s excited about Google expanding its focus to include helping users create new AI-generated content. “Organizing information is clearly a trillion-dollar opportunity, but a trillion dollars is not cool anymore,” he said recently on a podcast[2]. “What's cool is a quadrillion dollars.”

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/google-openai-gemini-chatgpt-art...

[2] at minute 29:18 , https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jeff-dean-and-noam-shazeer
by Sloowms | 2025-05-29 12:34:27+00:00
Google and all the other algorithm related content platforms have had this power before AI and have been using it as well. I think AI is a new layer to the SEO war.

I don't care for the grand conspiracy claims though. It's pretty obvious Google will optimize their search engine and the question answering to benefit their bottom line.

Maybe there are people actively working towards evil within Google. I think it's more likely some people recognize the implications of changes, some people don't but no one is working against those changes and ultimately the system will be capable to be used for very bad things and will do bad things naturally.

Anyway a better title would have been: Google's AI is the newest website killing feature