skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sounds like a fun time waiting for transaction to process in the shop
It's almost like financial markets are not a good proxy for reality anymore
> People don't like APIs that can randomly crash your program while there's no good technical reason for why they should. Why not fix the problem?

I think you're not seeing this from the right POV.
People that consume POSIX API need to know POSIX API.

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009604499/functions/se...

It says loud and clear "The setenv() function need not be reentrant. A function that is not required to be reentrant is not required to be thread-safe."

> "The unpredictable crashes only happen very rarely" doesn't mean the crashes go away.

If you get a crash over setenv() reading the manual page of setenv C call should be your first step. And the only step. The bigger issue is in design of application that has wrongly assumed setenv() is thread-safe. That requires a refactoring and is solely due to developer misunderstanding the API.
White House lays out possible rules for private space stations and more
No, that day was when openAI decided to betray humanity and go close source under the faux premise of safety. OpenAI served it's purpose and can crash into the ground for all I care.

Open source (read, truly open source models, not falsely advertised source-available ones) will march on and take their place.
A pharmacist friend mentioned a few years ago that she and her colleagues were wrestling with how best to standardize and dose fecal transplants for antibiotic-resistant c. diff. It fell to the pharmacy department to dispense such a treatment, but is it in that sense a “drug”? How about snake antivenoms, which are not specific compounds but instead antibodies harvested from the blood of animals injected with the venom in question?
Ben Thompson has the best take on this (if a bit biased against nonprofits):

https://stratechery.com/2023/openais-misalignment-and-micros...

I don't know what the risk of AI is, but having a nonprofit investigate solutions to prevent them is a worthwhile pursuit, as for-profit corporations will not do it (as shown by the firing of Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell by Google). If they really believe in that mission, they should develop guardrails technology and open-source it so the companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon et al who are certainly not investing in AI safety but won't mind using others' work for free can inegrate it. But that's not going to be lucrative and that's why most OpenAI employees will leave for greener pastures.
Now that the dust is slowly settling after the release of Java 21 with its slew of new features, and the new possibilities offered to us. It seems like a good time to look towards the future as people are experimenting evermore with Virtual Threads and new concurrency possibilities.
There is SDL_SetHint [0] which doesn't modify the environment but instead changes the value internally to SDL only.

[0] https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL2/SDL_SetHint
I'm glad TFA mentions Solaris/Illumos' implementation, so I don't have to.
Usually this is due to autism, please be kind.
Google's play in order to force Mozilla to adopt new Manifest V3 and cripple adblocking.
> these guys don't know what they're doing, even if tens of billions of dollars are at stake

also known as "never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence", which to my gut sounds at least as likely as a cui bono explanation tbh (which is not to be seen as an endorsement of the view that cui bono = conspiracy...)
"Nobody really knows what they're doing" is a cope that will keep you mediocre forever.

There are absolutely people who know what they are doing.

https://twitter.com/awesomekling/status/1723257710848651366
I’ll use ChatGPT to help surface docs and examples or to get a very rough high level overview if what a task might involve, but I don’t really want an LLM in my IDE.

Not only does it feel like something that might be dangerous to become reliant on (what happens when it’s not working or I don’t have access to it), I have no idea what material it was trained on which makes it ethically gray. I might be more receptive to a local LLM where I can personally vet what it was trained on (primarily, I’m concerned with if the material was obtained fully consensually or not).

My attitude towards image generators is similar. Adobe’s is totally out of the question for example, because though they claim it’s 100% ethically trained because all material came from their stock image service, I know that’s bullshit because I’ve seen stolen art put up for sale there more times than I can count (and worse, they’re unresponsive when theft is reported).
I was rooting for FLIF. I think JPEG XL is the current living successor, with a much worse name. (It's not even clear it can be lossless)
You are literally putting forth arguments in favour of fixing the thread safety issue, and then conclude it’s not worth the effort.

It’s simple, really: we indeed rarely to `setenv()`. So it’s not a performance problem. So we can make it thread safe, and the performance impact will be negligible. In exchange for this small price, safety will increase.

Sacrificing any amount of safety for a negligible improvement in performance is flat out unprofessional, and should be grounds for immediate termination in most contexts.
It depends on whether you're talking about the top 1% of the US, or the top 1% of the world. The latter is a much lower bar.
That's the biggest question mark for me; what was the original reason for kicking Sam out. Was it just a power move to out him and install a different person or is he accused of some wrong doing?

It's been a busy weekend for me so I haven't really followed it if more has come out since then.
Example:
Lithium is used to treat several mental health disorders. You can't patent a naturally occurring element, but lithium is often prescribed. Is lithium a drug?
When you say “humans are a virus and a blight on this planet”, there is an obvious implied “solution” to that. To which I retort: you first.
A lot of us will be happy if a repairable phone costs me twice as much, but lasts 3 times as long because we won't have to throw the entire thing away and buy a new one when a tiny IC, a battery or the display fails. It will also reduce the damage to the environment which is already at the brink. These things are not harmless to recycle, even if they can be.

Add to this, the fact that many OEMs go for exclusive deals with the parts manufacturers where the parts are not allowed to enter mass market. This is to make repairs costly by creating artificial scarcity. This suggests that the true cost of repairable devices is not as exorbitant or harmful to the poor as these manufacturers and OEMs project it to be. It's more in the realm of disinformation.
Has Adam’s role in this mess been reported? From the board makeup and Poe seems like he would have been aligned with Sam (investor in Quora) and Greg. Until he wasn’t…
Really what we're observing with these people is the survivorship bias of humans with astounding levels of cognitive dissonance — which nearly all humans have. Except they have the rare combination of wealth and luck on their side...until it runs out.
Yeah, just like the suit Microsoft is in with windows 11 anticompetitive practices, right?
Recently he also said “There’s no outcome where this organization [OpenAI] is one of the big five technology companies”.
> It's supposed to be close to the metal, and it's supposed to be small.

Unless you're developing for the PDP-11, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.

We absolutely want -- and occasionally get -- safe versions of unsafe functions, like strlcpy. And we rely on quite a lot of code to maintain the appearance that C is close to the metal.
Sweden had colonies in north America and the Caribbean. Denmark still controls Greenland. Sweden and Norway are both colonizers in the US way, expanding boarders by stealing land from the indigenous people (Sami) etc
Or posix_spawn / posix_spawnp.
Those houses are cool. There's two next to each other near where I grew up. I noticed them in High School I think. I never knew what they were until a couple years ago when I watched a video about them. They look quite unique with the smooth panel looking tiles for the exterior.
I'm glad TFA mentions Solaris/Illumos' implementation, so I don't have to.

Java doesn't allow one to set environment variables for the running process, but it does allow setting env vars for processes being spawned. It would be better if all C libraries did what Illumos' does.
My favorite Atom/RSS reader:
https://fraidyc.at/
I agree with the spirit of your comment; I too hate over-engineering. Choose your battles is an important step in mastery, yes, but being lazy can't be chalked up to mastery.

In this particular case I disagree with using `sleep`; using the idle timer it's not as roundabout as you put it: _Transcompiled frameworks inside of microservices talking to DBMS adapters over virtual networks_. It's a straight-forward callback, some lower-level timekeeper signals you and you do your thing: it's nowhere close to the convoluted jumping through hoops you explain.

Mastery comes with balance: putting in the optimal effort, not more, not less either. Of course, depends on what one's trying to master: job or programming. Former means do the minimum and get maximum benefits from your job/boss, latter means enjoy learning/programming and arrive at the most optimal solution (for no reason, just because you're passionate).
Exsept to many it looks like the board went insane and and started firing on themselves. Anyone fleeing that isnt going to be looked on poorly.
I would be shocked if the Azure credits didn't come with conditions on what they can be used for. At a bare minimum, there's likely the requirement that they be used for supporting AI research.
The compiler uses the same level of optimization on both DOS and CP/M. It is self-compiled on both platforms. It uses DOS interrupts on DOS and BDOS functions on CP/M, but I/O is really not a big issue here. The DOS compiler does make use of the extra 16-bit operations.

Is it still an inaccurate comparison? Sure. But I expected something dramatically different, so I asked.
This is true. Long-term plan is to abolish the state itself, as Milei is a declared anarchocapitalist
Once you cut of all the non essential expenses and handouts you'd be surprised at just how little money is needed to run a state
It also works quite well with the browser save feature. Curl and wget will also save to a nice name by default. It may be nice if content-type tracking was universal but unfortunately file-extensions are probably the most robust way of tagging some data with a type (other than magic bytes). You can save that JSON, email it, archive it, upload it to a fileserver, someone downloads it again, decompresses it and uploads it in an HTTP form and the result will probably still be identified as JSON and highlighted by default in your editor.
I did not make this up, it's from OpenAI's own employees, deleted but archived somewhere that I read.
I think he orchestrated the coup on principle, but severely underestimated the backlash and power that other people had collectively.

Now he’s trying to save his own skin. Sam will probably take him back on his own technical merits but definitely not in any position of power anymore

When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die

Just because you are a genius in one domain does not mean you are in another

What’s funny is that everyone initially “accepted” the firing. But no one liked it. Then a few people (like greg) started voting with their feet which empowered others which has cumulated into this tidal shift.

It will make a fascinating case study some day on how not to fire your CEO
And looks more and more like he had a conflict of interest with Poe which should have either put guardrails on his board role at OpenAI or led to his departure.
I read this as "I regret things didn't work out as I planned them"

Sort of like the criminal who is sorry because they got caught.
So the moment they announce this, everyone in Argentina has no money (except USD they're already holding)? Who would trade a single dollar for any amount of pesos?
Would be a bad day for the Internet. There's no way Youtube is financially viable without being cross-subsidised by Google's search income and running on Google's peering agreements with ISPs. Ads would be nowhere near enough to cover the bandwidth cost, which is why sooner or later any attempt to copycat it failed or went down to utter niche content.
This is a horrible timeline
Disagree. MSFT extending an open invitation to all OpenAI employees to work under sama at a subsidiary of MSFT sounds to me like it'll work well for them. They'll get 80% of OpenAI for negative money - assuming they ultimately don't need to pay out the full $10B in cloud compute credits.

Competitors should be fearful. OpenAI was executing with weights around their ankles by virtue of trying to run as a weird "need lots of money but cant make a profit" company. Now they'll be fully bankrolled by one of the largest companies the world has ever seen and empowered by a whole bunch of hypermotivated-through-retribution leaders.
I'm a bit of a broken record on the idea, but I'm fairly convinced that much of what we think is unique to software is not that unique. Coordinating work with people is hard, pretty much period.
With nearly the entire team of engineers threatening to leave the company over the coup, was it a stupid move?

The board is going to be overseeing a company of 10 people as things are going.
"Even rich people?" - especially rich people, as they are the ones who can afford to use laws to protect themselves.
Ransomware gang files SEC complaint about victim
No I mean created, due to evolution.
Might be just me as a programmer out in the styx, SV programmers seem to flex a lot, in comparison to your average subordinates.
G+ was handled so poorly, and the worst of it was that they already had both Google Wave (in the US) and Orkut (mostly outside US) which both had significant traction and could’ve easily been massaged into something to rival Facebook.

Easily…anywhere except at a megacorp where a privacy review takes months and you can expect to make about a quarter worth of progress a year.
Ignoring "Don't be Ted Faro" to pursue a profit motive is indeed a form of incompetence.
Can't be better than Rust.
Here’s another upvote for rural life:

I live on an island in WA state, USA. I’ve got a spectacular view of Admiralty Inlet & the Olympic Mountains, and a workshop big enough for my CNC machine and other equipment. I’m using the workshop on weekends to make weird Arduino-powered clocks and LED art, which I sell on Etsy for beer money.
Eyra is a new implementation of libc in Rust that addresses this in its default configuration:

"Eyra solves this by having setenv etc. just leak the old memory. That ensures that it stays valid for as long as any thread needs it. Granted, leaking isn't great, and Eyra makes it configurable with the threadsafe-setenv cargo feature, so it can be disabled in favor of the thread-unsafe implementation. "

https://blog.sunfishcode.online/eyra-does-the-impossible/
>Bonus question: Why not Euros?

Euro is far, also Euro is far more left leaning (I guess) than the US (even democrats in the US would be considered right form the center in Europe). But the real issue would be the lack of currency reserves - least I'd think Argentina might have more Dollar notes than Euro ones.
>His "side-projects" could have been hugely beneficial to them over the long term.

How can you make a claim like this when, right or wrong, Sam's independence is literally, currently, tanking the company? How could allowing Sam to do what he wants benefit OpenAI, the non-profit entity?
Going Public with IPOs and SPAC Mergers
I don't know, is it about being loved by the employees, or the employees being desperate about the alternative?
So why not implement the fix suggested in the article: improve the existing interface to the extent possible, and introduce a new interface which is easier to use correctly.
> Very cool to see a live usenet discussion!

You can take part in those, too :)
I'd argue this cost has always been there and was never zero to begin with.
Mass producing non-repairable, cheap throwaway items is an excellent way for industries to externalize a lot of the lifecycle cost of an item onto society.

So you get to choose at which point you'd like to pay for it. Directly and very visibly in an item's price (maybe even making you reconsider if a purchase is actually necessary). Or later, in taxes or a decrease in quality of life due to the increasing overexploitation of our resources.
I would say Tether based on the exchanges.
> I think everyone is a "loser" in the current situation.

On the margin, I think the only real possible win here is for a competitor to poach some of the OpenAI talent that may be somewhat reluctant to join Microsoft. Even if Sam'sAI operates with "full freedom" as a subsidiary, I think, given a choice, some of the talent would prefer to join some alternative tech megacorp.

I don't know that Google is as attractive as it once was and likely neither is Meta. But for others like Anthropic now is a great time to be extending offers.
What a mess.

I genuinely feel like this is going to set back AI progress by a decent amount, while everyone is racing to catch OpenAI I was still expecting them to keep a reasonable lead. If OpenAI falls apart, this could delay progress by a couple of years.
>and history shows it has serious merit

Oh word? Where has this worked in the past?
I use Firefox across Windows, Mac, OpenBSD, and Ubuntu. I've not seen any specific issues with Google sites at all. I only really use Docs, Maps, and Youtube with any regularity but I've not really seen any of these issues.
I was wondering how many lines I'd have to scroll down in the comments to see a "M$" reference here on HackerNews.

They're a $2+ trillion dollar company. They're doing something right.
From the few interviews I've watched, he seems like a real life manifestation of an Ayn Rand hero character. I doubt he has any public sector or welfare in his plans
I keep a Chromium browser kicking around on my personal machines basically for the sole purpose of using Google properties, particularly Hangouts. Firefox is fine on virtually everything else, but absolutely drags on stuff owned by the Goog.
Isn't google the main source of funds for Mozilla?
It makes sense for a successful product that’s being hurt by competitors packaging it up and selling as a paid service. My advice: for a younger product, keep it actually open-source (FOSS).

With either Sentry’s FSL license or FOSS, you as a user can run your own. If you want a paid managed service, you can pay Sentry. With FOSS, there can be competitors who offer such service using the same exact up-to-date version, and undercut Sentry on price (since they aren't paying developers). With FSL, they’d have to run a 2-year old version. That’s a disincentive to competitors.

BUT: even with FOSS, a similar disincentive exists, because the maker of the FOSS software could decide to change license, forcing competitors to run a stale version or invest into their own development, or pay up for licensing.

Seems if you are small enough, pure FOSS is better for this reason (the option to release future changes under a different license is always there). But if you are big enough to have competitors, and you can’t convince enough competitors to pay or revenue share (e.g. through support agreements), then FSL can be a way to twist their arms without hurting most other users too much. (It does hurt to some extent, as the many arguments in this discussion point out.)
OpenAI: Facts from a Weekend
Like the artists, this won't be an option. Market pressures will force devs to use AI assistance.

For example, this recent GitHub presentation about productivity improvements: 35% acceptance rate, 50% more pull requests, etc. I believe these numbers, and even if you don't, they will be a reality soon.

https://youtu.be/AAT4zCfzsHI?t=486
O was thinking of something like that. This is so weird I would not be surprised if it was all some sort of miscommunication triggered by a self inflicted hallucination.

The most awesome fic I could come up so far is: Elon Musk, in running a crusade to send humanity into chaos out of spite for being forced to acquire Twitter. Through some of his insiders in OpenAI, they use an advanced version of ChatGPT to impersonate board members in conversation with each other in private messages, so they individually believe a subset of the others is plotting to oust them from the board and take over. Then, unknowingly they build a conspiracy among a themselves to bring the company down by ousting Altmann.

I can picture Musk's maniac laughing as the plan unfolds, and he gets rid of what would be GPT 13.0, the only possible threat to the domination of his own literal android kid X Æ A-Xi.
He should resign then.

Simple.

The utter failure of the board has led OpenAI from the top of the AI world to a path of destroying relationships with customers and partners.

Ilya did this, he should resign.
Ooh, I love this theory.
You're now the guinea pigs in a very large scale experiment.

Good luck.
Near a famous national park. ;-)
Maybe something like an ouroboros then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
The best outcome right now is for OpenAI to open source GPT-4 architecture and its training data, then release the weights. Would at least take LLM dominance away from Microsoft.
No, almost certainly not lol
If you are interested, «why yet another programming language?».

The unique selling point of Roc is clever optimization to convert purely functional source code to deep-imperative fast machine code, while keeping all the correctness of functional algorithms.

See this video of Richard Feldman for details — «Outperforming Imperative with Pure Functional Languages»: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzfy4EKwG_Y

Among those clever optimizations:

- static reference counting (no GC, like in Rust, but with no borrowing and borrow problems);

- stack allocation of the data with no external links;

- hidden («opportunistic») mutability even in the cases, where Haskell or Lisp will copy the value.

edit:markup
via https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-today-is-failing-... :

> Archive.is’s authoritative DNS servers return bad results to 1.1.1.1 when we query them. I’ve proposed we just fix it on our end but our team, quite rightly, said that too would violate the integrity of DNS and the privacy and security promises we made to our users when we launched the service.

> The archive.is owner has explained that he returns bad results to us because we don’t pass along the EDNS subnet information. This information leaks information about a requester’s IP and, in turn, sacrifices the privacy of users. This is especially problematic as we work to encrypt more DNS traffic since the request from Resolver to Authoritative DNS is typically unencrypted. We’re aware of real world examples where nationstate actors have monitored EDNS subnet information to track individuals, which was part of the motivation for the privacy and security policies of 1.1.1.1.

> [and more, please read]

I don't know anything about the intricacies of EDNS, let alone the implied implications on anonymity.

But to me, as a EDNS layperson, it sounds like a sensible compromise on both archive.today's and Cloudflare DNS' sides to respect their respective users' wish for anonymity possibly expected by using their offering.

This doesn't answer who is behind archive.today. I'm also curious to know, but am more than happy for their service than knowing about the provider if there was even the slightest risk of compromising it if their identity was spilled.
All matter is made of chemicals.
Rereading the Mythical Man-Month