salad-tycoon

My uncle was a forensic child psychiatrist. He told me once about a very poor family, both parents had the equivalent IQs of lukewarm water and over all were dull and struggled in every aspect of life.

Yet, they had a kid that was actually very bright.

One time during a family session the kid would complain that he got made fun of at school a lot because he smelled of burnt rubber.

Turns out, the dad would burn tires in the “living room” to heat the house and explained to my uncle that it was cold (freezing) and they couldn’t afford other heat so it was tires or freeze.

Story always stuck with me. He said his job in this case was to help the kid understand the reality of his situation and help him live with it so that he could move on past it when he was finally old enough to move out (and move up) in the world.

Maybe your dad also struggled with something that he kept from you that caused him to not want (or be unable to afford) to turn the heat up. Or, maybe, he was just a controlling jerk. Or some combination of the two even. I have no idea of course of your life but thought the story mildly relevant and worthy of sharing.

Say more? Please. As in, everything after “last week.” Take us back, if you will.

I live in the country. Amazon takes days to ship out here, though sometimes it has 1-2 day. Walmart has same day shipping (not delivery, regular shipping) and is cheaper or comparable to Amazon.

Or like me, I use disposable emails via simplelogin (?) and iCloud hide my email. I have hundreds. “Roflz” but I’m a citizen so guess I’m okay?

They have the Master Chief collection or something (almost all the games in one with a selector screen), I remember a year or two ago booting into and playing online game, plus there appears to be a discord server that organizes players to better reach playable numbers.

You’re absolutely right. If it was a song from iTunes you bought you sure as hell could burn it on a dvd or cd or whatever. (Right? It’s been a long time.) So if I buy a movie why can’t I archive it on a DVD?

I don’t really leave thank you notes as they don’t add anything but just to balance out the opinions here:

Thank you for taking the time for that wonderful explanation, may it teach some of us/me to think before we shoot. I found it very enlightening and am sure many other drive by casuals do as well.

Kind of seems to me, the heart of the critique is that 1. unthinkable amounts of financial and social and political credit have been thrown at this which necessarily has deducted it from other fields we could have invested in, instead. 2. Thus, with such wealth you would expect at least a couple of discoveries.

Not my post, but I think point 1 is stronger than 2.

I’m actually quite interested in this on device scam detection and might be installing chrome on my aunts computer. She’s an upper 70s millionaire widow who is constantly confused and attacked by a deluge of convincing scam emails.

I had no idea chrome had this feature. Wish Apple had something like this honestly. https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...

I read it as a socially awkward but very bookish very young teen. My one quote summary is “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I never became Mr. Popular but found it very helpful in trying to understand somethings that were unobtainable for me at the time.

I need to read it again, I think about it a few handful of times a year, many years later.

Sometimes it reveals hidden biases within ourselves/society as a whole. Like, do I give gays preferential treatment in a way to avoid seeming discriminatory?

It does feel a bit Supra-therapeutic at times tho, agreed but maybe it’s one small novel contribution.

My bigger question is: WHY can’t we stop the human vs AI comparisons?

In my life I’ve come across a few people who are really good at making analogies and it’s wonderful and makes mine look like a child’s scribble next to a Monet.

In fact, I think analogies are some of the most powerful rhetorical devices and, unsurprisingly, one of the most difficult to master.

Look at some of the all time, almost supernaturally skilled, analogists: Jesus, Plato, Buddha, Aesop, Socrates. Their analogies will be eternal.

Now that said, we aren’t always seeing quite that level of skill often here on HN (or anywhere) but when you see a great analogy, it’s like…[scratch that, I’m resisting the urge to force an analogy here].

I’m interested in what glanding FOCU5 entails and what are the benefits of this delivery mechanism? Is it like boofing?

How soon can we be market ready? Whatever it is, I think Generation Z is ready for it.

You’ll really like this then, it’s a clip of Phil Hendrie who I recently discovered. He does tons of voices and sound effects, his studio has multiple microphone and switches between them for different speakers.

Here is a clip of him when someone called his studio thinking they were the local Pizza Hut. Phil does all the other voices, including the phone system.

https://share.google/QHNkgsOdvGj7tapfk

The story I remember is French police units specifically launching focused investigation on the sudden explosion of crypto people / family members getting kidnapped and having a finger or more chopped off.

I did find your story from 2005 about a man having his finger chopped off once the thieves realized they would need his appendage every time in order to start the car2.

https://news.sky.com/story/french-police-investigating-serie...

[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18624943-600-finger-c...

It’s open as in the sign in the door of your favorite local diner that says;

“Yes, we are OPEN ”

Open, as in not currently out of business.

Excuse me if it’s considered uncouth on here to do this but, I would be interested in your thoughts on what I wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847600

I saw your comment after I wrote mine.

If the question is why Chinese models are contributing to open source and sharing of information, I don’t pretend to know the rationale but I think it’s because it’s an economic war.

I think the Chinese models have to be more open to increase trust as everyone is worried they are feeding their very essence/soul into a Chinese copying machine.

Also China wants there to be viable competitors so that US can’t just dominate a potentially very important field. It’s a challenge to a unipolar USA dominated world.

Also it helps to spur Chinese companies in the all important microchip industry which is controlled by a very small number of companies at various steps in the supply chain.

I wonder too if it allows them to hold an ace in their hand as well in terms of threat/power for negotiations. As in, they can cause the whole house of cards to crumble, an economic nuclear weapon so to speak.

Finally, there is a certain amount of prestige involved too. China can compete or even win at a very complicated game. They use it to increase national pride and to project their advancing power status to other nations.

Anyways, just my thoughts. Interested in others thoughts.

I like usb C more than lightning but I think legislation is terribly suited. If people only wanted usb c then just don’t buy an iPhone? But this is from my US idealistic view and distrust of over regulation.

Anyways, Apple was working on an iPhone with usb C in 2022 and said they were going to do it anyways* so I don’t see it as some massive win that shows the prowess of the EU legislative body.

Granted this may have shaved a couple of years off of the timeline but at what cost of legislation (monetary, attention, and time cost)!?

# https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-pushes-back...

Last couple of years it’s gotten easier, for iPhones at least. Pardon the YT short but it’s 48seconds or look up “iPhone 9v battery” if you’ve blocked YT shorts.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/VNZewnrkDng

I feel the same way for a while now but especially recently. It’s been obvious for a while I suppose but greatly clarified recently.

I have just one question for you pllbnk, are we the baddies?

Because it dumbs everything down, makes the output quality worse and more expensive, and removes personal agency and is dehumanizing. Plus, does it actually prevent harm, do we have evidence?

Finally, what is often missed is what if an actual good is decided harmful or something that is harmful is decided by AI company board XYZ to be “good”?

I think censorship is bad because of that danger. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who will watch the watchers).

Instead of throwing ourselves into that minefield of moral hazard, we should be lifting each other up to the tops of our ability and not infantilizing / secretly propagandizing each other.

Well, ideally at least.

Don’t worry, every bottle in the US has the surgeon general’s warning on it and it doesn’t call out cancer, yet. Adding cancer to the ills of booze was proposed in 2025 so your intuition was correct, directionally.

On every bottle:

Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act of 1988

“ GOVERNMENT WARNING: (1) According to the Surgeon General, women should not drink alcoholic beverages during pregnancy because of the risk of birth defects. (2) Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery, and may cause health problems"

Cancer proposal: https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/not-just-a-hangover--t...

https://www.ttb.gov/regulated-commodities/beverage-alcohol/d...

(As if adding this text will do anything other than reduce the companies liability, rofl)

They have to secretly add these guardrails on because the alternative would be to train the users out of consulting these things as if they are advanced all-knowing alien-technogawds. And that would be bad for business.

The better solution I think would be a reality/personal responsibility approach, teach the consumers that the burden of interpretation is on them and not the magic 8ball. For example if your AI tells you to kill your parents or that you’ve discovered new math that makes time travel possible, etc then: 1. Stop 2. Unplug 3. Go outside 4. Ask a human for a sanity check.

Since that would be bad for business and take a lot of effort on the user side (while being very embarrassing). Obviously can’t do that right before an IPO & in the middle of global economic war so secretive moral frameworks have to be installed.

If you are what you eat then you believe what you consume. Ironically, I think this undisclosed and hidden moral shaping of billions of people will be the most dangerous. Imagine all the things we could do if we can just, ever-so-slightly, move the Overton window / goal posts on w/e topic day by day, prompt by prompt.

Personally I find AI output insidiously disarming and charming and I think I’m in the norm. So while we’ve been besieged by propaganda since time immemorial I do worry that AI is a special case.

We know it, we’re just susceptible to it. Like not eating for an extended time, you know you’ll get hungry and then you do. There’s a very basic but powerful response to danger and a need for safety.

Like ski courses!

Wonder how hard it would be to train for diabetes? My under 10yo was just diagnosed with T1DM, a pocket rat sounds like fun and cheaper than a dog which is priced at unobtainium prices for us.

Animals are awesome, land mines are not. I hope we can avoid ever bringing that to our shores. Sadly, I know we now have air-mines (drones) so guess someone has to come up with drone sniffing pidgins or something (though obviously a parked drone probably doesn’t persist as long as a buried stationary mine and a flying drone less so).

War sucks.

Huh, health nut supplements?A number of you are missing the forest but for the trees, I shared something that I think is delicious and fun for me and my kids.

I only put the Amazon links there as a courtesy for people to look it up easily. I buy mine at Walmart personally, I think we all know about Amazon and fakes.

More importantly, while probiotic interest is shared within the “health nut” sphere that doesn’t suddenly invalidate the research that’s been done on this strain of yeast nor the anecdotal experience I’ve seen personally. It works great for stool consistency and diarrhea. It might help with immune system. But who cares, it tastes GOOD. That’s my point. It’s a fun and delicious science experiment & I think a healthier juice or pop alternative.

Try it or not but you dismissal is unfair.

I’ve enjoyed reading up and growing various mushrooms. They vary from tasty, medicinal, to deadly. Lions mane is a blast to grow and tastes pretty good, some say lobster, and you can cook them like steak. Plus they just look awesome. Supposedly has various health benefits too.

The scariest stories, beyond the usual “oops I ate a death cap,” to me are people growing oyster mushrooms and finding their house infested. Oyster mushrooms popping their heads out of every crack and nook in bathrooms, crawl spaces, and kitchens. Basically any crevice with moisture.

[]https://www.reddit.com/r/mushroomID/comments/rlozpo/these_gr...

[]https://old.reddit.com/r/microbiology/comments/lwpjas/theres...

Get some Florastor and put a couple of capsules into juice. Wait 24-48 hours. Drink. Delicious! Very fizzy and fun. Reduced sugar.

Good for the gut and immune system. Use it when my kids have GI distress/diarrhea or just as a treat/reward.

I like it way more than Kambucha and it never has vinegar worms.

Can buy some yeast energizer too on Amazon for a great boost.

* I get the Florastor has & bloat personally b/c I figure the enzymes might help and I find it’s a little cheaper somehow, sometimes. https://www.amazon.com/Florastor-Advanced-Probiotic-Digestiv...

I like apple cider, pasteurized is fine but must be preservative free. OJ is fun, comes out as orangina like, but tastes off too quickly.

Energizer https://www.amazon.com/LD-Carlson-Yeast-Energizer-oz/dp/B07M...