skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's probably been a decade since I last used them but there were two book swapping services, I used to belong to that would handle matchmaking of people who had books the other wanted and then you could print a shipping label at home if you had a printer (they were still common at the time). For small paperbacks, you could even print out the postal details on a regular sheet of paper and then wrap it around the book and tape it up, ready to be picked up by the post office. Using the media mail rate kept things reasonable, especially for standard size books.
> The closest recent group that’s come is perhaps the rise of QAnon, he said, but that’s more a secular than a religious movement.

I disagree. Qanon is 100% a religious movement. Supernatural revelations, irrational beliefs, and faith in a divine figure.
You can't do remote start in a garage. I remote start my Tesla in my garage all the time on super-cold days.

If I did that with a gas car, I'd get carbon monoxide poisoning.
“… left investors feeling like they’d been led on…”

I don’t doubt that these people really did think of themselves as investors. What a bunch of fucking idiots. They “invested” in video games loot from Logan fucking Paul.
Relevant comedy sketch from the past:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKkb0qXbyUY
When you need a whole YC-funded startup just to configure permissions of your cloud host, you know something is rotten about this entire industry.
> Elon is the wealthiest man in the world

Second wealthiest now…
Cheap labor already familiar with chip manufacturing, cheap land, good tax treatment, and tax credits from the gov’t if I remember correctly.
I'm still highly critical of what Musk is doing (again, without knowing the 'why') but something that seems important and is going unnoticed is that while the previous administration's actions were just as arbitrary and capricious, they almost always related to events that were popular topics of discussion like recent elections, a global pandemic, and other things that are naturally topics of discussion.

I think the current rules are likely just as dumb, but the number of people likely to be suspended for doxxing Elon or posting about Mastodon is undoubtedly a MUCH smaller segment of the population.

It's amusing watching the reactions to it. I've run enough communities in the past to appreciate how many times you have to make decisions that go against your personal ethics for the sake of the community. Everyone draws different lines on the sand on what they consider "free" speech, and anything closely resembling what is protected in America will likely get you into trouble internationally. Elon is finding out that it's hard, and while it may seem like he's setting his lines in untenable spots, it seems just as possible to me that we're all wrong and he isn't.
I just wish subscription model would be more friendly for the individual entrepreneurs. Have an hourly/daily renting model.

For example, I pay for IntelliJ, which is my primary tool, and I see the value of what I am paying for. Right now, the price is ~200/year, and will be ok actually paying 10x of that as well. On other hand, I also used to pay for Sketch, Adobe Suite, Parallels, which I used only 1-2 months a year (used it for a week, and maybe another week about 6 months later). So I switched to Affinity products (which also great, just require some learning) for design.

I also really like the SetApp model, marketplace with 250+ apps, for which you pay a monthly/yearly subscription. If you use a few apps, it kind of already can qualify the subscription. If you are using 10+ apps, might be even abusing it.
> Elon's critics rightly point out the problems with his arbitrary rule by fiat, but who among his critics are proposing anything more principled than his behavior? By and large, people are calling him a hypocrite without articulating any more principled vision for how social media platforms should be run.

Most people aren't supplying anything more principled. The reality of it is that it's REALLY DIFFICULT to run a generic-purpose social media platform. Twitter, pre-Musk takeover, had a whole bunch of teams, working groups, councils and employees whose task was to basically try to reduce the effects of Masnick's Impossibility Theorem[0] as much as possible. It is an established fact that Musk threw out the majority of these groups shortly after he took over the site.

The main reason people call Musk a hypocrite is because he was also very vocal about what he wanted to replace those policies with: unbridled free speech, with the only limitation being the law. He has not publicly abandoned this principle yet and to the contrary, still occasionally barks up the accounts of some far right users about how he's going to "restore free speech" on Twitter. By all public accounts, he's still believing in that idea, whilst also transparently setting policies on stuff that very much doesn't align with that belief (see this policy change, the recent banning of ElonJet and so on and so forth).

> This sounds like basically codifying the current Elon Musk mode of governance. Are you really suggesting that the Internet would be better if every social media site was operated in this way, as long as it is explicit in the rules?

It probably would be. I think it would actually improve the general state of the internet if people were aware more that the sites they use are effectively ran on the whimsy of other people. A lot of people live under the illusion that one singular website is supposed to be their free room to dump whatever thoughts they want. This idea both goes against the original goal of the internet and does not line up with reality. Codifying this sort of thing matters more than you think. It means people know where they stand. Nowadays this stuff still largely exists in the Terms of Services of most sites (not to mention that a big part of free speech is not a requirement to host anyone else), but being more open about that would be a much better move for transparency reasons.

So uh... yes? I am explicitly advocating for the implosion of generic purpose social media, I think what it has done on a broader scale is extremely damaging to society.

[0]: https://www.techdirt.com/2019/11/20/masnicks-impossibility-t...
I've taken to skimming through the Elon/twitter threads curious to see if there's anything actually new. I'm glad I saw your post and clicked the link, that was a very pleasant story to read.
Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return.

A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better.

Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back to Twitter because his account just got suspended...

See for yourself: https://twitter.com/paulg/
> I guess all those sensors are actually more expensive than the cost of a human driver at this point?

Waymo inhoused their sensors and claimed a 90% cost reduction, but before that they were at $200k+.

Still, even at $200k+ that's not terribly high compared to a human driver once you amortize it over 8+ years. Higher than minimum wage, but really it's probably a matter of the upfront cost more than anything.

I'll also point out that even if they 100% solved self driving... somebody has to fill the things up with gas in most states, lol.
Title: "Promotion of alternative social platforms policy"

Context: This is specifically linked in pg's tweet.

(Which should be reasonably obvious, though several comments to this thread suggest otherwise.)
Regarding behavior of Twitter's current leadership, the personality of recent years...

When people who seem intelligent and sensible achieve success, and then start to have a kind of jerk-y metamorphosis, I wonder whether it's not just that their voice is amplified or no longer suppressed, nor that "power corrupts", but... whether and how much drugs are involved.

Imagine a stereotypical young Wall Street bro of decades past, who starts doing cocaine. If their personality changes, I might wonder how much it was the money, and how much it was the echo chamber in their new social scene, but one really can't ignore the coke (where at least temporary personality change is basically on the label as an effect).

With some people, I also wonder about the awful effects of sleep deprivation. But usually first about drugs.
I'm not an ideologue so I don't derive my identity from my politics, and therefore don't view political opinions as "impressing" anybody.

I don't like the GOP for many reasons (maga) and I think the current iteration of Democrats are horrifically inept with economics to a degree where they are a net harm for the people they strive to help. Belief in policies such as rent control is as anti-science as creationism.

Most Americans have fallen into the trap of lesser of two evils to a point where they don't hold their chosen side accountable at all and the result is predictable. Incredibly dysfunctional policy.
If this is to be believed [1], what you describe:

> do morons get accepted into Stanford's STEM PhD programs

is a lie perpetuated by Musk and co. [1] contains links to court documents.

According to the court documents, not only does he not have a physics or other technical degree, he obtained a bachelor in Econ in 1997, not a physics degree in 1995.

The scan of the diploma does not specify department, has no year date, and is a bachelor of arts.

[1] https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/159330754193247436...
> I generally refuse to rent anything in life

It depends. I like that my rented apartment is housing-as-a-service because if any plumbing breaks it's not my problem. If it collapses in an earthquake it's also not my problem, I can run away and rent another one.

Sofware-as-a-service, on the other hand, I'm largely against. I much prefer one license for life with free updates for a set period of time.
Works fine under Debian although you have to load package from "unstable" (not really unstable 99.99% of the time) branch to get newest one
Social Justice Art Class – Kids in the Hall
Many celebrities end up burning out or spending all their money, start failed businesses, etc.

Rihanna imo is very savvy and the Fenty brand was a very successful business, involving a couple pivots from fashion to more lingerie and beauty. The big Savage x Fenty musical production event every year is a smart move that leverages her music industry connections and draws lots of interest and new customers.

Arguably she is doing better than Musk atm, given that he started life with a huge capital advantage and is likely losing big on Twitter right now (as well as tanking his public image).
They may as well have literally flipped a 70.3/29.7 weighted coin 10 times.

I walked out of the pub in disgust.
Thank you for your kind words. If Twitter/Mastodon is not what you need, perhaps I could interest you in my hosted XMPP and Matrix offerings?
French intellectuals want us to divide by the number of fingers we have, because man is the measure of all things. They’re also in league with mathematicians and some foreign Arabian number system.

English engineers much prefer a 12-based system where you can design, construct and build easily— dividing measurements by 2, 3, and 4– where practicality is foremost.

I do think French atheism is at the root of it yes.

P.S. completely trolling/kidding!

P.P.S. Long before the metric system, the French were calling a dozen dozen “grosse”. The prejudice goes long back and it isn’t from us Angle-ophones!
You cannot be both pleasant and dumb. Dumb people are inherently annoying.
I like the website but I wish I could control the slider between insecure policy and secure policy, it's a bit too fast.
https://mas.to/@paulg
Not of the type you probably need, not that searches what is being said in podcasts, but…

https://pod.link/
I think she never intended to be a billionaire. She doesn’t fall under the usual bucket of billionaires.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I was wrong about Zip2; the board just refused to let him become CEO. But at PayPal, the board fired him after 6 months as CEO. That's documented in many places, including here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal
I don't think Musk has any negative feedback loops anymore, it's highly unlikely said there is a single person who can tell him when he's screwing up.

Or maybe he needs something of Twitter going bust magnitude to get feedback now. I hope that happens so that he can go back to making great stuff again
>Content Warning: This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with this website at your own pace.

From an anthropological perspective, it’s fascinating how the weakest and most sensitive people possible are now the ones in charge of policing language. Talib was right about this, on a long enough timeline most things do become a dictatorship of the small minority.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
They could add an additional ball instead - every 5 minutes. Would be much funnier to watch.
The first ever toot from an Amiga computer
Sorry, "woke" is ableist and biased against folks living with narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders^W abnormalities^W^W somnodivergence.
Just a reminder that just because liberals are freaking out, doesn’t mean it’s a shared opinion. I see this happening on HN constantly where over time the hivemind shares their in-group responses to articles blasting whatever their current enemy is (yes it’s heavily liberal here).

Then after a few weeks of this, you start seeing funny comment threads like this. Where there’s this sort of this tactic to take control of the narrative, and make it seem like everyone agrees that X is bad.

It works really well because of course even if only a few people leave Twitter in rage, now we can share that as proof of status quo and keep building the narrative.

Just a reminder - this is only a view shared by the extremely online / tech / liberal bubble.

As an example, on more conservative discussions boards you see the same thing happening on the opposite side. Until threads are literally fully premised on the fact that everyone agrees that someone or some org is “speedrunning Y” or whatever.

My feedback is this: don’t write like this. It makes you look daft, because it shows ether you don’t realize you’re in an opinion bubble, or you’re a willing participant in gaslighting for the only purpose of back patting / narrative control. I see this stuff all the damn time and usually ignore, but nice to have a chance to clarify this.
Yeah, I think if we want driverless taxis in major cities ASAP, then Waymo is probably the way forward. It should be relatively easy to continuously map a city with a fleet of vehicles and keep them geofenced. It's will be a good revenue generator that can sustain the company while they work on a more general video based solution.
Paul Graham hasn't Left Twitter
These sorts of images do compress quite ok though (pun intended) with PNG.
Funny thing is the biggest Ubuntu derivatives (elementary OS, Linux Mint, Pop! OS) are all going against Ubuntu on this one and shipping with flatpak support.
No, because as software developer I want that the authors of the products I use for my work also get their well deserved payments.

Unfortunately subscriptions seem to be the only way to force people to pay for their tooling, contrary to other professionals.
I think adding support for ActivityPub to twitter would be a smart move but that would require a complete U-turn
SpinQ introduces trio of portable quantum computers
i've often thought that building a business that specializes in making it easy for SaaS companies to implement e2ee for complete customer data confidentiality and portability could be interesting...
We'd be happy to have you, just sayin'.
>I was baffled that we invented a bulb that could last 100 years over a century ago and I still have to change bulbs every year or two.

You need to buy better bulbs.

In 2015 my local utility subsidized the purchase of LED light bulbs and I replaced 59 light bulbs all at once from a variety of vendors including Cree, GE, and Philips.

I've had one, an overhead PAR (led equivalent) bulb in my shower, fail since then and that's almost certainly due to the repeated bouts of 100% humidity and frequent temperature changes.

Of course, I purchased higher-end bulbs knowing that the bargain basement ones are built to cost.

edit: it is actually really weird that you have to replace your bulbs so often because every manufacturer who isn't a ABOLENSKLONG (or something nonsensical like that) Shenzhen-special amazon drop shipper has a 5-10 year warranty and they'd drown in RMA requests if their products failed after a year.
Not the world, just the West.
They could also be aware of it and reject the theory.
As students c.a 2004 we were tasked with writing a MTA.

Actually, many MTAs.

Divided in small teams (1-3 people), each MTA would ultimately be pointed to the next MTA, and the teacher would use telnet to send a message over SMTP to the first one, the goal being that the message had to reach the last one in the chain.

Grades were attributed based on whether a team's implementation failed, crashed, mangled the message and whatnot, and also as a whole to promote team spirit all in good faith and sports.

It was quite fun.

(pretty confident we did HTTP things too although I have no actual recollection of it)
Personally, I assumed he had multiple overlapping motivations. Prove that he knew tech products better than SV insiders, own a major media platform to push his viewpoint, save a media platform from "woke" people and let people like Trump back on, silence his critics, make money, pretend he really intended to purchase something he didn't actually want to. I'm not sure that even he knows why he does what he does, because so much of it is impulsive and can't be attributed to a coherent plan with specific goals.

The only thing that will definitely hold true is that there is an audience of tens of millions of Americans who feel mocked by "the Elites." They will shower adoration on anyone with Elite creds - be it academic, media, or business - who tells them there really is a conspiracy to oppress them and that they're the straight shooter who will go to battle for them. That is a very seductive amount of positive feedback when the other things you're doing aren't home runs.
Ask HN: What are the coolest ML models I can run on my own desktop
The pace of improvements in ML, this year, took me by surprise.

What, in your opinion, are the coolest new ML models that I can run locally on a decent desktop, and ideally custom train, too?
Funnily, if it would have been Twitter, it would have been all the rage for a week.

Because it's Apple, everybody will have forgotten and forgiven tomorrow.
You self-host things that are easily self-hostable. You wouldn’t self-host something like emails or error reporting.
I would hope he doesn't get too big or he'll have too much to lose and not be able to do the work he does.

He hinted at this in his podcast with lex Friedman. He also mentioned another forcing function would be when he has kids he needs to reconsider he's journalistic risk.
Hey Paul, legitimate question. What actions from Musk would it take for you to stop supporting him?
>(Firefox updates at random time, then kindly asks to reboot by replacing each webpage by a grey one with a restart button, and it doesn't restart tabs in private windows)

that happened to me several years ago despite automatic updates being explicitly turned off - I actually have a screenshot of the settings page next to that gray one
Well, myself and the gp were referring to the approach of the OP, saying "X is Turing complete" meaning "would be Turing complete if you add these extra elements, like a tape or whatever". If you start with a time-limited Turing Machine and remove the time-limit, then you have a full Turing Machine now don't you.

Don't take any of this very seriously, my comment was more about the looseness of the whole approach in the article than any significant claim.
Let me present a great counterexample - Adobe want a monthly subscription for Premiere that's about 40 quid a month.

DaVinci Resolve has a free-as-in-beer and a paid-for version. It works equally well (modulo some codec licensing) on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. If you go with the Free version, you get a maximum of 2160-height timelines (so 4k landscape video or if you want your Tiktoks in high def, 2k portrait) and you don't get the neural network filtering, denoising, and certain fancy effects (film simulation and so on).

If you want to pay for it, it's (currently) about 300 quid, forever. If you bought a key way back in the early days it'll still work in current (18.1.1 at the time of posting this).

This is serious high-end editing, colour grading, and compositing software, at that, it's not iMovie. Things like Midsommar were cut on it. It appears to be the weapon of choice within Netflix.

You can download it for free, stick it on a potato PC with 16GB of RAM and a GT1030, and expect it to at least work, if slowly.

No subscriptions, ever.
It takes about 2 weeks to detox from social media if you go cold turkey.
The same is true for a car manufacturer. It’s not like they stop producing new cars after they’ve sold you one. You still don’t expect the updated breaking system once the line is out.
Hmm, it's good to try to be different, bit they certainly shouldn't push "different" stuff when it doesn't even work yet. I've not minded the transition to systemd, for example. Snap has been awful, I don't like it and every time it's pushed that bit more I feel like Canonical are behaving like Microsoft somewhat.

Debian is looking attractive.

Abandoning snap is not enough, it's more about respecting users ... but they are obviously under no obligations to me, I'm not paying.
I'm starting to believe being a Twitter user is the worst thing that happened to Elon.
Mir would have been a better thing to point out as a poor technical decision. But Upstart came out before SystemD and was used by other distros, most notably RHEL5 + 6.
That same page continues:

> What is not a violation of this policy?

> We recognize that certain social media platforms provide alternative experiences to Twitter, and allow users to post content to Twitter from these platforms. In general, any type of cross-posting to our platform is not in violation of this policy, even from the prohibited sites listed above.

I'm not sure what that means.

Does it mean that I can post a link on Twitter to Facebook, etc., if the link is to content I have posted on Facebook, etc.?

Or does it just mean I'm free to copy/paste the text of my Facebook, etc., post to Twitter?

Or something else?

Also, they say

> Additionally, we allow paid advertisement/promotion for any of the prohibited social media platforms.

So if Facebook wants to pay me to promote Facebook on Twitter that is OK? :-) That's awfully generous of Mr. Musk.
I am not on twitter and the link doesn't clearly tell my what happened. Can someone tell me what the last straw was for him?