skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> As someone with a journalism degree I am really sad about this news. Also learned a new term in this story, news desert.

Indeed, a 'news desert' is a good albeit sad term, highlighting also the dangers involved. I'd also like to note that it is not about the US alone (w.r.t. for instance this: "companies bought hundreds of newspapers seeking to squeeze extra profits from them at the margins as they declined").
I used to do that once upon a time when I had more free time. I don't bother these days. If there is a call from somebody not on my 'contacts list', I will often let it go to voice-mail. Real people will leave a message, scammers won't.

When I was trying for my 'personal best', the longest I kept a scammer online was two hours.
Followup tweet by Kara:
Dev day and store were "pushing too fast"!

https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725702612379378120
Kara swisher is reporting it’s a conflict between business goals and nonprofit goals. Unless there’s some conflicting reporting coming out soon, that probably enough to tamp down any speculation that will undermine the whole ai market.
I think if you keep your feet underneath your body you should be ok. Just don't do any swinging crazy pullups?
Prediction:

1/ Sam goes on to create NeXTAI and starts wearing mostly turtleneck sweaters and jeans
2/ OpenAI buys NeXTAI
3/ OpenAI board appoints Sam Altman as Interim CEO
You would think we'd wise up or get tired of worshiping tech "heroes," after Holmes, Musk, Bankman-Fried, etc. We can't seem to tell the truly outstanding people from the liars, frauds, sociopaths, and those who fell backwards into good fortune.
How to Stop Taking Work So Personally
I don't think anyone is trying to go to bat for Apple's graphics API policies in this thread or are corporate shills. I originally described it as a screed because of the tone, profanity, several factual inaccuracies, as well as the cutting and derogatory comments by the maintainer further down in the thread that I found unwarranted.
It’s wild, I actually downgraded back to gpt 3.5 cuz gpt 4 just wasn’t worth the money.
> > astounding amounts of work on inside-out tracking to make it work within latency and power budgets with sufficient accuracy

> That was Valve, not Meta.

When did Valve make a headset with camera based tracking instead of setting up lighthouses all around the room? Their tracking that I'm aware of is all about the timing of light flashes sweeping across light sensors, it would be totally useless on Meta's self-contained headsets.

> > foveated rendering

> That was a waste of time.

If you're trying to sustain non-barf-inducing framerates on a mobile processor this seems useful to me?
No offense but what would be the use of OpenAI in trench warfare in Ukraine?
Kara Swisher: OpenAI dev day and store were "pushing too fast
My stance in general is not that we shouldn't teach students why things work; just that rigorous proofs aren't at all a good way to do it. Indeed, as far as I could tell, most of the mathematicians who taught math classes I took had at best a rudimentary knowledge of how to use any of the theory they were teaching to do anything.

I studied physics in undergrad and the general method was, yes, it involved detailed understanding of all the theory, far better than anyone learned it in the relevant math class (differential equations, multivariable calculus, and linear algebra, in particular --- a 1-semester course in QM has to teach everyone linear algebra because the math course on the subject is garbage; a 1-semester course in E&M has to teach multivariable calculus also because the math course was garbage, etc.)

But yeah, absolutely you have to really learn e.g. group theory and algebraic number theory to do cryptography. I actually quit engineering and switched to physics precisely because I was so annoyed that an intro electrical engineering class used the Fourier transform as black magic without bothering with why it worked.

In particular many of the exact theorems that are used in formal math are totally irrelevant and historical accidents. Calculus could have been developed in a thousand different ways; we happened to pick one, the particular names of the theorems or what order the results are constructed in is, IMO, totally irrelevant to anything outside pure mathematics (particular examples: which construction of the integers you use; which construction of the real numbers you use; which definition of the derivative; which definition of the integral, stuff like that. In the case of integrals, yes, different constructions have different theoretical properties in terms of which functions can be integrated --- but, in any application, the answers intrinsically can't be affected based on your choice of definition, so the actual definition can't matter.
My personal opinion a central reason for the fading of volunteer-based distributed scientific computing (such as the mentioned SETI@home) is the rise of laptops.

Normal desktop PCs (in particular the ones that one builds by oneself for gaming) have sufficient cooling capacity that it is causes no serious issue to let them run to help some interesting science projects while you are at work. If you use a laptop, this is much more inconvenient since the cooling design of laptops is nearly always a compromise, and they are typically rather not built to run many hours of "numbercrunching" on most days for months.

EDIT: the article also at least as a sideline mentions this fact: "Making matters worse, fewer people have this hardware due to the general shift from desktop computers to laptops."
>So is your claim that, because a "standard" says something and claims it's a "specification", that is sufficient to guarantee that every implementation does exactly what the "standard" or "specification" says.

It's the other way around, a standard specifies the requirements of a conforming implementation, and then an implementation can claim conformance with respect to that standard. With C++, many well-known implementations do claim conformance to the standard such as MSVC, GCC and Clang. With Python no one makes such a claim, not even the CPython reference implementation, because there is no standard to conform to. On the contrary what you do find are implementations that try to be compatible with CPython reference implementation specifically, such as PyPy and Pyston but no one claims to conform to the Python reference manual. The reference document simply describes how some Python implementations happen to work, but it does not prescribe how a Python implementation is required to work in order to be in compliance.

If tomorrow CPython decides to add a new feature to the language, then the reference will be updated to include this change because the reference is a reflection of the implementation.

If tomorrow the C++ specification changes, then it's GCC or any compiler that claims conformance that will update to include that change because with C++ it's the implementation that is a reflection of the specification.

That's the key difference between a descriptive document and a prescriptive document. This may seem like a quibble as you put it, but quibbles can lead to multimillion dollar lawsuits as Microsoft learned in the 90s when they claimed to have an implementation of the Java specification and then were sued by Sun Microsystems because Microsoft's implementation did not in fact conform to the Java standard.

Microsoft ended up paying 20 million dollars over this so called "quibble":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine...
At one point, my local dump featured a sign that read, among other things, "No Mattresse's".
That might be true but e-bikes won't really take off until there's a reliable and safe way to lock them up while you go about your business on foot.
Pushing too hard and too fast does not seem consistent with lying to the board.
Honestly it could be something as simple and sordid as a credible sexual assault allegation that he lied to the board about, or just some plain old fashioned embezzlement.
This should be higher voted. Seems like an internal power struggle between the more academic types and the commercial minded sides of OpenAI.

I bet Sam goes and founds a company to take on OpenAI…and wins.
Wait this is just a corporate turf war? That's boring I already have those at work
a symptom of spending too much time on IRC back in the days, IMHO

I actually have auto-capitalization turned off on my phone
> and will remain in his role at the company

The portion you quoted says he will remain at the company. This post is about him quitting, and no longer remaining with the company.
> Since they're making cars for international markets they have to meet safety standards for the entire world, which are stricter than those for any one country and so harder to meet.

They'd have the scale to manufacture for individual markets, like any large auto manufacturer. Already I've seen videos/articles of people buying various (typically non-EV) cheap Asian vehicles that are not road-worthy in the US, but allowed for use on large parcels of land.
probably relax. Any real effect is likely due to stress.
I wonder if Sam knew he was going to lose this power struggle and then started working on an exit plan with people loyal to him behind the boards back. The board then finds out and rushes to kick him out ASAP to stop him from using company resources to create a competitor.
interestingly, I also type ellipses as ".." because the third dot is irrelevant!
MS actually created a decent base UI for Edge.

But then whoever in the company ruined it by forcing awful start pages full of horrific news stories on new users.

Did they not understand what made Chrome and the simple Google homepage so popular?

MS seemingly can’t help themselves with the cheapening of every experience they present to users.

Working for MS as a dev must be so frustrating at times!
It has been established that visionaries don't always need to come from a coding background. Often those who aren't can offer diverse viewpoints that are not restricted by the current technology limitations.
Yes so everyone rushed to buy the blue checkmark because that used to be for verified accounts. Then everyone lost all faith in the blue checkmark, so now they charge $1000 for authenticated accounts.

It's a massive bait and switch. The $8/month one is worthless.

If they wanted to retain a greater share of the value they were creating through authenticating big accounts they could just have charged $1000/month for the blue checkmark.
Huge respect for the RGB :)
Kara Swisher tweets claiming sources tell her the chief scientist was aligned with another board member against Altman and Brockman about a “move fast and pursue profit” vs “move slow and safely” divide.

https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1725702501435941294

https://x.com/karaswisher/status/1725682088639119857?s=20
Can anything actually back this up please? This twitter account is just posting stuff and then crediting "Sources".
Despite what the charter says, why is OpenAI called OpenAI and not OpenAGI? Is that at the core of this issue?
This gets way too philosophical way too fast. The AI doesn’t have to want to do anything. The AI just has to do something different than what you tell it to do. If you put an AI in control of something like controlling the water flow from a dam, and the AI does something wrong it could be catastrophic. There doesnt have to be intent.

The danger of using regular software exists too, but the logical and deterministic nature of traditional software makes it provable.
Actual humans or is this a metaphor for replicating the personas of humans via an LLM?
Not a power move at all! It's just that people who are this smart, whose brains operate in a higher dimension than you can possibly imagine, won't waste precious mental cycles on silly uppercases just the rest of us commoners.
I'm not betting on the gpus. I'm betting that whole categories of labor will disappear. They're preserved because we insist that people work, but we don't actually need the product of that labor.

AI may figure into that, filling in some work that does have to be done. But it need not be for any of those jobs that actually require humans for the foreseeable future -- arts of all sorts and other human connections.

This isn't about predicting the dominance of machines. It's about asking what it is we really want to do as humans.
No, this move is so drastic because Ilya, the chief scientist behind OpenAI, thinks Sam and Greg are pushing so hard on AGI capabilities, ahead of alignment with humanity, that it threatens everyone. 2/3 of the other board members agreed.

Don’t shoot the messenger. No one else has given you a plausible reason why Sama was abruptly fired, and this is what a reporter said of Ilya:

‘He freaked the hell out of people there. And we’re talking about AI professionals who work in the biggest AI labs in the Bay area. They were leaving the room, saying, “Holy shit.”

The point is that Ilya Sutskever took what you see in the media, the “AGI utopia vs. potential apocalypse” ideology, to the next level. It was traumatizing.’

https://www.aipanic.news/p/what-ilya-sutskever-really-wants
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The main challenge is peak uranium, as "The amount of uranium present in all currently known conventional reserves alone ((...)) is enough to last over 200 years at current consumption rates." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_pla...
therefore a real nuclear 'renaissance' implies a dangerous bet (on new uranium reserves, industrializing breeder reactors, or GenIV...)

Nuclear power: about 10% of global electricity generation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Production ) which is about 22% of final energy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum... ). Therefore the nuclear fleet (~440 reactors) now provides a meek ~2.2 of final energy. To reach about 11% implies building 2200 reactors (good luck with this), and would only let known uranium reserves provide each reactor for ~40 years, with few hopes towards the discovery of new reserves ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38288706 ).

In such a context uranium will become more and more rare, and therefore more and more expensive... and strategic (keyword: 'embargo').
Volvo's Class 8 electrics get around 275 mile range, which is more than Daimler's. Naturally, carrying more weight is gonna limit that range, dunno how much (any auto engineers around?)
Military and intelligence technology is almost always ahead of the private sector. Governments have practically infinite money and resources to throw at the problem, including for recruiting and industrial espionage.
> aaah such a methodical and painstaking expression, writing with caps and quotes, period and all.. suspects shields one from hyperbole :D

Funny that you got through that without the shift key, only to reach for it as the final character to use an emoticon.
If Elon Musk truly cared, what stopped him from structuring x.ai as open source and non-profit?
Because 99.9% of people who say things like this are just using ChatGPT itself and not any of the various awe-inspiring tools with full access to your codebase dynamically inserted into context via RAG. I have yet to talk to anyone who has actually worked for any amount of time against the GPT4 API or through Cursor, say, who underestimates their capabilities. Sincerely hoping this 'coup' doesn't mean the beginning of the end of that experience for most...
"This twitter account" is Kara Swisher, probably the most well-known tech reporter working right now. She has known essentially everyone in the tech world for decades at this point. Her sources are not only going to be legit, but she probably has more of them than literally anyone else in the tech world, so she can accurately corroborate information or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Swisher
Yes, this can happen, though generally the ousting party would also need to be able to point to some policy or legal transgression to do it without putting themselves at risk of a lawsuit.
Yes, diesel engines are some of the most efficient internal combustion engines, the best of them are slightly better than 50% efficient from tank to crank.

And then diesel-electrics have more losses converting that to electricity, and then more losses again to convert back to rotational power.

It is more efficient to generate electricity at a power plant and electrify the tracks, because power plants can far exceed 50% efficiency. Also they can run on something less dirty.
I have a theory.

Ilya has always seemed like he was idealistic and I’m guessing that he was the reason for OpenAI’s very strange structure. Ilya is the man when it comes to AI so people put up with his foolishness. Adam D'Angelo is, like Ilya, an amazing computer science talent who may have shared Ilya’s idealistic notions (in particular OpenAI is non-profit, unless forced to be capped profit and is categorically not in the business of making money or selling itself to MSFT or any entity). “Helen” and “Tasha” are comically out of their depth and are loony toons, and simply decided at some time ago to follow Ilya.

Sam got the call from MSFT to sell, MSFT really ponied up (300B ?). The inference costs for OpenAI are/were staggering and they needed to sell (or get a large influx of capital which was in the works). This ran counter to Ilya’s idealistic notions. Sam attempted to negotiate with Ilya and the loony toons, a vote was called and they lost, hard.

I think this tracks with all the data we have.

There are a couple of other scenarios that track given OpenAI’s comically poor board composition, but I think the one above is the most plausible.

If this did happen then OpenAI is in for a hard future. Imagine you worked at OpenAI and you just found out that your shares could have been worth a tremendous amount and now their future is, at best, uncertain. There will be some true believers who won;t care but many (most?) will be appalled.

Let this be a lesson, don’t have a wacky ownership structure and wacky board when you have the (perhaps) the most valuable product in the world.
Maintainer here.

We have upstream support for macOS now, since there is at least one person ready to work on it.

Well, thankfully, it doesn't require too much work, except some Apple specifics. If someone could set up a CI build, that would be awesome.
> Green washing - it's "clean" energy for some definition of clean, certainly compared to coal

It's very clean when compared to coal, 50-60% less CO2.
Seems unreasonable to make such a powerful decision over feature releases. Doesn't pass the smell test to me.
This is perfect for Google. When your enemy (OpenAI) is making a massive mistake, don't interrupt them.
Exactly.

> I'm sure Musk would have made equally commercial bad decisions
Sutskever: OpenAI board doing its mission to build AGI that benefits all
I'm not patronizing you, I'm just responding on the same level as the post I replied to. There's an endless supply of examples of corporate/legal decisions and communication being made on very different criteria from interpersonal interactions.

Of course the press release is under scrutiny, we are all wondering What Really Happened. But careless statements create significant legal (and thus financial) risk for a big corporate entity, and board members have fiduciary responsibilities, which is why 99.99% of corporate communications are bland in tone, whatever human drama may be taking place in conference rooms.
Kara Swisher is reputable… as far as tech journalists go.
"He lied to the board about what he was going to announce" would sort of make sense, but it's odd that Swisher isn't trying to connect the dots here.
Sorry couldn't resist a side nitpick:

> if the government hasn't robbed them

Since dawn of times government robbed people (aka taxes). That's basically the definition of a state. It's actually the first and most important task of any state -- collecting tribute (the second is preventing other states doing the same).

So, if we're looking for a state that doesn't rob it's people, we should look for another universe perhaps.
What do you think the baseline gender ratio is on HN? Presumably we made up nearly all the users for the site today.
OCR. Tesseract. Huginn. Python. Mo AI needed but add a LLama and you're home rolled. N
The board who fired Sam Altman is the board of OpenAI Inc., the nonprofit. Microsoft has no ownership stake in OpenAI Inc.
This kind of confusion is why I hate and advocate against Twitter as the worlds' choice for a soap-box.

It turns out that simplifying the entire world's discourse into likes and re-tweets and snippets of media creates confusion and misdirection.
I don't think the person you are replying to is correct, because the only technological advancement where a new OpenAI artifact provides schematics that I think could qualify is Drexler-wins-Smalley-sucks style nanotechnology that could be used to build computation. That would be the sort of thing where if you're in favour of building the AI faster you're like "Why wouldn't we do this?" and if you're worried the AI may be trying to release a bioweapon to escape you're like "How could you even consider building to these schematics?".

I don't think it's correct not because it sounds like a sci-fi novel, but because I think it's unlikely that it's even remotely plausible that a new version of their internal AI system would be good enough at this point in time to do something like that, considering all the many problems that need to be solved for Drexler to be right.

I think it's much more likely that this was an ideological disagreement about safety in general rather than a given breakthrough or technology in specific, and Ilya got the backing of US NatSec types (apparently their representative on the board sided with him) to get Sam ousted.
Say hello to Manna:
https://marshallbrain.com/manna
Sutskever: "You can call it (a coup), and I can understand why you chose this word, but I disagree with this. This was the board doing its duty to the mission of the nonprofit, which is to make sure that OpenAI builds AGI that benefits all of humanity."

Scoop: theinformation.com

https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1725707548106580255
that wouldn't be scam that would be a invention worthy of a Nobel Prize and be world altering beyond the impact of AI. I mean controling the flow of time without creating a supermassive blackhole would allow sort of fun exploits in computation alone not to mention other practical uses like instantly aging cheese or wine
In general leaf shape is an unimportant factor, in comparison to the actual 'oxygen/sugar factory' parts of the leaf. So different tress have evolved different leaves because it's not a 'life or death' mutation.

It's pretty much the same that people have evolved different hair colors which are a minor, unimportant thing in life, not like a mutation that prevents a heart from developing for instance.
My phone and apps autocapitalize I have to go out of my way to use all lowercase. Weird.
Bull. Shit.

OpenAI and its people are there to maximize shareholder value.

This is the same company that went from "non-profit" to "jk, lol, we are actually for-profit now". I still think that move was not even legal but rules for thee not for me.

They ousted sama because it was bad for business. Why? We may never know, or we may know next week, who knows? Literally.
They are not worthless at all, at my company if you get a referral you will skip the phone interview and go right to in-person, and you're going to get called about it.

When we are hiring.

There is the rub, there are a number of companies that are either actively laying off, or just letting attrition nibble down their numbers without having to announce layoffs.
Unfortunately, it was by original Xash3D author. In FWGS we do not take any leaked code, but we also do not tend to do clean room implementations, since it's easier to work with decompiled code.

And license-wise it would be very hard to get rid of the fact that Uncle Mike used some stolen code.