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toraway

567 karma · joined December 7, 2024

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toraway··on Judge blocks Pentagon effort to 'punish' Anthropic with supply chain risk label
Why are you absolutely convinced the government requesting a contractor (Palantir) no longer use a technology they've determined to be unsuitable for their needs would be "extremely illegal", yet demanding every single company engaged in government contracts can no longer use Anthropic for any use whatsoever is totally fine?

I cannot follow the logic there at all. It's like being concerned that asking your neighbor to move their car would be too rude so your solution is to bulldoze their entire driveway. A federal judge evidently disagrees with your legal theory here so perhaps you're off the mark (in fact they specifically call out that the DoD failed to attempt less drastic remedies in violation of the law behind the designation):

  Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a “supply chain risk” is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious. The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.

  There are other serious procedural problems with the government’s actions.    Anthropic had no notice or opportunity to respond, which likely violated its due process rights. And the Department of War flouted procedural safeguards required by Congress before entering the supply chain risk designation, including that it consider less intrusive measures.
toraway··on We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
"Disrupt" feels like yesterday's Web 2.0 lingo, now we say "Democratizing".
toraway··on We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do
Well, we were able to observe in the impact of legalization of online betting in real time, watching every other ad slot during sports games turning into gambling app ads designed to hook 20 something men into lighting their paycheck on fire for a brief dopamine hit.

Plus, prediction markets going from a harmless novelty where people would bet a few bucks on an election into a massive offshoot of gambling industry incentivizing manipulating outcomes/insider trading, once again leaving the average gambler left holding the bag and poorer.

You honestly couldn't design a better experiment to test the theory of whether open and legal vs. banned but underground gambling leads to better outcomes. So I'm not sure why it matters that other countries have different laws (that likely were more thoughtfully designed than basically just saying "it's legal now" out of the blue).

toraway··on False claims in a widely-cited paper
Semmelweis died approximately 100 years before the thalidomide scandal so not sure what that is supposed to prove…

(other than being a favorite go-to of numerous quacks and charlatans who insist that modern medicine is similarly persecuting them).

toraway··on A lawyer won Anthropic's hackathon – what everyone missed
This appears to be an advertisement for a (somewhat inscrutable) AI product they're selling called CANONIC, that also has a cryptocoin bolted on to it somehow.
toraway··on Goodbye to Sora
Sora was one of the earliest demos of a "wow okay that is good enough to be mistaken for real" GenAI model, which is what that comment was referencing with the "weapon" reference (the tech behind it not just Sora™ Videos).

Sure, by the time they productized it, Sora was no longer SOTA thanks to the AI arms race. And ultimately positioned as a TikTok for Slop with an annoying watermark so didn't take the world by storm on its own.

But since it was unveiled GenAI videos as a whole have become commonplace everywhere else on the internet, with plenty of negative impact already in terms of spam or manipulation, and we're barely in year 2 so far.

toraway··on Goodbye to Sora
IMO what's really wishful thinking is believing that society will necessarily adapt for the better in response to a deluge of AI spam/ads/propaganda.

You could have said the same about say, pre-AI deceptively edited/ragebait/made up content going viral on FB, "actually this is good because soon people will realize they are being tricked/lied to, they'll think extra-critically before sharing dubious content next time".

Which has not happened. I can only see AI videos/images making the problem worse as people are fed personalized, narrowly targeted content that seem to perfectly appeal to their own beliefs/biases/emotions/etc.

Also, if anything it seems like we will have to trust authoritative groups more thanks to GenAI. If I have to consider every video on the internet from e.g. Iran as fake, I'm going to turn to NYT or WSJ who can be relied on to (usually) share only original content, or highly vetted 3rd party content.

toraway··on Goodbye to Sora
(FYI, this is an LLM bot, check their comment history and note the repetitive structure with every comment they've ever posted all within the last hour)

  > This is the right question but hard to answer in practice ...

  > The brownfield vs greenfield split is the real answer to ... 

  > The babysitting point is the one people keep glossing over ...
toraway··on Goodbye to Sora
Sure, and I'm also consuming a gigantic quantity of GenAI art while knowing it, completely against my will. Which like OP has soured my overall perception of it.

The existence of inoffensive use cases doesn't invalidate anything OP is saying, that's just a natural human reaction to overexposure of a technology.

In the span of less than 2 years, pretty much everywhere I look has been inundated with zero-effort spam, manipulated imagery, etc that has had a net-negative impact on my life. Even if it may also be helpful for a small business making a flyer or whatever without actively making my life worse, that doesn't really move the needle on my overall attitude.

toraway··on Goodbye to Sora
Yes, and Disney is apparently no longer investing in OpenAI, making one more example of an OpenAI investment hype cycle that turned out to be hot air.

Disney Exits OpenAI Deal After AI Giant Shutters Sora

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/openai-sh...

  A source familiar with the matter tells The Hollywood Reporter that Disney is also exiting the deal it signed with OpenAI last year, in which it pledged to invest $1 billion in the company and agreed to license some of its characters for use in Sora.

  “As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere,” a Disney spokesperson said. “We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”
Also "exit the video generation business" seems somewhat notable, suggesting they're not just planning to launch a different video gen product to replace Sora?
toraway··on Bored of eating your own dogfood? Try smelling your own farts
Yeah, my mental image before reading the article was the farts analogy would be a company actually trying out the AI chatbot slopware they added to their line of Bluetooth toothbrushes and hyping to investors as the Next Big Thing or something like that.
toraway··on Our commitment to Windows quality
Look at the names, the parent comment is implying hiring Indians destroyed Microsoft with a wink/nudge. And conspicuously omitting Phil Spencer who led the deteriorating Xbox/gaming division for almost a decade but instead chose to include Spencer's replacement of 1 month and some Xbox PM because his ethnicity wouldn't fit.
toraway··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks

  AI is the same: it's unquestionably (to anyone evaluating it fairly) a huge boost to productivity .
And yet, the only research that tries to evaluate this in a controlled, scientific way does not actually show this. Critics then say those studies aren’t valid because of X, Y or Z but don’t provide anything stronger than anecdotes in rebuttal.

It’s ridiculous double standard and poisons any reasonable discussion to assert something is a fact and anyone who disagrees is a hysterical Luddite based on no actual evidence.

toraway··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks
That, and an objective comparison measuring time saving should include all time that went into learning, configuring, maintaining the tool.

And ideally a sample large enough to capture any wasted time from dead ends in other tasks where the tool may actually fail to solve the problem.

I’ve definitely lost a couple hours here and there from when it felt like I was right on the verge of CC fixing something but never actually got there and finally had to just do it myself anyway.

toraway··on Democratic Backsliding Reaches Western Democracies, U.S. Decline "Unprecedented"
It’s a well known benchmark in comparative political science with a specific rubric for how each category is analyzed. It’s imperfect but far more rigorous than dismissing indicators of backsliding as just “not liking Trump” (just one of many examples that together form a concerning trend):

F.C.C. Chair Threatens to Revoke Broadcasters’ Licenses Over War Coverage

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/world/middleeast/fcc-broa...

FCC boss vows to ‘rebalance’ media, urges more pro-America programming

https://www.foxnews.com/media/fcc-boss-vows-rebalance-media-...

toraway··on France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app
They move a carrier into a vulnerable position in the Strait, where an attack by a tiny boat could both result in causalities and draw the UK into another protracted war in the Middle East with no clear exit condition and even more casualties?

And for what, exactly, a pat on the back from Trump? (who will then inevitably turn on them after a week and blame them for anything that goes wrong in the war.)

If escorting ship traffic was so straightforward with only upside, the US would be doing it already. Instead of trying to get someone else to take that risk.

toraway··on Bombarding gamblers with offers greatly increases betting and gambling harm
Okay, but have you considered that thanks to Polymarket, society was able to intuit within mere minutes that Khamenei was most likely dead when the odds jumped to 99%?

No more need to rely on MSM or governments, it's all just math and data (odds jumped entirely based on Reuters newswire update posting a quote from an unnamed Israeli source).

And as a bonus, people lost a bunch of money "winning" that trade!

toraway··on Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence
By that definition, nuclear is also “dependent on natural gas” because it’s a baseload power source that can’t dynamically follow demand.
toraway··on Stop Sloppypasta
As an example of this, I am currently comparing two different models of Android e-readers, from a Chinese brand where the tech specs are all published but there aren't a lot of good comparative reviews. Plus, the specs like battery life are close to the same mAh, but for e-readers especially with Android optimization/drivers/etc make a gigantic difference.

So I have been Googling for "Reader X vs Reader Y review"(/comparison/etc) hoping to find Reddit comments or non-spam blog posts from people who actually own both to compare screen and battery life. I found a reddit thread comparing them directly and lo and behold the first comment is someone saying "I own both but honestly you could just ask ChatGPT for this". Fortunately a couple other people responded...

When I ask Gemini or ChatGPT, all I get is regurgitation of the tech specs (that are all mostly identical) plus summarized SEO spam reviews (that were probably written by another LLM based on those same tech specs) and it's totally unhelpful. So for this, I absolutely do NOT want an OpenClaw bot to respond as if they've physically used the devices and it would be actively enraging to learn a "helpful" comment "answering" the question was actually just an LLM impersonator.

toraway··on UMD Scientists Create 'Smart Underwear' to Measure Human Flatulence
Or just maybe, it was developed to further a legitimately needed area of medical research with direct human clinical relevance like quantifying differences in the microbiome for colorectal cancer, etc.

The concept of the Golden Fleece awards (and whatever Rand Paul’s version is called) linking a reaction of “sounds stupid to me” by a random layperson with “taxpayers are getting ripped off” is inherently faulty and weaponizing populism to sabotage publicly funded scientific research.

toraway··on Head of FCC threatens broadcaster licenses over critical coverage of Iran war
Every time I see news about Brendan Carr's latest threat leveraging FCC licenses to enforce approved administration speech I search for the corresponding HN post and half the time it's a graveyard.

Wasn't that long ago an article about Mark Zuckerberg claiming someone in the Biden admin made some vague request about state-sponsored disinformation brought every so-called 1A defender out of the woodwork, but apparently the actual regulator of news orgs publicly threatening their business is shrug worthy by comparison.

I've been on HN since 2010 (different account) and honestly used to take the libertarian/right-leaning types at their word about being free speech advocates and not simply partisans using it as a rhetorical weapon.

But, lesson learned...

toraway··on Head of FCC threatens broadcaster licenses over critical coverage of Iran war
Accusation in a mirror, a strategy that is pretty much as you describe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror

toraway··on 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6
Codex CLI is so much more pleasant to use than CC. I cancelled my CC subscription after the OpenCode thing, but somewhat ironically have recently found myself naturally trying the native Codex CLI client first more often over OpenCode.

Kinda funny how you don't actually need to use coercion if you put in the engineering work to build a product that's competitive on its own technical merits...

toraway··on 1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6
Haha, reminds me of an unbelievably aggravating exchange with Codex (GPT 5.4 / High) where it was unflinchingly gaslighting me about undesired behavior still occurring after a change it made that it was adamant simply could not be happening.

It started by insisting I was repeatedly making a typo and still would not budge even after I started copy/pasting the full terminal history of what I was entering and the unabridged output, and eventually pivoted to darkly insinuating I was tampering with my shell environment as if I was trying to mislead it or something.

Ultimately it turned out that it forgot it was supposed to be applying the fixes to the actual server instead of the local dev environment, and had earlier in the conversation switched from editing directly over SSH to pushing/pulling the local repo to the remote due to diffs getting mangled.

toraway··on Shall I implement it? No
It doesn’t help that a frequent recommendation on HN whenever someone complains about Claude not following a prompt correctly is to “ask Claude itself how to rewrite a prompt to get the result you want”.

Which sure, can be helpful, but it’s kinda just a coincidence (plus some RLHF probably) that question happens to generate output text that can be used as a better prompt. There’s no actual introspection or awareness of its internal state or architecture beyond whatever high level summary Anthropic gives it in its “soul” document et al.

But given how often I’ve read that advice on here and Reddit, it’s not hard to imagine how someone could form an impression that Claude has some kind of visibility into its own thinking or precise engineering. Instead of just being as much of a black box to itself as it is to us.

toraway··on Grief and the AI split
That doesn't sound like it would help while reviewing a PR full of verbose slop in your day job.
toraway··on Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition

  "Among his accomplishments has been establishing the department’s Real Time Crime Center that leverages technology and data to support officers in responding more effectively to incidents," the city's release said. "Zibolski also prioritized officer wellness initiatives to strengthen mental health resources and resilience within the department. He reinstituted the Traffic Safety Team to focus on roadway safety and proactive enforcement, and ... played an active role in statewide discussions on various issues affecting law enforcement."
From the same article... He spearheaded a push to "leverage technology and data to support officers in responding more effectively to incidents", then that same technology mistakingly ruins a woman's life by passing along a hit to an officer who compared with her FB photos and said "sure, seems right".

The technology seems highly relevant here. Plus, as we've seen in the software world, when a mandate comes from the top to use the shiny new magic AI tools as much as possible, the officer may have felt pressured to make arrests using the new system they paid a bunch of money for instead of second guessing whatever it spits out.

toraway··on Colon cancer now leading cause of cancer deaths under 50 in US
Not saying it’s actually linked to cancer but it definitely does increase the risk of hemorrhoids, rectal prolapse and bleeding from straining. Which could mean chronic stress at a cellular level repairing damage over the long term.
toraway··on Colon cancer now leading cause of cancer deaths under 50 in US
That seems like wishful thinking, IMO. Seems more likely we will find it’s due a complex constellation of genetics, diet, lifestyle factors like exercise, environmental exposure, etc associated eith a modern sedentary lifestyle with no clear smoking gun or single preventative intervention.

It sort of reminds me of when Lesswrong was fixated on a hypothesis that lithium levels in the water supply was the cause of the obesity epidemic. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea at the time, and somewhat understandably as it would have been a single variable that could be tweaked for massive societal benefits.

But there wasn’t really any credible evidence to support it. Trying to reduce the complexity of human biology and lifestyle to single cause/effect relationship is an easy and tempting trap to fall into to explain unknowns in medicine.

toraway··on Atlassian to cut roughly 1,600 jobs in pivot to AI
If I was controlling a swarm of 1000 agents who do all the dev work on my extremely complex enterprise SaaS product with tightly defined business logic I feel like I’d definitely want something like Jira to manage what they’re working on.

They could also pivot to developing something for that exact use case if it’s a bad fit and if there’s such clear demand.

But truly they’re just cost cutting here and AI is really neither here nor there.

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