agar

I've read many of your replies, and while I /think/ I understand your point, I am not sure what you're proposing.

Is this a reasonable summary?

> AI = easy, so it should be regulated. It has passed the "threshold of simplicity" (and realism) where new legislation should be enacted.

> Photoshop = harder, so it should not be legislated.

If so, what happens when Photoshop releases a "copy/paste a face" feature (a desired general photo editing capability) that uses GenAI to merge background, skin tone, lighting, etc.? That could easily be a beginner-level feature (ctrl-c/ctrl-v with auto-segmentation) and be used to create porn.

Are you proposing that the feature be regulated because it's become too easy? That artificial barriers of difficulty be implemented?

Again, what are you proposing be the outcome?

Hard disagree. Many security "breaches" are really the discovery of customer data in an S3 bucket "that no one is using in an out of the way data store that otherwise wouldn't need to be touched."

Forcing companies to track and manage the data in their stewardship is necessary because clearly the economic incentive is not high enough - by your own admission. It's easier (and cheaper) to just leave around. But - when, not if - it's hacked, /I/ bear the cost of their negligence, not them.

This is exactly why consumer protection laws are needed.

As a California resident who regularly opts out of data collection (and also, incidentally, works in tech), as a consumer I don't really care what you or your clients think. I just want you to comply with the law.

A remarkably high percentage of our legal framework is designed to protect a very small number of people from being exploited by another small number of people. Yes, the costs of implementing these laws are high, but the societal benefits are, in aggregate, huge.

My personal information is my own, just like my house, my car, my investments, my copyrights, and bank accounts. And I expect there to be laws that protect it, allow me to control it, and restrict how others can use it just as there are for my other assets.

If applying these laws is inconvenient, then that speaks volumes as to how overdue these laws were.

An under-discussed aspect of this pricing structure is the number of older games that will simply be pulled from the (virtual) shelves. I've already seen a few and I fear more devs will follow suit.

The ripples and unintended consequences of this move could really be significant for years.

Lonesome Dove was a revelation. A book I started reading twice before finally finishing it on the third go. Somehow that time the characters stuck, the landscape was seared into my brain, and the story drew me in deep. No fan of Westerns, I still absolutely loved it. Beautifully written, entertaining, and a clear masterpiece. And yet, I've never really had the urge to read the sequels.

Consequently I read this profile with no knowledge of Lawrence Wright. Enjoyed it too. But then got to the end and...Holy cow, what a resume on this guy!

> LAWRENCE WRIGHT is the author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and named one of Time’s Top 100 Books of All Time. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and winner of three National Magazine Awards. His 2013 book, Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, was made into an HBO documentary that won three Emmys, including one for best documentary. Wright is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Society of American Historians, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He plays keyboards in the Austin-based blues band WhoDo.

CSVi is quite clever. It immediately conjures the idea that its an editor for CSVs.

I assumed from the HN headline that Modern CSV version 2 was an iteration on some new CSV specification.

Yeah, I totally get it's a high quality problem. And, I feel you. Not to be "back in my day..." but I had to work 40 hours a week and live with 3 other people off campus to put myself through school. I understand sacrifice and hard choices.

But dude, after all that I wanted to give my kids the college experience I couldn't have. Let them live on campus, not have to work to pay tuition, be able to enjoy the benefits of both a strong curriculum and extra-curriculars and maybe even a social life to build networks for the future.

After working my own ass off my whole life, I make good money and have kids that can go almost anywhere. But...can't. All the living in a trailer park and full-time work will barely make a dent in some of these numbers.

But this really isn't a "woe is me" - I talk to a lot of other parents in exactly the same situation. I'm just at one end of a systemic middle class problem. You're either rich, in which case dropping $200K-$400K for a bachelors isn't a problem, or you're poor, in which case there's huge need-based aid available today.

If you're in the middle though, you're either squeezed out or taking on massive debts. This isn't even touching on the declining value of a bachelors and possible need to pay another $50-$60K for a Masters just to have an ROI.

(and I really wasn't slagging UNT. It's a fine school. My point was that it's hard to shift a teenager's thinking from a "dream school" to an affordable school without a significant amount of disappointment -- and the concomitant feelings of failure as a parent.)

This is exactly right.

It also forces 18 year-olds to commit to a high $ major on day 1, then stick with it no matter what. What if you're undecided, but still want to be in a good university while you figure it out? What if you realize you hate computer science but don't want to transfer universities? These would be horrible causes of anxiety, stress, and burn-out.

Of course there are options; there's community college, transferring, less prestigious schools, etc.

However, it sucks to tell your kid that worked their ass off their whole life that they can't go to their first choice schools because of administrative mismanagement. Read the WSJ article that is linked elsewhere to see the systemic issues facing higher education. It's bleak.

"Congratulations, you got into Rice! Can I interest you in University of North Texas instead?"

The most costly, of course, are private schools (which is where my daughter wants to go).

However, the "financial back-up plan" of in-state 4-year universities is not exactly affordable either. In-state cost of UCLA, for example, is $37,385. UC Davis is $38,956 for California residents.

Speaking as a parent, the state of higher education is shocking.

Costs of $300,000 for a 4-year degree ($75K/year for tuition, fees, and housing) is not just possible, it's essentially the norm for many schools that aren't even top-tier. Even state schools will run about $200,000, all-in. God forbid you have more than one child.

Universities tout their need-based financial aid, but the cut off is often far below the median salary in high cost of living areas. At that point the aid is "Congratulations, you qualify for student loans!"

It's great that more lower-income families can get a full scholarship, but the middle class has been priced out of everything but state schools and community college.

Apple bought NextVR (and shuttered or stealthed it), whose sports-broadcast-in-VR platform was fantastic even years ago when I watched NBA games in my original Rift. No one has really stepped into that space since.

Concerts in VR are a real and big thing already.

Examples:

Fatboy Slim: https://youtu.be/u1ulTKJNj7Y?t=145 (watch for at least 30 seconds)

Notorious BIG: https://themusicuniverse.com/meta-announces-exclusive-notori...

Megan Thee Stallion: https://www.livedesignonline.com/news/bring-thee-hottieverse...

They talked about it at last year's Connect conference:

https://mashable.com/article/meta-connect-wrist-controller-h...

> it's also the only speed bump left to unlimited money printing.

I have never once heard during the budget negotiation process, "we cannot increase this budget because it will put us over the debt limit."

The debt limit restricts the US from paying for things it has already purchased. It in no way stops the US from purchasing them, or budgeting for them, in the first place.

Using the debt limit as a means of controlling future budget negotiations (in other words, "adopt my budget priorities or I will tank the economy") is exactly why Fitch downgraded US debt, thereby increasing the cost of debt service and exacerbating the problem you're concerned about.

I always thought that if the same amount of engineering and investment that went into overcoming the 8088 architecture instead was redirected into a more sane CPU architecture, development of the PC industry would have been accelerated by about a decade.

I'm talking products like QEMM, Sidekick (and the whole "terminate and stay resident" industry), expanded vs. extended memory, and other massive engineering efforts by major software (Lotus, Ventura Publisher, etc.). Time spent overcoming the limitations of the 640K barrier, segmented memory, and similar design challenges could have been spent in more productive ways, as could be seen in the development of other ecosystems on a comparative shoestring budget.

Granted I was an Amiga aficionado back in the late '80s/early 90's, so I'm comparing things like the ATI VGA Wonder (1988) to the Video Toaster (1990), or early efforts at GUIs (like GEM) to the multitasking OS of Amiga. But still, I think the point stands.

100%.

On a related note, I could see Apple improving the AirPod Pro's ability to protect hearing through improved isolation combined with a modified Transparent mode. Such a "concert mode" device would effectively moderate the volume to a reasonable decibel rating but keep the audio sounding pure and unmuffled, improving over even concert earplugs. Current devices are almost, but not quite there[1].

Making health or safety claims often risks running afoul of FDA regulations; I don't know if that's the case here, but the more open hearing aid FDA rules may allow such use cases with lower risk. IMO this, plus hearing aids, make an "AirPad Pro+"'s market too large for them to ignore.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/can-airpods-pro-prot...

Credit where credit is due. It was bipartisan legislation that was signed into law by Trump.

Rollout and re-regulation was very slow, with additional hearing aids being made available over the next few years but with the FDA seemingly maintaining a fairly strong regulatory hand.

The Biden administration pushed the FDA to fully implement the law and gave a 120-day deadline. I'm sure work was already in progress, but the FDA pushed and met the deadline which brings us to today.

IMO this is a case where politics worked. Biden gets a "win" by touting this as more affordable healthcare and helping the middle class. Trump will I'm sure take credit for signing it into law, and republicans will highlight it as a win for deregulation.

In the end though, this should be an unvarnished good for millions with hearing impairment that can't afford hearing aids, but also for many companies who can now innovate without onerous FDA testing requirements.

Put the salt in tanker ships and dump it out at sea across a wide area. Cargo ships are massive, and desal plants would likely be in bays (i.e., not on "wild coasts") where there are ample loading docks in nearby harbors.

Again, seems like a solvable problem with minimal incremental infrastructure (particularly given the overall cost of desalination plants with adequate urban capacity).

Worth calling out that Bradley has denied that claim entirely.

> The source in question came to me with a prepared information package. I did not personally seek out this person or attempt to bribe or entice them into leaking trade secrets.

Full clarification post here:

https://twitter.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/16251978833088389...

I'm confused as to your proposed solution. Should the new employees not been hired, and existing employees overworked due to understaffing? Should they have hired contractors and not paid benefits like healthcare?

The companies I'm aware of that exist in cyclic industries (game dev, retail) tend to either have brutal cyclical layoff periods, leverage a ton of contractors, outsource their work to other firms, or hire seasonal workers.

What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort of thing"?

> probably involves at least some understanding of the status quo.

Oh man, you had me going with such a vivid metaphor. I was really hoping for a payoff in the end, but you abandoned it. The easy close would be "probably involves at least some understanding of the existing terrain" but I was optimistic for something less prosaic.

I agree the topic is complex and fraught. I have opinions but they're not strongly held or informed by debate, and unfortunately I don't think even a generally well-moderated forum like HN is the best place to have that debate (plus I don't have time).

However, in this case I wasn't trying to argue how moderation should work, I'm trying to examine a hypothesis on how it does work. The additional mapping of statistical crime data I mentioned would help measure whether that hypothesis is correct.

As I said in a sibling comment, my wording was imprecise. When I said "it makes sense to use crime stats to weight moderation strength" I really meant "If OpenAI was trying to avoid additional harm to already targeted groups then to verify that it would make sense to..." So it was the results of the post's research that I suggested should be mapped against statistics, not the results of ChatGPT's output.

In answer to your sincere question though, and at the risk of going down a rabbit hole, I'll say this. Censorship is bad, but I can see why some may be required (see "yelling fire in a movie theater," libel, direct threats of violence, etc.). The question then becomes, how do you minimize censorship while also attempting to avoid direct harm?

In short, asymmetric filtering could potentially limit the amount of censorship by focusing it on groups that are actively attacking other groups.

This is a bit out of context. My point is that the article's results should be mapped against hate crime statistics to illuminate a possible rationale for the bias.

I'm not taking a position on whether this bias should inform the results of ChatGPT. I have opinions on the topic, but they are not strongly held.

(Rereading my comment I see why it appears I'm taking a side here. When I said "it makes sense to..." I meant that "[if the intent of OpenAI's moderation was to align moderation strength with statistics then it would] make sense to...")

There is a fundamental question this article (and most debate) overlooks: what is the objective of the content moderation?

Is it to avoid all hate in an equal way? Or is it to reduce potential harm?

If the latter (which I would argue is the case, primarily to avoid legal liability), then the results should be mapped against statistics representing actual violence against certain groups.

Is there more harm against women then men? Then by that metric it makes sense to have stricter moderation for statements targeting women. Is there more violence targeted at Christians or Muslims? More political violence by the left or by the right?

While politically and emotionally fraught, there is a lot of research out there that answers these questions. It would not surprise me if the answers line up fairly well with the bar chart at the bottom of this article.

A single senator and an entire political party

OP is right. Manchin gets the blame but 50 others voted against it as well, many who would be willing to cross the aisle but for the toxic partisan environment in this country.

The assignment of blame to VR/AR for Facebook's stock drop is mostly media noise and not reality. The "metaverse" term is cringeworthy, the technology is early and easy to critique, and the tech-savvy public hates Zuckerberg. All this combines to create easy click bait about how VR is leading to Meta's problems.

In reality, Apple's changes to tracking in OS 14.5 has cost Facebook at least $10B in annual revenue and - far worse from an investment thesis perspective - likely continues to constrain growth for the foreseeable future. As a growth stock, this is poison.

Yes, VR/AR investments are also $10B, but they can be turned off and there is a revenue stream coming from them today (at least 10M users, at least $500M in app store revenue) and a potential large market in the future.

A $10B hit to annual revenue in perpetuity and growth cut from 36% to 12% is a far worse problem and a huge overhang on the stock.

That story just doesn't get clicks though. You can't accompany that article with a stupid picture of Zuck's comical avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower and make jokes about missing legs in the metaverse.

Did you see https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/v2-changes.htm?

The article title has been revised to more accurately reflect the researcher's position (and removes the AI ambiguity): "Google Researcher, Long Out of Math, Cracks Devilish Problem About Sets"

Should the title of this HN entry be updated accordingly?

> CO2 has been decreasing

You're looking at the wrong statistic, my friend. Climate is a global issue, so global emissions matter more than US emissions. Try this graph, from your same source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...

(Of course CO2 declined in 2020-2021 due to the pandemic shutdown. Unfortunately, 2023 global CO2 emissions will likely continue the prior growth trend.)

Your comment that the proper application of regulation, carbon capture, and nuclear energy would fuel declines is fine and I support all of the above. However, climate deniers and opportunists cherry-pick data and stall needed regulation in the name of politics and economics.

Carbon Engineering-type solutions and generalized R&D into massive climate capture is absolutely necessary, but has little to no business model behind it without a carbon tax or other market-driven incentive. Again, climate deniers lambaste government-funded climate R&D and free-market incentives (i.e., accurately pricing carbon) as either pork-barrel politics or unnecessary and broad overreach. I'm being kind, because people at the extremes use much more dire language.

Carbon Engineering is a fascinating case study and odd place to hang your hat. They are a startup, with 142 employees on LinkedIn and their flagship plant "is expected to capture one million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually when complete."[1] Humans emit approximately 35 billion metric tons of carbon annually, so it would take 35,000 Carbon Engineering plants in production to get us to carbon neutrality. And even then, our atmospheric CO2 is still 100 ppm higher than it was in 1960[2]. Who pays for building those plants? At best-case cost of $94/ton, who pays the $94M/year operating cost per plant, or $3.3 trillion per year?

Actually reversing the carbon impact requires us to massively reduce emissions and massively invest in carbon capture. We're not doing either.

Nuclear is a phenomenal technology, but a political and regulatory nightmare. Thankfully it's being re-thought, but that will take time - as will the process of building them. Significant additional nuclear power won't be connected to the grid for a minimum of 7 years, maybe 10. It's just not enough.

This is why "all of the above" is such an important concept. We need to invest in research, revise regulations, create market incentives, and use wind and solar that are available today to feed our growing need for power instead of building new coal and gas fired plants.

But there will never be the political will to do all of that when people delude themselves to believe carbon is declining (it's not), solutions will appear on their own (they won't), we aren't affecting the climate (we are), and the drive to shift to a lower carbon footprint is because a cabal of elites want to take over the world (they probably are, but that's always been the case and that doesn't mean climate change isn't real).

[1] https://carbonengineering.com/ [2] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_Engineering#Pilot_plant...

I can't help but think of two webcomics when I read your comments:

"they want to flip the economic system..." https://www.butajape.com/comic/conspiracies/

And "of course the climate changes--it always has" https://m.xkcd.com/1732/

What you fail to recognize, or refuse to recognize, is that global conspiracies to take over the world are completely unnecessary to explain everything you mention. Just pretend for a moment that human behavior really is warming the planet and, if continued, will have devastating effect. Some people would freak out. Some would not care because they'll be dead before they feel the impact. And some people would tell others what to do but hypocritically continue to act in their own self-interest.

The harsh truth is that conspiracies rarely pass Occam's Razor.