Hacker News Reader

quietthrowon World Train Map – 1247 train routes around the world

Amazing. Also super interesting to see that when you filter for high speed rail it’s basically Japan, China and Europe. America (north and south), Africa - basically the rest of the world is in dark ages

quietthrowon Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets

At the end of the day leadership matters in corporate settings (or for a country for that matter). The person at the helm sets the tone for the culture - what’s acceptable what’s not etc. how to go about achieving a goal. Objectively speaking and leaving out judgement of good or bad- Sam, Trump etc all are extremely good at the skill they bring. And when they are put in a position of power they do end up revealing who they are. Thats the thing about power - once you have it will reveal who you are and you have no control over that And Thats the deal. Sam prolly has no idea about it but given who he is he only has a bunch of narcissistic megalomaniacs surrounding him and so on and so forth with dilution as levels progress

quietthrowon Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

This seems great - one question (ideally for Alan stapleberg) why is this not available for everyone? Seems like this is only applicable to the EU? Genuine question - Why would other governments not want this for their people ? I am sure there is a flip side that EU thinks is not worth more than thier people getting this kind of privacy. But what’s has to be true for some govts to think that the flip side is more beneficial than the privacy aspect. Appreciate if someone can break down how incentive structures are different and hence the resultant choices/positions

quietthrowon Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models

It’s that self interest is what got them to meta in the first place. These people are highly skilled and smart at what they do. They worked probably extremely hard for a large swath of their life to get where they are with meta. It’s one of those classic what got you here won’t get you there scenarios. Self interest has its limits (and so does collectivism). The real intelligence is in knowing when one has stoped working for you and when it’s working against you. Self interest / collectivism etc These are all just tools. We as humans are best when our indentity is that of a tools user (and not that of a single tool user - it’s possible and you may be rewarded for it well but it has its limits and it certainly confines what you can do has a human. It’s a limiting way to live at best )

quietthrowon Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models

It’s implied in someways I would say. that’s why these folks creating any meaningful leverage is a black swan event. Say all of them walk away and meta can get a million new people it’s still a massive risk for the meta (entity) as they may never be able to recover fully. The million new people when band to gather will not form the same larger entity that was existing earlier that made a lot of money. They are not going to be productive day one or year one. What will emerge is a new entity and it could make even more money or even less money as things may never be the same. And that’s a large risk that Meta may or may not take. But without leverage created by banding together / complete solidarity Meta will never be forever to face the risk of it being transformed into a completely different entity that may or may not be as successful as it’s today. And that’s the power of leverage.

quietthrowon Petition against Meta's employee training data collection for ML models

The way I look at it is this:

There is an entity that provides product/service and makes money. A lot of money. Like mind boggling sums of money. That entity has made a deal with a set of humans to give some of that money (which for the humans is very large and or at least hard to ignore) in exchange for their time and skills. The deal is mutual.

This entity is now changing the deal somewhat and the set of humans don’t like it. But not to the point of walking away from the deal. They are used to the money and walking away from it has severe repercussions that only some can absorb. Most can’t absorb. So these humans are doing what they can to alter the recently altered deal as much as possible.

The entity knows for the most part these humans have little to no leverage. There is an extremely rare (almost black swan event) chance that the entity could lose its leverage. The black swan event is that the almost entire set of humans that it made the deal with walks away from the deal. In other words the set of humans transforms from elements of a set in one homogeneous entity or at least behaves like one. Beside this the set of humans individually have very little real leverage. This letter which is from a subset of the original set of humans is an example of an attempt to become a relatively small entity.

Here is the kicker - the original entity is actually emergent entity that emerged from within the set of humans in the first place. Each human in the set has a weight and it’s unequal. And ultimately since from a set of humans multiple entities can emerge entities are simply the sum of weights of the humans that make up that subset. The entity with the most weight(not most humans) has the most leverage.

Does this situation really matter?? Especially since It’s just (largely) two entities and Given the number of entities that emerge and exist from the larger set of 7 or 8 billion humans?

Humans generally relate to other humans that Are like them. If you are a human who is part of a similar low leverage entity you will sympathize with the humans who don’t like the new deal. If you are a human part of a very high leverage entity you probably can’t sympathize with the low leverage entities as much. In the large scheme of things it really dosnt matter for us HN outsiders. And for those humans within meta all I will say is know which entity you are part and if you don’t like the leverage it has, keep working towards changing the situation you are in.

quietthrowon MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble

Apple makes unbelievably good hardware and software that just lasts and just works. Until it’s 7 years old. After that you essentially have to chuck it as you don’t get any updates from Apple and slowly you descend into incompatibility unless you world exists in browser.

I wish once you bought an Apple computer it was truly yours for as long as you wanted it instead of it being dictated by Apple.

Still Great computers though.

quietthrowon A desktop made for one

This. I have written so much software recently to make my computer my own. It’s been so much fun to be able to borrow the the ideas from different tools I have used (eg vim modal behaviours etc ) and also bring them together with some completely novel ideas to produce tools for myself that are one of a kind and that “fits me like a glove“

Too bad this is all on the work computer and need to bring it to my personal one but can’t copy paste lol. It’s been thrilling building g and using them and the time from an ideating a small enhancement/ optimization to actually using it is like 5 to 15 minutes away. Soo cool.

quietthrowon Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

Genuine curiosity: if you are gifted with a certain “wiring” (genes, brain chemistry etc) why is that considered an accomplishment? Also - We, as a society, tend to celebrate people with “natural didn’t really need to work for” type gifts quite inconsistently - eg A supermodel who is gifted with the gift of looks, beauty etc is also in the same category of “natural” talent but sure doesn’t get the same celebration as a prodigy in maths or science. In both cases the people are fundamentally bestowed with abilities they didn’t really have to work extremely hard to acquire but are perhaps looked at differently. What’s kind of psychology is at play here? Would love to understand how we tend to interpret such things and then form beliefs.

I realize and acknowledge both sets had talents and the spent thier time doing something with it to produce something extraordinary but we seem to tend to overlook the massive head start they also had. Why so?

(Totally understandable if you feel like downvoting but I would ask you to articulate and share the cord it struck with you if you down vote)

quietthrowon India's Electric Two-Wheeler Market: Rise, Reset and What Comes Next

Curious how this impact air pollution? My understanding is that the largest contributor of air pollution in cities is vehicles. And if predominantly the vehicles are cars and 2 wheelers and of that the higher percentage is 2 wheelers and if those are changing from petrol to electric then it should make a dent in pollution. As such air pollution could be a proxy of how e-2w benefit the country…

quietthrowon Willis Whitfield: Creator of clean room technology still in use today (2024)

Well said.

quietthrowon Theory – how to make it so nobody's poor

Well the whole thing is damned if the point can’t make it across right.

quietthrowon Theory – how to make it so nobody's poor

Dude - use a LLM. Make it coherent and try again. You owe it to your idea

quietthrowon Cost of AGI Delusion:Chasing Superintelligence US Falling Behind in Real AI Race

Because that’s what is configured as the “default” page to show when somebody goes straight to archive.ph. When you go to archive.ph/someurl the server then serves you a page that corresponds to that url (someurl in this example). When you go to YouTube.com/somerandomstring it takes you directly to the video. But if you just go to YouTube.com you get a bunch of “random” videos as the home page is configured to show that (grossly simplifying )

quietthrowon What to do with an old iPad

Genuine question:

1) I am surprised there is no mention of trading it back to apple? 2) I am sure putting a decent “churn” schedule for apple devices is already been done right? Top of my head I can imagine coming up with one where for of the major product line apple offers (mbp, iPad, iPhone) we can look at the typical depreciation curve and find optimal “get in” points and “get out” points right? How hard could it be. I agreed there is a friction and activation energy needed to going down to the Apple Store and trading it in but you could get a new device every 1-2 years and keep largely churning the same out of money plus a slightly more to top up (call it premium to avoid the anger /pain inflicted by not doing it.)

What am I missing here ?

quietthrowon Prison isn’t set up for today’s tech so we have to do legal work the old way

Aren’t prisons a business run by corporations? And I could be wrong but I recall reading somewhere a while ago that 1 or 2 companies run most of the prisons in USA. As such they probably have no need / incentives driven by market forces to modernize. It’s not exactly a market to begin with in the first place I would say.

quietthrowon Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

This. To me if you are still unprofitable after 15 years you are not really a business.

However genuinely curious about the thesis applied by the VC’s/Funds that invest in such a late stage round? Is it simply they are taking a chance that they won’t be the last person holding the potato? Like they will get out in series L or M rounds or the company may IPO by then. Either ways they will make a small return? Or is the calculus diff?

quietthrowon Study mode

I agree with all that you say. It’s an incredible time indeed. Just one thing I can’t wrap my mind around is privacy. We all seem to be asking sometimes stupid and some times incredibly personal questions to these llms. Questions that we may not even speak out loud from embarrassment or shame or other such emotions to even our closest people. How are these companies using our data ? More importantly what are you all doing to protect yourself from misuse of your information? Or is it if you want to use it you have to give up such privacy and uncomfortableness ?

quietthrowon California has got good at building giant batteries

Genuine question: If CA is mostly getting its energy from Solar why is my energy bill so high especially during winters? Or does solar energy while clean does not necessarily mean cheap?

quietthrowon Observations from people-watching

What’s the name of the book? Can’t just leave that hanging !

quietthrowon Tsunami Warning for Northern California

Interesting observation: I am in a circumstance where I am transitioning from an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy) to a iPhone. I observed that android phone alerted me about an earthquake and that I should be ready to feel tremors. To my surprise as I was pondering how this system works - especially wrt to latency - where it alerts me head of time, I then fell small tremors in 2 or 3 seconds after the alert. The tremors were very small and I would not have noticed it if it weren’t for the alert. ~10 (may 15 minutes) later, the IPhone gave a tsunami warning which I take it was due to the earthquake.

What I was surprised by is how behind the iPhone was. I expected iPhone to be on par with android in terms of safety alerts.

Anybody know if there is a way to get the early alerts on iPhone like I did on the android phone?

In general my impression of Android is that it’s quite ‘leaky’ and apps can abuse it quite easily and iPhone is more secure. Would love to hear thoughts on this or point me to resources that address this question.

quietthrowon Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove

Well said. "Youth is wasted on the young"

quietthrowon Bill limits smartphone use in California schools

> So why are we babying students by incessant confiscation and phone cubby nonsense?

Because your prefontal cortext does not fully grow till you are in your early 20s. A 17 years olds brain is very different from that off a 22 year old. There are different repercussions to arressting development vs letting the brain "grow" and then have it face the issues of the day. Both will still have impact but the latter gives them the best fighting chance.

quietthrowon Ask HN: How do you deal with an off-day?

Genuine question: why does being productive matter on a off day? Isn't an off day ones body's way of telling that it's need something else not what the mind conjures up randomly or something that is instilled in the subconscious through cultural or personal values?

quietthrowon Ask HN: How do people feel about working for Meta?

Just know somebodys hero is another persons zero or villan ;) Having saud that I understand its not a competition.

quietthrowon Ask HN: How do people feel about working for Meta?

This is very close how most are there. There are those who need a paycheck and keep the job but on balance lot of the ones there have drunk the coolaid.

quietthrowon A generalist AI agent for 3D virtual environments

Can you share more about your career shift. What you did before and what you do now. And why the shift was triggered by closedAI 5?

quietthrowon Ask HN: What is Q* (Q star) at OpenAI and how does it threaten humanity

https://drpippa.substack.com/p/q-tigris

Interesting but not sure who this author is.

quietthrowon Emmett Shear becomes interim OpenAI CEO as Altman talks break down

This. Very accurate. At the end of they day this is a battle between academics and capitalists and what they stand for. We generally know how this typically goes…

quietthrowon Ask HN: How many people on Hacker News live in rural areas?

What is the real question here (if there is one). Where one lives, just like everything else has trade offs. And like most (but not all) trade offs the value or the opportunity cost is relative to the individual incurring it. Generally speaking people go where the economic opportunities are because today you need to be a part of the economy to survive. This increases your dependence on things and people. Life in a rural area decreases your dependence on things relatively speaking. Also which stage of your life you are in changes the cost equation. If you have kids you may be someone who doesn’t want their children growing up in a podunk town with few resources. However the opposite could be true for some people where they prefer a smaller idyllic environment compared to a “commoditized” city /urban environment. There is no right or wrong here but where you feel more safe / content. And for most people that is an urban/city or suburban environment. Rural living is definitely on the edges there.