ARandumGuy

Tesla's stock price has always seemed completely irrational to me. Tesla's market cap is over double Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, VW, GM, and Ford combined. All while selling far fewer cars then any of those manufacturers.

For this market cap to make sense, Tesla would have to eventually become the dominant car manufacturer worldwide. And that just doesn't seem like a reasonable prediction, given that legacy car manufacturers are starting to figure out EVs, and newer EV-focused manufacturers are making huge strides.

I don't know when (or even if) Tesla's stock price will fall back down to Earth. The old saying is that the market can remain irrational longer then you can remain solvent. But I do know that Tesla's stock price is not a good indicator of how well they're doing as a car manufacturer.

In general, the people who like EVs hate Elon's politics, and the people who like Elon's politics hate EVs. This significantly reduces the amount of people who want to buy a Tesla.

This is the risk when you tie your brand to a single person, especially someone who loves being in the spotlight. Whenever that person does something controversial, that reflects poorly on the brand.

Ziz did leave the rationalist movement, but to imply there's no link is simply dishonest. Ziz spent a lot of time in the Bay area Rationalist scene, and a lot of her belief system has clear Rationalist origins (such as timeless decision theory and the general obsession with an all-powerful AI). Ziz did not come up with this stuff in a vacuum, she got it from being a rationalist.

Also, I'm not sure if you did this intentionally, but Ziz is a trans woman. She may have done some awful shit, but that doesn't justify misgendering her.

At least one cult originates from the Rationalist movement, the Zizians [1]. A cult that straight up murdered at least four people. And while the Zizian belief system is certainly more extreme then mainstream Rationalist beliefs, it's not that much more extreme.

For more info, the Behind the Bastards podcast [2] did a pretty good series on how the Zizians sprung up out of the Bay area Rationalist scene. I'd highly recommend giving it a listen if you want a non-rationalist perspective on the Rationalist movement.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians [2]: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

The accessibility for this design is pretty terrible. There's a reason the gold standard for closed captions is still white text with solid black background. That way, regardless of what's going on in the background, the text is still readable for someone with poor eyesight.

Out of curiosity, I used this site [1] to get the contrast of some text, specifically the artist name on the Apple Music now playing bar (in the "Updated App Design" part of the page). During parts of the video, the contrast of the artist name with the background was 1.7:1, which is terrible. For reference, the minimum recommended contrast by WebAIM is 4.5:1 [2].

Maybe there are accessibility options that improve things, but the defaults seem terrible. The goal for any design should be reasonably accessible as default, with robust options for people with more specific needs. As it stands, this UI is just too hard to read, and Apple needs to make a second pass.

[1]: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

[2]: https://webaim.org/articles/contrast/

It's used because, despite the fact that race doesn't really match with genetic ancestry, it still has impacts on people's lives and health.

For example, a study indicating that "black people in the US are X% more likely to have {some condition}" is useful, even if "black person in the US" doesn't tell much about an individual's ancestry. That's because health conditions are heavily influenced by environmental factors, and someone's race impacts the environmental factors they're exposed to.

This does get complicated, and requires digging deep into the data. Top-level statistics don't indicate root cause, which still needs to be researched. But top-level statistics can indicate that there's a problem that needs to be worked on, which is why medical studies tracking race are still useful.

Most research is funded through grants. Many different federal agencies provide grants, as well as private organizations. When applying for a grant, you have to indicate what you're going to spend the money on. And your grant may be rejected if the organization funding the grant thinks you're not going to spend the money well. And if you can't find someone to give you a grant, you probably can't do the research, even if you have tenure.

There are problems with this system. Researchers often have to spend a lot of time writing grant applications, and grants can be rejected for any number of bad reasons. And there are cases where research was funded that probably shouldn't have been funded. But research funding isn't given willy-nilly to whoever asks, and taxpayers wasting money on kooky ideas isn't a particularly big problem.

I guess it depends on how you define "using google", but as I've progressed as a developer, I've found myself spending less time googling problems, and more time just looking at official documentation (maybe GitHub issues if I'm doing something weird). And yeah, I guess I technically use google to get to the documentation instead of typing in the URL, but that feels like splitting hairs.

And it's not like people weren't able to develop complicated software before the internet. They just had big documentation books that cost money and could get dated quickly. To be clear, having that same info a quick google search away is an improvement, and I'm not going to stop using google while it's available to me. But that doesn't mean we'd all be screwed if google stopped existing tomorrow.

Is this the same Grok that started inserting talking points about "white genocide in South Africa" on completely unrelated queries? Even if you wanted some AI chatbot integrated with your chat app (which I personally don't), it feels like Grok is the worst one you could pick.

For stuff that people need and will buy at heavily inflated prices, sure. But there are a lot of non-essential items that people probably won't buy if the price increases significantly. And for those items, I suspect a lot of stores will just let the shelves stay empty instead of spending a lot of money for inventory they can't sell.

I believe most people don't want AI because I read the Pew Research report linked by the parent comment, which indicated most non-experts don't want AI. That report has a pretty large sample size, the methodology seems sound, and Pew is an organization that's historically pretty good at studying this sort of thing.

Obviously one report is not the end of the discussion. And if more research is done that indicates that most people really are interested in AI, I'll shift my beliefs on the matter.

I was interested in that 400 million weekly user number you posted, so I did a little digging and found this source [1] (I also looked through their linked sources and double checked elsewhere, and this info seems reasonably accurate). It seems like that 400 million figure is what OpenAI is self-reporting, with no indication how that number is being calculated. Weekly user count is a figure that's fairly easy to manipulate or over-count, which makes me skeptical of the data. For example, is this figure just counting users that are directly interacting with ChatGPT, or is it counting users of services that utilize the ChatGPT API?

In addition, someone can use ChatGPT while having a neutral or negative opinion on it. My linked source [1] indicates that around 10 million people are actively paying for a ChatGPT subscription, which is a much more modest number then 400 million weekly users. There clearly are a lot of people who use and like AI, but that doesn't mean the majority of the population feels positively about it.

[1]: https://backlinko.com/chatgpt-stats

I find it interesting how a lot of other comments are saying how "HN users are a bubble, the public is actually really excited about AI", when the research indicates that the general public is even less interested in AI then HN is.

It's fine to express your opinion on AI, whether positive or negative. It's even fine to share anecdotes about how other people feel. Just don't say that's how "most people" feel without providing some actual evidence.

I'm in this boat as well. From my perspective, I'd only bother keeping a tab open for a long period of time if it meets the following criteria:

1) It's something I'd actually want to go and view later (most stuff fails this criteria)

2) It's not something I can easily find again

3) It's something that I only anticipate going back to a couple of times, and thus isn't worth making into a bookmark

And over all my years browsing the web, almost nothing satisfies all that criteria. I'm pretty aggressive with closing tabs, and I almost never regret closing a tab.

How would an AI know if "2pm at Shake Shake" works for me? I still need to read the original email and make a decision. The actual writing out the response takes me basically no time whatsoever.

Shorter emails are better 99% of the time. No one's going to read a long email, so you should keep your email to just the most important points. Expanding out these points to a longer email is just a waste of time for everyone involved.

My email inbox is already filled with a bunch of automated emails that provide me no info and waste my time. The last thing I want is an AI tool that makes it easier to generate even more crap.

I've seen stuff that echoes this sentiment before, and I have to say I don't understand this desire at all. Why would I need a computer to show me what something in a book looks like? I already have an imagination for that!

Books are fundamentally a collaborative artform between the author and the reader. The author provides the blueprint, but it's up to the reader to construct the scene in their own head. And every reader is going to have slightly different interpretations based on how they imagine the events of a book. This act of imagination and re-interpertation is one of the things I love about reading books.

Having a computer do the visualization for you completely destroys what makes books engaging and interesting. If you don't want to visualize the book yourself, I have to wonder why the hell you're reading a book in the first place.

If you need that visual component, just watch a movie or read a comic book or something. This isn't a slight against movies or comics! They're fantastic mediums and are able to utilize their visual element to communicate ideas in ways that books can struggle with. And these visuals will form a much more cohesive artistic vision then whatever an AI outputs, since they're an integrated and intentional part of the work.

It's possible. The wealthy are a lot better positioned to make a lot of money during a bear market then the average person, as they can afford to buy a lot of stocks when they're cheap. Just look how much money billionaires like Bezos or Musk made during COVID.

But even if that's their plan, that doesn't mean they're executing it competently. The specific tariff amounts do not seem well thought through, and fighting a trade war against literally every other country in the world seems like a bad idea.

There's an idea called Hanlon's Razor which states "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". It's a good rule of thumb, but it implies that malice/stupidity is an either/or choice. I think that the Trump tariffs are a malicious plan executed stupidly, and if nothing changes the effects will be catastrophic.

There's a lot here, and it's more complicated then "the government should never use Signal".

First off, I 100% agree that the bombing of civilian buildings in Yemen should be a bigger controversy. I don't really have anything to add to that, I just agree that it's important.

There are a lot of situations where it'd be acceptable for a government employee to us Signal, even to communicate potentially sensitive data. There are a lot of times where someone with only phone access may need to communicate sensitive info, and Signal is a good tool for that. It's a hell of a lot better then text messages or Slack or whatever.

The issue isn't Signal's security, it's the security of the phone it's installed onto. The phones of high-ranking government employees are a huge security weak point, and other countries know it. One has to imagine that Russia (or some other country) is trying very hard to hack into Pete Hegseth's phone. A lot of countries have invested huge amounts of money into developing hacking teams, and it should be assumed that any device with access to the broader internet is a potential target.

That's why government devices that access high-security information have immensely high security requirements. From air-gapped networks, to only buying hardware from vetted vendors, to forbidding outside devices (like phones) from even being in the same room. This is a level of security that Signal can't provide, and is necessary when discussing things like military plans.

Finally, the fact that someone accidentally added a journalist to this group and no one said anything shows a frankly reckless attitude towards security. Someone should have double checked that everyone on the group was supposed to be there, and the fact that no one did is fucking embarrassing.

It's actually fairly common. Other sibling comments have a lot of examples, but one I'd like to focus on is the swimsuit arms race in competitive swimming. It really got started with Speedo's LZR Racer suit at the 2008 Olympics, where 98% of swimming medals were won by someone wearing one of these suits.

However, there were serious issues with cost and accessibility. These suits cost a lot of money to develop and manufacture, which was passed on to the swim teams. The LZR Racer could cost $550 per suit, with each suit only lasting a handful of races before requiring replacement. This gave a huge advantage to wealthy teams and swimmers with good sponsorship deals, and talented swimmers without a lot of financial resources were left in the dust.

Then there's the basic question of "what skills do we want to measure and reward in this sport?" With swimming, it got to the point where races were won not in the pool, but in the R&D department of swimwear companies. The swimming organizing bodies felt that swimming competitions should be focused on the athletic ability of individual swimmers instead, so advanced swimsuits were banned.

Don't get me wrong, I like F1 a lot, and part of that is the cool cutting-edge technology the teams develop. But for most sports, heavy technological development doesn't lead to more exciting competition, it just adds barriers to entry.

While home runs are exciting, there are limits to that. For several years the MLB has been dealing with "three true outcomes", where a large percentage of at bats end in either a strikeout, walk, or home run.

While this can be exciting for individual at bats, it becomes pretty boring if it's too common. This is because it invalidates every role except the pitcher and batter, and removes a lot of strategy from the game. While this may be fine if you only watch the occasional game, it can get really dull if you watch a lot of games every season.

Home runs are a lot of fun! One of the things that makes baseball exciting is that every pitch has the potential to result in a home run. This adds a lot of tension to the game, and helps keep things engaging. But when home runs become too prevalent, it eliminates other fun aspects of baseball, and makes the game one dimensional and dull.

That's true enough. We don't know what we don't know, and there's always the potential for some groundbreaking idea to shake things up. That's why it's important to fund research, even if that research doesn't have obvious practical applications.

But this sort of innovation comes from having an actual solution that makes tangible improvements. It does not come from someone saying "this technology hasn't changed in years, we need to find some way to innovate!" That sort of thinking is how you get stuff like Hyperloop or other boondoggles that suck up a lot of investments without solving any problems.

Sometimes something is a "solved" problem. There hasn't been a lot of innovation in say, firearms, because we pretty much figured out the best way to make a gun ~100 years ago and there isn't much to improve.

Not everything needs innovation, and trying to innovate anyway just creates a solution in search of a problem.

For sure, but do you think a complete ban on car traffic in Manhattan would ever get passed? Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Being uncomfortable != being unsafe. It's not wrong to feel uncomfortable around, say, drug users or homeless people. And it's valid to complain about that! But that does not mean you're actually unsafe, and conflating that just isn't helpful.

Humans are not perfectly rational actors, and will often make the "wrong" decision when better options are available. Especially when a given decision may not be bad individually, but adds up when a bunch of people make the same decision. In these cases, you have to not only incentivize the behavior you want, but disincentivize the behavior you don't want.

If it was solely up to the opposing party, then they'd strike down every single expert. The judge still is the ultimate decider on what evidence (including expert testimony) is admissible.

Stocks have always been influenced by stuff outside of company performance. This is why you should look at other metrics to see how successful a company actually is.

Also, companies don't exist in a vacuum. Every US company is impacted by the actions of the federal government. Some companies may be able to come out ahead, but many others will struggle. And predicting which is which is incredibly difficult.

That's why the phrase "don't try and catch a falling knife" exists. We have no idea if prices will rebound shortly, or continue to take a nose-dive. Trying to time the market is a gambling strategy, not an investment strategy.

Even if the underlying code is "bad", who cares? There are far more important skills in indie game development then programming ability. I'd much rather play an interesting, well-designed game with a few bugs and messy code over a well-programmed but boring game.

No matter how high you set a maximum limit for interactions on social media (followers, friends, posts, etc), someone will reach the limit and complain about it. I can see why Bluesky would prefer a "soft limit", where going above the limit will degrade the experience. It gives more flexibility to adjust things later, and prevents obnoxious complaints from power users with outsized influence.