rl3

>I cannot see any reason, over than oversight and a lack of imagination, why something useful in Ukraine in 2022 was not feasible or useful in 2017 by the USA.

Perhaps it had to do with optics? It's not like there was a lack of capability in 2017. [0]

The war in Ukraine provided a way for the US to assist in rapid iteration of the technology without having to shoulder the negative sentiment or grapple with the morality of it.

Also worth noting that the two conflicts were wildly different: Afghanistan was more of an occupation across a much larger area with air superiority. There's not really much impetus to field killer drone swarms when you already have the 24/7 ability to instantly delete most enemy combatants off the map to begin with.

Whereas Ukraine with neither side having air superiority and it resembling something closer to modern trench warfare. In most cases with literal trenches.

>We already used drones quite handily well before that time frame but in a much more limited manner in a different form factor.

The picture below is from 1995. [1]

By approximately 2001 it received the MQ-1A designation indicating it was capable of employing AGM-114 (hellfire) payloads. Kind of crazy to think about.

[0] https://www.twz.com/6866/60-minutes-does-an-infomercial-on-d...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-1_Predator#...

Having written more sed invocations by hand than I care to remember, please bin me in the mediocre camp.

Aside: The speed at which AI can spit out complex diagnostics is nuts. Par is usually half a second for a dozen complex shell commands tailored to the exact problem at hand.

>... Does it have any waste products? ...

There's now commercially-available computers that operate using human neurons.

I figure before too long we'll be feeding our computers Pepto-Bismol and Tums.

>... but as there's no complete feedback loop, it still would require a lot of human effort.

Not for long. Picture this: a robot receives instructions on what to physically solder in order to complete the desired modification task.

However, before it can send an image back to the vision-aware LLM guiding it, the PCB lights on fire along with the robot because said LLM confidently gave the wrong instructions.

Then, the robotic fire brigade shows up and mostly walks into walls unable to navigate anywhere useful.

The future is bright.

I wasn't judging nor disputing that, just think it's a sad commentary on the current state of the world when outsourcing is considered as dirty as scam and cam girl operations.

That won't work for long.

I'm putting my money on miniature RC Incom T-47s complete with tow cables.

It should be required that as soon as firmware detects that its bipedal host has, in fact—had its legs tied up by a snow speeder—that it must proceed with a claymation-style display of panic before falling onto its face.

>... it is a mixed (live women and AI) porn webcam app.

>... various scam niches ...

>... and much more ethical line of business than outsourcing.

Wild.

>..."This is the problem - no wait, we already proved it can't be this - but actually ..."

Ditto. Has me wondering why there isn't a reconciliation pass somewhere on the final output.

At least it's a decent signal for when model confidence is low.

>Be prepared for an eye-watering invoice if you have a bug or get hacked.

Speaking of:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787042

I really hope that person gets a resolution from Cloudflare that doesn't financially ruin them.

>I'm a pre-launch sole proprietor who put all my personal savings into this startup. This bill would financially destroy me for usage that generated zero business value.

That's terrifying.

If I'm not mistaken even AWS tends to forgive instances like this, so here's hoping Cloudflare has a similar disposition.

Good luck!

>1. Is the user productive or distracted?

Pomodoro and todo list apps are so yesterday. Now I can have my graphics card observe me as an ever-vigilant guardian of productivity.

That might sound sarcastic, but moving context between prompts and just keeping the gears turning often isn't really that cognitively engaging these days. Thus, attention suffers.

So, that's actually pretty useful.

sudo humanctl status

Using Claude 4.6 [Extended thinking] exclusively via the web interface: No, not really.

My use case is having Claude tear through an extremely complex Kubernetes setup, reviewing code and drafting plans.

Despite the near-instant answers, it still manages to do this effectively at a speed I can't even hope to keep up with as a human. It's reconciling concerns that easily span dozens of dimensions with each problem I give it.

The trade-off here is that you sometimes see the model make subtle errors in thinking, but they're easily recognized and corrected for when called out. I've also noticed the model will make a statement and then correct itself mid-stream, which sometimes muddles my job of reviewing its output.

Compared to competing top-tier models taking anywhere from 5-40 minutes for a sometimes impeccably-reasoned answer, there's no comparison velocity-wise. The real win is the speed at which Claude troubleshoots, though. Near-instant turns really wins here.

It's tempting to directly assume speed is proportional to quality, but we really don't know what's going on at any given provider's back-end serving configuration, nor the internal model routing configuration.

>... but I found out they were planning to mount teleoperated weapons on the robotic platforms for a demo. I’m not willing to go there, so I resigned without another offer.

There's a ton of anti-drone defense startups currently, but how does one defend against armed bipedal robots? They're a lot heavier than most drones, so presumably they can be decked out with various types of shielding.

As far as I'm aware, phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range don't yet exist.

I think they've taken the integration difficulty into account.

Besides, full redesign isn't so expensive these days (depending).

>It seems like a solution in source of a problem.

Agreed, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Fair enough. I respect the commitment to purity.

In the not so distant future you'll probably be one of the few who haven't had their actual coding skills atrophy, and that's a good thing.

Now you've got me curious about what the Bible has to say about crustaceans, and if anyone's already created a religion around Rust [the programming language].

It might when an individual function has 50 different models reviewing it, potentially multiple times each.

Perhaps part of a complex review chain for said function that's a few hundred LLM invocations total.

So long as there's a human reviewing it at the end and it gets locked, I'd argue it ultimately doesn't matter how the code was initially created.

There's a lot of reasons it would matter before it gets to that point, just more to do with system design concerns. Of course, you could also argue safety is an ongoing process that partially derives from system design and you wouldn't be wrong.

It occurred to me there's some recent prior art here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47721953

It's probably fair to say the Linux kernel is critical infra, or at least a component piece in a lot of it.

Sure, but what replaces it?

You're talking a catastrophic level of pain and suffering if there's nothing to take its place.

>> ...give him unlimited model access

>We do not need vibe-coded critical infrastructure.

I think when you have virtually unlimited compute, it affords the ability to really lock down test writing and code review to a degree that isn't possible with normal vibe code setups and budgets.

That said for truly critical things, I could see a final human review step for a given piece of generated code, followed by a hard lock. That workflow is going to be popular if it already isn't.

That was my attempt at rephrasing a sentence to be more clear in response to an accusation of waffling, I think.

Suffice it to say, point-by-point rebuttal exchanges/slap fights tend to not lead anywhere good, let alone in a comment section that's emotionally charged and personal from the outset.

In retrospect, I should've just left my original comment stand by itself rather than panic and dive into a detailed follow-on explanation which snowballed from there.

I was genuinely trying to post in good faith for positive effect while taking a middle tack that still condemned violence while perhaps humanizing some of the anger.

It didn't quite work out, but I do very much understand where the opposing positions were coming from now.

And, my apologies for swearing.

---

You brought up a dynamic in the second incident's discussion touching on essentially redundant condemnation, where normal people don't bother because it's universally assumed that violence is bad.

Having closely watched the comment section unfold there, I see what you meant by that: it ends up being negative space for what you termed countervailing sentiment to expand within.

I think that was actually the first time I was happy to see a thread taken off the main page early, for everyone's sake.

>>Rather, only stating that such indifference does logically follow in those circumstances.

>This is exactly what I’m talking about.

In other words: There's a lot of people angry about AI right now, and it isn't much of a surprise that indifference and insensitivity follows.

>When you say things like "it's easy to understand how someone arrives at that position", you're laying the groundwork to justify why what you class as "callous indifference" is just a logical and natural state that we should accept.

I didn't say it should be accepted nor was I laying groundwork for justification, be it implicit or explicit.

Rather, only stating that such indifference does logically follow in those circumstances.

Quoting my prior comment:

>>Most people's perception of Sam was shaped in recent years, by press coverage that tends to treat him as the face of AI, with sentiment that usually goes something like: "hey, this guy's stealing all your water so he can take your job too, and by the way he lies a lot."

People's reaction here isn't exactly shocking when taken in that context.

>To borrow your language: fuck them, too.

Yeah, agreed.

>I didn't mean it as a zinger; I meant it as a rebuttal of the line from your comment.

Fair enough.

>If you felt zinged by it, maybe it's worth considering why.

Conditioned response from years of defending comments against immediate pedantry, of which I'm probably guilty of myself. Not saying that you were being pedantic.

>What is your actual point?

Originally dang seemed pretty burnt out from moderating this thread, so I just wanted to pitch in with my two cents saying that he's dealing with a tidal wave of larger negative public sentiment that's perhaps beyond his control.

I think there's an important distinction to be had between whoever threw the cocktail (fuck them), and the folks expressing what I termed callous indifference.

People are allowed to not give a shit and say as much, and while that might be bannable I don't think it's particularly productive to take that route.

Moreover, I thought it was important to note that some people here (like dang presumably) actually know Sam personally, so it might not be appreciated that it comes off as extra ghoulish to them when they're reading said callous comments.

At the same time, if your only source of information about the guy is recent press, it's easy to understand how someone arrives at that position; anti-AI sentiment is gaining popularity rapidly.

That's it. That's my point or stance if you will, I don't think it's that unreasonable; just trying to highlight what I see as a disconnect.

To be clear I'm not saying any of it is justified and generally agree with everything you wrote. The fact that happened to Sam and his family is indeed horrible.

That said, please don't twist my words. I think there's utility in understanding why people feel and act the way they do.

Otherwise, everybody just takes the de facto stance of "those people are intrinsically bad people, and not good people like us!" which is pretty useless and typically just leads to more escalation.

You could also spare me the one-line zinger at the end.

Appreciated, but I would hope that it at least changes your initial read.

On the contrary, not justifying nor condoning anything of the sort.

The main point I was trying to make was in highlighting the perceptual and emotional disconnect between knowing and working with someone personally, versus those who haven't (myself included).

Most people's perception of Sam was shaped in recent years, by press coverage that tends to treat him as the face of AI, with sentiment that usually goes something like: "hey, this guy's stealing all your water so he can take your job too, and by the way he lies a lot."

A couple follow-on points there were:

a) Dan shouldn't take it personally for not being able to control a tidal wave of negative sentiment stemming from that dynamic playing out.

b) I don't think it does anyone any good to dismiss the negative sentiment driving that as mere mob mentality. Even Sam appears to understand this quite well, in the very blog post the submission links to.

To echo another comment[0]:

>... while the vast majority of us think "holy crap, that's horrible" but aren't adding it because of course that's already been said and there just isn't any more nuance needed.

I agree; explicit condemnation just felt performative and hollow.

For what it's worth, I'm actually rooting for Sam assuming his words ultimately line up with his actions, and my opinion of him is neutral or slightly positive. I don't think it's widely appreciated just how crazy a position the guy is in; there's no way he can make everybody happy.

To touch on the hollow part: this is someone pg once described in so few words as more than capable of handling himself. [1]

I recall reading that years ago he insisted offices be swept for bugs after a visit by Musk, and he hangs out with similarly powerful people.

In other words, you don't operate in that world without your security already being excellent, and it's probably going to get even better now. Give it a couple years and he'll probably have a humanoid robot perimeter that'll smoke anyone on sight with a level of efficiency that is comical.

So, in that context taking a thoughts and prayers tone felt a little unnnecessary.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732594

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7280124

I imagine you knew Sam personally when he was President of YC. Most people don't, instead going off what they read in the press. Recent press is often less than flattering, given how contentious AI in general is as of late.

Consider for some it's already hit home in the form of job loss, which for most people can easily be catastrophic. Or maybe they've a giant datacenter in their back yard suddenly, and now their air and/or water isn't viable.

That of course isn't justification, but it does partly inform why some people are that mad, and it's much easier for angry people to be callously indifferent.

If you were to break down HN's zeitgeist, it's some percentage site-local, some percentage larger tech scene, and some percentage general public.

Although you have outsized influence on the former, the latter items factor in heavily—sometimes overwhelmingly so. You can't really control that, and I don't feel it represents some sort of failure on behalf of the community nor moderation team.

I see it not as mob mentality so much as as multiple sides personally involved for different reasons. Things tend to get pretty heated when that happens; not a good recipe.

I'm sorry you had to deal with the aftermath. Your flurry of disappointed, exhausted-sounding comments reminded me of a service industry worker getting hit with a huge rush. There's a kind of PTSD that hangs around once the dust settles.

So, thank you for your efforts in trying to keep the site civil. It clearly ain't easy sometimes.

Only if it was Microsoft and entirely LLM-powered, because I trust their engineering:

Clippy: "Cessna 123, cleared for takeoff runway two-seven."

Cessna 123: "Cleared for takeoff runway two-seven, Cessna 123."

[seconds later]

Clippy: "Piper 456, cleared for landing runway niner. Where do you want to go today?"

Seems our best hedge in that case is Levi Ackerman.

>... you’d think they’d invented Skynet by the way they hand-wring.

Meanwhile, in reality: "Skynet, I'm not sure that line of thinking is correct. You should re-check the first part again before making any assumptions."

Skynet 4.6 Extended: "You're right, I should have caught that. Let me redo everything correctly this time."