tokioyoyo

> It is unavoidable that the modern world needs data centers (how many is open for debate)

You know, I’m currently having drinks with a friend who has no connection to the tech world, and asked him about this line explicitly curious of what he thinks about it. He said “I have no idea why such things would be unavoidable”. And that is the sentiment of the general populace towards AI/DCs and etc.

If you check out some sub-tweets from people in the org, it wasn't really all butterflies internally for a while. Sorry, really don't want to name people and give examples.

"The company raised its full-year 2026 capex forecast to between $195 billion and $205 billion, with further significant increases planned for 2027." - Alphabet.

From time to time, I’ve seen “people whose time is very expensive” types to argue with literal AI slop bots on Twitter. Then delete the thread when they realize it after 30 mins of back and forth. So yeah, make your own assumptions.

I don't agree with that - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S132389302.... It's really not that big of a problem here.

"In Japan, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's vital statistics, about 50 cases of fatal anaphylaxis are reported each year.4,5 In 2020, the most frequent cause of fatal anaphylaxis was bee or wasp stings (13 cases), followed by drugs (8 cases) and foods (2 cases)".

I'm fairly AI-pilled, as the cool kids say. But it would be fair for any AI-generated work to be labelled as such. The problem is, vast majority isn't doing it, because they know what the perception is like.

The question is, should we spend the same amount of time evaluating AI-gen work as non-AI-gen work. I would say no. In my opinion, AI-gen work should be evaluated by other AIs. Goes back to the whole "if you didn't put effort into creation, why should I put effort into evaluation" thing. Obviously it's not an all-or-nothing thing. But you get my point.

Very much of a survivorship bias. As of today, I don't think you can conclude if the images on UberEats/DoorDash are AI-generated or not. It's not 2023 anymore. Things have gone way past that now. I hate it as well, but I've seen AI-generated photos that I would've never guessed as AI from a quick scroll on a small screen.

A few years ago Epic made a whole event out of deliberately breaking AppStore rules, writing blog posts and suing Apple.

Public opinion matters, and narrative control is important if you don’t want to be perceived as “morally wrong company”.

They manage fine in China/Japan. It’s a cultural issue. People aren’t dropping dead from not being catered for their allergies.

Look, i’m not some sort of a devil that hates people with allergies. Roughly 15% of my closest friends have dietary restrictions. But we kinda understand the problem and navigate it ourselves, rather than making it someone else’s problem. Really not a big deal.

I’m very sorry to hear that, but I don’t think restaurants have to be forced to deal with that. The only thing I could support is “if revenue >X then allergen disclosure is mandatory”. I know personally multiple little shops that had to refuse customers, because that’s extra hassle and responsibility that they can’t afford to deal with.

Our jobs are basically sifting through PR garbage and making use of what it’s actually capable of. Obviously there’s a lot of fluff, but there is real use cases for myself as well.

If you think of what you could do for $200 last year vs today, I could argue the prices went down.

To be very fair, I was also very skeptical about LLMs in 2023. Not so much anymore.

Edit: ok, i guess this account is from 2024, but been around a while. I guess can’t defend myself like this :)

It would be cool to see HN internal stats over the last 5 years. New users, posts from different accounts and etc.

Models aren’t trained as much from random internet text as they used to in pre-2024 era. Like they are, but specialized datasets get more attention.

Frankly? Never. And the root cause is because majority of people have access to the internet now. The small voice of people who care about some stuff is completely overshadowed by billions of people scrolling through YT Shorts / Reels / TT.

Very common for some movie, tv shows or music not be available here. Or also, fairly expensive to buy/rent for some. If it was service issue, this would drive people who want to enjoy the media to piracy.

Yet it doesn’t.

I know Japanese people who can easily pull it off, but ideologically very against it.

Every time this argument comes up, it doesn’t explain why piracy rates are much lower, despite having a lot of service problems. Piracy is a cultural thing. And I’m saying this as someone who kinda understands the pirate’s position.

Thanks for explanation. To be honest, that's what I've heard from my American friends as well, and I genuinely respect this position (as I agree somewhat agree with it). But at the end of the day, the results speak for themselves. Since it's a democracy, if it was an issue people cared about, they would have voted in someone in local/state/national level who would oppose surveillance, no?

I understand that it sounds a bit condescending to paint the whole nation in such manner, but this is what it looks like to me an observer with no skin in the game. And I understand that when you're in political minority, you can't really do much to change it.

I can't respond to a couple of dead comments under my post, like the one says "Difference is china uses to police speech. Police in US use it to catch scumbags". And this is exactly what I meant in my post. There's an interesting perception of "when X does it, it's definitely for bad stuff, but when WE do it, obviously it's for good". Again, sorry, I think I woke up in a shitty mood, and picking up fights.

I do find it very funny how over the past couple of decades US has been talking about how awful Chinese government is wrt surveillance, but now doing exactly the same but through private industry contracts instead. I hold a semi-middle ground view to CCTVs/plate readers, and understand how it can deliver improved QoL to most citizens. But a bit weird how a core American "surveillance = big no no" belief was thrown out in a few years. Another proof of people just say things, but when it comes to action, you can just do stuff.

Sorry for a negative comment, but it's just an interesting observation from an outsider.

I’ve done webdev in 2000s as well, and everything you described is so much more longer and times-taking than what we’re doing now.

I understand that a lot of people hate JS ecosystem and etc., but we’ve moved on from that a while ago.

Although I’m more on infrastructure side of things nowadays, I don’t miss the early days’ of handwritten HTML.

What? Both sides are cool with it, why would anyone be arrested and etc.?

Dean W Ball from OpenAI kinda laid down how the “ban” would work. Everyone clowned him over the weekend, but pretty much everything he said had substance. It’ll most likely will go that way - “mention in memos in all gov orgs they’re not supposed to use any AI other than American ones. And let the implications handle everything else, rather than legalese”

I genuinely believe in the early days they were looking for the problems. At least the people I know personally did so. Openly and loudly as well. Some people genuinely like to solve problems!

But again, now it’s more of a “aight too much money on the table so maybe not real”.

I did say explicitly that I think, Google did not cherry pick any data. My main question is “are they trying to build a narrative, because of the growing anti-AI tendency of the general population?”. It feels like every big co is giving up on big questions (e.g. what happens when AI replaces more and more jobs? what happens to education system?) because searching for an answer to those questions was upsetting a lot of people. So, now it feels like it’s just “good and neutral stories only”, so I have to raise my eyebrow on each post.

I don’t agree with the OP, and don’t think data is cherry-picked. But everyone is so deeply invested in this, that no article from any company can be taken as is.

Reading the post, I had to keep thinking “why are they only talk about how people use it at work, and nothing about possible economic outcomes?”. Or “titled Understanding the AI Economy, but it avoids all the big questions”. Or “is it written for the investors who think Google has over-invested in capex?”. And I might be overthinking about all this! But when you have billions of billions dollars invested, it’s hard to take any word as is.

It will sound insane, but I would love a parallel (not a replacement!) internet where everyone is ID verified. Time and place for both.

UBI is also another topic that has been discussed intensively for the past couple of decades. I don’t see it being implemented almost for the same reasons as cheap housing. On top of it, we experienced UBI-lite during pandemic, and saw the inflationary result. “But it wasn’t perfect UBI” argument won’t really fly either in the current political world.

People are generally selfish and will want the best for themselves and their loved ones.

I’ve been part of housing-related online discussions for a decade now, and everything reads like a wish-list.

- Majority of people own their homes. So it’s in their best interest for the housing prices at the very least not go down.

- Less, but still, some amount of people are buying houses with sky high prices. After a huge purchase, they will also do their best to ensure prices don’t go down.

- Another good chunk of people are waiting out to inherit homes from their parents.

All these people, in one way or another, will protect asset prices (e.g. voting for certain people to ensure nothing gets built). The only ways I can see it being resolved is:

- China-style benevolent dictatoresque commitment to surgical detachment of housing prices from the general economy (they’re trying, a lot of people are unhappy, but some progress is visible)

- Population collapse, to reduce the demand. But looking at Japan, metro areas will keep skyrocketing, because people will flock to the main cities even more

Any of the options will make a lot of people unhappy. A huge political no-go zone.

All the talks about allowing construction and streamlining the process have been circulated for a decade+ at this point. But incentives for people aren’t there. “I got mine, don’t care about you” is the general attitude of majority of people.