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not_wyoming

165 karma · joined January 10, 2023

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not_wyoming··on Felony Bench
I don't think this is a difficult question. The US has a history of civil product liability cases - see tobacco companies (Philip Morris), the Ford Pinto, the recent Meta cases, and the cases against character.ai.

From Investopedia [1], "[f]or a product liability claim to succeed, the plaintiffs in the suit must prove that a product was defective at the time it was transferred from the accused, and that the defect did cause the injury that's been claimed". It doesn't seem like a huge leap to me to argue that these models were defective insofar as they could not be safely used in a way that did not break the law.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not arguing that this is legally cut-and-dry, but I do expect that we'll have some answers about whether AI companies bear any sort of product liability sooner than later.

1 - https://www.investopedia.com/the-5-largest-u-s-product-liabi...

not_wyoming··on Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)
Even better!
not_wyoming··on Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)
I agree. Software engineers are approaching a level of societal impact that it would be appropriate to start thinking about professional ethics systems similar to Canada's Iron Ring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring).

I also think there's a long, long way between here and there, especially in the US. Requiring ethics in CS programs seems more immediately attainable to me, but I agree that it isn't a standalone fix.

not_wyoming··on Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)
My original comment was more about the quality of discourse in this thread being...somewhat lacking. I'd hope that an ethics course would at least equip CS grads to have a more substantive debate about these sorts of topics. I agree that many students would dial it in for an ethics course (just like they do for many required courses), but I also think there's likely some value in exposure, and it's difficult to argue that ethics are irrelevant to software engineering given the frequency of discussions like this one.

(And, to be fair, it's a discussion board on the Internet, so maybe my expectations are just out of whack.)

not_wyoming··on Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)
Interesting. I don't know. Do you have specific sources you're thinking of?
not_wyoming··on Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)
> My university had over 4 for the cyber students

What program? Or if you'd rather stay anonymous, can you share the curriculum somehow? I'm very curious about what a CS program of study looks like with that many ethics courses.

In the US, many undergrad programs award a minor with 15-18 hours of study in the subject (or 5-6 standard courses). Four ethics courses would basically get you to a philosophy minor.

not_wyoming··on Civic Hygiene – avoid building technologies that could be used by a police state (2013)
This entire thread is such a strong case for why all undergrad CS programs should have a core requirement of at least one ethics course.
not_wyoming··on The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It
I actually did this - I plugged The Verge article into Claude and got the following critique of what biases are there:

> The article accurately cites real Gallup data but selectively omits findings that complicate its "backlash" narrative — most notably that curiosity is Gen Z's single most common emotion toward AI, and that daily users remain substantially more hopeful and excited than the aggregate figures suggest. The 79% "laziness" concern and declining hope figures are presented as evidence of generational rejection, when the researchers themselves describe what they found as "deep ambivalence." *In short, the article uses real numbers to tell a cleaner, more oppositional story than the underlying polling actually supports.*

Then I then put that Claude critique back into Claude and asked it to analyze the critique for bias and agendas and got this:

> The critique accurately catches real flaws in The Verge article — particularly the omission of "curiosity" as Gen Z's top emotion and the failure to distinguish between heavy users (who are more positive) and non-users (who drive most of the negativity). However, *the critique has its own directional bias, consistently framing every correction in ways that soften the negative trend, while ignoring data that cuts the other way — like the sharp positivity decline even among daily users, and the near-majority of Gen Z workers who see AI as a net negative in the workplace. *Both pieces are selectively using the same real data to tell opposite stories; the Gallup findings themselves are more nuanced and more negative than the critique allows.*

So according to Claude, Claude is biased in how it describes The Verge as biased.

LLMs are breakthrough technologies. The AI products we have today are SaaS products built by companies doing everything they can to find people who will pay for them. Very, very different things.

not_wyoming··on The More Young People Use AI, the More They Hate It
> The cool thing about the current generation of AI tools is how easy it is to uncover bias or an agenda in an article like this.

This is only true if you assume that an AI tool is itself unbiased. I'm not sure how anyone can earnestly believe AI tools are unbiased after Grok's MechaHitler episode [0], unless they just aren't giving it much critical thought.

0 - https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-...

not_wyoming··on Why AI companies want you to be afraid of them
To my mind, "if we don't say this is dangerously powerful, we will not be able to hire the talent we need to build this product" is the supply-side version of "if we do say this is dangerously powerful, it will make people want to buy our product".
not_wyoming··on Our Changing Planet, as Seen from Space
The "natural cycle" argument is one of the most common points around climate change denial. It's also one of the most commonly debunked. See the following:

UN - https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/debunking-eight-...

MIT - https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/todays-climate-change-simila...

Columbia University - https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2017/04/04/how-we-know-cli...

It's also unclear to me how scientists might not have enough data to validate climate change in the last several hundred years, but they do have enough data to validate the natural cycle hypothesis spanning thousands of years.

I'm not going to engage more deeply here because this post has the smell of trolling to it, but if you're engaging in good faith, there are hundreds of reputable reports refuting the natural cycle hypothesis:

https://www.google.com/search?q=natural+cycle+arguments+on+c...

not_wyoming··on I'm done with social media – Or: why I have a blog now
Path (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(social_network) was ten years too early.
not_wyoming··on Launch HN: Miyagi (YC W25) turns YouTube videos into online, interactive courses
That would mean poaching lol
not_wyoming··on My sourdough starter has twins
Um, what?

Baking has been a major hobby for 15 years. I know the dangers of raw egg and flour but licking the bowl/beaters/spoons is still a major highlight of many of my recipes. And, of course, there's always raw cookie dough.

Maybe not the smartest choice for longevity and health, but yes, eating raw flour is totally a thing!

not_wyoming··on Geothermal power is a climate moon shot beneath our feet
Relatedly, I've read a couple of neat articles on using mine shafts as gravity batteries: https://bigthink.com/the-future/coal-mines-gravity-battery-e...

Major footnote here that I'm wayyyy out of my wheelhouse on this stuff, so there may be reasons that this doesn't work. I invite correction if that's the case so we can all learn some stuff :)

not_wyoming··on Material Theme has been pulled from VS Code's marketplace
Are you contending that's what happened here? This is not a leading question, I genuinely do not know and am trying to learn more.
not_wyoming··on Show HN: I built an app to stop me doomscrolling by touching grass
/r/angryupvote

:)

not_wyoming··on The PayPal Mafia is taking over America's government
In the US, reporting true things is literally never considered slander [0][1][2].

The legal system has recognized truth as a wholly adequate defense to claims of defamation (which includes slander) dating back to 1734 [3] - before the Constitution even written (1787).

--

[0] - "Under the United States law, a statement cannot be held to be actionable as slanderous or libellous if the statement is true but has "slight inaccuracies of expression", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_truth

[1] - "Truth is widely accepted as a complete defense to all defamation claims." https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

[2] - "Truth is an absolute defense to defamation." https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/privileges-defenses-...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peter_Zenger

not_wyoming··on What do you visualize while programming?
Retirement
not_wyoming··on New York Times tech workers union votes to authorize a strike
This line of questioning is often brought up in response to pay gap conversations. Universal trends do not explain individual data points, but in general, studies do seem to indicate that pay gaps are real.

https://www.epi.org/publication/what-is-the-gender-pay-gap-a...

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/07/01/racial-ge...

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/women-of-color-and-...

not_wyoming··on Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal
Juiciest update I’ve ever gotten to share: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/technology/google-antitru...
not_wyoming··on Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal
The air travel industry has also seen some of the most significant government regulation in the form of blocking mergers (ie monopolistic, anticompetitive behavior) - meaning that competition in the airline space is due to regulation, not free market dynamics alone.

I’m happy to continue this debate if you’d like to start supporting your posts with citations but probably won’t engage further unless you do. Have a great day!

not_wyoming··on X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm
It would certainly be strange if I were concerned.
not_wyoming··on Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal
> Monopolies are entirely consistent with free market economics.

This is a fair critique. I'm approaching this from an admittedly American perspective in which "free market" colloquially implies competition - but I recognize that competition is not inherently a free market concept.

Good callout!

not_wyoming··on Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal
If you check citations, you'd find the sentence preceding my excerpt on barriers to entry:

"Because barriers to entry protect incumbent firms and restrict competition in a market, they can contribute to distortionary prices and are therefore most important when discussing antitrust policy."

Antitrust policy then links to a page on competition law: "Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies." [0]

So yes, I'd downvote you if I could, but HN doesn't allow downvotes - which is honestly pretty fitting in the context of this conversation.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

not_wyoming··on X redesigns water pistol emoji back to a firearm
Still 15 minutes fixing something that wasn't broken instead of generating revenue or cutting costs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit - and another 10 defending the decision on HackerNews forums

not_wyoming··on No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)
> Small businesses somehow are more inventivized to do this than institutional investors? Because the margins are not sufficient to attract the large businesses?

Yes. When Joe is buying a couple homes, he doesn't have to pay for HR, business dev, legal, compliance, etc etc. And -

> That needs evidence.

Fair enough! I care about this topic, but not enough about this thread to make a carefully cited case here (no offense to you, friend). I'm sharing from anecdotes and personal (albeit unscientific) research.

> Someone buys a two flat, lives in one and rents the other to help pay for the mortgage. That has classically been ok. You're only objecting to the short term ones?

Yep, and I've come around on this. I used to think landlord = bad (in college, we're all young and naive at some point), but I've come around to the real economic need for an LTR market. I'm thinking of cases where an individual buys up a handful of properties to use as STRs, removing them from the LTR market (which reduces supply which increases rates of the remaining units). I have seen this happen in my area in real time but I recognize that it is scientifically unsound to extrapolate that to other areas.

not_wyoming··on Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal
> There is nothing preventing search companies paying the same $60 Million to license content.

Yes, actually, there is - having $60m to throw around.

"Barriers to entry often cause or aid the existence of monopolies and oligopolies" [0]. Monopolies and oligopolies are definitionally the opposite of free market forces. This is quite literally Econ 101.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry

not_wyoming··on No one expects young men to do anything and they respond by doing nothing (2022)
> Institutional housing ownership in the US is not a material contributor to housing price inflation

This statement and citation fail to account for the impact of AirBnB and other STR market-makers on the housing market.

I strongly suspect a big part of housing price increases is the "small business" equivalent of institutional investors - someone buys 1-2 units that they do not plan to occupy and rent them as STRs. Similarly, vacation homes (aka homes that will go unused for the vast majority of the time) are now much, much more affordable if you can book a couple rentals a month to supplement a mortgage.

I'm *sure* AirBnb has some fascinating data on this, but I don't expect to ever see it in the public eye without government intervention (much as we'll likely never see Meta's studies on teen users' mental health).

tl;dr - but what about her airbnbs

not_wyoming··on CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops
> we're a civic tech lab

Obviously not the point of your post, but say more? This sounds like it could be pretty cool!

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