Recurecur

This was a well-written and thought provoking article. The USA bashers out there should contemplate a world where the Chinese PLAN has assumed the role of the US Navy. Hint: it wouldn’t be pretty.

Where the essay goes off the tracks is in its conspiratorial view that the US no longer wants to perform the role of securing maritime trade. Instead, the US is intent on expanding its Navy, and the Trump administration clearly recognizes that trade is crucial for future American and worldwide prosperity.

It’s America First, not America Only. ;-)

We should get to the point fairly quickly where “written by AI” is far less relevant than the accuracy and timeliness of what was written…

Were the points made in the article valid? Mostly, it was well worth a read, with or without AI involvement.

One issue with private, for-profit organizations is their major focus is “creating shareholder value”, which is apparently the modern way of saying “making money”. That, along with competition (if applicable, see below), drives them towards minimizing costs, increasing efficiency, and innovating.

Government has the major focus of taking money, and largely spending it arbitrarily. It’s inarguable that the US Federal Government is bloated, corrupt, and vastly inefficient. Despite taking in $trillions in revenue every year, the US has $40 trillion in debt. That’s utterly inexcusable, and heads should roll.

Getting back to the discussion about private enterprise, would you characterize Amazon as bloated, corrupt, and inefficient, despite being an effective monopoly? I would not, though I’ll admit I have no data on the corruption aspect…

We shall see about how much of nursing can be automated. I do think that the human presence of a nurse (particularly if of the opposite sex to the patient) is helpful. That could still be provided on a less frequent basis.

As to the rest of their function, I think probably the biggest obstacle will be the ability to safely manipulate the human body, as in turning or moving the patient. That requires delicacy, advanced tactile sensors, and physical power. For fine detail work, such as finding a vein with a needle, the technology already exists. Elon Musk also predicts that robotic surgery will rapidly outpace human surgeons, and I agree there.

On the subject of human teachers, my comment is similar to that about human nurses. A human connection helps with motivation. That said, I think video serves much the same function, and with video one teacher can reach an unlimited number of classrooms. That’s independent of how humanistic the teaching robots will become, and I expect that will also improve rapidly. We are nearing singularity like situations with engineering problems, in other words recursive improvement without much if any human intervention.

I think you’re failing to factor in the rapid improvement in robotics.

I was at the hospital a few days ago, and was pondering the numerous nurses who were wheeling around portable nursing stations with monitors and various types of equipment. They’d stop at a room, take a patient’s blood pressure (among various other things), type some notes, and move on. I can easily imagine most nursing tasks being subsumed by robotics.

The same goes for brewers, soldiers, cops, and teachers. Soldier, cop, and teacher robots are already being tested, or actually deployed…and it’s early yet. If a safe, highly dense source of power is developed, that will vastly accelerate the process. At best, there will be far fewer humans involved, monitoring the robots, much as software engineers are now monitoring the agentic AIs.

I’m not sure how human society will adapt. The optimistic view (championed by Elon Musk) is that we’re headed for a “Star Trek economy” of essentially endless abundance for everyone. I hope things play out somewhere along those lines…

I’ve personally been impacted very heavily by LLM technology. Two of my major skills, coding and writing, have been greatly devalued by it. I’m relying on one of the truly core human traits to compensate - adaptability. That’s an area where LLMs currently lag far behind.

We’ll see how things go from here… ;-)

> we definitely don't have news or straight up video of people who are regular citizens getting killed for no reason by ICE or even non-citizens getting effectively executed without trial.

You may have made-up “news” from the usual suspects, but you don’t have video. The videos of Good, Pretti, and the alien recently shot for using his vehicle as a weapon sure don’t show innocent victims dying at the hands of ICE. Any other law enforcement agency involved in the same incidents would have acted much the same.

In every case, the deceased put themselves in situations that lead to their deaths.

In two cases (Good and the alien), they attempted to use their vehicles as weapons.

In Pretti’s case he brought a pistol to a protest (illegal in his location), inserted himself into a detainment attempt, and struggled with officers. He may not have fired the shot that startled the officers surrounding him, causing them to fire (they all knew he was carrying), but he would sure be alive today if he hadn’t done the other things.

They say stupidity should be painful. In these cases, it was fatal.

They’re a threat to those fearing deportation or arrest for criminal activity. If you’re not in those categories, you have exactly nothing to worry about.

I’m a lot more worried about the giant NSA data centers like the one in Utah, funded under prior administrations. Those are definitely warehousing wide-ranging data about all Americans (and others), harvested right off the Internet backbone…

Good! Illegal aliens shouldn’t get credit from any source. They’re bad risks, especially if they get deported…

You folks are both mentally ill, and extremely misinformed.

One might say brainwashed…

You’re misconstruing the situation. Only 10 million subscribers means a vast growth opportunity.

I think there’s easily potential for a billion subscribers eventually.

We’ll how that prediction turns out…

My informed opinion says that you are wildly wrong.

(Also don’t forget the Starlink related military contracts that SpaceX has.)

Starlink is wonderful for many reasons.

It allows technical folk to live wherever they’d like as long as they’re working remotely.

The mobile applications, particularly in the case of airline aircraft, have also been compelling and worth a lot of money to SpaceX.

Starlink has also brought broadband Internet to a vast number of people that would not have had it otherwise. This will boost the worldwide economy by an enormous amount.

Since you have such strong (and numerous) opinions…

AI is a tool, and one that governments of all stripes will use for many things, including military applications. It’s overly simplistic to say “AI was used to bomb things”. There’s always a human making the decision to hit a target or not in Israel and America. Of course, that won’t necessarily be the case in totalitarian countries…

As to hitting the school, bear in mind that it was literally part of a military base.

On energy use, there’s actually no reason to limit it unless worldwide usage grows by orders of magnitude. What does need to happen is a transition to clean sources. Natural gas isn’t ideal, but still much better than coal. However, there’s a lot of interest in modular nuclear reactors for this application, which would be fine.

As to how well current AI works, the canard “Past performance does not guarantee future results” applies. We’re just at the infancy of the tech.

Your anecdotal screeds of hate towards AI should be balanced with the numerous stories here on HN and elsewhere of people using it very successfully and happily. As to the general populace, the daily usage figures for ChatGPT and other chatbots belie the hate you’re claiming to be universal.

Finally, yes the price increases on RAM and SSDs aren’t great. This too shall pass as more capacity comes online due to the wonders of capitalism. Don’t panic! ;-)

Pretty funny to be downvoted so heavily. Sadly, it appears the average HN reader is pretty far left and woke. China is NOT your friend.

I didn’t even express a preference for or against AI…

Nonsense. The sea floor in those areas is soft muck, 20,000 ft or more deep.

The waste, likely packaged in torpedo shaped structures made of corrosion proof, high density, high strength materials, would arrive at somewhere around 150 MPH. Being extremely dense and heavy, they would penetrate deeply into the sea bottom, estimated at 35-55 meters deep. There’s no chance they’d somehow be forced back to the surface. Even if they were, being sealed they would be harmless.

Even if by some miracle one broke open at the sea floor, the nuclear material is dense and wouldn’t disperse. There’s very little life to affect down there regardless.

For a thorough analysis (which shows how useful the frontier models are getting at this kind of thing), see https://x.com/i/grok/share/276607c72b5e4f639527935cbc614fa0

We should all keep in mind that foreign interests, primarily China, are astroturfing to drive resentment in the USA against AI and datacenters. National governments are largely viewing AI as a strategic capability.

That’s not to say there aren’t downsides, but they vary quite a bit depending on location and grid capacity.

I actually expect there will be major progress made on the energy efficiency and performance of LLM models using novel hardware. So, the buildout may overshoot by quite a bit… If so I hope we can find a use for all those racks…

A much better, safer, and cheaper idea is dropping suitably packaged waste on the subducting side of the Mid Pacific Subduction Zone. It’d be inert long before seeing daylight again…

The only downside is the “waste” is quite valuable. MSRs can also use it, and their waste is only dangerous for ~300 years.

>Trucks and guns pose outsized risks to bystanders, and if you don't agree with that, you are either being grossly disingenuous or you're just extremely stupid. In the case of trucks, you can literally just go read OP's article if you want to learn more about the risks they pose, but I suspect you have no interest in doing so.

I did read the entire article. One point you may have missed is the same increase in frontal height happened in other countries, but didn’t result in the same increases in pedestrian fatalities. It’s likely that other factors are in play in the USA.

Various tools represent varying levels of risk to bystanders. Every auto or truck is a potentially lethal weapon.

Guns and large vehicles are similar in that both increase the safety of the owner. There’s no downside as long as the owner is responsible. One flaw in the NYT analysis was around the “A column” blind spot. No competent driver will look for pedestrians without moving his head enough to eliminate that blind spot.

There is no denying that large vehicles are safer for their occupants, the statistics are clear. Regardless of whether large trucks and SUVs are in play, the major offenders will remain…those being delivery trucks, busses, and semis.

On a final note, everyone in the USA has the legal right to own firearms for self defense, as it should be. Many in Europe are wishing for the same thing about now…

My impression was that Gossamer has good Rust FFI rather than basic C FFI, sharing struct layout etc. I may play around with Gossamer and see how it really does performance wise…

The syntax similarities help make for a more painless two language approach.

All three points are erased by its ability to call Rust functions…

It’s not a bad approach, in that for most general programming one doesn’t need those things. Granted, macros can be convenient.

It doesn’t have a garbage collector, it uses reference counting with a cycle detector. So, no GC pauses. It should be suitable for hard real time systems.

Ha, sure, not five years from now what about 10? Many times technological paradigm changes have been quite unexpected.

There are no scary vegans, but the humane harvesting of animals for food has occurred for millions of years.

Consuming animal protein is also one of the healthiest things you can do for your body.

Neither trucks nor guns cause a single death. The people using them may cause deaths.

It also should be pointed out that in many cases, both large vehicles and guns save lives.

There is absolutely no denying that larger vehicles are safer in an accident. Anything to the contrary that you have read is propaganda.

In the case of guns, defensive gun uses have actually stopped a tremendous number of crimes. Those statistics were altered by the FBI to make gun ownership less appealing. Note that many of those uses did not involve firing the firearm.

Please educate yourself before you spread more propaganda.

This has been a public service announcement.

No, they lost their state of the art missile and drone factories as well as all of their nuclear facilities. Not to mention their navy and Air Force…

I’m pretty sure the “fresh and energetic leadership” won’t enjoy their positions if hostilities resume, which seems likely.

You’re anthropomorphising.

Actual AI is like the Terminator. There’s no human feeling, it will do what it’s designed to do. No emotion, no remorse.

Cue the swarming drones… :/

Access to space is almost infinitely valuable. It is literally the only way to retrieve extraterrestrial resources, which are effectively infinite.

It also leads the way to extraterrestrial manufacturing, which will be a revolution!

Indeed. Good to hear you’re a Trump supporter!

It’s been confirmed that the entire crew perished, and sadly the max complement of eight was aboard.

RIP!

The answer seems to be large, lightweight sunshades to protect the radiative coolers. That would avoid the degradation due to UV radiation mentioned in the article and would also increase the efficiency of the coolers.