skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Chat bots type a lot faster than call center pay-grade humans.

Most chat bots I've interacted with have artificial delays and typing indicators that remove this one advantage in favour of instead gaslighting me about what I'm talking to.
> There's a verb for this heat process, but I can't remember it.

Denaturation (of proteins): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denaturation_(biochemistry) .
I'm curious - what made you choose deepgram over just running whisper? I don't have any experience with deepgram but whisper has worked so well in my own tests that I didn't even ever consider there might be API speech recognition-only companies.
Some interesting ones:

- Blades in the Dark: Players are members of a thieves guild. Focus on pulling off heists, creative ways of solving problems, and providing a spectrum of outcomes (e.g. "success but with consequences" or "failure but without consequences" instead of a binary pass and fail).

- Heart: Sort of a psychedelic cosmic horror take on underground adventuring. Has an interesting level up system where at the end of each session you tell the DM something you want to have the chance to accomplish in the next session in order to gain a level. Character classes are crazy (e.g. one revolves around sharing a connection with a hive mind of transcendent bees). Each class's tenth level ability is incredibly overpowered but renders the character unplayable (often dead but sometimes it's something like ascending to a higher plane of consciousness by becoming one with the previously mentioned bee hive mind). For example, there's a class that revolves around communing with a demonic subway system. Their tenth level ability summons a subway car to bust through a wall and destroy everything in the area including the player.

- Electric Bastionland: Set in nearly infinite city of Bastion "the one city that matters" in a society that's similar to a late Victorian era take on sci-fi. This one's difficult to describe because it's more about the vibe than the rules. The players are attempting to pay off their debt to a kafkaesque bureaucracy. The layout of the city changes daily. The Underground can be used to travel anywhere quickly, but it is controlled by sentient Machines that require the players to complete "tests" in order to pass. Sentient muppets are a canonical player race. The best comparison that I can give is if you've played Fallen London or Sunless Seas/Skies.
If countries want to heavily regulate business deals, I think the quid pro quo should be a tax system that provides a good way for founders and early employees to take some money off the table without having to sell to big companies like Adobe, by going public, or having half of any gain wiped out in taxes. Why shouldn't those folks able to pick up a lump sum for their work and the risk they took? They may as well have got a job at a big enterprise if an annual paycheck was all that mattered, and then you end up with fewer new companies and entrepreneurial risk-taking.
Maybe but he also said(in mid 2022) the reason he did not entertain that offer is because he thinks his business is at least worth $10B.
Adobes cancellation practices are literally illegal in the Netherlands by the way. The deceptive trick of "pay monthly for a full year" and then hitting you with the cancellation fee is against local law. (It's called de wet van Dam for the curious.)

You have to threaten their customer support with legal complaints to make them comply with it, it's super frustrating to deal with. They do fold immediately when you do this though, so they know it's illegal but hope the frustration of getting through customer support will deter people (and avoids the legal problems).

And yes I know you can just switch subscriptions and use the early cancellation period there to avoid the hit back fee from cancelling. It's the principle that's scummy.
Nah, I think this is truly a case of regulatory agencies shutting the deal down. Adobe knows Figma is best-in-class in their category, and even in the current market downturn, $20b still feels like a good bet to own the winner in and up and coming category for the next 5-10 years
Some do it just in spite. There is also unintentional litter Things that just fell down from pocket - if there is enough people in area - some small % of this litter is guaranteed.
I dont like that i can't see all the tasks at once somewhere
A Yule Log
People made money from creating art long before copyright was a thing. Copyright is not a pre-requisite for creative work.
The ease of following censorship has no bearing on whether censorship is authoritatian or not.
I’m tired of the “they’re Luddites” middlebrow dismissal, ignoring all of the history and lessons of that time.

Yeah, Industrialization was a completely painless and smooth process. No one was ever inconvenienced. That’s why we can make fun of the then-naysayers now.
Totally agree. I resent the fact that they’d try cash out that way. At least ipo or something. More fragmentation is good for preventing monopoly.
A new linux distro that doesnt use systemd and is actually reasonable about it? Interesting...

I think I'll keep an eye on this
Never considered that Memento was a cinematic adaption of Reflections on Trusting Trust.
And just for those who felt the need to check:

> Computer application software that may be downloaded via global computer networks and electronic communication networks for use in connection with mobile computers, mobile phones, and tablet computers, namely, software for use as a voice controlled personal digital assistant
> The entire purpose of starting a company is to get acquired.

I imagine this claim is satire, given how outlandish it is. But if I were to take it at face value for a second... Acquired by whom? Other companies... Who were started to... Get acquired themselves? Where did these other companies get the money to begin with? Etc. This is just a stupendously ridiculous take, I just cannot consider it was made in good faith.

> Of the literally hundreds of companies that YC has invested in, only 5 have gone public.

YC is a droplet in the ocean of the economy. Even if we just look at the US, about five million businesses were started in 2022 alone. https://www.census.gov/econ/bfs/index.html
What's wrong with selling goods and services for more than they cost?
I also thought about the piezo clickers I had many years ago, but I think the principle is different: from what I heard at the time, the clickers were supposed to use a small amount of electricity to break the molecules of the substance causing the itch/inflammation.
To be fair, it probably isn't available in that exact build configuration. You can however, walk into a dealership and say I'd like a BMW with XYZ and the will submit your order and you'll receive it 4-6 months later. The cars on the lot have popular build configs that customers often request.
Hedge funds have a goal of creating reliable profits by systematically dismantling profitable businesses. This is that.
> Late stage capitalism at its worst.

Any evidence that ignorance, greed, and opportunism is unique to "capitalism" or "late stage capitalism"?

Seems to me you are just making an observation about human nature, which manifests itself in any and all economic systems.
Hence why I also included “the training methods and data.” All three come together to produce something impressive but with inherent limitations. The human tendency to anthropomorphize leads human intuition about its capabilities astray. It’s an extremely capable bullshit artist.

Training agents on every written word ever produced, or selected portions of it, will never impart the lessons that humans learn through “The School of Hard Knocks.” They are nihilist children who were taught to read, given endless stacks of encyclopedias and internet chat forum access, but no (or no consistent) parenting.
Or no lifestyle companies. What would be the harm without them?
Free tip for folks - this doesn't work every time (unfortunately), but sometimes just spamming and mashing numbers gets you to the operator faster than going through the stupid call tree. I guess it depends on how the default is set up in the software, Asterisk of whatever it would be. From my experience it seems you can either set up the call tree to restart from the root if you get out of its bounds or to default to some given option like the connection with a representative. To me this is easy enough to try every time so I just default to doing that. Sometimes the person on the other end will see you mashed in 60 numbers in the system I think and they will ask about it though. Easy enough in that case to politely ask them to relay to their boss that a customer though their system was too stupid to use and decided to short-circuit it like that. Not that anyone will care but still. :)
The fact that things are better in Europe than in Russia or China does not mean that we can't show concern for the changes that are being imposed in Europe.

I don't know why people keep bringing up Russia or China in every one of these conversations. It's nothing but a strawman fallacy.
Oh, so we are back to litterally tens of thousands of people at non-approved demonstrations sayong they cannot voice opposition anymore as we had during Covid...
Having moved from Hamburg Germany to Shinjuku a few months ago I would like to add that I am still astonished by how clean the streets are here despite there not being trash bins except for the ones for cans and the ones inside of konbinis. Of course some people litter and if you go to Kabukicho or the along the street to Shin Okubo you’ll see more trash than let’s say in Nishi Shinjuku but given the density of these areas it’s still so surprisingly clean here. I also regularly see people (often elderly) pick up trash from the streets and put it into the trash bags just to clean the streets for everyone apparently. Maybe it is just the collectivist society showing here but I think this is rad!
it would potentially be, if it had any hope of working.
You’re each arguing half of the article and are thus both correct.

Your conflict is self-created and can also be undone.
PE universally has the worst possible outcomes for all sides of a deal besides the PE firm themselves.
Anytime a solution to a potentially complex problem is to the tune of "all you've got to do is..." may be an indicator that it's not a well thought out solution.
Or maybe there is more to life than tech and car companies, who knows ??
How to be bad at fixing problems in software
It reminds me of something I used to do against mosquito bites when I was younger and more sensitive to them. I dipped a spoon in boiling water, and gave the mosquito bite a few quick touches with the hot spoon.

Nowadays I just use anti-acne wipes with salicylic acid against mosquito bites, it reduces the inflammation for me.
> This belief is baseless and unhelpful, and needs to be discarded.

Based on what? I’m not saying that every addicted person is a helpless automaton, but people are often subject to factors over which they have no control, and some instances of addiction are indeed close to someone being stuck in a loop until someone from the outside can intervene.

This is why criminalization or ignoring the problem is so problematic. Many of these people need psychological help and supportive treatment.

I’d also suggest that many of these people have fallen into a form of learned helplessness. In this state, they don’t actually believe they can do anything to change the situation, and so their brains never muster the will to do so. This is a well studied phenomena and I’d recommend the book “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman which explores the original research and discovery of Learned Helplessness.

It’s a phenomena that is highly relevant to addiction, and “they should just try harder” isn’t a realistic stance.
Tech acquisitions haven't been outlawed. And this particular situation is applicable to perhaps 2 or 3 a year (all of which are multi-billion dollar values).

I doubt very much if this will stop funding of new companies except perhaps at the level of Uber/WeWork.
I wonder if Figma is cashflow positive. They must've hired an army of people over the past 18 months. The $1billion cash infusion will help for sure.
You could try the method we used for our vector search demo for e-commerce (all open source, natch) - use CLIP to get vector embeddings for product pictures and then use these for boosting or matching. https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2023/03/22/building-v... Our demo works pretty well for searches like 'blue network cable' when the colour isn't always explicitly mentioned in the product data.
It is refreshing that they weren't able to get away with it, anyway.
For most creators this is the wrong monetization model, or they do it very poorly (E.g. paywall content no one wants to see). Launching merch/products and/or doing brand deals is much more effective.
Maybe just use a battery, a button and a resistor? It does not really need to connect to your social media or a bank account.
I used to swim laps regularly. At the lap pool there were various bits of equipment for general use, kickboard/flippers/floats and such. Nobody ever seemed to return them to the racks. They instead massed into a pile at the end of the lanes. So when I was done my routine I regularly pickup them all up, sometime making a thing of how many kickboards I could carry at once. About 50% of the time some other swimmer would say "By pickup those up you are taking a job away from a lifeguard." Entitled pricks. Some people just don't care about the world around them, to the point that they believe their laziness literally supports other people.
Journalism's Next Disruptor: Love
Can software legally enter into a contract on behalf of a natural/legal person?
Having just spent a week there, I can confirm there is almost zero public trash cans. I found this really interesting and ended up carrying my trash a good bit, but quickly adapted. I also hardly saw any litter.
Maybe you're an aspiring entrepreneur for the wrong reason, then.

Start a business to solve a problem.

If you really build something users like, with a decent market, you will do fine (as will/have the founders of Figma).

If you hope to use getting "acquihired" to get rich even if you fail, then sorry, the world doesn't need more founders like you.
> Estonia has also been known to deport its own citizens when they truly are a menace to our society.

Deport where? Could you please provide us more info?
Yes. Which is why I’m surprised that people seem to think this break-up will prevent Figma from turning into yet another Adobe-like SaaS with heavy upsell.
We could guess or we could refer to history to here. Maybe you would rather be doomed to repeat it?
What Adobe product is intended to compete with Figma, Adobe XD?
Can you list a few of them as examples?
I am curious if XD will still stay EoL or if they write a blog post about it's bright future in 1-2 days.
If for example you change the country to Spain you can see both the european commission and european parliament among the top spenders: https://i.imgur.com/TjzlrV5.png

Also i don't understand what you mean by 'judicial power'. The EU is not a state, it doesn't have judicial power and the legislative is shared between EC and EP
Realistically, only by the already-wealthy - i.e. those for whom the cost of failure is less than complete personal ruin.

Admittedly these are the people getting the lions share of VC money in the first place though.
Why are you so happy with eu downfall? Are they too woke? Too weak? Who are you cheering for instead?
This is some very good marketing, intentional or not.
Every time a merger fails, an angel gets its wings.

Force megacorps to actually compete rather than just snapping up their potential competitors.

Force startups to aspire to create an actual product rather than just manipulating the lizard-brain fears of irrational megacorp execs in the hopes of a payout.
Because GP said this:

> They are no better than the Russian and Chinese counterparts after all

Correct, we should be protective of our freedoms and indeed the EU (IMO) is a bit lacking in its speech protections, but no one except China and Russia are served by this meme that US/EU are just as bad as China and Russia.
If I say, "with all due respect... fuck you", does that mean that I'm free to say fuck you to anyone I want? I added a disclaimer, right? Because that's about what that sort of service feels like.
Probably 8 or 9 years ago there was a mistake on the Air Canada Flight Pass website. It was advertising a 10 leg, business class flight pass between Western Canada and Western US for $800. This would mean 5x return trips between say LA and Vancouver in business class for $800 total. It was obviously a mistake fare but many people bought a pass or two. Air Canada cancelled all the passes and it eventually went to class action lawsuit where each person received $450/pass in Air Canada credits.
Part of the argument was that Air Canada had pretty clear disclaimers that "Any advertised price will be honoured and cannot be changed or cancelled". I still have the screenshots of their pages somewhere.
It's also funny how every thread related to UE regulation turns into the UE being depicted a "no-free speech" / "corrupt" / "undemocratic" etc.

Yeah we're living in an absolute hellhole here in the UE, damn those institutions for trying to protect the general population against megacorps / missinformation. (/s)

It honestly feel more like the comment section on Youtube or Facebook sometimes around here.
>There's something called information warfare, which basically means manipulating public discourse to further one's political goals. Russia is notoriously good at it, for example. West sucks at it

Funnily, both of the above points about Russia and US are basically accepted after manipulation of public discourse to further one's political goals in behalf of the latter. Arrived at through countless articles about "misinformation", "indepedent" think tanks and "fact checking" bodies, the BS stories about the 2016 elections and Steele Dossier, all major media outlets complicit, the "Twitter Files" style cooperation of state agencies with Big Tech, all the client states governments and media playing along, and so on.

Russia is at best mediocre or insignificant in this, China is non-existant, and the US has every major force in this game, selling its own discourse, including on the EU side.
Can't really see what the harm is if we believe DSA is a good thing and there is real reason to believe they aren't fulfilling the requirements then go ahead and investigate.

Interestingly, yesterday a Swedish newspaper published a story about conditions for child workers in africa mining minerals that go into the batteries of many car manufacturers. Many manufacturers were called out in the article, but Tesla were singled out in the headline (By far the biggest customer of these minerals so nothing strange in that). Twitter/X instantly placed a warning that the article link could be harmful. My trust in EU as a steward of free speech isn't unlimited, but it's massively higher in my trust that Elon Musk being the same.
> West sucks at it

If one can't sense it's there it could also be a sign of how good it is.
I'm not sure honestly what this better parodies: AI gibberish, or the endless buzzwords this industry loves to make up.
Yes, I wonder how feasible it is to do that while still protecting state of being anonymous.

And what if you develop this very sophisticated system of reputation score, what if bad actors find a way to still perfectly abuse it, e.g. they pay for desperate people for the IDs and then stay just within the limits ever so slightly.

Would you be able to easily iterate on the system when that happens to make it more secure?

But if you also track IP addresses then doesn't that already mean loss of anonymity?

And ultimately with something like IP address, a bad actor could offer you to download an app where they could simply use your IP address to post content/propaganda from under your ID and IP.

It would be more expensive for bad actors, but also I think there was period when Facebook accounts were bought and sold, and there was very active market for that. I imagine teenagers for example are really easily tricked into selling their creds etc.

Also Reddit and other social media accounts are being sold a lot, so definitely there would be market for that.
Apparently the dissemination of illegal content refers to the October 7th videos of the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel that galvanized American support for Israel [0].

I personally don't think it's in people's interest to have this kind of thing hidden from them and I really dislike the EU for attempting to censor this.

Musk is really under a lot of financial pressure and it might be a losing battle to try to fight the EU over this in court. To be honest, I hope he is able to pull out from the EU without cratering the company, but he is now being pulled into lawfare with multiple actors across the globe so Twitter might have no choice but to accept is role as a conduit of censorship for state-level actors.

[0] https://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1736707341070860689
The cards that I remember having, specifically 4 of every dual land (about $800 / each as of a couple of years ago) and my most valuable card at the time...a Time Twister ($1,500 now) make up the bulk of it. I don't remember what all else I had.
The oldest companies still operating today
Yes, in our street in London most litter is from foxes raiding bins. We have food recycle bins which are basically a foxes takeaway despite locking lids. Next most is builders - no, polystyrene won't stay in an open skip.
They themselves said they spent 15 months trying to manipulate the system and are only doing this because they failed, let's not be naive about them doing this out of the goodness of their hearts lol
At least China and Russia are honest about their censorship.
imo, Adobe is falling behind. Photoshop's generative AI is substantially worse than what I can get from models on Tensorart/CivitAI + an upscaler.

It's way easier to produce something that can go live right now without much editing in CivitAI -> Upscale in Magnific -> Add to Canva.
We’ll have our own Chatbots fighting the sellers bots and it’ll be a great waste of time and resources
The first person mentioned in the article was a mother of 4 who had breastfed 3 babies before without trouble.

These are not all rubes. The world is complicated and people seek advice from experts when they have trouble. Sometimes bad things happen, especially in areas that are poorly researched and rife with differing opinions.
Certainly in western/Christian culture greed was traditionally been seen as a sin, not a virtue[1]. I'm not sure how much this applies in other cultures. Perhaps you could cite some examples?

[1]Not that this stopped the clergy being greedy of course. The grossly overweight priest is very old trope.
If the value of Figma has fallen by more than $1B since they signed the deal (which I think it probably has) then passing up $1B to get out of the deal is not nuts, especially considering the regulatory opposition. Though it depends more on whether the value of Figma to Adobe and less the agreed acquisition cost has fallen below -$1B, since Adobe was presumably agreeing on a deal that they thought gave them significant surplus.
That’s really interesting, from a cultural perspective, in the UK and my circle at least, if I was entertaining guests I’d be horrified if they were to so much as raise a finger in the kitchen.

I’ll do the prep, cooking, cleaning, hosting, and everything else, thank you. If you want something, ask and it will be given, but to think of my guests _working_ when I’m hosting is far from my nature and far from how I’ve experienced being a guest.

I’d invite you to come and cook with me if I wanted you to cook with me, but if you arrive as a guest under no circumstances would I expect, nor want them to be doing anything in the kitchen or around the house, personally.