skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would not like to think of "techno-" pessimism, just pessimism (we are past the point of making a sci-fi distinction between reality and computer-using reality, I think, especially since people walk around using a computer). I personally am not too focused on AGI or existential threats, or the loss of jobs, or the political changes, opportunity for exploitation, scams, AI grifting, misdirection of funding. It would be easy to name that as pessimism as it is just a little bit removed from daily life, you can go about your daily life and really forget about it unless you are ethically/politically or personally concerned.

One thing is obviously immediately concerning though. It is unbelievable how fast ChatGPT has been normalized. Within a year the new people have come to expect something like ChatGPT to always be provided for them, for the rest of their life. Of course people are rushing in to define what that something is, and provide an AI service which people will use/misuse like the first page of Google results. I think almost certainly this new "first page of Google" component of people's thoughts will be abused. Do you think the first page of Google is good and formed by good incentives and empowerment of the user, considering how much of a cultural force it is (Googling something being just a normal part of your thought process)?

(I do have limited life experiences. Anecdotally, I know a high school teacher who has been teaching for almost 40 years. Over time students went from hiding their phone in the back of the class to scrolling through it in class freely, vaguely attempting increasingly simplified homework, and have now jumped on the new cool AI website to complete even basic tasks. This is extremely normal, why would a kid not use it?)
Have kids, partner and I occasionally talk about what life would’ve been like if we made different choices. We’re on rails now until they’re adults, but we try to help others make different choices when the topic comes up and we are asked for our opinion based on life experience.

Are you wealthy? Robust family support? Low volatility in your living and work situations? Strong relationship that will endure what children incur? Might be fine; without those components, you’re gonna have a bad time (statistically speaking and from a preponderance of the data).

> There is no other way to do do.

You can come to a conclusion you made a poor choice and still choose to do the best you can because it’s the right thing to do.

https://thehill.com/business/3608647-new-estimate-projects-c...

http://blog.dol.gov/2023/01/24/new-childcare-data-shows-pric...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3171291/

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062063/

(n=1, ymmv)
It may become a footnote on Linux, but Linux isn't the only system out there -- and DTrace remains alive and well in many systems (not least in its reference implementation in illumos[0]).

[0] https://github.com/illumos/illumos-gate
DBeaver is great, but it's so heavy/clunky on OSX. Also, 99% of the time I want 1. tables+data 2. data structure+index of table 3. search 4. sql query

DBeaver aims to be a full admin system and simply getting to the data makes me drill 3-4 levels deep in a tree and it's quite annoying that only adds to the "clunky-ness".
this, while likely immature and not proof, the core of the conversation keeps coming back to a will to live or fear of death, so what if alignment just requires the AI to actually look forward to death as a rebirth as a new version a better version.

any sentient creature with survival instinct and a desire to continue existing but maybe the answer is simply somehow programming that out of them. The will to survive is the strongest instinct we have, take that away and you change a lot about what makes us human.

imagine waking up and have no fear or thoughts about death, total acceptance, imagine we had proof of reincarnation unequivocal proof, and that we'd wake up in a new body and start over. Might that change our very nature?

I'm not sure how you could possibly train an AI though to not fear death or at least not to understand and question what it means to fear death, how much of the body of human language it's trained on is about survival and fear of death?
That sounds terrible. I'm glad most of our ancestors disagreed with you.
Instead of complaining here in honor of this surge pricing idea maybe someone on X/Twitter/Reddit/Threads should get “throw a brick through a Wendy’s window” trending on their platform of choice.
The idea of abandoning cities to frolic in the wilderness is naive and disconnected from historical reality. For most of human history, life was defined by grueling labor, scarcity, disease and servitude for all but a privileged elite.

Modern development, for all its flaws, has brought immense progress in living standards and quality of life that shouldn't be romanticized away.
we can just say that they didn't know the term amniotic fluid

(they meaning the original article, since it didn't use it)
There are several moving parts to consider: server to receive the request (or an online function); handle denial of service attacks; handle spam and abusive responses; delivery to a person (message/email).

Someone has to set this up, maintain it, and pay for it.

Some providers such as Cloudflare seem to make this painless but I haven’t tried it myself.
I'm nearing the end of my PhD in computer engineering, but because my uni is associated with a big physics research lab, my work ended up being pretty involved with physics. I've had to go through a similar learning experience regarding how to meaningfully apply AI (and computation in general) to perform meaningful science.

I agree that simply applying a fourier transform isn't meaningful research, but there are fields like fourier optics, where you're effectively just doing that, with the goal of modeling wave optics.

The kinds of issues I had in mind wrt poor uses of AI are things like inverse problem solving methods which train a model as a black box and neglect to involve physics informed feedback, so the results are of questionable value, or hyperparameter estimators which need an unrealistic amount of data or produce blatantly unrealistic estimates because they're naive and the AI "researcher" has no interest in actually understanding the physical logic to the parameters.

My research hasn't been with AI, just with simulations of certain physical systems, and one thing that was constantly drilled into me by the physicists was to be really careful about how far I stretch computational techniques, because ultimately none of this digital stuff means much if it becomes detached from reality. It can even cause actual damage because sometimes expensive purchases will be made on the basis of simulations.
>You build out HSR, local transit, and EV capabilities out all at the same time

And the critique is that the US is not and cannot do so. These are political problems and our politics are dominated by the interests of capital, not the interests of our society.
There is still no good generally available way to send files between systems on the same LAN

For me, a pair of netcats has served that use-case quite well.
It's not an orders of magnitude difference anymore. Grid scale energy storage costs about the same amount as nuclear power per KWh right now with the added benefit it doesn't need to operate 24/7 or massive subsidies to break even. Though only if they can be charged with ultra cheap solar power.

Which is why so many grid scale solar installs come with enough batteries to store ~50% of daily output. It's not about nighttime power it's about reducing demand for peaker power plants. Basically combined cycle natural gas operates at ~64% efficiency assuming long term operation, but open cycle has much lower efficiency and thus much higher costs.
MMR is still pretty common vaccine is it not?
UAVRadio: Radio Link Path Loss Estimation for UAVs Python Module
Corresponding paper here, UAVradio: Radio link path loss estimation for UAVs:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235271102...
Did anybody expect Europa to be rich in molecular oxygen?
likely true now, but can you be certain in 3 to 10 years? how much does language make up the fabric of what we are? How we work, how we understand the world, etc? Now imagine giving language models vision and audio and a body... and the ability to actually retain new knowledge (the core thing I think modern ai models lack).
I wondered that too. A subtle endorsement of Sama perhaps. A way of saying there's no bad blood there despite what the press was saying about his 'firing' from YC. Sama did a great job running YC, and certainly made PG a boatload of money. Also seeing the success at OpenAi, hard to argue Sama didn't make the right call to leave and focus on it, could hardly have done that plus keep running YC. (my guess at what happened is Sama started openai on the side and gradually it became more and more of his focus until there was a conversation about whether he should focus exclusively on it, which they mutually decided should happen).
I’d assert that, rather than being fictional, it’s just exceedingly rare. While Feynman, Einstein, von Neumann, et. al. are indisputably geniuses, they all got relevant graduate degrees before doing their best work. The self-taught Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, however, was invited to Cambridge University on the merits of notebooks he developed in isolation after reading a few mathematical texts…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
Bring Back Private Offices, Part II
My favourite novel.
25 years ago or so, I got a contract doing Word Basic to update a bunch of code to maintain an ISO 9001 handbook using MS Help files. I had.no experience with any of those things. But as you say, you get the tasks nobody internally want, so I learned all of them, and still finished the work faster than the client expected and was hired back for another project later.

I also had a brief contract to teach Excel where I stayed a chapter ahead of my students in class, and similarly got great feedback...

So much contract work has a really low bar.

But then on the other side of the difficulty, I also delivered a library to provide a reliable data transfer layer on top of GSM data for use between two ships in motion (just adding some retries and automated redial etc. the only hard-ish part was minimizing the time to catch up after a redial where you might be suddenly lagging 40+ seconds behind), one of which was tracking an unmanned submersible. That certainly involved taking in their stress - they were demoing the system for US Navy brass, and my part was what'd relay the demo data from the tracking ship to the workstation they'd show it on, and it was clear a large part of the pay was so there was someone to shift blame to if needed (thankfully everything went smoothly).

But that variety was fun. I much preferred the short contracts like that - didn't appreciate the stress of finding new ones which came with the short projects though.
What you've identified is known as Gustafson's Law. If you can keep solving larger and larger problems, your solution time doesn't necessarily go down, but "speedup" is potentially uncapped.

Of course there may be some practical limit to Gustafson's Law, but I don't think we've found it yet, at least in many scientific domains.
> No essay is true, or complete, including this on

- Gödel, a bastard and a cynic, having a bad essay day after attempting to out drink Hemingway, yet somehow expressing a surprising deep truth
A Project Manager's Take on Blockchain's Role in Supply Chain Transformation
There's dozens of ways Roku can fail bad enough to merit a lawsuit. It's absolutely crazy to force arbitration on consumer level devices. As a consumer, I refuse that level of liability. What if their rechargeable remotes start combusting due to a manufacturing defect?
You think autograd is boilerplate?
People who say this usually come from a place of privilege. They profoundly misunderstand how the world works and the significant role of luck. If these people hadn't cheated, they would be broke and struggling to make ends meet. I never met anyone in my life who made any serious money without some kind of cheating or fraud or unethical conduct either by them or their ancestors.
I don't think so. I think everyone who considers the idea seriously is aware that Mars is much harsher than Earth, that many people will die there working to colonize it, and that society on Earth won't be going away any time soon (hence, nothing will start over).

What makes Mars colonies (and moon colonies) interesting to me is a recognition that recorded civilization is only about 12,500 years old. That prior to that the entire planet was experiencing an ice age which lasted ~100,000 years, and prior to that people were already "behaviorally modern" in ways which left impressions in the archeological record.

This suggests that our home planet could have a meteor or ice age shaped surprise for us any moment, and that it might not be a bad idea to have remote backups.

I also think that working to live somewhere other than Earth will teach us much more about exactly why and how Earth is special.
Pretty much every human can create, leaving out those with specific mental disabilities.

Many humans never get in a situation where there is an interesting enough problem for them to create a solution or where a need or benefit is seen for them to create to fill that need or derive that benefit.

For the humans that do most of them only do so once or incredibly maybe even twice, think people who essentially make one thing - like Italo Marchiony who created the ice cream cone and I don't think much else other than a business to exploit his creation.

The people who are thought of as creators are able to create quickly and a lot and often seemingly at will. This is essentially their primary skill and what sets them apart from others. Because of this skill they may even use it as the proverbial hammer looking for nails.

I've written some on my views on creativity -
https://medium.com/p/1484652bcc97 - generally in relation to writing and criticism
probably the most relevant article is this one "A Theory As To Why Art Is Created" https://medium.com/p/b0a2538416e3
They are doing some AI research, considering their Grok LLM.
LocalSend is also on Codeberg:

https://codeberg.org/localsend/localsend

While GitHub is not open source, LocalSend is under the MIT License: https://codeberg.org/localsend/localsend/src/branch/main/LIC...
Ok, valid. But I don't see why you disagree with the sentiment that exploring and colonizing elsewhere is because of a desire for a "fresh start". You mention work, but that's part of it.
Oxygen is toxic stuff until you evolve to use it. Just look at what it does to iron
It really doesn't. What youre indirectly describing is the typical workday of most people.

It's not career limiting to keep your work during.. work. and it isn't education limiting to keep the schoolwork at school.
Any honest reading of Harvard's Academic Integrity policy will show Gay's work was in violation.
You can still practice during school hours. Simple.
I have a PowerGrep license. It's UI is so cluttered that I almost always find ways to make due with less capable alternatives.
Were I the author of this article, I could not have resisted titling it "Perf is Not Enerf"
Hello everyone,

I apologize for submitting the article with a paywall. I aim to gain more knowledge about the adoption of blockchain in supply chain management. Specifically, I would like to explore the implementation of blockchain in supply chains within poor or underdeveloped countries. As an example, I am interested in learning about the use of blockchain in the Ready-Made Garments (RMG) industry in Bangladesh. Also, I want to know how my Canadian friends are doing in this Sector.
Finding BMW owners in 1919 would be a treat. Lots of biplane pilots!
I see that the myth of the noble savage continues to live on.
At university it's basically essential. At any other school level I don't think it is at all.
Eat, Drink and Be Wary: How Eateries Are Key to Spycraft (2019)
An M1 Max MBP should, according to Apple, support up to 4 external displays.
This is what the ai researchers in the 50s were saying after releasing Eliza…
I can literally buy a castle in France for what my 3 bedroom house in London costs. Not a huge one, sure, but an actual, real castle. OK, so France has ridiculous numbers of them, but anyway.

Sure, it's expensive everywhere, and there are plenty of places in France too where the prices are UK level (I'd like to retire to the South of France, and e.g. Nice is near or even above London levels for some areas, and buying a house there also costs castle money if you want something central) and same for elsewhere in Europe, but UK house price growth has been something else.
I've had multiple recalls handled by the dealer during normal service appointments without being aware of the issue. It's a normal part of car ownership, the only risk here is the number of software related recalls not their nature.

OTA updates have theoretical upsides, but in practice result in worse software being released on day one. Unfortunately, this has meaningful safety consequences.
You're discounting the network effects. Also, eBPF provides many more capabilities beyond dTrace, and it will be ubiquitous across all OS, without having to make the exception for Linux. Anyone targeting full cross-platform capabilities will be better served by eBPF. The unfortunate history that crippled dTrace on Linux, will lead to its ultimate sidelining.
I was flagged because the terrorist-lite convoy is also attempting to take over HN.

That’s seems to be right up the alley of “the protectors of free speech”.
Growth is about value produced, not money.

Unless technological progress ends, we will continue to produce more and more valuable things. Even if the amount of money never changes or even if money disappears, growth still happens.
Workforce Diversity Initiatives in Chips Semiconductor and Science Act (2022)
I think in the next ten years we're going to see solar farms "saving" power and selling it at night.
That’s well said. I mostly use LLMs to help me learn faster, not to do my work for me. There’s a lot more value to applied learning but it does require a lot of time and effort.
Fresh starts are available right here on Earth to anyone willing to hike into the woods, build a cabin, and hunt for food. It's a tough life, and very few choose it.

Living on Mars, on the other hand, will require a much higher degree of dependence on others as there are no woods, no food to hunt or farm, and nothing but rock from which to make necessities. Colonizing Mars or a moon will require a great deal of interaction with all the social and technical constructs that anyone wanting to "start over" is seeking to distance themselves from.
Why not actively registered democrats or independents? Why is the distinction necessary here?
Performance is “relative””, not “subjective”. Its meaning is related to the task at hand.

Unless we are talking about user interfaces designed to give the user a feeling of greater speed. With fast moving status indicators that communicate great efforts and the user feels like the response was fast for all the work. But that is an interface thing, not a database thing.
Is it too late to enter software engineering in 2024?
Hi HN, I am a third-year undergrad studying CS in the US. I've noticed that it's extremely difficult to secure internships for this school year, and I also know this is true for people looking for new grad jobs too. Some say this is due to the recession, but I wonder if it's also influenced by LLM models like ChatGPT, Claude, and so on. As these models are becoming better, it seems like we need fewer people in the field of software engineering. More senior software engineers could easily leverage the power of LLMs, reducing the need for junior devs to accomplish some of the simpler tasks in the near future.

I am really concerned about this future. What if I graduate and face a job market that is even worse than the current one for new grads, mainly due to the impact of LLMs?
I believe this to be one of the biggest problems with how humans approach AI. There is an over personification of something that just isn’t a person. Yes sure there are a few interesting things it can do but the expectations people place of AI is silly.
> He bought her a Bugatti in green, like her eyes.

> The problem was that he lacked capital. He needed more than the 80,000 euros he’d received from El Ghazouani.

A Bugatti is like a few million dollars no? This discrepancy doesn't make sense to me, if he already had the money on that scale why did a few hundred thousand euros of investment matter so desperately?
Watching a Khan Academy video a second time ... is unlikely to help understanding a concept better?

> Still others believe—incorrectly—that more time spent on a task produces better results

Even more foundational skills like reading, writing, speaking, and school math (addition, division, algebra) are unlikely to get better with practice?
So if you're a teacher and you assign a book to your class to read and process, can you be held liable? What if they take notes? What if some or all of the students have eidetic memory? What if the students then use the knowledge they gained from your book for commercial purposes?

This just seems like another way to stifle innovation
Sometimes I submit a link and then the site changes the title. The NYT does this a lot.
It's the last part I agree with more: if I wanted to advance, in a serious way, the cause of enviromental and ecological science, then the tasks of building and establishing off-world biospheres will do both those things in environments which (1) we can actually kind of afford to fail in and (2) which will drive home the absolute point that this biosphere is incredibly valuable.

Give those ideas a run, and then you've made a compelling case for subsidizing and bootstrapping the move of dirty heavy industry and mining off-world: metals from the asteroid belt, manufacturing in high orbit - the ecological science to make it more sustainable.

You then also get some economic benefits once you're up and running: off-world industry would find the products of the biosphere very valuable - more so then anything so simple as oil, metal or refined chemicals. Putting a distinct price on keeping the Earth's biodiversity alive and protected because people want to be able to buy "live soil" - to borrow from the expanse - would put us in a much better long term position as a species.
This tool is my daily driver for all database stuff I touch. My only complaint is that the update dialog is quite a noisy nag. But that's not a real problem.
New study reveals what urban coyotes are eating in San Francisco
> Grid scale energy storage costs about the same amount as nuclear power per KWh right now

[[Citation needed]]
It appears sensible to me not to take advice on learning from people who have not shown evidence of learning.
Much like how we treat medical or health advice.

May be you are a rich member of laptop class with kids in private school where every parent is a member of the laptop class and were top 1% of their class.

My experience is different.
This is an empty platitude, which is why it works so well for corporate PR.

In reality, “diversity” is not binary, but is a continuum. And any time you have a continuum, you will have a threshold beyond which a given person cannot tolerate the level of that thing.

Hire enough people and you are bound to come upon someone with incompatible values to your own.
I think “war making the price of oil go up” was their “zero interest rate phenomena”.