MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dahart | 2025-11-11 15:58:22+00:00
> we’re talking about 0.019% of US emissions

That’s assuming the numbers are accurate and in the ballpark, and I’m having a really hard time getting the numbers in the paper to add up. Do you believe them, or better yet, do you have other sources that support or confirm these numbers?

Just googling, what I get back is estimates that AI in 2024 already consumed over 200PJ, nearly 10x the number in the article, and is projected to double in the next few years. US electricity production is already ~25-30% of US CO2 emissions, and data centers are at least a quarter of that, and AI is now a huge driver of data center energy use. Data centers are using more than 4% of US electricity.

How is it possible that projected AI emissions are 0.019% from this one paper, while multiple other sources are estimating AI is already responsible for on the order of 2% of US emissions in 2024? I’m seeing a 100x discrepancy…

I don’t suspect the authors have intentionally downplayed either estimates, but a bunch of the paper’s data is old enough that it’s not useful for examining AI trends today. The energy use data is from 2016 and 2019. The energy use of inference is from GPT3 and usage numbers in 2023. The estimates of NVIDIA servers sold is from 2023. AI has exploded since then, and I suspect their estimates are off by orders of magnitude because AI usage has exploded in the last 2 years.

The author’s estimate of 28PJ of future AI energy use is based on a whole stack of assumptions in which small errors at every step can lead to very large errors in the estimate. That number is based on guesses of how automatable jobs are, and not on observations of the actual change in AI energy use today.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-k...

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energ...
by EGreg | 2025-11-11 15:58:29+00:00
I clicked hoping they’re making a small iPhone again like the SE was.

I look around at people with the smaller phone and wish we had a newer model. Whatever happened to this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0gtsjfy7E

The small iPhone is like the Cadillac Ciel. So many would buy it if they could, but they can’t so they won’t.
by jmclnx | 2025-11-11 15:58:35+00:00
I feel this is true, but there is a big but:

Who will determine how much people will get ? How will it be determined ?

I fully expect if this is put in place in the US (doubtful), it will be equivalent to the current minimum wage, were people on UBI will be in sever poverty. With the rich getting richer by something like 25% per year.

Again I see the US heading directly into an economy very similar to an old TV show called "Incorporated". 99.9% of the population will live in poverty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series)
by zahlman | 2025-11-11 15:58:36+00:00
> where the primary change has been it's not longer acceptable to tell racist/sexist jokes or make disparaging comments about others based race/sex/ethnicity.

This is simply untrue. Such conduct was already completely and utterly unacceptable prior to "DEI", for decades. These policies have instead enabled disparaging comments about others based on race/sex/ethnicity — in particular, accusing people belonging to certain such groups of being inherently whatever-ist (see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWoC90bbsdo), while defining away discrimination perpetrated against them (to move back towards the original topic, this claim was repeated many times in the discussion of the removal of references to "Strunk & White" in PEP 8).

> What can you not say or do in these environments for fear of reprisal?

For example, I doubt that you could refuse a request to state your "preferred pronouns", or critique the idea of making such requests or normalizing the culture around them.
by j1elo | 2025-11-11 15:58:37+00:00
* Good "Base" salary: around €30,000-35.000 gross annually is considered a good base for a single person in Spain, including larger cities. From there, thech workers might be able to get a better salary. This is before taxes, of which there are plenty, so you can count that final effective take-home money is around 60-70% of that. VAT is 21% so that's another chunk that you'll contribute each time you purchase stuff.

* Median rent price in the city: one-bedroom apartment is around €1,000/month; 3-bedroom apartment around €1,500-€2,000.
by fennecfoxy | 2025-11-11 15:58:58+00:00
To be fair Ukraine's drones seem to mostly be commercial units with an explosive strapped to them. I imagine the failure rate/hits are quite low compared to what they could be with something purpose built.

They're also relying mostly on human operators rather than autonomy, human operators come with all the usual caveats of reaction time and requiring video to be sent back.

I don't want people to think I'm denouncing their drone operators though, they're doing what needs to be done with limited resources, stress and psychological tolls.
by onionjake | 2025-11-11 15:59:16+00:00
When the cameras become a revenue stream for a city it is not a good thing.

Cameras have been installed to fine cars running red lights. The city then reduces the length of the yellow to catch more people and offset the high cost of the cameras. The shortened yellows cause increased crashes and fatalities.

Net-net the track record in the states is not great.

One example https://www.koaa.com/news/news5-investigates/news-5-investig...
by singron | 2025-11-11 15:59:36+00:00
The paper is based on an estimate of productivity increases per industry due to AI. The highest increases are around 0.2% and most industries are <0.1%. In that world, AI isn't transformative and doesn't accelerate.

In some ways I think this is probably realistic, but it's not compatible with outcomes touted by boosters. They estimate 28 PJ/year, which is only about 0.9 GW. Stargate was planned to build 10 GW of capacity alone, so they can't both be true
by SpicyLemonZest | 2025-11-11 15:59:55+00:00
20% of American workers (38% of those under 30) report that they use ChatGPT to help with their job (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/25/34-of-us-...). I suppose it's possible that none of that group are "ordinary", but my anecdotal experience has been that random nontechnical people have no problem using or finding value in generative AI.
by jjk166 | 2025-11-11 15:59:59+00:00
Ukraine is using drones as a substitute for many military capabilities it doesn't have, and is fighting a war where it is in desperate need of whatever munitions it can get to be used over a relatively short distance. Drones have undoubtedly become part of the battlefield, but a war between great powers being waged on the opposite side of the world is going to look very different from a small nation holding off it's neighbor.
by nine_k | 2025-11-11 16:00:04+00:00
There is a number of small Android phones, so apparently there is demand in that niche, and smaller companies can address it and make money.

But this is because Google is a software / service company, so it keeps Android open.

Apple is a hardware company, and always has been. They have a relatively narrow lineup of devices which they support for a very long time, compared to Android devices. So Apple are not interested in fringe markets; they go for the well-off mainstream mostly.
by keyringlight | 2025-11-11 16:00:06+00:00
Yes, I do this because when I'm using my bike to get into work as it often involves more than one set of clothes and swapping everything between different pockets is annoying so I have a big 'unipocket' fanny pack, my 6.7" phone is still cumbersome in there making digging out other items annoying. And when I'm wearing some pairs of pants and the phone isn't angled just right it will dig into my hip while walking up stairs until it's adjusted. (and that's with a relatively budget android phone, smaller devices are a tiny niche of old less powerful devices that barely have support)
by kmoser | 2025-11-11 16:00:09+00:00
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.

Marketing 101: Create a customer. Even if phones were small enough that there was no need for such a product, Apple's marketing team would convince you that you needed this product for [reasons].
by gwbas1c | 2025-11-11 16:00:13+00:00
I just took lazygit for a spin:

In general, the tool looks cool. It also looks like it takes time to learn; but if you find it useful, it's probably worth it taking the time to learn.

There were two blockers for me:

1: I can't free-form select text with a mouse like a can in a terminal. (I honestly haven't used a TUI since the 1990s.) I frequently copy bits of branch names from the terminal, so this was a big deal for me. There is a way to "disable" the mouse in lazygit, which then allows copy & paste; but as I prefer to learn a program with point & click, it's a non-starter for me.

2: A lot of this functionality is built into Visual Studio for me. I use a mix of Visual Studio's point & click with git, and then the git command-line: Whichever is easiest for the specific task I'm doing. It just takes a bit more exploration in Visual Studio to find this functionality, as opposed to it being front and center when starting lazygit.
by Marshferm | 2025-11-11 16:00:22+00:00
These are not examples, they’re narrative (false) equivalencies.

Brains don’t perform Natural language CSR etc, those are cultural extensions separate from mental states etc. there are no functional equivalencies here.

There are many many empirical disputes for function eg

Aru et al “The feasibility of artificial consciousness through the lens of neuroscience” December 2023
by netdevphoenix | 2025-11-11 16:00:23+00:00
In the game of musical chairs, there is no official moment when players need to get in position to reach the closest chair. One second there is music and another second later there isn't. However, the that period exists if you can look at the relevant signs: the host hand and body in relation to the music record player.

No AI player will admit to be positioning for a sector collapse but it would be naïve to believe that anyone close to ground zero isn't planning contingency plans and are just coasting in the golden age of AI. And those who have the most skin in the game are certainly the ones most incentivise to do so while denying their true intentions.

LLMs are going no where but the reality of them not being the civilisation shifting money makers people have hyped them up to be is undeniably setting no matter what the AI astroturfers hiding in HN tell you. People have been jumping off the train or positioning to reach the closest chair when the music stops. Not long ago 2023, the world bubble was just whispered here. 2 years later it has hit mainstream and has been uttered by people holding the money bags. It might be a dream or it might not.

The difference is that, if you were in denial, now you are seeing signs that are much harder to deny. And we should expect the upcoming signs to be harder and harder, until the number of people denying reaches to zero right as the bubble fully bursts and the AI startups layoffs begin.
by fwn | 2025-11-11 16:00:45+00:00
> Had a couple of drive-by downvotes... Is it that stupid an opinion?

While I do not agree with your take, FWIW I found your comment substantive and constructive.

You seem to be making two points that are both controversial:

The first is that generative AI makes the availability of lyrics more problematic, given new kinds of reuse and transformation it enables. The second is that AI companies owe something (legally or morally) to lyric rights holders, and that it is better to have some mechanism for compensation, even if the details are not ideal.

I personally do not believe that AI training is meaningfully different from traditional data analysis, which has long been accepted and rarely problematized.

While I understand that reproducing original lyrics raises copyright issues, this should only be a concern in terms of reproduction, not analysis. Example: Even if you do no data analysis at all and your random character generator publishes the lyrics of a famous Beatles song (or other forbidden numbers) by sheer coincidence, it would still be a copyright issue.

I also do not believe in selective compensation schemes driven by legal events. If a legitimate mechanism for rights holders cannot be constructed in general, it is poor policy craftsmanship to privilege the music industry specifically.

Doing so relieves the pressure to find a universal solution once powerful stakeholders are satisfied. While this might be seen as setting a useful precedent by small-scale creators, I doubt it will help them.
by jimbokun | 2025-11-11 16:00:45+00:00
It's kind of like this:

https://xkcd.com/224/

Also this:

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/

For me, there's a dopamine hit in taking a complex problem, and breaking it into simple interacting parts that solve the problem in an elegant way. Overly complex programming languages add lots of incidental complexity that slow down this process. A clear, simple, consistent semantics accelerate this process.

If that doesn't inherently excite you, the life altering experience probably isn't going to happen for you.
by tschellenbach | 2025-11-11 16:01:07+00:00
I'm Dutch, the media narrative is a major problem. It's not being honest about the level of relative decline between USA & NL. 20 years of diverging growth rates has had a massive impact. This trend will continue, since NL missed most of the internet, mobile, social and AI startups.

Here in Colorado even people at entry level jobs can afford a nice home. Salaries are way lower in NL, and housing is incredibly expensive.

But the media just doesn't report on it. You don't notice it unless you live in both places. Still a beautiful country though and USA has it's own problems as well.
by perihelions | 2025-11-11 16:01:19+00:00
It's a large step up from "it's used for job postings in (or closely working with) mainland China", to "it's featured in Apple product announcements targeting a global audience of millions".

Has it been used in an Apple product announcement before? My search is imperfect, but I actually can't find an example (on their /newsroom subdomain).

As recently as two months ago, with the Airphone announcement, they weren't doing this:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/introducing-iphone-ai... ("Introducing iPhone Air, a powerful new iPhone with a breakthrough design")

> "The 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max will be available in Canada, China mainland, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, the Philippines, and the U.S."
by pavon | 2025-11-11 16:01:45+00:00
Ooh, I'm going to have to download the emulator tonight and try this out. The swiss micro and 47calc sites both say "display with 4 stack levels", but I can't figure out if that is also the size of the logical stack.

The shift key on my HP28C died last year. I never used the advanced features (eg the entire left-hand keypad), but loved its effectively infinite stack, and haven't been able to go back to an HP42, HP35s or the like since.

I'm now using Plus42 on my phone with the big stack option, but would love to have a physical calculator again.
by sigwinch | 2025-11-11 16:01:53+00:00
In another thread, the edits of Trump’s Jan 6 speech by Panorama were called “fake news”. Seems to me that the more-problematic edit was showing the Proud Boys after Trump’s speech, when in fact they left before.

But it’s not like Trump is being taken out of context. It’s not like he was acting with incomplete information.
by boc | 2025-11-11 16:02:12+00:00
The US actually has a series of social safety nets. There are massive government programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security which provide real, measurable safety nets to the most vulnerable in society. There are also hundreds of thousands of charities, churches, and non-profit organizations that donate time, money, and resources to assist families going through hard times. There is also the US Military, which serves as a government-backed career path for millions of high-school graduates.

I think you're thinking that the US got ahead through exploiting labor. You missed the biggest piece of it though - the US welcomes (or at least until recently used to welcome) massive amounts of highly-educated immigrants from all over the world, and crucially has built a culture and society where those people can feel "American" fairly quickly in a way that they would never if they moved to Switzerland or France.

Being able to brain-drain the entire world and then smartly arm those people with unlimited capital to build their companies and dreams is the "unfair" American advantage. It isn't unethical, it's just not something European society supports. That, and the 30-year mortgage.
by subscribed | 2025-11-11 16:02:22+00:00
Oh sorry, missed that one.

> your main email address

Right, it doesn't get my main email at the moment, true, turns out an app needs `android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS` to do that. I do, however, expect them to do that later -- looking at their declared permissions, it's hard to assume a good will:

- `BLUETOOTH_SCAN`, `ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION`, `ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID` -- all together. Yes, I see they use `android.ext.adservices`

`READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`? `WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`? What for? Do they even offer saving a PDF into a Downloads folder? I think they can do it without asking for the separate permission.

> and they can only identify apps from a fixed list

While it's true they would require `QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES` to openly get a _complete_ list, see this: https://www.medianama.com/2025/04/223-android-apps-data-brea...

And then check their admitted privacy practices/policy from their Google Play listing (com.ryanair.cheapflights)

Notice, the first section is `DATA SHARED`, not just collected. It's shared with the undisclosed third parties (we know from the privacy policy[1], though, that at the very least it includes all the social networks

>> App Activity: installed apps >> Purposes: Analytics, Personalisation

>> Also: Email address, financial information, physical address, user payment info, phone info.

`DATA COLLECTED`:

>> Photos, User ids (plural, it's not just email used to login), Installed apps once again, Files and docs (?!)

Generally;

I have a very little trust for a vendor that is known for the deceptive practices and which lies from the outset about the reasons to force all passengers into using their app.

If they lie in such a fundamental question, it should be assumed they're using deceptions and trickery.

Like with disgraced Meta caught red-handed on deception and trickery: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are...

[1] https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/lp/privacy-policy
by nostrademons | 2025-11-11 16:02:31+00:00
Arguably an even greater leverage point is to have the ability to select your enemy. Don't fight wars with belligerents that are 1000 miles away. Instead, fuel nationalist and separatist sentiments within elements of your adversaries that are much closer to them. Instead of having to fight your adversaries, get them to fight themselves, and destroy their country from within.

Russia is doing a masterful job doing this to the U.S. Biden's foreign policy also was pretty brilliant - get Russia bogged down in a quagmire with Ukraine, while supplying just enough weaponry to Ukraine to keep the war going but not enough to win it. Strategy is also used throughout the globe; see all the various proxy wars going on.

If the U.S. honestly wanted to have the best chance defeating China, the optimal strategy would probably to protect and fund Chinese billionaires political ambitions, so that they could provide a countervailing (and ultimately rivalrous) force to the ruling Communist Party.

The role of drones in this is largely in protecting supply lines and information collection/dissemination points. If you want to arm your enemy's adversary and give them a shot at challenging the ruling power structures in their country, you need to be able to get weapons and information to them.
by mjr00 | 2025-11-11 16:02:31+00:00
I didn't downvote, but

> I think having the lyrics reproducible in text form isn't the problem. Many sites have been doing that for decades and as far as I know record companies haven't gone after them.

Reproducing lyrics in text form is, in fact, a problem, independent of AI. The music industry has historically been aggressively litigious in going after websites which post unlicensed song lyrics[0]. There are many arcane and bizarre copyright rules around lyrics. e.g. If you've ever watched a TV show with subtitles where there's a musical number but none of the lyrics are subtitled, you might think it was just laziness, but it's more likely the subtitlers didn't have permission to translate&subtitle the lyrics. And many songs on Spotify which you'd assume would have lyrics available, just don't, because they don't have the rights to publish them.

[0] https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/nmpa-targets-unli...
by almosthere | 2025-11-11 16:02:38+00:00
I haven't watched the TT but anecdote. One of our friends has an autistic child, but fairly high functioning. When he was about 6 or 7 one morning this child complained he didn't want to go to a weekly playground and told his mom the slide was broken and it wouldn't be fun. Mom said what are you talking about - when they arrived, the slide was literally broken. The friend said there was no possible way he should have known that (I don't know the details) but this child does not have a phone and is under non-stop supervision.
by stetrain | 2025-11-11 16:03:08+00:00
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.

I think it's an admission that consumers prefer phones that are large enough that they have become inconvenient to carry in a pocket.

Some people have never had pockets big enough to comfortably fit even a smaller smartphone and have been carrying them in bags this whole time.
by thiago_fm | 2025-11-11 16:03:31+00:00
The measure of "output" is the problem. Output can be increased by more expenditures, not a real tangible benefit for the society.

The US had 6.3% GDP deficit in 2024, meanwhile it's 3% in the EU. The US is growing on debt, and on its way to become Japan.

Even on EU's worst debt crisis times, it didn't run such a big deficit as the US.

Add in the fact that the EU has accepted the Meta/Google tax in advertising, among other US' interests businesses. Which it can change its mind and get such businesses in trouble.

Not to forget about shale oil. The US became the biggest oil producer BY A WIDE MARGIN.

But it's all based on a $60 barrel, if the oil barrel goes back to $40, you'd see most of those companies filing bankrupcy and trillions disappearing. Here's another industry that the US government will need subsidize further with more US debt and taxpayers money.

There's a lot of risk attached to the US' recent growth, people would be naive to not consider them. We'd have to see if that trend lives for longer, and what are the tradeoffs.

The EU could decide to also destroy its country, feed people a lot of corn syrup and diabetes, and provide them GLP-1 drugs to increase its GDP.

Or just make the european believe that big cars are great, and they need a 5 bedroom house for 3 people.

All this would push that holy productivity number UP, but does it make rational sense to do that? Nope.
by zahlman | 2025-11-11 16:03:36+00:00
> He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.

His questions did not carry any such implication and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the argument he was making. I've been over this so many times in the past and I keep being told that the words I read don't mean what they very obviously mean. (I'm accustomed to that being called "gaslighting" when it goes the other way, inaccurate as that is.)