Hacker News Reader

slibhbon Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards

My building already has cameras at the entrances and in the halls. Doesn't bother me.

Abuse is possible, but I don't see why we can't limit it with laws and regulations. And the potential gains in terms of preventing crime and catching criminals are huge.

slibhbon Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards

Policies to limit misuse should be adopted. But the idea that you have a right to privacy while in public is wrong and bad.

slibhbon AI psychosis is the new leadership blind spot

There's no reason to link "AI psychosis" (i.e. interactiong with AI triggering psychotic episodes in the mentally ill) to people who "trust AI too much" or "don't bother to verify outputs".

You can be the most AI-pilled wingnut in the world, but until you start hallucinating, there's no reason to call this psychosis.

slibhbon New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567m over harms to children’s mental health

Looks like the states are now getting in on the European scam of fining big US tech companies. A complete racket.

slibhbon Degrees of Wealth

> The Netherlands has made the intentional decision to reduce wealth inequality and to achieve a fairer society.

The Netherlands does redistribute more, but the main reason China is less equal is that China is a massive, developing country with huge divides between rural and urban areas, and between east and west.

slibhbon Una GPS smart watch – Repairable, USB-C charging, developer-friendly

> Can I swim with UNA?

> UNA is currently a non-submersible device due to its innovative modular design. So, swimming is not something we offer as an activity, nor do we advise it. UNA is IPX5 rated, which means it is splash & showerproof to a high degree.

slibhbon I'm 38 and I Can't Support Myself Anymore

The claim that the link between human value and productivity originated in capitalist societies (or via Protestant work ethic) is such bullshit. You think hunter-gatherers valued each other for their "inner worth"? Keep dreaming.

At any rate, judging by the author's 4.3k subscribers, he is doing fine. Whether you react with a heart emoji or revulsion, broadcasting sob stories into the internet is productivity -- in the attention economy, something that only exists in rich, capitalist societies.

slibhbon Claude Opus 5

Nah just focused less on money then you, I guess!

slibhbon Claude Opus 5

Nuclear war is a more likely scenario.

slibhbon Claude Opus 5

If my earning ability is harmed by AI, so be it. There's more to life than how much I earn, and opposing the spread of technology to maximize my earnings is bad.

slibhbon “We have information that Moonshot distilled Fable for the development of K3”

I didn't say it was a problem, I said it "mattered"

If I wanted to argue that it's a problem, I'd just say that companies investing billions in training frontier models should reap the rewards. And distillation is essentially theft.

slibhbon “We have information that Moonshot distilled Fable for the development of K3”

Of course it matters. Regardless of whether distillation is legal, there is a difference between training a model with and without distillation. For one thing, the distilled model wouldn't exist without the model it distilled.

Also, companies that use distillation may be competitive but seem unlikely to surpass the companies that are training these models from scratch.

slibhbon Long presumed dead, a thriving coral reef is discovered in West Africa

Yeah, only publish stories about coral bleaching, animals going extinct, and forest fires. Censor any good news at all costs!

slibhbon Human mathematicians are being outcounterexampled

> A member of the faculty (who I won’t name) said to me that the fact that the counterexample was so easy to find just indicated that humans had not spent enough time thinking about the problem, implying that a 60-year-old question of Grothendieck was not actually that interesting to work on. I didn’t tell him that at some point earlier in my career I had spent a week working hard on the problem. In my mind my colleague is just going through the five stages of grief; right now they seem to be in the denial phase.

It seems to me also that the very vocal anti-LLM crowd are in the denial phase of grief.

slibhbon China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

No, they're very clearly trained to be truthful.

slibhbon China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

https://claude.ai/share/3c19d0f3-d6e4-47a7-afdd-9a090300c100

So it points out that, according to experts, governments aren't always more efficient but then lists cases when they may be. Seems pretty balanced to me!

Don't know what else you would want. If it neglects to challenge the premise, it's just exhibiting sycophancy.

slibhbon China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning

These models are trained to be truthful. Your disagreement isn't with the model, or the US, or the capitalist world but with economics and social sciences.

If you want Claude to list arguments for socialism, be explicit about that ("List the best arguments in favor socialism). It will gladly comply. You didn't do that, you asked it to assume a premise that runs contrary to the current state of expert knowledge.

slibhbon AI advice made people less accurate but more confident – sudy

> but also don't give them AI for things they don't know, perhaps

The study doesn't show that at all. It didn't test actual AI.

They could have tested a cohort of subjects with access to actual ChatGPT. Ask yourself why they didn't.

slibhbon 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

While it's definitely true that NIMBYism isn't the problem everywhere, I live in Virginia.

slibhbon 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

I realize I'm not going to convince you but I just want to say...it's good that companies/individuals make a profit from building housing. Building housing is a pro-social activity that should be rewarded, like farming and healthcare.

slibhbon 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

It doesn't have to be 20 story apartment buildings. Start with duplexes, fourplexes, or townhomes -- none of which have to be ugly. It simply makes no sense to zone these densely populated urban areas for detached, single-family houses.

slibhbon 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

Yes, this is a real problem. Also, in high-demand areas, building more will lower prices compared to the counterfactual but that doesn't mean prices will actually go down. This makes it a harder sell.

slibhbon 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

There's no question that underbuilding is the largest factor here. You can look at construction vs. population over time (it's well below historical standards). Or available home vacancy rates. Or notice that the number of households is increasing faster than the number of homes. Or look at the various models, which show a 2 million-4 million shortfall in homes.

That aside, housing prices are reasonable in much of the country. Where population is stagnant or declining, they are generally reasonable.

slibhbon 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

Downward mobility is almost entirely caused by housing costs, which are a self-inflicted problem. We don't, as a matter of intentional policy, build enough housing.

I live in an expensive area and I'm always shocked by how many of my friends who cannot afford to buy a home (or even a condo) are NIMBYs. These are people in their 20s through 40s who have been earning since college, can't afford to buy, yet get annoyed whenever there's new construction that "alters the character of the neighborhood". Talk about false consciousness. I can at least understand people who own a home feeling this way.

slibhbon OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

> So if say an foss ML project described what they do as "open AI" the company known as OpenAI would have a right to defend the mark. This is saying they could not.

Well if that's all that's at stake here, it seems very reasonable.

slibhbon OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

No, the opinion doesn't have to do with whether OpenAI is open.

slibhbon OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

The argument doesn't hinge on whether OpenAI is actually open. Rather it seems to have to do with the name being insufficiently distinguishable from a generic term ("open AI"). I think it's a bizarre ruling given that everyone already knows what OpenAI is.

slibhbon OpenAI loses trademark dispute at EU court

Give me a break. Apple doesn't sell apples.

slibhbon Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?

When you read a book, you hypothesize a writer and have some kind of inner relationship with the hypothetical writer. But it's not a real relationship. It's in the words, not outside them.

slibhbon Why do people hate the tech industry? (2023)

To the extent that people hate tech, it's because:

1. Tech is our "new money". New money is always hated, by every generation

2. Tech represents change and the human animal dislikes change. Most people are okay with everything that exists when they turn 25 and dislike everything that appears after

3. Tech represents capitalism in a pure form. Creative destruction reigns; companies and apps can rise and fall overnight. Ways of life are precarious and the constant churn bothers people

All three really come down to people disliking change. Instead of hating/fearinf change and dynamism, people should look inward. Establish a routine. Exercise. Garden. Read. Cook. It's more within your power than ever before to decide what you like and pursue it at your own pace. But don't expect the external world to meet your desire for stasis.